Deceived Read online

  “Come on, pretty boy,” the left head growled when the brothel employee handed him over. “Into the back with the fuck toys you go.”

  Dark got into the back of the cruiser without comment, just as the female Replicants were doing. They sat in an orderly row on the long back bench as Gorn piloted the ship up and away from the brothel.

  It was a short trip through a conveniently placed nearby worm hole and before Dark knew it, the ship was bearing down on the Trollox home world.

  It was a strange place, a ravaged wasteland of bombed-out buildings and rubble below where the poor lived and a number of floating islands above, held up by anti-gravity generators where the rich made their homes. In this way, there was no way for the poor to reach the homes or shops of the rich and the classes could be kept completely separate—which was how those in power liked it.

  Gorn piloted his cruiser around to the back of a vast mansion, set on a floating island that had been landscaped with lush, tropical plants, fruit trees, and a spacious garden. There was even a little stream running though the artificial wilderness behind the mansion Dark saw, with benches to sit beside it and watch the colorful marine life swim by.

  Over the entire island was a shimmering atmosphere dome which no doubt kept the warmth and moisture in and the pervading cold of the rest of the planet out. The Trollox home world was a dry, frigid place which would have been inhospitable to life as delicate as the tropical plants he saw growing around Gorn’s mansion.

  In fact, it was inhospitable to all but the hardy Trollox themselves, which was one reason no other species chose to live there. The other reason, of course, were the Trollox themselves—they were a savage race that nobody wanted for neighbors.

  Gorn pressed a button to make a ship-sized hole in the shimmering dome and then flew in quickly and landed on a private docking bay.

  “In through the service entrance,” the left head growled as Gorn herded them out of the ship.

  They filed into the back door of the huge mansion and found themselves in a service corridor with several doors leading off of it.

  “You lot through here, to the fuck room,” the left head said, shoving the three redheaded female Replicants through one door. “And you go in there to the kitchen and make me a fucking meal,” it growled, shoving Dark roughly through another door.

  Dark had to force himself not to turn back and punch the male who had touched him. He was bare-chested so he could feel the rage shimmering just under the Trollox’s surface when Gorn’s clawed hand had touched his skin. Even five years ago he wouldn’t have been able to stop his instinctive reaction.

  But he’d had time to get his emotions under control when he lived as a slave to Mistress Hellenix. She had touched him whenever she pleased and however she pleased and Dark had been forced to endure it. It was just that her touch hadn’t felt as threatening because she was small and female and Gorn was huge and male, he told himself.

  He pushed the negative emotion from his new master away as well as his own well-honed instinct to strike out when touched and went into the kitchen as he had been instructed.

  “Your pardon, Master,” he said politely, to Gorn who had followed him into the large, echoing area filled with appliances and cooking implements. “But what shall I prepare?”

  “Something good,” the left head growled. Dark had noticed that the right head seldom spoke and the left one seemed to issue all the orders. “Proper Trollox grub,” the left head continued. “And if I don’t like it, it’s back to the brothel with you, pretty boy! I told ‘em they’d better be selling me a good cook this time or they were taking him right back again.”

  Then Dark’s new master stumped out of the kitchen, leaving him alone for the first time since he’d gotten to the brothel hours ago.

  Dark drew a deep breath. Proper Trollox grub, eh? Well that narrowed things down to about a thousand dishes—all of them equally disgusting. And if he didn’t get it right, he was out on his ass. Great.

  The first thing to do, he decided, was to take stock of his new workspace and see what he did and didn’t have. The food stocked in the panty and cold storage unit might give him a clue as to what Gorn liked to eat and he could go from there.

  At least he felt at home in the kitchen—just being where food was prepared calmed his nerves. But he couldn’t cook bare-chested like this. He looked around and found a white chef’s jacket hanging on a hook on one wall. After putting it on, he felt better—time to begin his tour.

  The wave cooktop got hot instantly and had a good variable temperature setting and the convection cooker in the corner was a high-end one usually only seen in commercial kitchens. The cold storage unit was huge and well-stocked—whoever Gorn got to do his shopping certainly knew their stuff. Dark wondered if it had been the last hapless Replicant the Trollox had gotten to cook for him. Maybe the erstwhile chef had known which things to buy but not how to prepare them.

  Whoever had bought the groceries, Dark was grateful to them. There were ingredients for five different meals that he could think of right away and enough variety to mix and match for several more after he prepped a little.

  In his experience, a hungry Trollox was an angry Trollox so he quickly gathered the ingredients for a knohllock egg and brain scramble with gut sauce and dried purda intestines for garnish and got to work.

  The pots and pans and cooking implements in Gorn’s kitchen were all high end too. It would have been a pleasure to cook with them if the Trollox ingredients weren’t so disgusting, Dark thought as he mixed and mashed and sliced and diced.

  Trollox cuisine was heavy on organ meats and bodily fluids and light on any kind of greens or vegetables. Often the smells were nauseating to any other kind of humanoid but Dark had trained himself not to be bothered and he sautéed the brownish-purple knohllock brain and then mixed in a dozen telga eggs. He seasoned the resulting mess well with salt, ground Vineshian green peppercorns, and glack—which was an all purpose Trollox seasoning that included—among other ingredients—the dried and powdered hooves of a plover beast and the fermented honey of fear wasps.

  He plated the brownish-purplish-yellowish mixture on a huge trencher and then heated some bright green snarl bile to pour over the top. A garnish of the dried purda intestines finished the dish and he was just about to bring it out for Gorn’s approval when the Trollox came crashing through the vast swinging metal doorway again.

  Both heads were turned in Dark’s direction, the yellow eyes and the red both glowing as both sets of nostrils flared.

  “That smells proper!” the left head growled.

  “Maybe we have finally found a Replicant who actually knows how to cook,” the right one speculated.

  “Your meal is ready. Where would you care to eat, Master?” Dark asked blandly, though if he had been in his own kitchen back home, he would have thrown a customer who dared to barge in on him out on his ear. Still, he was a servant here—less than a servant—a Replicant. Which meant he had to act the part, he reminded himself.

  “Out here in the dining room.” Gorn motioned with one boulder-sized hand. “C’mon, pretty boy—get a move on!”

  Dark followed him without comment out to a grand dining room with a table big enough to seat thirty regular humanoids—or twelve Trollox. The vast polished surface was broken up by surprisingly dainty white lace place mats and there were about ten enormous chairs that looked to be made of titano-wood, which was one of the only naturally grown trees that could hold a Trollox’s weight.

  Dark placed the steaming trencher on the lacy mat at the far end of the table and pulled back the heavy chair for his new master. Gorn stumped over and sat heavily, both sets of eyes looking greedily at the meal.

  “Would you care for utensils, Master?” Dark asked, already knowing the answer.

  “No fuckin’ need,” the left head said. “Ain’t like we’re visitin’ the Empress of the galaxy, now is it?”

  Then Gorn dug in, using his clawed hands to shovel the brain