A Pet For Lord Darin Read online

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  A Pet For Lord Darin

  Part One: Stolen

  Part Two: Kept

  Part Three: Us

  Part Four: Prove It

  Epilogue

  Sign Up!

  A Pet For Lord Darin

  By: Hollie Hutchins

  Part One: Stolen

  The flight from Earth to Neptune is short, as far as the people on board are concerned. You enter hyperspace ten minutes past the moon and emerge in a burst of light on the far side of the solar system, with little more to show for it than a headache and a sore stomach.

  Inside the ship, the journey would take about an hour, but in the “real world” hardly any time would pass. We weren’t entering hyperspace as a naked ship – that would melt the computer, the shuttle, and everyone in it to putty – we were slipping into what was loosely referred to as a “pocket universe”, a stasis-field-like bubble that could travel a little past light speed, without any of the nightmare physics of hyperspace screwing with the inside. It was a miracle of technology, but a costly one, one that devoured near as much energy as it did money. The engines and shields responsible for creating the stasis universe were perfectly stable, but an hour of on-board flight time was just about all you could ask of them before the cooling systems couldn’t take it. I’d read somewhere recently that we were close to developing an engine capable of two, even five-hour jumps, and from there it would only be a matter of time until we were leaping entire galaxies. Close in science is a relative term, but proximity is progress, and no frontier is so enticing as the stars.

  And yet we still know jack about the oceans. Science doesn’t march on so much as skip sideways.

  It was a raffle win, this round-trip cruise to Neptune – or rather, to a colony on one of its moons, a research facility setting itself up to poke and probe at the big blue planet in the hopes of finding something alive besides a tardigrade. The temperatures on Neptune routinely drop well below fifty-five degrees Kelvin, so liquid water was out of the question; they don’t call Neptune an “ice giant” for nothing. If nothing else, it was a water source, if one that would be stupidly expensive to access. There’s always knowledge to find and resources to mine, though NASA and the rest always hope for something more.

  Our teachers entered our class into the drawing when construction first began more than a year ago, open to certain schools and universities around the country. The companies financing the operation promised an exclusive first look to STEM students and their chaperones. None of us had thought anything of it. We’d signed the permission slips on the off chance we’d get a call one day, but after a week of excitedly imagining what a research colony might look like, I’d completely forgotten about it. I had finals to worry about, term papers and last-minute labs to make up from the days I’d been gone with the academic team. I had more pressing things to worry about than a fantasy trip to Triton.

  And then we got a call. Hooray for us.

  The ship me and my classmates were on was long and white, with just enough fuel for landing and takeoff, planning to refill on Triton. It was little more than a courtesy shuttle, with large seats and cupholders and a promise of an internet connection yet to come. How they intended to give us internet in hyperspace was beyond me, but if they were advertising it, it must have been close to coming true.

  There were seventeen of us spread throughout the small cabin, leaning against steel walls four feet thick, peering out of small porthole windows at the multicolor vastness of hyperspace. None of us had ever seen anything like it before, not in person. When would we have? Katy and Jonathan—twins with the dark eyes and olive skin of full-blooded Italians—were quantum physicists, and while hyperspace wasn’t their specialty they’d certainly run simulations that looked like this. They had their noses pressed to the glass, each at their own window, eyes wide and sparkling with every color the human eye could see.

  The world swam past us in a tangle of lines like knotted strings, rising and falling as something pulled at them from either end. Some of us watched, some of us prayed. Most of us were bored.

  “Brittany, look!” said Naomi, pointing to one of a billion strands of colored light. I leaned forward and pretended to see it.

  “Oh, wow,” I said. My stomach gurgled. If I closed my eyes I couldn’t even tell we were moving, but just the idea of being in a smallish tube flying headlong through a part of the universe that technically didn’t exist was enough to make me nauseas.

  “What do you think it’ll look like?” Naomi said. “The station.”

