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Within theInseminatorhierarchy, spies were seen as higher ranking than even most generals. In some packs spies were treated like dirt, in part to try to wash away the metaphorical stink that the job could bring to a pack. I was lucky my pack valued my work. It badly damaged relations between packs when a spy was caught, and treating spies poorly was one way to mitigate that damage. Our pack was wise though, because treating spies well meant that we performed better, andInseminatorspies were rarely caught.
It also meant that Thelusir wouldn’t dare defy my order.
“Now bring me to him,” I said.
He walked me through the corridor. He talked, and I listened.
“It’s temporary, right? The Hive Mind will be back soon?” he asked. I didn’t answer. I’d give my report to Tharkur. He’d choose what to do with it.
“We’re assuming it’s temporary,” he said. “The Hive Mind can’t just begone.”
He changed the topic when I met him with an icy glare.
“So you came back with just one unbreedable woman,” he said. “That either means you didn’t get anywhere on a ship full of women, or it means you already planted your seed…” he narrowed his eyes at me. “Didn’t you have two bodies?”
I gave him an even harder stare this time, and he stopped talking entirely.
He brought me to the Grand Hall. OnWrath, Thuliak had a Bridge. On theInseminatorwe had a Grand Hall.
The Grand Hall was always changing. The last time I’d been in it, it had looked like a dark forest. The smoke in the air had been thick, and inhaling it made any Khetar impossibly hard. The main difference betweenInseminatorsand other packs was that we fucked each other for practice. We had somehow evolved the ability to fuck without emotion, to separate the act from the meaning. The dark forest had been meant to encourage meetings between Khetar. Liaisons, they were called.
Sometimes, when two Khetar fucked each other good enough, they merged into one. I called myself Kaav, but once I’d been Khalius and Aven. We’d lost ourselves in the act and come out as a bubbling dual-consciousness spread across both bodies. Within a few weeks we’d cohered into a single mind spread across two bodies. We’d been merged for a very long time, and we’d spread evenly between both bodies. Even though I now only occupied Khalius’ former body, I was not Khalius, and Aven was not gone. There was now only Kaav, and he was only in this body. All that had been of Aven was now in this body too.
Back then in the dark forest, there’d been little alcoves where Khetar were practicing on each other, honing their skills for their future lifemates. I’d stumbled across a few of them, but I hadn’t joined in. I’d been going to see Tharkur, knowing he’d send me away again to spy on another pack.
Now, when I entered the Grand Hall, it looked like a huge stadium. It looked like it was made of solid marble, and technically it was, but it was just something the Hive Mind had made from interstellar dust. I wondered if Hive could remember how he’d made this grand thing atom-by-atom, which was now full of ten-thousandInseminators.
TheInseminatorhad a big bulging top, making it look decidedly unlike any other packship. Where most packships looked like cocks with no balls, our packship had a pair. Though only if you squinted at it and saw double, because the bulge it was a big smooth dome, which now had a patchy artificial sky overhead.
It used to be that the dome could simulate anything—like the dark forest full of fog—but now there were big gaping holes in the sky, through which I could see the black of spaces and the distant stars. TheInseminatorwas visibly dying. It hurt to see.
There was a fevered frenzy in the colosseum. An orgy was forming in the middle, and onlookers were cheering, but suited soldiers were breaking up the orgy by poking at the naked Khetar with big pointy sticks.
Thelusir was staring down at the spectacle. We’d entered near the top of the stadium’s rounded seating arrangement, so we had a good view of everything. He snapped out of it and looked back up at me.
It was strange, because I remember being drawn to things like bigInseminatororgies before, but now it had no appeal to me. These orgies had always been about practicing, honing, and mastering our craft. All in preparation for when it really mattered. I’d already crossed the bridge with Weapons. I’d fucked for real, and these little training exercises were of no interest to me now.
There’d even been duels. Two Khetar would suck and fuck each other, and whoever came first lost. Sometimes these duels were to the death, and other times, if both duelists were equally matched and especially skilled, they resulted in a merged consciousness.
Thelusir pointed forward. “Follow me. I’ll bring you to him.”
Tharkur would have a big, visible booth somewhere overlooking the center of the stadium. We must have been underneath it now, which was the only reason I couldn’t see it.
Another suited warrior came down a stairway and stopped us. “He wants you down there.” The warrior pointed down into the stadium.
“All the way down there?” I asked, growing impatient. “Why?”
“He’s the scion. There’s no ‘why.’” As he said that, he made a minuscule little motion toward his holstered weapon. It meant he’d give me real trouble if I resisted. I’d end up making a scene, and spies weren’t meant to make scenes.
I sighed and nodded. “Fine. Lead me down. Quickly.”
They took me down a lot of winding stairways. Tharkur must have been getting the men ready for a lot of movement on mountainous terrain, because the stairways seemed designed to wind and fork with the sole purpose of making the distance from point to point within the stadium as long and up-and-down as possible.
I was moderately winded by the time we got to the ground and stepped out onto the packed dirt floor of the stadium. Some of the dirt was blood-stained, though I didn’t know if it was Khetar blood, or blood from something else.
There were a few stragglers still trying to keep the orgy going, and a few men were even dueling, each with the other’s cock deep in the other’s mouth. The warriors switched to even pointier sticks, and they were poking big chunks out of the rainbow-colored mass of Khetar flesh, and it was very quickly falling apart into individual Khetar. It was very difficult to keep your cock hard when someone was poking you with a spear.
The soldier who had threatened me nodded toward the center. So I was going to be made into part of the spectacle?
