FINE PRINT

"Oh my God!" Kimmie covered her mouth and laughed. "You're kidding, right?"

"No, I'm not kidding, don't laugh." Jayme scowled at her best friend.

"You're serious? How can you be serious?"

The two were sitting at a table in the food court at the mall, both sucking on Karberfruit smoothies. They'd come straight from the salon where they'd both had their hair done in the latest craze. Their hair was now embedded with sparkles so that it shimmered under the lights. Jayme had gone with blue, and Kimmie with pink. The pink matched her cheap, disposable, stick-on plastic bra top. Kimmie loved the stick-ons, but didn't get to wear them much. 'Too distracting', the school board had said, which was just stupid. Today she was wearing a demi-cup squeezer that just barely covered her nipples and pushed her tits close together. Stick-ons, being strapless, didn't provide much support, but she didn't need it. Not much to support. Maybe someday, if she could afford it. . . . For some reason stick-ons looked sluttier than going topless, which she didn't mind. Besides, you couldn't go topless in the food court, and they'd known before they left their house they were going to eat here. That's the only reason she'd put the shorts on over her J-Hook, because they didn't allow bare buns on the food court seats.

With shorts on the J-Hook wasn't necessary, but she wore one almost all the time. A lot of women complained at how uncomfortable they were (even though they kept putting them on because of the way they looked, they were the hottest thing) but Kimmie liked they way they felt, especially when she was walking or sitting down. J-Hooks were simple, U-shaped pieces of plastic with flats at either end. The wearer fitted themselves, affixing however much dermal adhesive they liked onto the flat ends. The larger, flat Y shape pressed against the pubic bone, then narrowed into a finger-wide strip as it passed between the wearer's legs. It flared out again into a smaller flat which was affixed to the small of the back. Kimmie just wished she could afford those J-Hooks with built in catheters so she didn't have to take it off to pee.

"You know how much I want to get away from my mother," Jayme said. "I've wanted to go to Aries my whole life. There's no way I could afford to do that on my own, my mom can barely pay the water bill. How am I going to afford a TS ticket?"

"You could get a job." Kimmie rolled her eyes and sucked on her straw. Not that she had a job, or wanted one.

"Making what, minimum wage? My grades suck, there's no way I'll ever be able to afford to relocate offworld on what I can earn working, not if I save for twenty years. Maybe if I win the MegaDraw . . ."

Kimmie was shaking her head. "You could marry a rich guy." She smiled at the thought.

"Oh please." Jayme snorted. "Where am I going to meet a rich guy? At the mall food court? Dressed in an outfit that costs less than my smoothie? Besides, fucking a rich guy and getting him to marry you are two separate things. You hate school even more than I do. Why are you so against this?"

"It's creepy. Being pregnant . . . ick." The young woman shuddered.

"Didn't you ever think you were going to get pregnant?" her friend asked her. "You been fucking every guy in sight since we were twelve. I know you've got the implant, but there's still a chance."

"Oh please. It's not the same thing."

"It is too. Well, almost. Like getting pregnant and then giving your baby up for adoption, that's what the lady said during assembly."

Every year the junior high and high school girls had to attend an assembly extolling the merits of the HUMACE program. Kimmie wondered if it was so great, how come they had to keep advertising it? She said as much to her friend.

"Because there aren't any girls around who've been through the program to talk about how good it is," Jayme explained patiently. She'd obviously been thinking a lot about it. "They're all off-world. That's why they joined in the first place, to get the fuck off this planet."

Kimmie seemed unconvinced. "That lady was weird," she said.

"You're just saying that because she was so tall and gorgeous," Jayme said. Kimmie wasn't even five feet tall. Kimmie stuck her tongue out.

"I don't even know why you're thinking about this now," Kimmie told her friend. "You can't even sign up until you're eighteen."

"Were you even listening during assembly? You can sign up at fourteen if you have your parents' permission and you pass the physical. I'm going to go down to the recruiting office tomorrow after school. Come with me."

"I don't know."

"You've got nothing else to do. C'mon, maybe this time you'll actually listen to what they have to say."

"You're such a bitch sometimes."

"Jealous."

The HUMACE recruiting station was an unremarkable space decorated much like other government agencies, with off-white walls and spartan furniture. Jayme pushed through the door with butterflies in her stomach. Even though she'd secretely decided to do it months ago, and knew she'd be able to get her mom's permission, she was still a little nervous to be actually going through with it. That was one of the reasons she'd wanted Kimmie to come with her—moral support.

Kimmie glanced around the drab office warily, not quite sure what she'd been expecting. There was a lot program material scattered about, vids playing on the flatscreen, a few pictures of pretty young ladies on the walls holding cute Lingan joeys. They thought of that still made her feel decidedly weird.

"Oh, they're so adorable," Jayme said, peering at the joeys.

"Good afternoon ladies. Come on in." The recruiter was a plain-faced woman in her thirties dressed in a conservative suit.

"Hi," Jayme said hesitantly.

"Interested in the program?" the recruiter asked them with raised eyebrows and a warm smile. Kimmie ignored her, continuing to look around the room.

"I am," Jayme said.

"Well, come on over and sit down and maybe I can answer any questions you might have. You girls know what the program is, right?"

"We just had our school assembly," Kimmie told her.

"Well then, you know that the Human-Marlingan Anti-Extinction Cooperative Effort is perhaps the most important endeavor we humans, as a race, have been involved in. The Lingans discovered Earth, and us, some sixty-odd years ago, and the whole world changed. They were so much more advanced than us, they could have conquered the planet in weeks if they'd wanted to. Luckily, they're a peaceful race and, in a way, they needed our help.

"The Lingans are an old race, compared to us. They were flying around their galaxy before humans discovered fire. But there were never that many of them."

"We heard all this at the assembly," Kimmie said. She was wearing a clear rubber two-piece ensemble, the kind you shrunk to fit yourself, with colored inserts that covered her nipples and pubic area. They were all the rages at the clubs, and cheap as dirt, but they weren't allowed to wear them in school either, even with the inserts, which was just dumb.

The recruiter glanced at Kimmie's outfit and clear matching high-heel pumps but didn't change expression. A lot of the girls that ended up enlisting in HUMACE dressed the same way. The program seemed to draw them like flies.

"Well, then you know that they were never very fertile. Their numbers have been declining for two thousand years. And their declining numbers have caused an increase in what we would call inbreeding, which has in turn lowered their fertility rates even more."

Jayme nodded her head as the recruiter repeated what she'd already heard a dozen times.

"It was human scientists who discovered just how close we were to the Lingans genetically. Nearly as close as humans are to monkeys, even though you wouldn't know it by looking at them.'

Both girls nodded. Lingans looked like nothing so much as kangaroos. BIG kangaroos, that stood six feet tall resting on their haunches, and nearly eight when on outstretched legs.

"Most people think they look like Australian kangaroos, and they do, but if you ever saw one next to a real kangaroo you'd have no trouble telling the difference. They make kangaroos look like tame bunny rabbits."

"Have you ever seen one?" Jayme asked her.

"In person?" The recruiter nodded. "I spent six months at the Jupiter space station. There was a small Lingan delegation there, but they tend to keep to themselves. That's why you rarely see them on Earth. They hate crowds, and our atmosphere's a little thin for them."

"What are they like?" Kimmie asked, displaying her first sign of curiosity.

"Very polite and well-mannered," the recruiter said. "And big. When they squat down, on their heels, they're still as tall as a man. They weigh between three and four hundred pounds, you know."

"I keep thinking they're smaller than that," Jayme said.

The recruiter nodded. "Like they're kangaroos. Well, like I was saying, genetically we're very similar. And it was our scientists, working with their Lingan counterparts, who came up with a solution to their fertility problem. They technology we've received in return . . . ."

"HUMACE," Jayme said, pronouncing it 'hummis'.

The recruiter nodded again. "Doctors figured out a way in which they could splice Marlingan DNA onto human ovum which, when fertilized, would produce a normal, healthy, Marlingan joey. Still, however, Marlingan reproduction was such a low-yield endeavor that the great majority of lab-grown Lingan fetuses died before becoming viable. Only by eliminating all the artificial elements in the gestation cycle were the scientists able to consistently bring joeys to term."

"Surrogate mothers. Humans," Jayme said.

"Exactly." The recruiter smiled. "And that is what we're talking about here today. Tell me, what would you two ladies like to get out of the program?"

Kimmie just frowned as Jayme blurted out, "I want to live on Aries."

The recruiter figured it was something like that. "I've heard it's beautiful there. Here." She flipped open a nearby e-notebook, and swiveled it to face the girls. The entire screen was covered in fine print. "Here's one of our standard contracts." The recruiter hit the page down button several times, then pointed with a finger at a paragraph.

Upon successful completion of her Terms Of Service, the enlistee will be entitled to the following compensation:

1. All expenses paid transportation to any non-hostile planet in the Confederation.

2. A one-time, tax free settlement sum of 20,000.00 standard credits to be used for settlement and/or property relocation costs to the off-Earth location of their choosing.

"That's pretty much the standard deal," the recruiter told them. "As you probably know, a TranSpace ticket costs a minimum twenty thousand credits, so in effect you get forty thousand credits out of the deal."

