“Zay! You’ve broken the fucking sex droid again!” Tev’s bellow echoed through the whole ship.

“I swear Tev uses that thing more than Zay.” Bir leaned back in the command seat, scratching his chin.

“What we need is a real female.” Niz never glanced up from the navigation console.

“Yes, there are plenty of Demos’ females lining up to live on an old transporter ship and wander through the Hellious Galaxy, from job to job.” Bir made sure his tone dripped with sarcasm.

Niz lifted his head to glare at him.

“Sex droids are our only option. If we want a female we would have to head back to Galafrax. Take months, maybe even years to find a female, then go through the courting rituals, competing against dozens of other Demos quads. If we managed to win her favour in the arena and in the bedchamber, it is a life of service to meet her every demand. Face it, Niz, no Demos female would even look at a band of broken brothers like us.”

Niz stared at him, his gaze mixed with both sadness and anger. “We are not broken. It has been years since we made the blood bond, joining us with Zay and Tev. We are a complete set of four.”

Four years had passed since the battle on Chanalloinan Prime. So many Demos soldiers were killed in the vicious war, a war not their own. Zay and Bir lost two of their brothers, and so had Tev and Niz. On the med ship where they had met, empathy for each other’s situation drew them together.

Demos quads couldn’t function properly without all four brothers. To lose any of your brothers was a devastating mental blow. Bonding with the other two brothers made good sense. They had gone to the best geneticist on Galafrax. It ensured a strong bond between them, as if they had been born brothers, instead of coming from different families. It also helped ease the grief, weighing heavy on their hearts.

The door slid open and in strode Tev, with a long shapeless lump, covered with red textured synthetic skin designed to mimic a Demos female. The sex droid shuddered and the vocal processor, wailed a looping low ‘aauuh… eee… auuuh… eee… auuuh… eee…’

He slammed it down on the floor. The droid’s legs spasmed several times, and then its hips bucked before grinding to a halt, thighs wide open.

“Glad I didn’t have my rod in it when it did that.” Zay quipped from the doorway, his eyes fixed on the now motionless sex droid.

“This is your fault, wanting to try all those different positions, not to mention you’ve been way too rough with it.” Tev jabbed his finger towards Zay.

“It was fine the last time I used it. How in the ice plains was I to know you would short out its circuits?”

Bir watched as Tev took a menacing step towards his brother, swinging back his arm. Bir shook his head. All of them knew damn well Zay was an expert in hand-to-hand combat tactics. He ducked Tev’s punch and barrelled forward into his younger brother’s stomach, both of them grunting. Tev’s back hit the ship's metal floor, right next to the ex-sex droid.

“Enough! Both of you!” Bir snapped before the fight escalated, as it often did when one or more of them were sexually frustrated. “Keep your rods in your pants, we’ll be arriving on the station in less than an hour, minds on the assignment not fucking the fucked up sex droid.”

“Maybe the Piclar Ambassador would exchange our services for a new model sex droid.” Zay climbed off Tev and offered his hand. Tev slapped his hand into Zay’s, and Tev helped pull Zay back onto his feet.

“It’s a five day assignment, guard the Ambassador and get him to and from the Hellious Intergalactic trade talks.”

Demos males are renowned throughout the Hellious Galaxy as formidable soldiers and fighting machines. The Demos' army was usually only ever brought in as the type of peace keeping one used with a lot of heavy force. They did not get involved with smaller trade talks, unless it directly affected Galafrax and the Demos' people.

This made Tev, Zay, Bir and Niz’s service all the more sought after. After their graft bonding and discharge from the Demos army, they had pooled their credits and bought an old T-201 Class, three deck transport ship. With some borrowed credits they fitted her out to meet their needs, with a few extra weapons and more modern food replication units. They created the Fire Bond Brothers' Security Services.

To have your own private Demos security team, or bodyguards, added prestige to any species with enough credits to hire them. It wasn’t just security they did, but they were pretty much muscle and guns for hire. They travelled from job to job, accumulating quite the hefty profit over the past few years.

“Easy credits, Piclars like to have as many colourful things around them as possible. I’m happy to stand around looking pretty, don’t know what the rest of you bring to it.”

Bir rolled his eyes at Zay’s inflated ego. Despite his easy playful manner, Zay knew more than a few hundred ways to kill with his bare hands alone.

“Tev, everything up to spec?” Bir brought up the schematics of the Ambassador’s schedule on the holo screen.

“Of course. I did an inventory check less than a half hour ago. Everything is in perfect running order, more than I can say for this thing.” Tev bent down, grabbing the sex droid’s ankles. “I doubt I can fix its circuitry this time.” Tev rounded a glare at Zay before dragging the droid out of the bridge.

Niz was studying his brother with a shake of his head. Niz, the healer of the four, and also one of the best navigation pilots in Demos' history, there wasn’t much he couldn’t make their old ship do. He rarely spoke without something important to say. Always in calm control of everything he did and said.

Bir stood up from this command chair. It was his responsibility to lead their team, and make sure everything ran smoothly. “Twenty minutes till docking, go suit up, we have a job to do.”

