Human Pet Pound - Loki Renard Page 0,30

name.”

“Yes. It is. But the universe ran out of serious combinations of sounds thousands of years ago. Everything since then has been at least somewhat silly. The further out you go, the sillier it gets. The most distant reaches are outright ridiculous.”

He says all of this with that inimitable scythkin deadpan which makes it impossible to tell if he’s messing with me or not.

“Sometimes I think you’re lying to me.”

“I have no need to lie to you. There is more than enough strangeness to go around without making it up.”

Again, whatever I was about to say is lost in another assault of very loud words.

WELCOME! WE HOPE YOU’RE HAVING THE BEST DAY. IF YOU HAVEN’T HAD THE BEST DAY BY 12 PM TONIGHT GALACTOR TIME, YOU’RE ENTITLED TO A COMPLETE REFUND OF YOUR DAY.

The voice lowers and speaks much more quickly. (Refunds are available from the ticket desk at the event horizon of the nearest black hole. Present your receipt to the unseen ticket taker at the verge of the void. Please be careful not to fall into the anomaly.)

“None of this gives me a good feeling,” I mumble. I don’t like anything about this place. I don’t like the blue ocean, or the green land masses. I don’t like the overly friendly shouting voice which is still blaring through the ship and refuses to be turned down.

WELCOME! The voice begins to repeat itself, spewing out a slight variation on its first message. WE HOPE YOU ENJOY YOUR STAY! ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE HERE! THE ONLY LIMIT IS YOUR OWN IMAGINATION! WELCOME TO GALACTOR! SPEND YOUR INTERSTELLAR CREDITS FOR HAPPINESS!

“Can we not turn that off?”

REMEMBER! THE UNATTAINABLE IS UNKNOWN AT PLANET ZOMBO. THE INFINITE IS POSSIBLE. WELCOME TO YOU WHO HAVE COME TO PLANET ZOMBO.

“Please, please turn that off!”

He reaches across to the control panel and shuts it down. Silence floods in, beautiful, perfect silence.

John

I can’t help but find her reactions to the Galactor planet adorable. I have never, in all my years, heard someone call an ocean gross. But Itch has a very specific frame of reference. Her life has been a series of interiors briefly punctuated by built-up spaces. She’s been a station rat for as long as she can remember. I can’t wait to get her down to this Galactor outpost and let her loose among the fields. A human needs open spaces in order to be truly human. Those who remain indoors become neurotic, temperamental, and more than a little frustrated. This should be good for her.

But it will not all be long walks in the park and maybe on the beach.

This, at its core, is a mission of vengeance. My broodkin are gone because of one or more Q’Ren. I have some difficulty coming to terms with that fact. I keep thinking that we will join up with my broodkin again sometime.

We will. But not in this life.

I have had everything taken from me. All the riches in the universe are useless to me — though they do not appear to be useless to my little pet. Humans cannot help but be impressed by the gathering of wealth and resources. It is encoded into their DNA, just as destroying entire civilizations is encoded into mine.

I will take the riches of my brood and I will use it to defeat the Q’Ren. Their alliance will be wiped from existence. Nothing will stand in the way of scythkin domination. This, I swear. I swear it to my slaughtered brood and all those who are yet to hatch. I swear it by the matriarchs and by the…

“Are you alright?”

“Hm? Yes. Why?”

“You were staring into the distance and growling and you’ve gotten all pointy.”

“Sorry,” I say, retracting my blades. I am trying not to burden Itch with the brutal intricacies of my plans for vengeance, but I have many. Retrieving the riches is merely the first of a thousand steps toward a dark destiny. Scythkin do not destroy planets simply for our own pleasure. We do so because that is how our species reproduces. We have the same right to exist as any other being, and we claim that right in the same way all species have from the beginning of time.

We fight for it.

I have to pick a disguise for the Galactor planet. Having ripped through my last suit in the pound, I have to replicate one, which is going to be difficult without scythkin technology. Difficult, but not impossible. The replicator is more suited to making food than