The recruiter leaned back, taking her hands off the notebook. Kimmie pulled it into her lap and began skipping through it. It was at least a dozen pages long, filled with long, legal-sounding words she didn't understand.

Once accepted into the program, the enlistee will be considered to have completed the terms of service when she has successfully delivered one (1) healthy Marlingan litter.

"How long are you pregnant?" Kimmie asked the recruiter, who'd been watching her.

"Three months from fertilization to live birth," the recruiter told her. "Compared to nine for a human baby."

Kimmie went back to the contract, skipping forward and backward through the fine print.

By signing, and therefore entering into this contract, the enlistee agrees to be modified as HUMACE sees fit for the express and sole purpose of improving the chances of fertilization and successful gestation.

Kimmie looked up suspiciously.

"Of course," the recruiter told her. "You have to agree in writing to let them splice Lingan DNA into your eggs. As a bonus, you'll be given that Lingan drug I'm sure you've heard all about. It reduces the odds of miscarriage, but it'll also make you healthier than you've ever been in your life, and probably help you live longer, too. Most women grow taller after taking it."

"Really?" Kimmie could hardly bear to believe it.

"Didn't you see how tall that lady was at our assembly?" Jayme said to her. "That's why you thought she looked weird. She was so healthy she practically glowed."

The recruiter was nodding. "That's the truth. They want to make the drug available to the general public, but that's going to take a few years. The advanced biotechnology the Marlingans have shared with us to make our program possible is not cheap, not at all, and most of it is still classified Top Secret. Once you've successfully completed your terms of service, assuming you do join up, there will be electro-chemical urge-blockers implanted in your brain stem to guarantee non-disclosure of those secrets, but that shouldn't concern you ladies, you both seem responsible. You'll find that in there as well," she said to Kimmie, who was skimming the contract again. There were legal definitions of the terms used in the contract: enlistee, fertilization, litter. Kimmie could hardly understand the definitions. She skipped over them to the next section.

"Does this fertilization," Kimmie said, peering at the notebook, "take place in a lab?"

"It takes place on a military base off-world, in very controlled conditions, so as to ensure the greatest chance of success," the recruiter told her. "HUMACE employs the finest medical professionals you're ever going to find."

"So if I signed up, what would happen?" Kimmie asked. Jayme raised her eyebrows and looked at her friend.

"I thought this whole thing creeped you out," Jayme said.

"It does, but what the hell am I going to do here, especially after you're gone? Keep hanging around the Tasty-Bite until the manager bans me because I've been banging everybody there but him? Or I get knocked up? You're not the only one who wants something better."

"How old are you girls?" the recruiter asked them. They told her.

"The first thing that has to happen is you need to get your parents or guardians permission. They need to come in and sign an authorization sheet, once you've signed a contract. Once that happens, you'll be given an exhaustive medical exam to make sure you're healthy and suited to the program."

"I'm healthy," Jayme said.

"Do you have any genetic abnormalities? That's what they're talking about, not if you've ever had a broken bone or the flu. Your genes need to be healthy for this."

"Oh."

"Once you pass the physical, you'll be sent to one of our prepping facilities, then shuttled up to one of the big cruisers in orbit."

"Really?" Kimmie was wide-eyed.

"Yes. They're even more amazing up close. Even using one of the Lingan ribbon drives the trip to the fertilization facility will take six months, so you and all the other girls will be placed in an induced coma in a gel-cap."

"What's that like? Do you know?"

"Sure. The Jupiter station is too close to use a ribbon drive, so you have to use the standard gravity drive for the trip. It takes four months. I was in a gel-cap for three, both there and back. It's just like sleeping, only you're covered in inertia-dampening gel."

"Oh."

"You, on the other hand, will do something I didn't. You'll wake up a different woman."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean right before they induce the coma and put you in the gel, you'll take the Lingan health drug and a few others. Lingan DNA will bond with your unfertilized ova while you sleep. When you wake up it'll be like you're a different person."

"Taller?" Kimmie asked her hopefully.

The recruiter looked her straight in the eye. "Definitely," she said.

It felt like swimming upward through a sea of mud, her limbs weighted down as she struggled through the murky gloom toward the dim light ahead. Slowly it grew brighter, larger, ever so slowly, until finally she was there.

"Easy there. Watch it, she's a noodle."

Jayme kept blinking her eyes but they wouldn't focus. Finally she realized that was because they were coated in the gel covering the rest of her body, and she was sitting up inside her opened transport capsule.

She opened her mouth to speak, and her body just then decided to rid her lungs of the gel that had collected there over the one-hundred and ninety-one days she'd remained in her induced coma, submerged in the gel.

When her coughing eased the vomiting began and she felt the gel filling her bowels squirting out of her with every clench of her body. Soon her stomach was empty of the gel as well.

The capsule was on its side, the section with the observation window removed so she could sit up. Jayme sat waist-deep in the gel, her nude body glistening. The gel slowly obeyed the .53G inside the decelerating ship and slid down toward the capsule.

Jayme shivered as her body fought to regain a normal temperature, and she wiped at the gel coating her face. She looked left and right, seeing a dozen other young women being awakened and helped from their transport capsules.

"I'm cold," she said, teeth chattering.

"We'll get you into a hot shower, wash that gel off, and put some clothes on you," one of the technicians told her. Jayme let the two earnest techs help her from the capsule and stood beside it, shivering hard enough to splatter gel drops on their white coveralls. She was surprised at how short they were, but lost her train of thought as they herded her by both elbows into the ship's communal shower. The steam-filled room was filled with glistening, shivering bodies, and Jayme joined them, huddling under a jet of hot water that slowly worked the chill from her bones.

"I'm five-eleven!" Kimmie squealed in delight when she was finally reunited with her friend. She peered up at Jayme. "Oh my God, look at you! You're a giant!"

Jayme nodded. They'd all had post-capsule physicals. All the girls had grown, some just a few inches, others, like Kimmie, almost a foot, until there was hardly anyone under six feet. Jayme'd grown six inches while in the capsule, and was just a hair under six foot six. Most of the girls seemed about the same height, with a few substantially taller, and a few, like Kimmie, substantially shorter.

"I feel too tall," Jayme said, almost pouting. She was at least two inches taller than the biggest member of the crew, even though he outweighed her substantially.

"Don't you dare," Kimmie scolded her. "You look great!"

Kimmie was right, she did look great. They all did. Their skin was smooth and pimple free, their hair was uniformly thick and glossy, their bodies nearly glowed with health. The growth spurts had left all of them slender but curvy, which was quite a welcome change for several of the girls. Apparently genetic health didn't necessarily translate into skinny or feminine, but the Marlingan drug had taken care of that.

"I feel great," Jayme told her. "Look at me, I hardly recognize myself in the mirror. My face, yeah, but my body . . ." She waved a hand at herself. "Look at my hips." She made a face.

Kimmie gave her a disappearing look. "You're skinny as a rail, and always have been. The drug just gave you a woman's hips, that's all. Happened to all of us. Look, my hips are wider than yours, and I'm a lot shorter. If anyone should be complaining, it'd be me, but there's nothing to complain about. You could put my eye out with your hipbones."

They both wore baggy flightsuits that hid just about every aspect of their new bodies, although their hips were difficult to miss, but they had plenty of time to compare their bodies with those of the other girls in the communal showers. Most of the girls were still, even two days out of the gel-cap, wearing diapers. They'd been in the cap long enough for the gel to have completely filled their digestive systems, and with sometimes spotty control over their bodily functions (a common side-effect of extended gel-cap travel) the diapers were a smart precaution.

"I didn't know there were going to be this many girls on board," Jayme said, looking around. They were just inside the cafeteria doors, and watched the line of jumpsuit-clad women snaking around the room toward the row of Auto-Chefs. The tables were filling up quick.

"Yeah, neither did I," Kimmie said. "There's got to be two hundred girls here. C'mon, let's get in line, I'm starving. I want to be sitting down when the orientation starts."

"Good evening ladies, I'm Doctor Trotman. As you can see from my uniform, I'm also a Colonel in the Confederation's Navy. This brief presentation is designed to reduce the shock and confusion you're bound to experience upon meeting your first Marlingans." Trotman's picture was replaced by an image of an adult Marlingan.

"Shortly after your arrival at the breeding facility on Zinta, you'll be introduced to several adult male Marlingans. You should take this opportunity to familiarize yourself with how they look, how they smell, what they sound like, their physical mannerisms. You'll be working in close contact with them for several months, so it's important to get over any uneasiness quickly.

"The first Marlingans you meet won't have those translators you might expect to see around their necks. They find them uncomfortable, and the whole point of this initial meeting is our continued reassurance to the Marlingans that we are happy to be equal partners in this joint endeavor. I'm sure you understand. That is also why we insist on your being without clothing for this first meeting. As you can see from this vid, the Marlingans do not wear clothing, and find it disconcerting when they see it on humans. Don't let this upset you; they find our lack of body hair equally disconcerting. Their nickname for us is 'pinkies'." That got a laugh from the room, although most of the young women looked a bit apprehensive. "That's also why we have not issued razors to any of you young women. Those of you who haven't undergone laser or other type of body hair removal should just continue to let it grow naturally, as you see it has during your time in the gel-caps. It might be a little disconcerting at first – I know it's definitely not the fashion back home, but it is here. You'll quickly get used to it. It is natural, after all.

