Free Deep Penetration; Alien Breeders I by Stacey St. James Page B

the walls but he
couldn’t be certain it was enough to indicate a fire had killed
them. If they’d been sheltering in the area for a while, they
would’ve needed some means of cooking. He couldn’t even say for
certain that they were huddled together because they’d known what
was coming and were terrified. They could’ve been crowded together
for warmth or even comfort from misery.
    By the time they’d found
the fifth group, Tariq decided, grimly, that he was fairly certain
he could dismiss any possibility beyond the first. They’d died
cowering in the darkness from something they knew was coming after them. His
anger threatened to boil over into rage. Had they turned on each
other and fought a war to end all wars? Or had outsiders invaded
with the determination to wipe them out? And if that was the case,
what would’ve provoked them? Or had they not needed provocation
beyond a desire to destroy?
    He realized when he’d finally tamped
his anger that they still had nothing to say, positively, that a
war had caused the apparent extinction. The Earth had had time to
recover from any number of things—including various natural
disasters and if something as cataclysmic as an asteroid was
responsible, that would also explain why they’d taken shelter below
ground and cowered in terror.
    The area they’d discovered was
virtually undisturbed. This might be their best chance to track
down what had happened.
    He returned to the surface and
organized the workers into three groups. The group remaining
topside would focus on clearing enough rubble to give them easier
access to remove the remains. The two going below would divide into
a recovery group and an investigative group.
    He looked around for Koryn when he’d
outlined the plan and discovered Koryn wasn’t among the workers.
Trying to convince himself that Koryn was working on extracting the
DNA from the pair they’d found the day before, he headed back to
the ship, but he discovered it was hard to contain the rage
seething just below the surface.
    * * * *
    Koryn relaxed fractionally when he’d
gone over the latest scanner results on the developing clones.
Everything was testing normal as far as he could see. It was early
days in the development, of course, but he didn’t see any reason
for the alarm that had first smote him when the female’s cells had
begun to divide and then separated. Clearly, she was genetically
predisposed toward that particular trait. Once the cells had split
to form two, they’d begun to generate more cells very rapidly that
had clustered.
    Tariq would be pleased, he thought
wryly. It was a shame he couldn’t take credit for it!
    Turning his attention to the readings
on the male, he studied those with equal care and was satisfied
with the development of the two clones he’d managed to coax with
the DNA he’d harvested from the male.
    He had no idea how desirable the end
result was going to be, but the males seemed to be mongoloid, at
least, which meant they’d managed to harvest representatives of two
races—assuming the cells continued to develop.
    The more varied the genes they
collected, the more pleased everyone on Nibiru was likely to be
since genetic diversity was the objective in collecting the
purebloods to start with. With any luck, the clones would be ready
to transplant into the larger pods within twenty four hours, Earth
time.
    Not that luck had been particularly
forthcoming in this endeavor!
    He hoped to hell they found more soon.
At the rate they were going, they were going to have the council
breathing down their neck any day, demanding to know what the hell
was going on. They should already have made a shipment back to
Nibiru.
    He didn’t envy Tariq!
    That thought produced an image of
Emerald in his mind, unfortunately, and he abruptly felt a
sickening wave of the emotion he’d just denied. He hadn’t realized
the proprietary interest he felt toward Emerald went beyond either
pride in his achievement, scientific