Protection

I woke up in a laboratory. Two slithes in white coats were standing beside me, talking about distracting topics.

- They say some of the spare engines exploded, - one of them, with an accent typical of another Machiavellian ship called "The Hydra", was drawing some green liquid into a syringe.

- It's a good thing he wasn't in charge, or who knows how long we'd have been stuck, - the other one, without the accent, seemed to be sterilizing the instruments.

- Is it fixed yet?

- I don't know, I guess.

Holy crap... how long have I been here? A day? Two? 

I got up off the bed. I felt fine, nothing seemed to hurt. That's fine. Pain is a disgusting feeling.

- Oh, you're awake, one of the medics noticed me.

- How long have I been here?

- About two days. It took a lot of work to heal your burns and regenerate you. You're pretty badly hurt.

- Oh, yeah. But you're good as new. Except for, uh. a big scar on your back.

When I felt the rough skin around my shoulder blades, I realized I'd lost all sensation there. Standing up from the recliner, I looked at myself in the mirror from the back. A huge area of burned skin, covering everything but my neck, shoulders, and mid-back, that looked like it would never heal again. Well, fuck it. I absolutely shouldn't give a fuck what it looks like.

I walked out of the office, thanking the doctors. I wonder what they found out in the last two days? Did they figure out who sent the spy? I'll find out later. Right now I'm going to my workplace. I'm sure someone else is running the place, and I can't stand it. I went down from the third floor to my sector. When I opened the door, I was not happy with what I saw. Warten had been guarding Lya for the past two days instead of me. She sat behind the glass, huddled in the farthest corner. Her face was trembling with fear, but as soon as she saw me, she immediately jumped up and ran to the glass.

- Kserd, you're alive!

- Of course I'm alive, honey.

Nobody's gonna kill me. At least not with a crooked knife.

- I'm so glad! - she seemed to cry with joy, judging from the glitter in her eyes.

Warten was lying on the bunk, snoring loudly.

- Do you hear me, asshole? Get out of my bed, - I kicked Warten's leg with all my might, and he woke up immediately.

- Kserd, you bastard, - he growled slowly, and reluctantly got out of bed, - What a shame you didn't blow up with that damn engine... - he said in the same tone of voice.

Warten used to be afraid of me - I used to punish him regularly by throwing him in the punishment cell. Now he seems to hate me for it.

- Get out. Fuck off. Get out of here, - I grabbed him by the collar and literally threw him out of the room.

Warten growled back:

- You'll pay for this.

He headed somewhere along the hallway. Let him go, I had every right to get him out of here. This is my facility. I'm her guard. Me, and nobody else.

Lya looked so scared when I walked in, I thought the pig was intimidating her. Or worse... I decided to let her out for a while. As soon as I pushed the button, she jerked out of there, and threw herself on my neck.

- I'm so glad, so glad you're alive! I thought you were dead in there! - She started to cry and wouldn't let go of me.

It's the first time someone is so happy for me...

- Well, well, don't cry, - I tried to get free, but she wouldn't let me go.

I was very embarrassed - I wasn't used to such tender feelings for me.

- I've missed you so much! That Warten, he is...

What he does to his subjects is reprehensible and repugnant to even the most thick-skinned of our race. That pig was the worst thing you could take on that damn ship. Just the thought that he might have harmed Lya made my insides burn with anger. When did I ever care about her well-being? Or am I angry because someone was trespassing on my subject? I don't know, probably both.

- What... he... was... doing to you? - I loosened my hold on her slightly, moving her hair away from her face, revealing bruises on her cheekbones and collarbones. Lya had been injected with a drug that allows her to regenerate almost as well as the skroge. But she still can't regenerate like we can. The fact that her bruises haven't come off suggests that Warten beat her brutally, using all the force a brute can muster.

- He beat me. First with his fists, then with his feet. Then... then he... I was in so much pain!

- Lya, if only I were here... I would have made him feel the same way he made you feel.

- Don't leave me to them, Kserd! - she fell to her knees, straddling my shins, - I won't laugh at you again, never, never, I promise! I'll be obedient! - she pleaded with me as if her life depended on me.