"I know how fast this must seem to be going to all of you but don't worry, you'll be well taken care of. The staff and employees of the Zinta facility will make sure of that. Just remember, upon successful completion of the breeding program, you all have a free ticket to anywhere in the Confederation waiting for you." A cheer went up around the room.

"Are you watching this?" Jayme asked, pointing at the vidscreen on the wall. It was showing a documentary on the Marlingans made specifically for HUMACE volunteers. From the bunk below her came a grunt.

Kimmie was having a hard time remembering what she'd looked like before, which seemed strange to her, and every hour that passed made it harder. She was glad, though, that she'd undergone laser hair removal—those girls who hadn't, it wasn't only the hair on their heads that was growing thick and fast. Seeing hairy armpits in the showers next to her was one thing, but some girls' legs were getting so hairy they looked like guys. Ick.

Kimmie was noticing that more than just her height had been altered. Under the blanket her hands slowly roamed her body. Her nipples had grown in the gel cap, of that she was sure, but by how much was a little fuzzy. They were certainly tougher—she could pinch them until her fingers ached and it didn't hurt at all. She supposed that had to do with her body growing and maturing under the drug's influence. There were other changes, too, between her legs, but with the substantial proportional increase in the width of her hips she supposed it would be strange if things hadn't changed somehow down there. Still, she wasn't exactly thrilled—all the boys had loved how tight she was before, and now she could slide four fingers in dry and wave them around without even feeling stretched.

"They're marsupials, did you know that?" Jayme said around a yawn, blinking sleepily at the vid. "Just like our kangaroos. How weird is that?"

Her vision blurred as the narrator began discussing Marlingan social customs. While a group of lions was called a pride, a group of Marlingans was called a harem.

"Huh. That's weird. Hey Kimmie, what's polyamory mean? Kimmie, you awake?"

Jayme, Kimmie, and another young woman named Banda disrobed together in a kind of locker room, hanging their clothes on numbered pegs. All three of them were nervous but trying to hide it, flashing each other strained but encouraging smiles. Banda had thick black hair, and was one of the many unfortunate girls on board who'd never had her body hair removed. After six months in the gel cap and two weeks on board the decelerating ship, her black triangle was spreading up her belly like a storm cloud with a line running straight up to her navel. There was enough hair on her legs to look like they were in shadow, and thick tufts peeked out from under her arms. Banda wasn't happy about it, but what could she do? At least she wasn't alone. Kimmie's body, on the other hand, was still smooth, but the hair on her head was getting so thick and long it looked like she had a mane. The same held true for Jayme, and her dark brown hair seemed to have grown two inches since she'd awoken from her induced coma.

After stripping, the three young women were led by a technician down a short flight of stairs to an elevator.

"Get in, and the doors will close. You won't even have to push any buttons," the helpful tech told them. She smiled reassuringly. "When the doors open, there'll be a few Lingans there, or they'll be there shortly, and you can get accustomed to one another. Relax, everything'll be fine," the middle-aged lady told them.

The elevator doors closed behind them with a hiss and the girls felt their ears pop even before the car began to descend.

"So far I'm not too impressed with Zinta," Kimmie said. All they'd seen of the planet since exiting the ship was one room after another where they'd been scanned, weighed, and otherwise processed. They hadn't even seen a window they could look out of yet.

Kimmie shivered in the cool air and felt her knobby nipples harden. Both Jayme and the other girl had really big nipples too, confirming Kimmie's suspicions that the change was deliberate and perhaps was related to her body getting ready to become pregnant.

The elevator stopped, but the doors didn't open. Instead, the vid screen beside them flickered on. It was Colonel Trotman, from the orientation vid on the ship.

"Ladies," he began, "I want to thank you for what you're about to do on behalf of all humanity. You are all going to have to do so much more than you thought you were. Your task won't be unenjoyable, but that doesn't lessen your sacrifice.

"What am I talking about? Well, I'm sure you remember that at some point, either before you signed your contract or after, you were given an explanation as to why Marlingan fetuses can't be grown in a lab. Too low of a success rate, because of the artificial element. Well, I'm sad to say the same has been proven true for artificial insemination. The problem isn't with you, it's with the Marlingan males; only through persistent sexual stimulation while in the presence of female Marlingan pheromones can they produce sperm, or their equivalent. We tried alternatives for years, but there's no way around it.

"You may remember a phrase from the contract you all signed: '. . .the enlistee agrees to be modified as HUMACE sees fit to improve the chances of fertilization and successful gestation.' What does that mean to you? To begin with, it means that your bodies have been engineered to give off the same pheromones-sexual attractants-that female Marlingans do when they are in estrus.

"Not only do your bodies now emit female Marlingan pheromones, you have been engineered to respond to male Lingan pheromones. The car you are in is hermetically sealed; that is because once you've become exposed to the male pheromones, you will enter into an accelerated state of estrus that, unfortunately with our current technology, is irreversible. This action will have consequences, of course, that is its purpose, and so we have done what we can to make your experience here on Zinta as enjoyable as possible. You may have noticed a widening of your hips and other pelvic alterations during your time in the gel-caps. This was done for two reasons. The first, of course, was to reduce the risk of injury and provide you some measure of comfort during intercourse."

"Intercourse?" Banda said stupidly, blinking at the screen. She didn't want to hear any more.

"The second reason was to facilitate your post-partum role as surrogate mother. Marlingans are a marsupial species, and we could not alter that. This will be explained in much greater detail as events progress, and if you ever have any questions, there will be a staff member close at hand eager to assist you. Again, on behalf of all mankind, I want to thank you for what you're about to do."

The three young women felt the car drop another short distance and with a loud hiss, the doors opened. The elevator was filled with a warm, wet-blanket smell, and in the middle of the room before them waited three adult male Marlingans.

"What's estrus?" Jayme asked, too shocked to think. She hadn't yet taken a deep breath of the warm air. Kimmie had.

"Heat," Kimmie said, her voice low, almost a growl. "We're going into heat."

"Oh God," moaned Jayme, having taken her first full breath. Beside her, Banda started to pant loudly. None of them had noticed the air flowing past them as fans inside the elevator pumped its pheromone-laden air toward the waiting Lingans.

"This can't be happening, this can't be happening," groaned Jayme, as her body flushed and tingled. She tried to deny the sensations, but instead found herself staring at the Lingans intently, trying to see between their legs. She saw their pointy ears twitch, and their hindquarters shift, as the girls' altered pheromones finally reached their snouts.

"Oh my GOD," Kimmie breathed, staring. There was no way that was going to fit in her, there had to be some mistake.

FINE PRINT-PART 2

Medical Specialist 4 Tania Zhirkov hadn't known what to expect at the HUMACE breeding facility, but upon being notified of her reassignment she'd been very excited at the thought of working near or even –dare she hope? – with Lingans. She even imagined it might be glamorous, or at least glamorous compared to most military duties. She definitely knew it wouldn't be dull, and on that point she'd been absolutely right.

Neither she nor the rest of the reassigned medspecs, as they were called, had been aware of the true details of the HUMACE breeding program until they'd been explained to them in their week-long orientation and training. That, of course, had only taken place after the appropriate electro-chemical urge blockers had been implanted in all their skulls, so that even if they wanted to divulge the secrets of the breeding program they were no longer capable.

"Where I'm taking you now is the Acclimation Suite," Staff Sergeant Myers told Zhirkov and the six other recently reassigned medspecs. They were all wearing white coveralls bare of rank, insignia, or name tags, which was the uniform worn by those who dealt one on one with the breeding program participants. "Actually, to the observation deck overlooking the four Acclimation Suites," she corrected herself.

"We call it the Oven," Sergeant Withers said with an evil little smirk curling the corners of her mouth. The elevator doors opened and the medspec trainees followed the two sergeants into a medium sized room with angled-out windows along all four walls. Half a dozen uniformed personnel peered out of windows or typed on notebooks.

"Why?" one of the medspecs asked.

Staff Sergeant Myers led them over to one bank of floor-to-ceiling windows and pointed down at the room laid out below. "One way glass," she said absently. "They can't see us."

"Oh my God!" one of the transferees gasped, putting a hand to her mouth.

"These are the rooms where the program volunteers are first introduced to Marlingan males and go into estrus," Myers explained. "Their first mating occurs here, under strict supervision. Once they successfully complete one group mating, provided there are no complications, they are usually ready to be moved into the general population. They are assigned to a harem, each of which has its own separate kiva. Occasionally one or two girls need a little extra attention here, and we've got a few rooms set aside on the other end of the complex for them. Minor tearing issues are the bulk of what we see, as least physically. A lot of the girls suffer some emotional trauma, but it's usually short-term. The intensity of their estrus doesn't leave them a lot of time or energy to devote to worrying or deep thinking. You've all seen the training vids and read your manuals, or were supposed to, so this shouldn't be a shock," she said to the staring medspecs.

"It's not the same," someone said.

Zhirkov silently agreed, staring down through the glass at the room below. She'd been in the military long enough to know not to say anything out loud. The HUMACE Breeding Program's Manual of Operations and Procedures was full of dry text, arcane medical terms, and technical jargon, and the training vids hadn't been much better. None of it did the scene before her justice.