  I didn’t know. I was trying not to think about how small the cabin was, and what would happen if we exited hyperspace too fast or too slow. I didn’t know much of the science – my realm was always chemistry – but I knew just enough to give me specific things to worry about. Like coming out too close to the space station and crashing into it at top speed.

  Lucky for me, Naomi never asked questions to get answers; she asked questions to give them. “I’ll bet you can’t even see it,” she said. “I’ll bet it’s underground.”

  “They can’t see Neptune if it’s underground, dingus,” said Theo. He had his hands cupped around his eyes, like that might help him see outside better.

  “Who says they want to see Neptune?” said Naomi. “Gathix still hasn’t said what the facility is gonna be for, just that it’s there.” ‘Gathix’ being the multi-million-dollar benefactor of NASA’s new project. “They’re probably mining for something.”

  “Like what?” said Theo. He didn’t sound very interested in the answer.

  “I don’t know,” said Naomi. She ran her fingers through her hair, blond and bright as dawn, and tossed it over her shoulder. Naomi was fiendishly pretty, and she took every opportunity to make sure we knew it. “But that’s always what millionaires want, right? Raw materials? There’s bound to be something.”

  “Like what, kryptonite?” said Katy, laughing. “I don’t think so.”

  Naomi stuck her tongue out at Katy and turned back to her porthole. The windows were circled with bands of dark black metal, cold to the touch. The way it caught the color was mesmerizing.

  “Do you think they’ll find aliens?” Naomi leaned to the left, trying to get a look at the rear of the shuttle. “Ooh, what if something’s following us?” She turned to me. “That would be fun, wouldn’t it?”

  “Hardly,” I said. She didn’t seem to hear me.

  “Hyperspace would be a nifty place to find life, wouldn’t it?”

  Oh Lord, I couldn’t even begin to list all the reasons it wouldn’t be; and it was Naomi, so I didn’t.

  “Like little sentient lights that only live in pocket universes.” She was silent for a solid eleven seconds, mulling something over in her head. She bit her lip. “There’s probably aliens somewhere, right?” she said.

  “Probably,” I agreed. It’s a big universe, there was probably a big jellyfish-looking something with googly eyes out there somewhere.

  “Do you think they’re cute?” Naomi said. There was an odd lilt in her voice I couldn’t identify.

  “Cute?” I frowned. “Like…bunnies?” I said.

  “No, like people cute. Like, ‘I’d hit that’ cute.”

  Oh Jesus Christ. “…I think they’re aliens, so it doesn’t matter,” I said. Bubbles rose and popped in my stomach and I wrapped my arms around myself, counting slowly under my breath so I wouldn’t vomit. “One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi…”

  “But if they were, you’d totally bone one, right?”

  I looked up, face twisting into what I hoped she’d interpret as, “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  She didn’t. She blinked at
me, expression blank. “Well? Wouldn’t you?”

  “Wouldn’t she what?” said Jonathan.

  “Bone an alien,” said Naomi. She turned away from the window and sat back in her seat, drawing her legs up to her chest. “You totally would, wouldn’t you?”

  “Are you talking to me or him?” said Katy.

  “All of you,” said Naomi. She looked around at us expectantly. “Would you or would you not bone a hot alien?”

  “Can we stop saying the word ‘bone’ please?” I said.

  “Okay, would you bang a hot alien?”

  “Maybe if he killed you first,” I muttered.

  “Hey!” Naomi frowned, as offended as I’d ever seen her. I tried to smile.

  “Kidding,” I said.

  “Sure,” she said, and immediately perked back up. “I would.”

  “Really, we never would have guessed,” said Jonathan.

  “Okay, but how are we defining ‘hot alien’?” said Katy.

  “However you like,” said Naomi. “Extra-terrestrial aesthetics are in the eye of the beholder.”

  “Do they have to be humanoid?” said Jonathan. “Like, am I allowed to bone a giant lobster-mermaid monster in this scenario?”

