Science Fiction (Lets whirl)

The alien price for saving the station had been a heavy one.  After that leviathan destroyed the alien vessels that were attacking, it assumed a high orbit over the colony, and waited.  Thirteen local days later, the aliens patient watch ended with the arrival of more ships.  Massive bulk landers descended on the planet below, and the colonists found out the price of their salvation.

Of the nine million colonists, eight and a half million were loaded onto the transports and taken back into space.  Resistance was met with instant lethality, and the colony was turned into a ghost town over the course of a week.  Factories and labs were abandoned, and the basic infrastructure started to break down without the people needed to maintain them.  The supply ship that arrived after the aliens took their price found a colony in shambles, and evacuated the remaining thirty thousand souls off world.

My life found its direction in the aftermath of that grim harvest.  The Hycanthians, the aliens that performed that harvest were a part of a vast interstellar community of nations.  Hycanthian scientists very quickly figured out how to build us out of our constituent parts using their genetic technologies.  Cheaper to build than robots, we were accepted into the service of many different species at the lowest rung of their social structures.  For a while we were new and exotic, and that meant that we were meat to consumed.  

They were hungry for us, using us up and discarding us like cattle or sheep back home.  The ones that weren't trying to eat us were trying to fuck us.  Of the initial grouping of eight and a half million, ninety percent were dead within that first year of our bondage.  Most were eaten as an exotic delicacy by the lords and ladies of interstellar empires.  We were the hot ticket item, and i heard stories of our children sold as pets to the children of the fabulously wealthy.  

Fortunately, in a twisted way of looking at things, our fad faded, and soon we were just another primitive bipedal race that didn't understand how technology worked.  We became the lowest level of labor used by most of the more advanced races.  Hard labor, mining, and agriculture became our stock in trade, we weren't advanced enough yet to understand alien construction technology.  

Five natural born generations of our people were born, lived, and died under the cruel watch of alien overseers.  We dug across a million mines, and fed trillions upon trillions of other more advanced sentient creatures.  One of the workers at a mining colony showed a remarkable bit of craftiness, and his overseer saw the potential and put him to work repairing mining equipment and overseeing other humans.  

Five more generations of our kind labored under the watchful eyes of our own people.  We were a wonderfully exploitable resource.  We kept ourselves in line, could fix our own equipment, and if given parameters to operate under, we could effectively keep ourselves motivated to complete a task. Thy Hycanthians made vast fortunes on the backs of human labor pods, and we were integrating slowly into the landscape of the interstellar collective we had been forced into.  

Then something unexpected occurred that changed the way we were seen forever.  The Gulark insurrection attacked the Hycanthians.  The rest of the aliens stayed out of the fighting, but the Hycanthians panicked.  They armed us, and sent us into the field against the Gularks.  We died in the millions, but the Hycanthians could always build more.  Using brain recordings and advances in cybernetic technology, they built a better human being, one that emerged from the genevats ready to take up arms and destroy their enemies.  

At a cost of 12 billion human lives, the Hycanthians destoyed the Gulark insurrection and added their planets to the Hycanthas regime.  The secret about humans was out though.  Intelligent enough to follow orders in combat but expendable enough to throw into the jaws of certain death, we became a commodity again.  Hycanthian technology is capable of building many different kinds of human soldiers, from common infantry all the way up to something like me.  

I remember the first time my purchaser came to the Hycanthian Ark.  Common infantry could be grown in less than a month, but something as complicated and advanced as i was took longer, almost five years and a fabulous cost in money.  My purchaser was a Brellian.  He was a large creature, covered in very soft, very fine fur.  Three eyes rounded its conical head, giving it the ability to see almost all the way around its head.  He nodded at the Hycanthian who was responsible for my construction.  

Despite his apparent approval, my appearance was deemed less than ideal, and i was modified.  My canine teeth were elongated and sharpened, and my skin texture was modified to a more pleasant texture.  Other humans i would later encounter had extremely smooth, soft skin.  Mine was much rougher and thicker, and had an abrasive feeling.  They also modified my skin color, giving me a dark blue coloration, with lighter highlights radiating away from my core.  