There were three young women—very young women—in the room below her, and three Lingan males that from their musculature appeared just recently full-grown. All six were in full rut.

The Marlingan reproductive cycle had more of a sexual component to it than the human one, where the act could be over in less than a minute and still result in pregnancy. Male Lingan mating behavior varied little from individual to individual. Once exposed to the pheromones of a female in estrus the males became highly aroused and the mating process would begin. Marlingan males needed to ejaculate a minimum of three times while exposed to female pheromones before their bodies began injecting their equivalent of sperm into the otherwise benign and inert ejaculate. Because of this, their reproductive cycle favored males with the greatest stamina, ensuring that no matter how short each mounting was most males were ready and eager to go again almost immediately. There was no courtship ritual per se; Zhirkov wondered if there had once been one, a thousand or two years ago, but if so, it had faded away as the Lingans' concern over falling reproductive rates overpowered personal sexual preferences. When in estrus, female Lingans took on all comers, and routinely experienced the equivalent of multiple orgasms while doing so.

The program volunteers, with their modified physiologies, responded just as enthusiastically to the physical sensations as their female Lingan counterparts, even though, the staff psychiatrists pointed out, some of them harbored extreme resentment at being deceived about the true nature of the program.

Zhirkov studied the mating pair directly underneath her observation window. The human female was on her hands and knees, with one of the Lingan males hunched over her. Even with her increased size from the Lingan health drug the brown-furred alien, which looked disturbingly like a Terran kangaroo, dwarfed her nude body. The Lingan's hindquarters were thrusting so fast they were nearly a blur, and the female's neck and face were beet red, veins bulging and muscles clenched.

Zhirkov wandered around the observation room and looked out the other windows. Much the same was happening in all four acclimatization rooms. On the far side of one of the rooms one of the young women was on her back on a low platform, her legs wrapped around the wide ribcage of another trusting Lingan male. She was screaming hoarsely with pleasure and had been for quite a while. They'd heard it as soon as they'd stepped off the elevator. Zhirkov guessed if they shut off the speakers they'd still be able to hear her through the glass.

Zhirkov wandered back over to her original spot. The male half of the mating couple directly below her stiffened, and after a few seconds straightened up and withdrew from the human female. Zhirkov stared at the panting creature's organ, which was bright red and glistening. Its head was fatter than the shaft, in size equivalent to a man's hands clenched together. The shaft equaled in length and thickness the forearm of that same imaginary muscular man, which was the reason for the disproportionate pelvic increase among the volunteers.

The panting, red-faced woman remained on all fours, sweaty and heaving. She stiffened with a surprised grunt as the Lingan's ejaculate inside her reacted to the bio-engineered secretions in her body as it would inside a normal Lingan female. Zhirkov was in a position to see the woman's stomach swell, her red gaping sex bulge, and then thick white foam oozed from her folds and began dripping onto the floor.

As the Lingan culture was polyamory and mating with a female in estrus was expected of every male who came in contact with her who was physically capable of the act, the military's reproductive specialists theorized the foaming ejaculate increased the reproductive chances of the female's latest partner as it pushed the seed from any of her previous matings out of her body as it expanded. If left untrammeled inside a female, the foam would dissolve into a thick, viscous fluid after several hours. Away from body heat, the foam thickened into an almost gel-like consistency, protecting the sperm inside it and keeping it viable for up to thirty-six hours. Doctors had done experiments, inserting the gelled clumps by hand into volunteers in an attempt to improve the pregnancy rate, but with only minor success.

Having paused just long enough to catch its breath, the male Lingan moved forward and remounted the young woman, who remained on hands and knees. The big animal hunched over her but didn't rest any of its sizable weight on her body, instead just lightly grasping her ribcage with its forelimbs as it pushed its big organ into her foam-stretched opening. Its hindquarters began that familiar motion that would quickly turn jackhammer fast. Foam squirted out of her and splattered on the floor, but the woman was too consumed by her estrus to care about anything other than the sensations she was experiencing. Shame, embarrassment, shock; these were just words her brain, now operating on a more primitive level, no longer really recognized. Her hips began thrusting backward as if of their own accord.

"How long is this going to go on?" one of the transferees asked, her voice thick. She cleared her throat.

"Each Lingan male will mate with a female an average five times," Sergeant Myers told the assembled women. "Some more, some less, but five's the average. This will take between twenty and sixty minutes, depending on the age of the male and how many other females he's mated with previously. In each suite there are three Lingan males and three volunteers. They won't be done until each male has completed mating with each of the six females. This usually takes two to three hours.

"Jesus," someone said. The sergeant ignored the comment.

"By the time they're finished, the males are tired enough to ignore the pheromones the volunteers are still putting out. Your job, the first thing you're going to be cutting your teeth on, is attending to the young ladies after their initial mating session. Some of them may still be difficult to manage because of the estrus, but most will be tired enough that you'll be able to administer to them properly. Restraints are available if necessary. Mostly what you'll see are minor tearing issues from the Lingan organs and dehydration, but you'll assess each female individually after removing her to an examining room. You will be assisting a staff doctor, of course, but make no mistake, you'll be doing most of the heavy lifting.

"After you've spent a few weeks here getting experience, you'll be spread around the colony, assigned to one or two kivas, or breeding groups. Each group, as you know, will consist of five to ten males and approximately half that number of volunteers. It is in these groups that they will remain as they fulfill the terms of their service, bearing Lingan young. Although the official term for these breeding groups is a harem, you are not to use that term around the volunteers, as we've found it has some unwarranted connotations."

Kimmie's kiva had on staff one full-time cook who prepared meals for both the humans and Lingans. This kiva was cleaned and maintained by a three person crew which was responsible for a total of four kivas. The kiva was also attended by a military medical specialist who monitored a total of seven human females in two kivas.

Each kiva was a separate free-standing structure, oriented around a central, sunken circular space called the "leisure area" by its designers. Around the periphery of the leisure area were various small rooms, including sleeping areas (human and Marlingan), the kitchen, and a storage room.

Kimmie's kiva contained eight Lingan males and three human females including her. The other two girls were fresh recruits to the program and about the same age; she learned the Lingan males were young as well, the equivalent of teenagers, although it would take quite some time before she could tell the difference in age between Lingans.

The only reason either humans or Lingans were present on Zinta was the breeding program, and so the members of the harem were freed of any and all outside responsibilities. Kimmie, on the rare occasions she felt the need to talk, and was capable of it, referred to the 'leisure area' by its unofficial name, the fuckpit.

The fuckpit had a padded floor, which was dotted with numerous odd-shaped pillows and pieces of soft furniture whose sole reason for existence was to make intercourse more comfortable. There were no clocks inside the kiva, and with the numbing effects of the estrus on higher brain functions on top of the physically taxing rutting, Kimmie soon lost all track of time. All eight of the males fucked her every day, and kept going until they'd come at least four times. Sometimes they came back for seconds. With her pre-gel-cap body such a relentless tempo would have sent her to the hospital within days even if the Lingans had been equipped with human-sized organs, but whatever had been done to her body while in the gel-cap had been more than cosmetic.

Kimmie could hardly remember a life before the kiva. She tried to sleep in her bed, but at least half the time fell asleep without moving from the last place and position she'd been rutted. She hated doing that, as she was usually awakened by another thrusting member, and the males didn't care if she had to pee, or wanted a shower, or anything; they wouldn't stop until they were done. She couldn't even remember how many times she'd been forced to pee while being fucked—so many that it didn't even faze her now. It didn't faze the Lingans, either, when it came to fucking they were machines, and seemingly didn't even notice the mess they were making.

Clothes and regular bathing were a thing of the past; she hadn't worn anything but sweat, Lingan come, and her own piss, since she'd arrived at the kiva. And that come, it was everywhere; the males produced massive amounts of the stuff, which then foamed up hugely. Her body was streaked with it, her hair crusted, it got in her eyes, her mouth, her very pores. The fuckpit had to be hosed down once a day (there was a drain in the center of its gently sloping floor), and the girls were as well, and still Kimmie smelled of nothing but, and could taste it in everything she ate. Not that she ate much; the medical specialists had to remind the girls to eat, and sometimes fed them by hand when the girls were stuck under males all day without a break. After maybe a month (Kimmie really had no idea), she'd dropped every extra ounce of fat on her body. Her new breasts, which she'd been so proud of, had shrunk to half their former size, topped with knobby nipples which now looked cartoonishly big.

She lay over a low, round, padded table, her knees on the floor of the fuckpit, panting, as the Lingan who'd just finished with her wandered away. She felt her abdomen swell as his come foamed up inside her once again. At first there were times when their foamy come had squirted out of her, but after getting fucked eight hours a day by Lingan cocks the size of baseball bats, and then stretched again by their foaming, weirdly firm come, Kimmie didn't think she'd ever be tight again. She seen enough freshly fucked girls to know that her pussy was now gaping like an open mouth and would stay that way for a while, unless she clenched down on the foam filling her and rounding her stomach. She didn't want to do that; she kind of liked the full feeling, and imagined that's what it'd feel like to be pregnant. She felt the thrust-ejected foam from the Lingan's three previous orgasms dripping from her pussylips and sliding down the backs of her thighs. It dropped in splatting clumps to the floor between her knees.

