A man laid on its back, strapped to a stainless steel table. 

A human man lied on its back allowing easy access to the pink fleshy skin on his abdomen and stomach. Its coarse hair stood on end, though whether that was from fright or the cold air the doctor could not tell.

He had no way of knowing, he supposed it could be an adrenal response. Many animals would puff up their down as a method of looking larger and more physically intimidating in response to fear.

Just over a dozen humans had passed through this room before this one ended up on the table. Seven females, and six males had been taken from the cell block one at a time and never came back.

This would be the seventh male, an equal sample size of each. With the medical data collected they would then be able to make a sound assumption on whether human slaves would be a good investment or not. 

He selected his tools and prepared for documentation.

“Audio log, two-seven-one. The human appears to have only lost four kilograms from his time in captivity as annotated, this would hint at a lower than average caloric intake for its size. Though it could just as easily be due to outside factors and should warrant its own study. As for now I merely document tissue samples and information on how to best treat-”

A speaker chimed, and the doctor paused the audio log and clicked his tongue.

“Sub in two. Sub in two.” The speaker repeated the warning multiple times as protocol dictated.

He checked the time and sighed, he was running almost two hours behind schedule and was about to get further delayed by the coming subspace jump. While it wasn’t critical, you were expected to be seated and not perform delicate tasks when entering subspace, as it often caused slight problems with the vessel’s artificial gravity, resulting in a few seconds of slight shaking. 

Instead of performing a dissection, he sat in a chair designed to incorporate someone with a tail and opened the current file they had on pink hairless apes.

Humans weren’t particularly strong, though they did seem to be capable of long workdays. Their diets weren’t incredibly demanding, either. It was likely they could form the bulk of cheap labor in a factory or sweatshop setting. Turning this planet into an industrial hub could make them rich and allow for settlement in nearby systems.

He fingered the data pad and began reading through his collective report. You had to double check for simple mistakes such as spelling errors or people would mock the accuracy of your findings. No one wanted to be the person to misplace a decimal point and spread a file into circulation that told everyone a species ate three thousand percent as much as standard.

In his head he compared a few numbers. The standard for an optimal slave was just over a meter tall, more than capable of simple labors such as creating trade goods in mass, and eating a small fraction of what a normal-sized species would eat. You simply mixed a few larger creatures in to do the heavy lifting. In comparison, a few humans could likely perform both tasks singlehandedly…

It wouldn’t quite maximize profits; most workers would be chained to their tables and thus should not need to be capable of feats of strength. Therefore, the added consumption rate would be a net negative. The true profit was from the fact that these humans were just standing there, free for the taking.

You would not need to purchase these workers from anyone. In a year or two him and his crew could come back with enough ships to bombard the major population centers, destroy all military outposts and seize control of the food production. The creatures would then be forced into servitude and pay the costs of conquest back within the year. A simple plan; the humans were already there, thus there would be no import or breeding costs, allowing for one sided profits.

He tightened his grip on the data-pad as the ship began to shake. Although the ship would not enter subspace for longer than an instant, it was enough to jostle everyone around somewhat as it played havoc on the ship’s stabilizers. The tools arranged next to the human clattered against their metallic tray, and the human shrieked like a scared, primitive animal. The doctor tightened his grip on his chair as he waited for the ship to compensate for the sudden changes.

The shaking continued, similar to a small earthquake, and then grew.

A metallic medical tray fell off of its table throwing the tools onto the ground. He watched a plate of food slowly tremble to the edge of the counter before flipping off the side and splattering on the white tile. The human had begun hyperventilating, and the doctor hoped the creature would pass out and make less noise. 

Then the shaking stopped as suddenly as it had started. He felt at his chair’s armrests for a moment before placing his feet back onto the ground and standing. That jump had tossed everything in his lab onto the ground; it had likely been one of the worst stabilization failures he had ever seen. Normally, it would simply vibrate the ship somewhat as the ship realigned and clatter some silverware against each other.

“I wonder if anyone got injured? Something could have fallen off of a shelf and landed on someone.”

He should activate coms and ask if anyone needed a doctor, so he let go of the chair and felt himself float away from the floor and began to drift through the air for seemingly no rhyme or reason.

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That was when he began to realize that something had gone wrong. The ship had not taken too long to realign its artificial gravity; it had not realigned them at all. For whatever reason there was now no gravity on the ship. 

“Impossible.” The doctor muttered. 

The artificial gravity was created through the shape of the ship itself, it resembled a large spinning cylinder and the centrifugal force kept everyone anchored onto the insides. The only way that the gravity could have stopped is if it had stopped spinning in its entirety. 

Was there something wrong with the engines?

He felt a sudden sense of urgency. A possible person injured was one thing, but the ship malfunctioning could leave them stranded in the void. It could be a death sentence to them all.

The doctor hit the ceiling and pushed himself towards his com unit, a small box attached to the wall with a detachable communicator. Everyone had personal devices but those could not connect to the ship’s official channels, they didn’t want people using the limited bandwidth to play games.

He grabbed the small device and held it like a radio, “This is Medical Officer Drath. Situation?”

The pause was long enough that he began to dread the worst case scenario, before the comms unit sparked, “Medical Officer Drath, location?”

“Medical.” He answered.

“Understood, await escort.”

“Escort?” The doctor stood dumbfounded. “Escort for what?”

“Reports of-”

The comms unit cut off, he paused for a moment looking between the handset and the small square box attached to the wall. There were no longer small glowing lights symbolizing that power was running through the device; it had faced some sort of malfunction.

