Chapter 5
Kazumi attended her new master as he worked on the cloning cylinder, tending his creation. The little cretin, who had been just her creator, Dr Malorus's lab assistant before he murdered him in cold blood, now insisted she refer to him as Dr Charlie. He also insisted on other things her previous master hadn't, things that had her aching and sore and crying herself to sleep.
It was just the two of them now. Before murdering his sponsor Charlie had managed to poison the guards and then had killed off the other experimental subjects as well. He told her she was the only experiment worth keeping.
The doctor had created her as his first test clone. She was more or less stock mirialan with none of the changes he had planned for his later work. He had wanted to start small.
Charlie wasn't being nearly as careful as Malorus had. He had basically mixed and matched a bunch of samples, gave the slightest nod towards documenting his creation, and then tossed it in the cloning cylinder. That had been almost 3 weeks ago.
Three weeks was the absolute minimum time to grow a clone, but her previous master had always done it much, much slower. He said there were always problems when a clone was "flash grown."
Like almost every other bit of wisdom or advice thatMalorus had offered over the years he had been in his service Charlie ignored that advice. He said this was just a practice run, to "fine tune" his clone formula.
He waxed philosophical to her about what they would do when his brilliant clones were sold to the highest bidder and made him rich and famous. He talked about all the things he would buy and the places they would travel.
Being as he spent most nights raping her she really didn't understand why he thought she cared. On many occasions she had decided to kill him, but she had never been alone and would have no idea how to contact anyone for supplies or even a way off this world.
The doctor had chartered a freighter to bring his team here and set up the pre-fab compound he had purchased. He had chosen this world more or less at random after ensuring there was no population and no major predators that could threaten the armored shelter.
He had come here to do more dangerous cloning experiments. He had also planned to create clones to use as combat troops, either selling the clones themselves or possibly the designs but he had done so carefully. His first experiments had produced basically normal humans, perhaps stronger or faster, a few with greater healing. It was a careful
exploration of the genome and he freely admitted that they would be on this planet for years.
They had been supplied accordingly, bringing in a full freighter load with them. The doctor had commissioned no second trip for that freighter or crew either. He had said he would contact someone when his work was done.
A curse and a scream brought her attention back to the present. Charlie jerked his arm back out of the cloning cylinder, his arm had a large bite mark and blood was oozing from the wound.
"Help me you idiot!" He shouted at her.
She stepped forward reflexively to do so when suddenly there was a horrendous bang from inside the cylinder and she saw the cracks appear and fluid run down the front. She shrieked in surprise and began backing up.
Charlie may have been an idiot in a lot of ways but let it not be said his sense of self-preservation wasn't top notch as he slammed the kill button each cylinder had been equipped with.
She saw the electricity arc within the fluid and she heard the roars. It wasn't enough, however, since rather than stop the pounding grew more intense.
She looked to Charlie to see what to do and he was staring at his arm in horror. It had already turned green all the way up to his elbow and was starting to
bubble. She gaped at the horrible sight. Then the cylinder shattered and the thing Charlie created came out, dragging bits and pieces of pipes and hoses.
It snatched Charlie up in a giant hand and started bashing him over and over into the floor, roaring in inarticulate pain and rage. She didn't hesitate any longer, she ran out and slammed the reinforced lab door behind her.
Seconds later a rhythmic pounding started as the creature beat at the door. Followed by that sound she ran out into the wild, there had been some sort of structure on the scans that the Doctor had ordered upon their arrival. He had planned to send the guards there eventually, maybe that place would be safe.
She cleared the main building and reached the garage, where several speeders were stored. The land vehicles had been used mainly for recreation and one of the nicer guards had given her a few pointers on how to drive it.
After all, they were on a deserted planet, where would she run?
She jumped aboard and started the engine, she was pulling out of the compound when the door to the lab came flying off the hinges and a thing leapt out.
It was her first look at Charlies creation and, after getting it, she sincerely hoped it was her last. It was nearly 8 feet tall and built like a tank. It had tusks and claws and muscles everywhere. It's beady eyes glowed in the light.
She was already moving when it caught sight of her and she pegged the throttles and just ran. She was out of the wooded area and onto the giant plains in just a few seconds.
She looked back and was terrified to see the thing was almost keeping pace! She was pulling away slowly but for such a large beast it was moving incredibly quickly.
Luckily it was intelligent enough to realize it couldn't catch the speeder after a few more seconds and turned to return to the lab.
She hurtled across the prairie, her face streaked with tears, and, unnoticed, her purple skin began to develop blotches of green.