One could only guess what terrible injuries Warten had inflicted on her if she begged me for help like that. I couldn't move from such a thing. I felt all sorts of feelings, some I couldn't describe, some I'd never felt even when I was high. I just wanted to hold her against me and never let her go again, not to the other guards, not to the scientists. But most of all, I wanted to remind Warten what real pain felt like.

- I won't leave her, - I picked her up and stroked her hair, wiping her tears away with my hand.

It was the most disgusting lie I could tell. I can't do anything... I just can't free her from this torment. I felt an extremely unpleasant sensation, like my throat was being squeezed in a vise. Taking her in my arms, I sat her down beside me on the bed. She didn't let me out of her arms, making me feel attracted not only to her body, but to her. In those moments, I felt that I was more than just a guard for her. I'm a whole world to her.

- Lya... I'm going to set you free.

- How?

She looked up at me with tears in her eyes.

- I'll do anything to become head of security again. I'll ask them to give you to me, - I ran my hand over her cheek.

- But you... you said the women here are either test subjects or whores...

- There isn't a problem I haven't solved.

I was pretty sure their trials were useless. One more test subject, one less... what do they care? I'll tell them I want my own personal whore. Telling them that I cared about this girl would mean embarrassing myself and losing my credibility, possibly forever. Hearing this, Lya touched my face and kissed my cheek.

- Come on... I haven't earned it yet, - I pulled her hand away, fearing a repeat of the recent incident.

- It doesn't matter, - she said quietly, taking my hand in hers.

- I wanted to tell you... - she started to say something, but the stomping of soldiers at the door interrupted her, and she quickly ran back behind the glass.

Grote came in to see me. He looked bad, depressed.

- Kserd, come on. Eil wants to see you.

You're finished, you son of a whore. I'll tell you everything that happened. I hurried out of the room before I could even lock the door.

As we walked up to the fourth floor, Grote avoided looking me in the eye, as if he sensed that I wasn't going to defend him.

- What are you going to tell him?

I smirked, looking down at him.

- Beg me to keep quiet about at least a quarter of what happened.

He was afraid to say anything. When we got out into the hallway, he opened the door for me with his access card, but didn't go in himself.

- Go. It was you, not me.

The security officer didn't seem to believe what Grote was saying. He had a way of scaring people like him. I knocked on the door.

- Kserd... come in.

I closed the door.

- Get in. Grote told me you tried to blow up the spare engine.

How'd he come up with that? Like I lost the meaning of life and figured why not end this shit with 300 skroges? My thoughts are often different from what I say out loud.

- And you believed him? In three months, he turned the security sector into a brothel.

The security officer, Eil, was a white snake slug whose long, gray hair he gathered into a ponytail. Calm and hard as a rock - that's how I knew him. And in this we were quite different, as well as in our opinions on many important matters. Every time he called me on the carpet, it ended in a fight. One day, I couldn't take it anymore, and that was the last straw.

- I'm asking the questions here, - he said nonchalantly, - I know you won't lie to me. What really happened in the tail section?

I hated it when someone shut me up. But in my position, it's not worth the trouble to talk back to him.

- Grote came to me, - I grumbled, - He ordered me to check the tail section. He claimed there was someone in there. And there was. He planted the bomb.

- You're saying we've been infiltrated by a spy? Who was he? What did he look like?

- He looked like us. But he was definitely not of our race.

- That can't be true. Who else could look like a skroge if not a skroge?

I didn't believe it when I saw him, either.

- How did you figure it out?

- He came down with a knife wound. I had very little time to find the bomb.

He stared at me with his eyes completely black as the cosmic abyss for a minute. I didn't look away. I didn't care what he was about to say. I was telling the truth.

- Damn it. It was most likely someone from the Commonwealth.

In truth, it could have been anyone from our galaxy. No one likes a skroge, and they're understandable. Who wants to be enslaved, or destroyed? Despite the fact that all members of the Galactic Commonwealth have secured themselves with a force field that keeps enemy ships out, as if the software installed on the Сindy keeps out viruses - they'd feel much better if our ships couldn't move at all. The officer turned back to the porthole, and only said afterward:

- You're dismissed.

I left the office, having saluted beforehand.

Returning to my cell, I thought about the vector of our development. Is it right to take over other people's planets? Isn't it more reasonable to unite and acquire a valuable ally in the person of at least five races of our galaxy? If our leader were smarter, he'd call a truce. Maybe other civilizations would join forces and help us solve our uterus problem. My musings were interrupted by a piercing, desperate female scream coming from my security camera. Lya?!