None of the Lingans wore translators, so even if they'd wanted to communicate with the girls (which they seemed to have no interest in) it would have been a challenge. The girls had given all of the males nicknames before the first month was over. Grandpa had a tuft of almost grey hair and was skinnier than most of the others. Speedy could come six times in about twenty minutes. Rex roared like a dinosaur every time he came, and Runt was the smallest. His cock head was just the size of a man's fist, and was barely a foot long, so if the girls were ever sore his attentions were the most appreciated. Bax reminded one of the girls of the famous PowerBall player, and Frizz was unusually fuzzy. Noah didn't look like anything special, but when he came, there was so much of it it went everywhere. When he was done with them the girls were usually ankle deep in foam.

Banda was on her hands and knees nearby. Grandpa squatted behind her, having just rutted her a second time, and was waiting for its erection to return. Her body hair was growing in almost as thick as a man's, and had Kimmie's brain been thinking much past her next rutting she might have found the sight of her hairy body unnerving. Banda's legs were as hairy as a man's, and looked like they were in shadow. The black patch between her legs was spreading in all directions; it had crept up the crack of her ass to the small of her back and now the hair was starting to grow outward over her buttocks. The top of her triangle had migrated several inches northward, thinning as it ran over the curve of her belly, and a thick line of hair ran up to her belly button and beyond. The tufts under her arms had grown and were starting to inch downward, and when her long, thick head-hair fell forward Kimmie could see it was starting to grow down her neck.

Sulki lay on her back at the raised edge of the fuckpit, getting roughly rutted by the Lingan they'd named Beast. He wasn't any bigger than the others through the body, but his cock was just about the size of Kimmie's thigh. Every time he forced it into her it felt like he was crushing her lungs, and he was not gentle about it either. None of the Lingans were gentle; they bounced the girls around like rag dolls. Sulki's flat tits were flying around on her chest like they wanted to come off under Beast's rough thrusts. She was moaning loudly, sweaty and dripping foam after several hours of mating. None of the girls were fat, but Sulki made Kimmie look it, and when she lay on her back her stomach formed a cave below her ribcage. That cave was gone now as Beast's massive organ bulged her abdomen upward with every thrust.

None of the girls was pregnant yet. They'd learned too late that it sometimes took human females three to six months of kiva rutting before they became pregnant, but most of them had no idea how long they'd actually been in the kiva. Most of them couldn't concentrate much beyond the reach of their arms.

Kimmie felt soft fur and warmth on her buttocks a half-second before the fist-sized head of a Lingan organ pushed into her foam-stretched hole. She felt the foam squelching and squirting out of her as the Lingan slid his length into her in one long thrust. She couldn't help but groan at the sensations; no matter how many times in a day, and for how long, she was fucked, it always felt good, like getting an itch scratched. She looked over her shoulder and saw Bax's big grey eyes staring down at her as the Lingan began a slow thrusting. The squelching sounds of his big cock in her echoed around the room and mixed with Sulki's and Banda's moans.

Jayme lay on her side, her head resting on her upper arm, and watched Star as he nursed. She'd birthed the Lingan joey two weeks earlier and already he'd doubled in size. Even at two kilos her nipples were a little big for him to fit into his mouth, but he was able to latch onto the very tips well enough to nurse.

Jayme had named her first joey Star after the four-pointed splash of white hair on his chest. He'd been no bigger than her fist when she'd birthed him and he'd made that laborious crawl up her stomach to nurse that first time. She's had to help him find a nipple, as his eyes hadn't even opened yet, but he'd caught on quickly.

It had taken four months of kiva rutting before she'd gotten pregnant, and had carried her joey the full three months. When Jayme had arrived the other women in her kiva all seemed to be pregnant or nursing, and she'd had quite a number of shocks those first few days. First, that just because the women were pregnant didn't mean their estrus stopped, although the intensity lessened somewhat. Also, just because a woman was pregnant or nursing didn't mean a Lingan wouldn't mount her. Most of the women had learned how to nurse while being rutted, as they really had no choice.

The mere fact that women who were pregnant and nursing were still in the kiva hadn't made sense to Jayme until one of the women (all having been as ignorant as her at one time), explained to Jayme about the fine print in the contracts they'd all signed. Their contracts weren't considered fulfilled until they'd delivered one healthy litter of Lingan offspring. 'Delivered' was defined as birthed, nursed, and weaned, and a litter was defined as six or more joeys. What all the women had missed, however, was the fact that while female Lingans usually gave birth to litters of six or eight joeys, human females in the HUMACE program rarely gave birth to more than one joey at a time.

"What!" Jayme had shrieked when she'd learned that. She'd had to be restrained, and sedated for a day. The medical specialist had left her in the fuckpit while she was sedated so the males didn't miss out on any rutting. As it was going to take so much longer to complete the terms of her contract the specialist figured Jayme wouldn't mind, as there was no telling which rutting would result in her impregnation. Occaionally a girl would get pregnant in that first week, although that was rare. When the sedative wore off, Jayme seemed resigned to her fate.

The duration of her participation in the program hadn't been the only unexpected development, not at all. Jayme looked down at Star as he finished nursing, nuzzled her briefly, and then padded awkwardly down her body. He was still amazingly tiny compared to the adults, barely more than four pounds. Jayme lifted one leg up and watched the little joey climb up and over her other thigh. She then pulled her knees up closer to her chest and felt the joey push his way back inside her.

When she'd read that Lingans were marsupials, she hadn't really comprehended what that would mean to her. Both Terran kangaroos and Marlingans were equipped with abdominal pouches into which their tiny newbors crawled. There they stayed, coming out only to play or nurse, until they'd grown large enough.

HUMACE doctors, however, apparently hadn't wanted or been able to re-engineer their program volunteers' DNA to provide them with an external pouch to house their birthed young. A slight adjustment in hormones and chemistry, to toughen the walls, and a redesign and re-scaling of the pelvic girdle was all it took to provide a workable alternative. Within HUMACE, it was called caching.

Jayme didn't even twitch as Star crawled into her headfirst, then turned around inside her to hang his head back out. After four months of near-constant impalement by massive Lingan organs, a small four-pound joey was nothing. He came out six times a day to nurse from her swollen breasts, which were producing much more milk than the tiny guy needed, and spent the rest of the day sleeping. He'd grow bigger, and more active, of that she was fully aware. After three months in the womb joeys spent another three to four living inside their mothers, nursing and growing. When they were too big to crawl back inside the joeys still slept with their mothers and continued to nurse infrequently for several more months.

Jayme looked across the fuckpit to the far edge, where Murga crouched on hands and knees. The joey Murga'd birthed nine months before squatted on its haunches beside her, its head ducked down to nurse from one of her large, overripe breasts. The joey weighed close to forty kilos and was just about done with nursing. Murga's distended stomach hung down between her thighs most of the way to her knees. She looked nine or ten months pregnant with a human child, but no one in HUMACE was likely to make that mistake.

As the juvenile joey finished nursing and hopped away, Murga lowered herself onto her elbows with a sigh and spread her knees, turning slightly away from Jayme. Jayme was struck by the size of the head of the joey she was caching, perhaps the largest joey she'd ever seen still caching. The joey's head hung down, nose pointed at the ground. Jayme thought it was asleep, but then Murga's hand reached back between her legs with a piece of banana. The joey sniffed at the fruit, then gobbled it out of her palm. It shifted inside Murga, who groaned and sighed.

Murga spread her knees further and lowered her body closer to the ground as the joey carefully began to extricate itself from her. The joey had to weigh close to twenty kilos, and if joeys didn't have such narrow hips and shoulders it would never have fit inside her. Murga's pink-lipped vagina stretched wide as the joey pushed its shoulders and forelegs out of her. It paused that way for a moment, its front paws on the floor, its body from the ribcage down still inside Murga, and stretched. It was just starting to develop a fine, downy coat, which glistened with Murga's juices. Then the joey leaned forward, and Murga's giant sex stretched even wider as the joey's body and long back legs emerged. The gaping, slack hole revealed in Murga was big enough to fit a man's head, and it did not contract with any speed.

The joey's tail had barely made it out of her before one of the adult males hopped up behind Murga and thrust its already hard cock into her gaping hole. Murga raised herself onto her hands so her caching joey could nurse as the adult began thrusting rapidly into her. Loud splatting sounds echoed around the room as her vagina clenched down on the organ, expelling large amounts of air. Her belly shrunk to a third the size it had been with the big joey cached in her. Rumor was she was pregnant again, which would make it the fifth time she was running three, as the girls called it—nursing one, caching one, and pregnant.

