After Haru spent several minutes fussing over me and a couple of stim-packs later, I was fully healed with a new small scar on my right side. Once she finished fixing me up, I stood, stretched, and put my shirt back on. “How many did we get?” I asked Haru before she could turn and leave.

“We got ten children total. They’re still in the HK-9 droids,” Haru answered promptly, disgust evident in her voice.

I cocked my head quizzically at her, “Why the disgust? Why the hate for children?”

Haru turned away and said, “It’s not a hate of them. It’s a hate of what we’re doing to them.” Then she walked away without another word.

I sighed as I watched her walk away, checking out her ass all the while. “You’re lucky you got a nice ass,” I mumbled and turned down the corridor towards the engines to go downstairs, where the HK-9 droids were stored, and the children were still being held.

I got to the door and opened it with a quick few taps on the lock screen. The room that held the HK-9 droids was the same length as the ship, with thirty droid storage cases on the right resembling six-foot by six-foot boxes with charging cables that could hold either one HK-9 droid or ten security bots each. The room’s left side had built-in cages for captured diplomats or exotic alien animals.

Walking into the room, the door closed behind me with a hiss, and I opened a small box on the wall with a med kit and a medical scanner to ensure the health of my captured beings. I took the medical scanner, ensured it was fully charged, and adjusted the settings. The scanner was charged, and I set the scanner to check general health and to ensure the children were biologically female. Some parents these days love messing with their children’s genes and forcing them into a different gender for their own benefit.

Opening up the nearest droid storage, I examined the first HK-9 droid. The droid resembled a massive ten-foot-tall dog when standing with dark steel plate armor, red robotic eyes, and two rows of raiser sharp teeth. The only soft part of the droid was the stomach, where they had an elastic bulletproof polymer that felt soft to the touch but quickly hardened when impacted.

I stroked the snout of the droid, which leaned into my touch like a normal dog, and huffed a small breath before breathing in again, providing air to its captives. “Aww, good doggy,” I cooed before commanding, “Now spit it out.”

The droid made a hacking, coughing sound before throwing up two crying children. The two girls had short brown hair and wore academy uniforms, a black blazer with a white shirt, a long black skirt, long socks, and dress shoes. The children looked up at me with tears in their eyes and the ugliest crying faces I’ve ever seen.

I knelt and spoke softly, “Hey, hey, hey. No need to cry. Don’t worry. I’m here and won’t let anything happen to you.”

“Y-y-you won’t?” one of the girls sobbed.

“I-I-I-I-I want m-m-m-my m-mo-mo-mommy!” the other girl cried loudly.

I stroked the girl’s hair and said, “Shh, shh, shh. Like I said, don’t worry. You’ll see your parents again. Now I just need to check if you’re all right.” The girls didn’t argue, but they also didn’t stop crying. I activated the scanner and scanned both girls. They were in fine physical health, and the second girl wasn’t originally a girl. The second girl was biologically male. I smiled, and with a thought, I opened the nearest cage, gently picked up the biological female, and put her in there while she still cried loudly. Then, I picked up the little boy and carried him to a cage at the far end of the corridor, next to the ship’s inner airlock docking door with a rectangular window that let me see into the airlock and to the outer door with the same rectangular window that let me see into space.

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I repeated the process of consoling the children, scanning them, and putting them in cages. Three cages had girls in pairs of two, with one cage holding three girls, while the last cage in the corridor had all the boys. Once I sorted them, I turned and left for the bridge, leaving the children to cry themselves out.

Once I walked onto the bridge, I saw a depressed-looking Haru lounging sideways in the copilot seat. “Hey!” I said cheerily, “What’s got you down?”

Haru sighed and grumbled, “I’m not comfortable kidnapping children.”

I crouched next to her and sighed, “I know. You’re not into the whole blood, gore, and child death thing. But if it were possible to find an adult, virgin, biological female, I would’ve taken one of those. But that’s like finding a unicorn fucking a leprechaun at the end of a rainbow on a pile of gold on a sun being sucked into a black hole. You just can’t find one.”

“Yes, but does the girl have to be a virgin? Like, really, do they have to be virgins?” Haru argued.

I raised my hands in defeat and said, “Hey, don’t ask me. Jin said virgins, so I’m delivering virgins.”

Haru sighed again, “Fine, I’ll argue with him then.”

I nodded and got into the pilot’s seat to check the navigation. Haru had set the coordinates to Ricme headquarters. I pressed a few buttons, and we dropped out of hyperspace in the middle of nowhere. Then, I set a chain of jumps zig sagging across the systems to ensure no one can follow our path.

Haru sat up from her chair and asked, “What are you doing?”

“You need to remember that the federation can track people through hyperspace. So, doing multiple jumps is wise to keep people off our trail. Five minutes until the next jump,” I gently chastised.

“Doesn’t that use more fuel? And take more time?” Haru asked, a little annoyed.

“Yes, but that will give us plenty of time to make calls,” I countered and put on a headset to make a call over the subspace communicator.

I typed in the number for my assistant Sam, who answered promptly, “Ricme Corp weapon manufacturing. How may I help you? This is Sam speaking.”

“Sam! It’s me, Violet Ricme. Would you be so kind as to put me through to Alexandra?” I said with a smile.

“Yes, ma’am. I take it the trip to Lazuli Academy was a success?”

“Yes, it was successful for the most part,” I said placatingly.

“Excellent, ma’am. Patching you through to Alexandra now,” Sam said. Then, there was a moment of silence as I was patched through to Sparky.

“What?” Sparky asked a moment later as she answered the call.

“SPARKY!!” I exclaimed, “How’s your project going?”

“Stop calling me Sparky!” Sparky snapped, and then she sighed, “It’s almost done. Just a few more hours, and it’ll be complete. Then, we need to run a few simulations to ensure it works, which will take a few more hours.”

“Excellent! I’ll be there in…” I stopped to check the navigation and see how long until we reached the Ricme HQ, “Ten hours. It’d better be ready by then.”

“It will,” Sparky said tiredly and ended the call.

After that, I took off the headset and got up. “Where are you going now?” Haru asked.

“I gotta take care of the children a little. Ten hours is a long time,” I said over my shoulder, not stopping. I quickly made my way to the cages, opening the door to the now quietly sobbing children. “Hey, kids!” I said as I walked into the room, “I’m just here to drop a few of you off.” I walked down to the back cage with all the boys and opened the cage with a thought, along with the airlock.

The three little boys looked up at me sadly, and one of them asked, “What about everyone else?”

I gestured to the airlock and said, “Don’t worry about them. We just docked with a ship that will take you back home. They’ll be right behind you.”

The three boys looked at each other and wearily walked into the airlock. I closed the door behind them, and one screamed in surprise. The kids looked through the outer airlock window and saw no ship there. “Hey! There’s no ship there,” one of the kids pointed out the obvious. Then they started banging on the door, screaming to be let back in.

I cocked my head to the side and pouted, “Aww, they look so cute when they’re about to die.” Then I pressed a button next to the airlock door, and the children in and outside the ship went deadly quiet. I looked through the window and saw three dead little boys become slowly encrusted in frost before their bodies burst from the lack of atmosphere. I then turned and skipped down the corridor, humming happily as I went to the mess hall to get myself something to eat. Today wasn’t so bad a day.