- What the...?

As I stepped inside, my jaw dropped in anger. Warten had her pinned against the wall, pulling down her pants.

- Don't, please, stop!

- Shut up, bitch! - he punched her in the face so hard that she fell to the floor and my brakes went completely out.

I ran up behind him and sank my claws into his eyes. He screamed at the top of his voice, grabbing at them, trying to stop the blood.

- Lya, hide, - I pointed her towards the door so she could escape.

- You bastard, you're gonna pay for this! - I didn't stop there, and even though he was bigger than me, I threw him to the ground and he fell with a thud.

He didn't last long, and a moment later showed me in all the glory of a brute kick, slamming me into the wall so hard it was dented.

- Come on, Kserd. Don't be so greedy! I'll let you fuck her second, - he stepped toward me, kneading his fists.

- The only one getting fucked now is you.

The brutes were physically stronger and bigger than the vipers. But they were extremely slow and sluggish. Because of this, their combat training was far inferior to ours. He tried to throw a punch, but I dodged it and kicked him so hard that he fell onto the control panel, smashing it to smithereens.

- I've waited a long time for this fight, Kserd... - he stood up slowly, swaying, - You're going to pay for all the minutes I've been in the punishment cell!

Well, you had to admit, he was resourceful in choosing his revenge. Warten swung at me, but I managed to dodge him by biting him on the collarbone. I don't know how much poison I spent on him, but his face turned black instantly, and a nasty, festering ulcer formed at the site of the bite. Viper venom, when it entered a Brute's bloodstream, though it didn't kill them, unlike other races, it paralyzed them, causing them unbearable pain. Warthen fell, wriggling and letting out a piercing scream.

- Bastard!!! That hurt so bad!!!

I caught Lya's gaze, who was looking at all this with frightened eyes, and some kind of furious rage awoke in me. I started hitting him with my fist one after another, unable to stop. The whole sector seemed to come to Warten's shouts. Aurtror was the first to enter. He laughed out loud at what he saw.

- Finally, someone had punched that asshole! Kserd, move over!

I didn't react to him as I continued to paint Warthen's face. Punch after punch, I turned his ugly face into a bloody mess. It looked like there was so much poison that it had completely suppressed his regeneration. Following him, two other guards came in.

- What a mess! - said one of them.

- We have to do something, or he'll be the first to kill his own kind on this ship.

It's extremely difficult for a skroge of our class to kill his own kind. But it's possible: if someone's regeneration fails, their injuries won't heal in time. Though it's never happened on this ship, there's a penalty for it. If you can call it that... it's not something we talk about, but there's a special device in the ammunition depot that can simply shut down an individual's consciousness. But it was never resorted to, as every unit on this ship is especially valuable.

Two guards tried to pull me away, but they lacked strength. The last to slowly crawl in was Jenel.

- Uh-huh... this is bad...

He wrapped his strong tail around my torso, and not without effort, but he managed to pull me away. I started to come to my senses: the room was partially destroyed, and Warten, blackened, was twitching on the floor under the effects of the poison. I could not catch my breath, and weakness overcame me. Soon Grote was here, accompanied by six soldiers.

- Who started the fight? - he said.

Warten could utter nothing but shouts and groans. Aurtror and Jenel looked at each other.

- There's something wrong here, Warden.

- Grote, you've been told a hundred times to put that fat pig away! Do we really have to wait for someone to kill him?!

- WHO STARTED THE FIGHT?! - he repeated, already shouting.

- W... Warten... - Lya said in a trembling voice, coming out of the waste room where she had been hiding. - Warten... burst in on me... - her knees were shaking from the horror she had experienced, - He tried to rape me, but Kderd stopped him... it wasn't his fault, don't punish him! Warten attacked him first!

Lya lied, obviously trying to protect me. Everyone in the room turned to look at her. Their faces expressed incomprehension, however, Aurtror snickered:

- Why am I not surprised? That brat should have been castrated a long time ago. It wouldn't be the first time.

- Kserd must be a little jealous! - Yenel joked.

I heard one of the soldiers let out a caustic laugh.

- Both of them to the holding cell, - Groot ordered, and I was taken away, along with Warten.