None of the women could leave the program while they were pregnant, caching, or nursing, but as they weren't separated from the males, and remained in estrus throughout their reproductive cycle, very few women got out of the program after having only delivered the minimum one litter of joeys. Murga had been on Zinta, she guessed, over ten years; so long, in fact, that she'd lost count of how many joeys she'd delivered. At least thirty, perhaps as many as forty; more than five litters worth. Jayme couldn't believe that wasn't some sort of record, but there were stories about a woman who'd joined the program decades before and had birthed over a hundred joeys. The story went that more than once she'd been free of joeys but had stayed in the kiva and before long had gotten pregnant again. Rumor was she couldn't bear the thought of leaving the harem life. Jayme didn't know whether or not to believe something that sounded like an old wives tale, but she had to admit thinking beyond her own insatiable desire was almost impossible some days, and she'd been in the kiva less than a year. What would it be like after two years, or three? When she could think clearly, Jayme could see it in Murga; the estrus had dulled her brain. Not only didn't she talk about leaving the kiva, she hardly talked at all. Truth was, she couldn't imagine a different life, and couldn't remember her life before HUMACE. Jayme couldn't believe she'd ever get that far gone, but then again she never thought she'd get used to, much less look forward to, getting fucked by Lingans while nursing.

Fine Print—Chapter 3

Banda stood in the kiva's kitchen doorway, eating a karberfruit and watching the activity in the fuckpit. Her body hair was thick and dark and now covered nearly every square inch of her body below her neck save for her nipples. She was as hairy as the hairiest man she'd ever seen, nearly as hairy as some chimpanzees she'd seen at the zoo, and her thick mane of hair hung to the middle of her back and would have been even longer if the kiva's medspec didn't hack off six inches every few weeks.

Banda had yet to become pregnant. The doctors had adjusted her hormones half a dozen times, but the only change she'd noticed was that her estrus seemed even more intense, if that was even possible. She still hadn't conceived. In some small corner of her brain she worried about what might happen to her if she couldn't get pregnant; after all, that was her only purpose in HUMACE, birthing joeys. They'd scheduled a meeting tomorrow, or maybe it was today, to discuss her future with HUMACE, but Banda found it hard to concentrate on those things. When she was done eating she'd go back into the fuckpit, to take care of the burning between her legs that had her hips already twitching. She hadn't been fucked in over an hour and the lack of attention had her hot, wet, and irritable.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Jayme grunted as the joey she was caching began to stir. He was already pushing fifteen kilos—it was amazing how time was flying by, it seemed like she'd just birthed him. But then again, she'd birthed enough joeys that they were starting to blur together in her mind. How many had it been? Twelve? Fifteen? Half the time she was running three, which meant she only slept in short snatches when she could get a few minutes.

The joey inside her pushed its forelegs out of her, and then literally hopped the rest of the way out of her vagina. Jayme grunted in surprise as the wind was kicked out of her lungs, but the young one hadn't hurt her. It would take a lot more than a joey's quick exit to damage her toughened innards.

With a palm she pushed on her hanging, slack abdomen and heard the sighing sound behind her as the excess air whooshed out of the six-inch wide hole between her legs. If she didn't clench up and stayed on her knees her vagina would remain an open black tunnel a palm's width across indefinitely, not that the Lingans ever left her alone that long. Her body had changed since coming to the kiva-she could tell that even with her dulled senses. Her hips had widened even more since she started caching, and her stomach hung in slack folds whenever she stood up. Her breasts were pendulous, and her huge nipples leaked milk more often than not. She couldn't really remember what her body used to look like, although she remembered things used to be different.

Jayme was about to get up off her knees and get something to eat when the newest Lingan to the kiva hopped up behind her. Her experienced eye told her he was an adolescent, just barely full-grown, which meant he never lasted very long but always went six or seven times. She clenched what internal muscles she had that weren't so stretched out they would still clench, ridding herself of as much air as possible. The young Lingan mounted her with one quick jab of his organ and began thrusting vigorously. Jayme groaned in pleasure, and felt the ache in her swollen breasts as the sensations caused her milk to let down. She took a glance over her shoulder at him before hanging her head down toward the floor. Her swinging breasts scattered drops of milk on the padded floor. This new Lingan had a four-pointed splash of white hair on his chest. Something about him seemed familiar to her, but she wasn't able to figure out why. She couldn't think too much about anything anymore. She didn't have the energy or the urge, really; all she cared about were her immediate needs—something to drink when she was thirsty, something to eat when she was hungry making sure the joey she was caching nursed enough to satisfy both of them, and easing the everpresent burning ache between her legs. Beyond those simple few, she had no cares.

Banda had been unoccupied when the signal bell chimed, and so had enough time to strap herself into a seat before they went zero gee. She'd been onboard more than long enough to know that the lack of gravity meant that the ship had stopped accelerating. The zero gee would last thirty or forty minutes, as the ship spun around, then the gravity would return as the carrier began to decelerate.

She was onboard a Lingan fighter carrier, part of their huge fleet that no one on Earth seemed to know about, or at least admit to knowing about. The carrier housed about two hundred small orbital fighters, plus their pilots and maintenance crew, and all the Lingans required to keep the military carrier running at top efficiency. Banda thought there were about three thousand crewmembers on board, but she couldn't be sure, since she was only allowed to move about half a dozen rooms in the ship. All of the crew male, of course.

Since she'd been unable to conceive there'd really been no other alternative for her, or so they'd told her. They'd invested a lot of time and money in her, with nothing to show for it. At one point in her life Banda would have recoiled at what they were telling her, and some distant part of her brain still knew that, but that was before the unquenchable ache began between her legs.

There were twelve of them on the carrier, girls like her who'd joined HUMACE but for one reason or another had been unable to conceive. Not very many, for 3000 crew, but then they all had jobs to do, and could only visit the mascots—for that was what she and the other girls were called—when they weren't on duty and had been given a recreation pass from their superior officer.

Because of the pheromones she and the other girls were constantly emitting, they were not allowed to mingle with the crew. It was never really an issue—although it was hard for her to keep track, Banda guessed she and the other girls were visited by ten to fifteen crewmembers a day. They barely had time left to sleep.

After a few minutes of zero gee, instead of releasing herself from the seat harness Banda began grinding her sex against the strap between her legs. It was better than nothing, which was what she'd get if she was floating around the room like several of the other girls.

The hatch slid open and a middle-aged Lingan floated into the room. He was obviously used to maneuvering in zero-gee, and from his shoulder patch Banda could see he was a mid-ranking officer.

The Lingan looked around the room, at the three girls floating around, and Banda and two more strapped down, and then pushed with his big hind legs toward Banda.

Banda couldn't stop her grinding hips as the Lingan unfastened the strap between her legs, then detached the seat beneath Banda's buttocks. The four straps across her chest held Banda in place as the Lingan grabbed the top of the seat back with its forelimbs and gracefully entered her with one thrust. It held onto the seat for leverage in the zero gee environment and began thrusting in earnest. Banda could only groan with pleasure as it had been almost two hours since she'd been mounted and had been going a little crazy. She was to be a ship's mascot for a minimum five years to fulfill her broken promise to HUMACE, and then she was free to travel anywhere she chose. Although she couldn't think of anything she'd rather be doing, or could do, with her mutated metabolism and body.

“Are there any other questions about the HUMACE program?” Kimmie looked around the junior high school auditorium at all the fresh young female faces. She'd been upbeat, positive, and informative throughout the talk, never straying even one syllable from the script imprinted in her brain. The people who'd written the recruiting talk had also provided her answers to any possible the questions the girls might ask her about the program, all of which were technically true but yet still concealed the true nature of the program. If Kimmie felt anything other than 110% enthusiastic about what she was saying, it never showed. In fact, the speech programming and urge blockers worked so well Kimmie felt like she was on autopilot, nothing more than a smiling mannequin standing behind the podium. This was her fifteenth school assembly in two weeks, and the only thinking she was doing behind her smiling, chattering mouth was wondering if she'd make it back out to the transporter before the metabolic suppressors began to wear off. They only lasted two hours, three at the most, and then it was like all of her suppressed urges hit her at once. Half the time she ended up cutting the question and answer period short—like today. She'd taken the urge blocker too early, before they'd even left the hotel.

“No? Then I'd like to thank you for taking the time to listen to me today,” Kimmie told the girls. She smiled even wider, per the script, the perfect recruiter. “I know, it's not like you had a choice, but at least it got you out of class, right?” A lot of the girls laughed.

Kimmie went on. “I felt the same way, when I was your age, which wasn't too long ago. Think about HUMACE, and see your local recruiting office. Thank you.” She waved once more, smiling, and stepped out from behind the podium. VerKleek, the assistant principal, came over and shook her hand.

Kimmie's face was one giant smile even as inside she wanted to run for the door. Maybe VerKleek noticed the sweaty, quivering palm and put it down to public speaking nerves. Kimmie didn't know, or care. All she knew was that her body had given her few options once she'd fulfilled the terms of her contract with HUMACE. She knew she'd been offered this temporary assignment, and the huge paycheck to go along with it, almost solely because she wasn't so tall or oddly proportioned as to appear alien to potential recruits. It hadn't sounded so bad, but then they'd exaggerated the effectiveness of their estral suppressor.

Kimmie forced herself to keep to a brisk walk as she headed toward the rear doors. She nodded and smiled to several students and teachers, some of whom looked like they wanted to ask her some questions in private, but she couldn't stop.

She hit the rear door hard and spotted her transport parked close by. Mark was at the controls. As she came close Birt cracked open the big sliding door and Kimmie ducked inside the spacious interior of the vehicle, which was designed for hauling cargo in urban areas. Mark pulled away from the curb smoothly.

“Oh my God.” Kimmie's hands were shaking almost uncontrollably. “Help me get this off.”