  Naomi laughed so hard she barely made any sound. Beside Jonathan, Katy, expressionless, reached into her bag, pulled out the thickest hardback textbook she owned – Quantum Entanglement and Other Cosmic Confusions – and hit him as hard as she could. The sound of book on skull made every one of us flinch.

  “Hey! I’m kidding, I’m kidding!” he said, holding up his hands. “Fuck, I’m sorry.”

  “I mean, you do you, man,” said Naomi, chuckling. “And your, um. Lobster-mermaid monster.”

  “Don’t encourage this behavior!” said Katy, raising the book like she intended to throw it full-force at Naomi.

  “Hey, I don’t kink shame,” Naomi said.

  Mr. Cravits’ voice meandered back to us from the front of the shuttle, where our professor was casually reading something on his tablet. “What’s going on back there?”

  All of us said “Nothing!” at once. Except Naomi, who said, “Would you bone an alien?”

  He looked up and over his shoulder, pulling down his glasses to squint at her. “Would I what now?”

  “Bone…” Naomi cleared her throat and adopted some more professor-worthy language. “If presented with an intelligent, consenting alien specimen of appropriate appearance, would you or would you not engage in coitus with them?”

  Mr. Cravits blinked at her. “I don’t think I’ll answer that.”

  “It’s a valid question!” she said. Mr. Cravits turned back to his tablet, shaking his head.

  Naomi sighed and slid back into her chair, crossing her legs, a public display of defeat. “I’m just saying.”

  “Just saying?” said Jonathan.

  “Yeah, it’s something to keep in mind.”

  “In case, what, we get hijacked by subjectively hot aliens?”

  “I mean, yeah.”

  Jonathan laughed his disbelief. “You…you’re a scientist, Naomi. A student of physical and universal law.”

  “I’m a behavioral scientist, and a human person with a libido,” she said. “I’m just keeping my options open.”

  Jonathan coughed and muttered, “Ahem, desperate.”

  “It could happen!” Naomi said. “The universe is vast and wide and full of wonders. One of those wonders has got to be a hot alien.”

  Jonathan draped his arm over the back of his chair. “Jesus, Naomi, if you ever bone a hot alien, I’ll eat my fucking diploma.”

  “Can I get that in writing?”

  Jonathan groaned and turned away from her without saying anything more.

  Naomi looked at me and smiled without missing a beat. “So?”

  I blinked at her. “So what?”

  She rolled her eyes. “So, would you—”

  “No, I would not,” I said. “What are you, twelve? I already said. Can you go back to looking out the window please? I feel sick.”

  “Sick thinking about banging aliens?” She cocked her head, blue eyes glowing with the rainbow outside. The ribbons of color laced through her iris like a thousand tiny strings, each one bright as daylight. “You’re not asexual, are you?”

  “No, I’m not,” I said. “I’m in a tube in a pocket universe hurtling through space at two thousand miles per hour and my stomach hurts.” We were probably going faster than that, but that wasn’t the point.

  She leaned forward, eyebrows hiking themselves up to her hairline. “You know what would fix you right up? Hmm?”

  Jonathan piped up from his seat. “If you say a hot alien, I swear to God I will punt you into space.”

  “This doesn’t concern you,” Naomi said.

  “It doesn’t concern anyone, it’s a weird question!”

  “I said no. Twice,” I said. “I’m gonna close my eyes now.”

  Naomi smiled at me and patted my head. “Okay sweetie. I’ll wake you up when we get there.”

  “I’m not going to sleep, I’m closing my eyes,” I said. “And I’ll feel it when we leave hyperspace, we all will.” The attendants who gave us our safety briefing told us it would be like slamming the brakes on a runaway rollercoaster. Everybody else was looking forward to it. “But thanks.”