For a moment he wanted to curse out corporate greed, embezzlement, everything he could think of. Someone had obviously cut corners or failed to properly inspect this ship for damage, but he held his tongue. This ship wasn’t that old, and someone was coming to escort him. Keeping valuable personnel such as medical officers safe was a textbook response to a threat. 

Sabotage. Someone must be damaging this ship from within. If rebels were on board he needed to remain quiet to avoid detection. It was standard procedure, only the trained military or police units would search out the enemies.

He pushed himself off of the wall, drifting helplessly for a moment before he could catch himself on the opposite bulkhead and scramble behind some furniture that was bolted to the floor. A hiding place, so that he at least wasn’t floating out in the open. For a minute or two he sat, listening to the natural hum of the ship, the sounds of the ventilation pushing precious air back and forth, the sounds of the human as they went from hyperventilating to whimpering. 

The doctor wondered if the quiet cries of that creature would attract attention, surely the metallic walls were thick enough to keep the sounds within the room? 

He eyed his tools strewn across the room, more particularly the scalpel that was now lodged in the cushion of a chair a few feet from him. It would be a simple manner to slice some of the human’s arteries and render it silent so as to completely avoid suspicion. But as of right now, the doctor was hidden from direct sight behind one of the many medical beds in this room. He managed to remain obscured by cloth and machinery to any cursory glances from untold villains lurking in the halls.

If there was gravity he could run over, slice through the restrained human’s neck and then be back here before you could count to five. But he did not have confidence in his zero-gravity maneuvering, and there was a good chance of injuring himself if he carried a sharp object while bouncing off of the walls and furniture. He was a doctor, not some sort of boarding marine.

The doctor took a glance between the door and the human, and then sat in stunned silence. 

A trickle of the creature’s red blood dribbled out from his chest, leaking across his side and onto the bed next to him.

Curiosity got the better of the medical professional, how had he even managed to be injured? The doctor hadn’t seen anything fly up into the air, had some form of shrapnel nicked him?

He slowly raised his head, alternating between the door and the human. Just a quick glance told him that this injury was far more than the result of a piece of shrapnel. A pattern spiderwebbed across his chest, pushing more scarlet fluid out and across his body out with every beat of his heart.

It looked deliberate. How had something criss crossed so many neat little lines onto the human flesh while he wasn’t looking?

Was there someone else in the room? Hiding just like him? His primal fears were as exaggerated as they were preposterous. Nothing could have opened the door silently enough that he could have missed it. Surely there had to be another explanation.

The doctor crept forwards, using his hands to climb up the floor like a vertical surface. He gripped the leg of a bed and used that to leverage himself upwards to a chair. Using the pipes connected to a sink to push ahead further until he could finally latch onto the legs of the slab restraining the human.

He pushed his weightless body up, looking over the sprawled human form. The male breathed in and out, barely suppressing his pain and fear. A simple glance at the pattern dispelled any guess that this could have been a natural occurrence from floating tools unrestrained by gravity.

Upon the soft flesh of the human a perfect circle surrounded a star, a neatly carved six-pointed star that held a smaller seven-pointed star within its center. Small symbols were cut into each point on both shapes. The blood did not cling to his skin in any way that would cover this image, and continued to flow away from the body into the air. The liquid misplaced itself due to the lack of gravity like everything else. 

The human stared at the doctor, eyes wide at the alien creature. It seemed too scared to make a noise at this point.

The doctor traced a clawed finger along the ridges of the wound even as the human shrank back from the pain. It was cleanly cut, like from a scalpel or a razor. No shrapnel could make a mark like this. Maybe a few gashes in a pattern, but a perfect circle? No, no knife or saw that was propelled only by the failures of this space station at least.

And if this couldn’t have happened by accident, the doctor glanced back at the human’s face and stared at his eyes. The eyes of captured prey looking upon its death, the face of something so far beyond horror that the adrenaline had muted all emotion. It stared to the doctor, no-

Past the doctor’s shoulder.

The doctor froze in horror for a moment, then turned to see what it was that had caught the human’s eye.

And never regretted any decision as much in his entire life.

~

I closed my eyes, and tried to hide myself from the screams as best I could while strapped to this table. 

Naked and exposed, I laid waiting for my turn. For that horrible creature to finish with my captor and then turn to me. 

Seconds turned to minutes as I waited until the lizard-thing’s voice grew so hoarse from screaming that it could no longer make sound. I laid and listened until the crunching and begging and laughter turned to silence. I refused to open my eyes until the blood on my chest dried and turned to scabs, and even then I prayed I would see nothing when I opened them.

Across the room the alien stood. The one who had strapped me to this table. Green scales under white robes that were designed to easily highlight stains and foreign contaminants. Only it wasn’t them, they were distorted. Its limbs were stretched and hung limp as if torn from their sockets. It stood taller and thinner than it had before, like something else was inside of its fragile shell and distorted its form like a suit that didn’t fit. 

I shrank away from the monster, pushing against my restraints and it bared its teeth in a mockery of a smile. It took a step, then a second and I realized it was walking. Not floating, like the tools and bits of food that had been launched into the air and refused to come down. It was anchored to this place while nothing else was, ignoring the lack of gravity.

Its steps brought it beside me, and I waited for the inevitable. I had known when I was carted into this room that I was to be taken apart, no one had ever come back after being strapped down, and it wasn’t hard to guess what would happen when I had first been wheeled into here and saw the scalpels and sawblades. It lowered its face in front of mine, and I closed my eyes waiting for its teeth to sink into me.

I felt a kiss on my cheek, and when I opened my eyes it was gone.