Birt's big fingers worked at the collar of the white shirt. The tailored suit ensemble displayed her body exactly as her employers wanted it displayed. Not only did the expensive fabric and custom tailoring promote an image of wealth and sophistication, they also camouflaged her unusual proportions. The jacket minimized her very wide hips with padded shoulders and by being cut very loose around her waist; it made her appear much thicker she was, and in fact she looked short, squat and chunky in the suit, when she was anything but. It was only when one of the girls would get close to her that they would realize not only wasn't she short, but she wasn't fat either, which was why Kimmie was instructed not to mingle or get too close. Kimmie didn't care if she looked fat; she had no use for men anymore.

The jacket came off first, then the shirt, then the pants. Underneath Kimmie wore a form-fitting bra that minimized her substantial chest, and full-cut panties that acted a bit like a girdle on her loose abdomen. Both pieces were made of clear rubber. Her nipples were only just starting to leak—Kimmie saw only a few white smears inside the cups—but it felt like she had a swamp inside her panties, and there was no doubt in her mind she would have soaked her suitpants through without the rubber undergarment.

“Oh God, oh God, get ‘em off!” Kimmie panted. Birt's hairy, muscular hands grabbed the waist of her shorts and peeled them down her dancing legs with practiced ease.

Kimmie practically jumped out of the shorts, then dropped to her knees in front of Birt. Birt lifted the camouflaging box off the floor of the van, revealing the massive dildo mounted to the padded floor at a forty-five degree angle. The dildo was hot pink in color and made of some synthetic material which felt like natural flesh. Instead of being anatomically realistic, in proportion if not in size, the dildo had been designed to satisfy, and its entire length was aggressively ridged and studded. Birt watched as Kimmie rubbed its bumpy head along her big, glistening crevice, then she sank down and backward onto it with a shiver.

“Oh fuck. Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” Kimmie humped herself violently backward onto the thick dildo until it could go no deeper. Birt shook his head in amazement every time he saw it—the dildo was a foot and a half in length and five inches in diameter, and Kimmie went all the way down on it until her asscheeks were resting on her heels. She shivered violently and mewled pitifully as that everpresent ache, growing in her quickly as the estral suppressor wore off, was soothed.

Even though she hadn't cached a joey in months, and her stomach was almost flat (if still loose and wrinkled), the dildo slopped loudly around in her like a spoon in a soup bowl. If she leaned back its shape was clearly visible against her belly.

Birt shook his head again. The woman had six more months of these talks before the school year was up, and he and Mark were two of the four men assigned to her to make sure she kept a low profile and ensure her body's needs were met. The assignment wasn't without its benefits—she would let them do whatever they wanted with her, and it wasn't as if she could get pregnant. They tried vaginal sex, of course, but it was like swimming in a vat of warm gelatin. Masturbating inside her sort of defeated the purpose, at least as far as Birt was concerned. Anal sex didn't seem to do much for her—that is, she was tight enough, but hardly seemed to feel anything—and had no interest in providing oral. That's not to say they didn't have any fun—as long as the ache between her legs was being satisfied, by an arm or an oversize dildo, she didn't care if the men entertained themselves in her ass or between her breasts, or got a little rough, and after years of getting soaked by gallons of foaming Lingan semen every day she didn't even notice their minimal output unless some got in her eye. Both the van and her living quarters had floor- and wall-mounted dildos nearly as thick as her thighs, on which Kimmie impaled herself for hours every day. The original dildos they'd installed hadn't been big enough.

Just what Kimmie planned to do after she'd given all of her agreed-upon recruiting talks Birt hadn't a clue, and he doubted she did either. She didn't have much energy left at the end of the day for thinking, but after six years in the kiva he would've been surprised if she had.

Lieutenant Tania Zhirkov stepped into the main room of the kiva and blinked her eyes at the smell. The training to get her medical degree had her in class eight days out of nine, and it had been months since she'd stepped foot inside a kiva, even though she was schooling on Zinta and specializing in HUMACE volunteers. She'd forgotten how strong the smell was, and how even though the volunteer's pheromones had been altered to attract Lingan males, they still affected humans to varying small degrees. She felt the wetness between her legs and the twinge as her nipples hardened, but reminder herself not to lose focus.

This kiva was relatively quiet at the moment. At the far edge of the fuckpit—she couldn't even remember what she was supposed to call it—a young Lingan was mounting an even younger volunteer who had the look of someone fresh to the kiva life—namely, How did I get here? What's happening? and Oh my God it feels so Good! Two other women were in the eating area, using their hands to greedily shove the food that had been prepared for them into their mouths. They didn't even glance up at Zhirkov when she looked in on them. Zhirkov compared their faces with the image she had stored in her palmpad and then pushed away from the door.

Once she stepped closer to the fuckpit, Zhirkov saw another female on its sunken padded floor that she hadn't noticed before because of the ledge. The woman was on her knees, chest to the floor and rump sticking up in the air pointed straight at Zhirkov.

Zhirkov studied the woman's backside with an expert's eye. The woman's rump was all vagina. Well, not all, but it was so large, so out of proportion, that it reminded her of one of those red-assed baboons she'd seen in a zoo on Earth.

The volunteer's sex looked as they all did almost all the time, red and puffy and gaping and glistening—freshly fucked, not to put too fine a point on it, although she seemed free for the moment of the foamy Lingan semen.

This volunteer was getting a pronounced case of what they'd taken to calling Lingan hip. Just as a woman's pelvis expanded during childbirth to allow the baby's head to pass, so were the volunteers' from the caching, but after the baby was born the hips went back more or less to their original shape and size. Not so with the HUMACE volunteers. The program doctors were studying this phenomenon but hadn't yet explained it. The most pronounced case of course was Murga Arroyo, who'd been in the program for fifteen years, birthing over fifty joeys, before unexpectedly dying of heart failure. She'd reportedly once cached a joey to twenty-two kilos, and rumor was that a medtech had once, on a dare, successfully inserted her whole head into the woman.

This volunteer's pubic bone was obviously bulged downward as she knelt on the floor, and the space between her narrow thighs where they joined her body was considerable. As Zhirkov studied her the woman stirred, and raised herself up onto her elbows, then fully upright. The volunteer's belly hung slack and wrinkled, and the change in position sent a large volume of air out between her legs with a loud whooshing splat. You heard it all the time with the volunteers, and if they'd been normal females with normal mucosal membranes, the insufflation might have been cause for concern. The volunteers' purpose-altered orifi, however, resembled a soft leather purse about as much as they did a normal vagina. As tough as their internals obviously were, Zhirkov wondered how they were able to feel as much as they obviously did, enjoy the rutting with the Lingans to the extent they did. She supposed the mere size of the Lingans' organs helped with that.

Zhirkov stepped to the side and saw the woman's breasts showed evidence of long-term rough use as well. They were stretched and partially flattened against her ribcage, even as they bulged with freshly produced milk. Her large, dark nipples looked as sensitive as bootheels. Zhirkov checked her palmpad against the woman's face.

“Ms. Anders? Jayme?”

Zhirkov had to say her name a few more times before her eyes focused and Jayme looked at her.

“I'm Lieutenant Zhirkov. How are you doing today?”

Zhirkov watched the volunteer idly scratch between her legs. From her lack of reaction Zhirkov wasn't even sure Jayme had understood the question. She pressed on anyway.

“Do you remember the visit you had last week from a medical specialist? She brought you into the office complex?”

After a beat, Jayme slowly nodded. “Yeah.”

“Do you remember what she told you?”

Jayme nodded again. “Umm…,” she began, then frowned. Her wiggling finger now seemed to be rubbing more than scratching.

“Jayme!” Zhirkov said loudly. “Pay attention. This is important. Do you remember what she said?”

Jayme jumped at the loud voice, and her finger stopped. “That I, uh, wasn't caching or nursing, so I …. uh…”

“For the first time since completing the terms of your agreement with HUMACE you are not pregnant, caching, or nursing. At least, not one of your own joeys, I know you're nursing others since you have the milk. Do you remember now?”

Jayme nodded more firmly. “Yes.”

Zhirkov leaned closer to her. “That means you can leave the program now,” she told her. “Get out. Settle offworld somewhere, wherever you like. You don't have to mate with Lingans anymore if you don't want to. You can leave. That's what we told you last week, and the scan we did yesterday confirms you aren't yet pregnant again, but if you're going to exit the program, you need to do so quickly, before you get pregnant. Do you understand?”

Jayme looked up at her then. Her finger had gone back to its wiggling. “I don't want to go. Do I have to? What would I do?”

Zhirkov wasn't prepared for this response, even though she'd heard it happened from time to time. Murga Arroyo, in fact, had refused five separate opportunities to exit the program. Jayme had been in the program only nine years compared to Murga's fifteen, but this was the first time she'd been free of joeys and eligible to retire from the program. Nine years, and almost forty joeys before being eligible—now that had to be a record.

Zhirkov was about to respond when she saw she no longer had Jayme's attention. She sensed the Lingan before she actually saw him, looming beside her. The male looked at her, and her uniform, but gave her only one disinterested sniff. Jayme, on the other hand, couldn't take her eyes off of him, or his erect phallus, and dropped back down eagerly to her elbows as the male took one big hop-step to get behind her.