  Naomi gave me the most patronizing smile I’d ever seen and sat forward in her seat, reaching for the belts, maybe intending to go to sleep herself and buckling herself in just in case no one woke her for the exit. She was as smart as any of us, but she had some…notably childish inclinations. I wondered if she’d dream about hot aliens. And thinking about that for another three seconds, I decided I’d rather not know

  I fell asleep in spite of myself, and my dreams were nothing but me falling through empty, airless space: sub-zero vacuum flash-freezing me from the inside out. When we hit the turbulence that happens just before you enter the real universe, I jerked awake, heart pounding, thinking I’d finally hit the ground.

  Above us, the seatbelt sign was on and blinking, accompanied by a soft beeping. Two flight attendants – two hurtling-through-space-at-ungodly-speeds attendants – were walking down the aisles making sure everyone’s buckle was fastened tight, and telling us to brace ourselves. Existing the pocket universe was perfectly safe, don’t worry, it was just going to be a little uncomfortable.

  The shuttle bounced and dropped as the pocket universe stretched wide, halfway to popping like a bubble. My stomach turned itself upside down. If I closed my eyes again I could almost imagine I was on an airplane, the ground forty-thousand feet below, waiting to catch us if something went wrong.

  Nothing to catch you in space, I thought. Nothing but Naomi’s aliens. And maybe black holes.

  The colored lights outside sputtered and popped like dying lightbulbs, and suddenly they were gone, replaced by a vast expanse of blinking stars. The shuttle shook like we’d hit something and my whole body tensed up. A moment later it was over, and everything was perfectly still.

  I half expected everyone to clap, the way some people do when a plane lands, but the cabin was completely silent. Everyone was in their seats, buckled in, staring out their windows.

  I looked out too, and my heart leapt into my throat. In an instant it became real, this small shuttle hanging in the impossible emptiness of space – and the possibilities of asphyxiation and flash-freezing that went with it. The air suddenly felt thin and cold, but my lungs burned as I breathed. The curving walls around me were too close, and they were getting closer, shrinking down and down and down until the windows cracked and the door was too small to open –

  “Look!” Naomi said, startling me out of my panic. She strained against her seatbelt for a better view. “There it is!”

  I looked out the window. And there it was.

  Beside and below us was the vast bronze globe that was Triton. The sun was behind us, shining brightly down on one side of the moon, making the little polymer domes far be
low sparkle like rhinestones. There were craters everywhere, and ridges that might have been cliffs or mountains, shrouding swathes of bronze rock in shadow. A shining white space station hung high above it, spinning slowly, wreathed in little lights that meant the station’s machinery was functioning properly. On its side was painted a big yellow smiley face. All the Galix stations had that; it was meant to be an interstellar white-flag, something intelligent aliens might see and think, “Oh look, they’re friendly.” There was always the chance, of course, that a smiley face in an alien culture was an overt declaration of war, but we tried to ignore the anthropologists and just be optimistic.

  The living quarters of the station took up a meager third of the space. The rest of it housed computers and emergency replacement parts, storage rooms that could be detached from the station itself if it had cause – explosions, catastrophic malfunctions, that kind of thing. Little grey ovals drifted back and forth between the station and the moon, a constant stream of computer chips filled with data too dense to be transported wirelessly. We would be taking a box of those home with us to analyze on behalf of the Galix Corporation. We were high schoolers, yes, but most of us were seniors and all of us were perched firmly at the top of our class. We were more than capable of analyzing it. Not to mention nothing makes a multi-million-dollar industry man look more amiable than the generosity of knowledge, especially to a younger generation of STEM students.

  I was looking forward to that part. Data was easy, data was safe, data could be sifted and sorted through from a computer on the ground somewhere, someplace where the atmosphere couldn’t choke the blood from your veins. It was a sight to see, Triton and Neptune and the yawning blackness that cradled them, but I’d seen it now and I wanted to be done. I had papers to write and tests to study for, research to do and books to read that had nothing to do with science so my head wouldn’t explode. All I wanted to do was turn around and go home and maybe buy a commemorative pin from the gift shop at the airfield when we landed – something with the research facilities and station stamped into it, or some campy postcard that said Greetings from Neptune! Something stupid so I could remember it and never, ever have to come back.