Gavin and Tinker had settled in. They had built a home of sorts in the crashed capital ship and Tinker had managed to use some components from both ships to make a basic power system. It had started as the power generator on their shuttle but the landing had certainly done it no favors.
Once they had power handled they had salvaged food preparation and storage supplies, clothing, bedding, and all the other items they could.
It was actually a fairly comfortable set up by this point. In a little over a week they had set themselves up comfortably to wait out their stay.
Tinker had even managed to gain access to the shuttles computer and had rigged power to it so they could peruse the library that had been stored onboard.
That's what he was doing when he was contacted by his brother.
"Did you somehow get a vehicle running?" Gavin asked.
"Of course not, why?" Tinker responded.
"Because I hear one off to the east of us, and it's coming in fast."
"I thought we were alone here?"
"I did too, but if that's an animal I want to see it."
"I'll armor up and find a spot to set up an ambush. What are you going to do."
"My armor is still better than yours so if one of us needs to go out in the open I will do it. Coming back towards the ship now."
It was a good thing, Gavin thought, that they had decided to always be armored up outside their new home. Thus far they had not seen any predators
large enough to threaten an adult human but the deerlike creatures they had been harvesting for food certainly gave the impression they might be out there, some had boasted fairly impressive claw and bite marks.
Tinker took up an overwatch position, watching the speeder approach out of a raised, open hatch. He used the scope on his rifle to get a better look but was a bit confused at what he saw.
"It's coming in pretty fast but it seems to be unmanned." He reported. "I have a scope on it and there is no one in sight."
"Let it get a bit closer, if I need to I can jet pack to it and stop it from getting trashed."
As the vehicle approached Tinker got a better angle into it.
"Hold on Gav, there is someone aboard but they are draped across the front seat. Not sure if they are unconscious or dead. Small green figure, can't identify the species."
"Keep the scope on them just in case, I'm coming now."
He heard his brothers jet pack fire up and Gavin caught up to the speeder and neatly dropped into the rear seat. He wasted no time and turned off the engine. The vehicle coasted to a stop just feet from the side of the derelict.
Tinker climbed down and approached the vehicle, still holding his rifle.
"What do we got?" He asked.
"Female, not sure of the species, no obvious wounds, might be running a fever?" Gavin reported.
Of the two of them Tinker was the more practiced medic so he stepped forward to take over caring for the creature.
When he caught sight of her face he completely froze.
She was a gorgeous green woman, maybe 5'4" tall, she was well proportioned, okay, very well proportioned and had black hair, oversized, pointed ears, little horns on her head, and adorable, (he thought), fangs.
Gavin, who knew his brothers triggers well, said, "I realize she is green but you still need to treat whatever is wrong with her." in a laughing tone.
"Go grab me the med pack will you?" He asked as he popped off his helmet. Obviously she wasn't a threat in her current condition.
Gavin came back in a minute or so toting the med pack they had salvaged from the shuttle. Owing to Talwin's profession, and theirs as well, it was a very well stocked med kit.
Gavin popped off his own helmet and began to check around the speeder while his brother worked.
"This is weird, there are no supplies at all in this thing and it is almost out of fuel."
"Oh no! Karabast! Gavin, don't take off your.. Aww crap."
Gavin turned to face Tinker, "what's wrong."
"We are both idiots, our buir would have our hides. We just found an unconscious woman who is more than usually warm to the touch and we both took off our helmets."
"You mean she's sick?"
"I mean she's running a hell of a fever and there is some sort of virus absolutely saturating her system at the moment."
"So, yes."
"Or close enough it doesn't matter." Tinker took the scanner and scanned Gavin and then himself. Reading the results he sighed.
"Well," he said, "we might as well get her and ourselves inside and as comfortable as possible. It looks like its going to get unpleasant."
Kazumi woke up with a start hours later. She was lying on a comfortable surface, covered with a soft blanket, and wearing some sort of short dress.
She panicked for a second, since someone had changed her clothes but then she remembered beginning to change and realized there probably had not been very much left. At least she was still wearing her undergarments.
She sat up and looked around the room she was in. It seemed to be set up as someones bedroom judging from the clothing neatly stacked in the corner farthest from the door. There was another pile of technical looking bits and pieces in the opposite corner.
Looking down at her green hands and arms she dreaded facing the changes she no doubt had gone through but there was no help for it. She stood up, straightened the mans shirt she was wearing as a dress around her waist, and slowly walked to the door.
Along the entire path from the lab to the derelict various animals lay, twitching and changing, as anything with a close enough DNA match went through violent changes.