“If you're going to go, you need to make the decision, and soon,” Zhirkov told her, as she watched the Lingan grasp Jayme by the hips, but by the vacant expectant expression on her face Zhirkov knew she'd lost her.

With his first thrust Jayme's mouth opened into a small “O”, and Zhirkov saw her eyes actually partway roll back into her head with the pleasure of it, before her body began shaking violently under his hammering thrusts, her breasts slapping the backs of her upper arms had enough for the sound to echo around the room. Zhirkov looked around and saw that two other males had appeared, and knew she'd better get out of the fuckpit. Pheromones or not, reinforced pants or not (because there had been a few incidents early on in the program with medtechs in the wrong place at the wrong time), she knew if the Lingans were overcome by their rutting lust and she was the only female available, there would be serious trouble. For supposedly sentient beings, they had surprisingly little control of their baser instincts.

She hopped up onto the ledge and backed quickly toward the door. Soon only the head and shoulders of the Lingan atop Jayme Anders was visible. That was two attempts, Zhirkov thought. By administration order they had to make a third within forty-eight hours, and then the volunteer was on her own.

“I know I've fulfilled my five year obligation, but I don't want to leave,” Banda told the human representative on board the Lingan destroyer.

“I'm sorry, but you don't have a choice. Lingans don't much care for humans to begin with, which is why only hirsute HUMACE volunteers, such as yourself, are picked for mascot duty, and they're sticklers about variety. That's why you've been moved from ship to ship so often. But your time is up, and there are more than enough new HUMACE volunteers who have been found infertile to replace you that you just can't remain a mascot.”

Banda stared at him and shifted her weight restlessly, pressing her thighs together. She was going to need some Lingan cock pretty soon. She told the representative as much. “What am I supposed to do? Where can I go? I'm hairy as a bear, and if I'm not getting fucked one hour in three I start going nuts. Can I go back to the Lingan homeworld with any of the crewmembers? Or to one of their colonies?”

The representative shook his head. “Not allowed, I'm sorry.”

“And you can't get me out of oestrus?” Banda pleaded.

“No, I'm sorry. The only change our docs have been able to make to HUMACE volunteers' metabolisms is to alter the type of pheromones—“ he stopped and shook his head.

Banda's hand had drifted between her legs. “What? What is it?”

“Well, I just thought of something, but I don't know…”

“What?”

The representative cocked his head. “Have you ever heard of a carxgle?”

“A what?”

“A carxgle. They're native to the Lingan homworld. They're very intelligent, and the Lingans keep them as pets. Apparently there's a pretty severe overpopulation problem with them, and Lingans don't approve of artificial contraception for themselves or anything else, as weird as that sounds, what with HUMACE and all. I guess it's a religious thing. Anyway, it limits their options.”

Banda's face scrunched up in confusion. She hadn't done this much talking, or thinking, in years. “What?”

It was almost too easy. It was rare to find a HUMACE program veteran who could even carry on an intelligent conversation for more than a minute or two, so leading them around by the nose wasn't even a challenge. The Lingans were demanding more and more women not just for HUMACE but for their pet problem, but so far finding enough desperate, willing volunteers hadn't been an issue. HUMACE enlistment was up, and the girls, especially the hairy ones, needed something to do afterward, whether they'd birthed their share of joeys or not. He watched this one rub between her legs, her oversize brown folds looking like they'd been grafted onto her flying buttress hips from some giant farm animal, a horse or cow, and wondered once again why the Lingans demanded this be done to human females when the classified medical reports showed cows or horses would work just as well for breeding partners.

“Whoo! They sound rowdy tonight!” Pritten brushed her glossy brown hair back from her forehead and smiled eagerly. She and Kimmie peered at the nearby flatscreen which showed what was happening onstage just a few feet away on the other side of the dressing room wall. Triny was in the middle of her famous contortive gymnastic performance, and from Kimmie's perspective it looked like there were two people up there onstage, curled up in a naked sweaty embrace. It was hard to tell Triny's arms from her legs, her knees from her elbows, and again Kimmie wondered just what had been done to her body to enable her to get into those positions.

Triny emptied her mouth long enough to invite the audience members who'd already paid up onto the stage with her. The roar of the crowd doubled.

The FireBall was either a whorehouse with a stage, or a strip club that allowed extensive audience participation (for a fee) both on- and off-stage. Either way, Triny's small, pale body was soon hidden under the sweaty forms of the colonists who'd paid for the privilege.

Alderson Prime had started out as a mining colony on a small planet with a thin atmosphere and not much else out on the fringes of civilization. After seventy years the air wasn't so thin, and there were actual towns instead of camps, but the planet was still wild, and so were the people, still mostly strong young men and those who thought they could make some money off of them.

Being on the edge of settled space, A-Prime saw more than its share of characters who didn't quite fit into the mainstream. The girls working at the FireBall were no exception—in addition to Triny, there were several Academy-trained whores who'd lost their licenses for one infraction or another, and a half dozen or so hardlabor (whoring) ex-cons from the nearby and notorious Cayan system, with their forehead tattoos and bald heads and genetically engineered need for semen. When not working the whore-cons kept to themselves and hardly said a word to the other girls.

There were two Trinians at the club as well. That there were still people who insisted on living on that planet with its atmospheric toxins, just because its ore veins were so rich, was a marvel. The planet-raised Trinians were small and childlike, the toxins having stunted their maturation, but they commanded quite a price from those men and women wishing to fantasize that they were something they were not. There were perhaps two dozen other females from all over willing to sell themselves for money, and then there was Kimmie and Pritten.

Kimmie glanced at Pritten and saw she was bouncing up and down, and that the insides of her thighs were already glistening. Both of them were wearing identical black leather chaps and squaretoed, high-heel boots. The assless, crotchless chaps, surpisingly, seemed to deemphasize their hips.

Although the urge blockers prevented Kimmie from even asking Pritten if she's been in HUMACE, she had no need to—it was obvious to anyone who'd been in the program. Just as Kimmie knew Pritten had been in HUMACE solely by looking at her hips, she knew Pritten had figured out her background just as easily.

Pritten looked young, and Kimmie sometimes idly wondered how many joeys she'd birthed. Of course, she wasn't able to ask her, and she knew looks weren't necessarily a good way to judge a HUMACE volunteer's age—the Lingan health drug had kept Kimmie as freshfaced as any college freshman, although her nipples, labia, and stomach told a different story. Kimmie and Pritten usually squeezed their slack stomachs with corsets or bustiers, when those wouldn't interfere with their performances.

Kimmie had bounced from planet to planet for several years, looking for some place she could lead a normal life. She soon realized that with her altered body, the demands it placed on her, the behavior it required of her, she would never be able to live a normal life. It was then that she began looking for a place where she could, at the very least, make a living without being treated like a freak.

Pritten had been at the club over a year when Kimmie arrived, and Darl, the club owner, had immediately made them a team. Kimmie didn't think it was possible for someone to be hornier than she was, but Pritten proved her wrong. Darl and Pritten had some sort of master/slave relationship Kimmie didn't really understand, and when Pritten wasn't onstage at the FireBall Darl was either whoring her out to private parties or fucking her himself. Kimmie didn't know when or how she found time to sleep, or what she and Darl did for sex—with her proportions, it wasn't as if they could have normal intercourse, but Pritten seemed happy.

Kimmie looked around to see if they had all the props they'd need for their show and saw Glyn oiling herself up for her turn pedestal dancing. Her big penis—Kimmie didn't know if it was the result of DNA treatments, nanosurgery, a birth defect, or something else—was already hard and bobbing as she moved. It worked exactly the way one was supposed to—most of the girls, including Kimmie, had tried it out, half the time in the dressing room while waiting to go onstage. It seemed Kimmie and Pritten weren't the only ones working at The FireBall with overactive sex drives, although few could competed with their engineered need.

The props were there—a dozen or so rubber balls, six or so inches in diameter, and the deflated heavy-duty balloon that when inserted and inflated made her or Pritten look ten months pregnant. The matching flesh-colored dildos, sixteen inches long by six wide, were there, one with a harness so they could strap it on and take turns fucking each other when they weren't fucking themselves.

Kimmie and Pritten's physical geometry pretty much precluded any normal male from enjoying vaginal intercourse with them, and they'd both been told that their asses, perhaps because of how large their pelvic floors were, were looser than most normal women's vaginas. They were, however, as popular as any other girls at the club. Not just for the show they put on with the giant toys—the sensation of being able to put both their arms up to the elbow inside a woman and stir them around, and have her beg for more, was, for some men, better than sex, and Kimmie had yet to meet a customer who was as rough on her as a big Lingan in full rut.

Working at the club every day still wasn't enough for Kimmie, and she had her own set of oversize toys in her quarters for when she wasn't working. It wasn't as good as getting pounded by an actual Lingan, but it was the best she could do. She didn't have someone like Pritten did; Kimmie didn't know exactly what she and Darl did on her days off, but sometimes when she came to work after a day off Pritten was more red and swollen and stretched out than after a long day onstage with a rowdy crowd.

Sometimes when she got a little homesick thinking about the kiva Kimmie would put the heavy balloon in herself and fill it up with three or four gallons of water, then rock back and forth on her hands and knees. It wasn't quite caching, but it was close.