Fictional Science (Word Play...its trendy)

The engines are humming, the dull pulsing sound of the fusion reaction chambers firing, giving this beast the energy to power itself.  Like the circulatory system of a living creature, the power system runs the length of the ship, carrying fresh energy to a thousand hungry mouths.  Shields, life support, the slip stream drive, even the sub light engines all crave power. The hungriest mouths on the ship belong to the cavernous weapons arrays.  High intensity beam exotic energy projectors mounted around the ship took all the energy the ship could spare and eagerly drank it down.

The ship itself was a great armored beast, gliding through the darkness, like an ancient leviathan, daring anything to catch its gaze.  If only it were that simple, if only this were some primordial hunter, some simple minded predator looking for its next meal.  Unfortunately, this great beast carried others to war, and it served ably, raining death from high above, or savaging other ships in the night. 

The bridge of the ship was alive with activity.  a half dozen weapons stations surrounded the primary control station.  Each was crewed by a seasoned veteran who'd proven themselves on countless assaults and boarding actions.  Now, they were responsible for clearing the way for others to follow.  The central station, an immersive pool made of blackened carbon held the captain firmly, protected by the pool's energy shields and personal life support system. 

The captain's eyes drifted over every deck plate and access panel, sweeping deck by deck as the ship reviewed its internal workings.  The ship's neural network had taken to this form extremely well, and was performing above expectations since its implantation.  The previous network had grown too old and unreliable, so it was time for replacement.  

The captain's eyes came to rest in the central cargo bay, where drones were busy working on replacement ammunition and armor from the internal stores.  The dead meat from the last engagement were being processed back into their constituent parts so they could be recycled into new soldiers.  The captain could see the tiny forms moving back and forth in their gestation tanks, the tiny lives being built from the broken bodies of the old and the dead.  

The other pods in the chamber drew the captain's attention.  the soft hum of the individual maturation pods resonated at its own frequency.  One of the shipwright's had explained it as the easiest way to get the soldier back to its own stasis pod for long flights.  The resonance was soothing to the meat body, and the soldier was much more pliable and capable of sleep for longer periods of time that way.  

The ship had a compliment of just over 5,000 active soldiers sleeping inside it, with around 1,000 either too old or young to fight anymore.  Those that were too old to fight labored on as technicians or engineers, working on equipment and preparing solutions to the problems that availed their younger kin.  

The tiny lights along the interior of the command pool were blinking, the ship was alerting the captain to something.  The focus shifted away from the cargo bays and to the exterior of the ship.  With an almost predatory glee, the ship had located a target, it looked to be a space station, or a base of some kind.  Sensors were picking up unusual readings, fluctuations in the energy fields surrounding it. It shuddered, as if struck by something, and the ship's external sensors locked on.  

They were under attack by something, sensors were picking up three distinct ships, each one firing mass driven projectiles.  Magnetically propelled explosive shells were hitting the station across its dorsal axis, and it looked like they were trying to hit it hard enough to snap its spine.  The station's sensors started to scan them, and a moment later, the communications channel flared to life.

"This is the station Fallkirk, to unknown vessel, we have come under attack by hostiles, and we're requesting your assistance.  Please, save our station."  The deck officer on the station was young, and ugly looking for a biped.  Smoke was filling up the command center, and small electrical sparks were crisscrossing the console. 

"Our Price is heavy, will you pay it?"  The captain said quietly.  It wasn't a real voice, but the ship had amplified the captain's thoughts into a mechanical vocalization.  The gun crews were all ready coming to life, and the ship's power plants were dialing up for combat. 

"Yes, for the love of god, we'll pay your bloody price."  The screen flickered and in the next moment, the officer was laying backwards over a console, his body barely moving. 

"Unsheathe the blades, ready the men, we're going hunting."  The ship rolled into an attack posture, and the targeting arrays for the exotic energy weapons flared to life.