* * * *

Could life get any worse? Ruby MacTavish shifted uncomfortably on the pillows under her large arse.

“Are you going to behave today?”

Ruby stared up at the grey fish-like headed creature; his eyes bulged on the top of his thinnish head. All the fish aliens on this space ship looked all alike, their skins a dull greyish colour. Nearly all of them were the same height, with the same bulging eyes that rotated in either direction, giving Ruby the creeps.

“Yes, I will.”

“Then pet, I will allow your arms freedom, but you must keep them by your sides.”

A sly smile twisted at her lips. Twice, when she’d first been sold to the ugly fish man, she’d tried to escape, maiming two of his guards by throwing her elbow into one's middle and kicking the other in his obvious sex organ, after which he'd flopped onto the floor in agony.

Unfortunately, the collar around her throat gave them control over her body. She never even reached the alien slaver’s door before they activated the stupid thing, bringing her to a bone-jarring halt.

Still, her defiant nature wouldn’t allow her to easily accept her crazy, bizarre situation.

For one who used to ridicule all those alien abduction stories when she was still on Earth, she was far from laughing now.

“Well?” Her owner demanded, jolting her mind back into the present.

With a sigh she nodded her acceptance. “Hands by my side.” Not that it would make any difference. Her gaze dropped to the fish man’s bright colourful robes. She knew the remote to the deceptively pretty gold cuffs on her wrists and ankles, and the collar around her neck, was hidden in the pocket.

“You should be more grateful that I own you, pet. With my wealth and status, I can give you all the comfort a pet could want, for the rest of your life.”

“I am a human, you big blubbering boulder head. What I want is my freedom, a ticket home and Gerard Butler covered in milk chocolate.”

The fish man's head bobbed in disapproval. “With that insult, you have earned this.”

He rifled into one of his many pockets and pulled out the vocal inhibitor. Ruby shrank back.

“Are you going to remain silent too?”

Hell would freeze over this whole weird galaxy and make sushi of his entrails, before she’d be willingly silent.

“I had a pet fish once. When he died I flushed him down the toilet. First chance I get, buddy, I’m flushing you down the toilet, dead or alive!”

She glanced down at his grey webbed feet as he took a step forward, before pressing her back into the corner, but there was no escape.

“Lift your head, pet; don’t make it difficult on yourself.”

She glared in defiance, jumping into a crouch, ready to strike out at the alien. “Put that thing on me again and you’ll be eating your kippers out of a straw for the next month.”

After several days of being ‘pet’ to this fish alien, Ruby had quickly learned to recognize signs of his anger. He gurgled like a human would after being plunged into water and being unable to breathe.

Although fish man hadn’t physically harmed her, he did punish her bad behaviour by withdrawing her food and comforts. Her meals mainly consisted of something that looked like green bacon, and tasted like seaweed and a round spiky red fruit the size of a tennis ball that tasted like creamy peaches.

Out came the remote, and Ruby winced in advance of what she knew was coming. The painful paralysing volt shot down her body, stiffening all her muscles. She couldn’t help but fight against it, causing herself even more pain.

Give in, obey. Dismissing the thought she continued to glare. At least her mouth still worked.

“Oh you slimy, bottom feeding para—” he lifted her with his clammy webbed fingers and pressed the inhibitor to her throat.

The satisfied triumphant smile on his fishy lips made her fight the control collar harder, causing herself even more searing agony.

“Much better, you will learn. I know you are new and training does take time. I have important visitors coming and wish to show off my most prized pet.”

He slid his hand into her hair, curling her rich red copper strands around it.

“So many colours, all in one place, a prize you are indeed. I shall be the envy of every delegate in the room.”

The fish man and all the other fish aliens had an obsession with colourful things. Splashes of colour were everywhere on his ship. He dressed himself in multi-coloured clothes. He had even dressed Ruby in a red jewelled corset top, which sparkled every time she moved, and a very short beaded skirt which reminded her more of a dangling lamp shade fringe than a skirt. Everything else was bare. Which made her extremely self-conscious of all her skin showing; at a size eighteen, there was a lot of her to show, but that was what fish man wanted. Display her milk pale skin, spotted with pale pink freckles. Servants came in twice a day to brush out her waist length hair, and make sure she was bathed and clothed.

Every time she protested, hurled verbal abuse and fought them. They quickly paralysed and silenced her.

She guessed the aliens had no preference in the size or weight of the women they had abducted along with her. Sadly, like Ruby, they too had been auctioned off to the highest bidder. At least she’d been fortunate to be bought by a wealthy owner, treating her like a pampered pet. She shuddered to think what was happening to the other women.

Talking to the women, one thing they had in common was they’d all been abducted at night, and in remote locations on Earth.

For Ruby, she’d been walking home from the train station in her little town, after attending a book conference in the city, her bags full of new purchases for her little bookstore. Within the blink of an eye she’d been paralysed, and knocked out. When she had awoken, they were far from Earth and the measly life she once called her own.

Her temper flared remembering how all sixteen women had been kept in small wire cages for days on end, with only water. If she ever got her hands on that slave trader, she’d staple his big ears to the nearest airlock then open the door and gladly watch his head explode.

“Remember, you agreed to behave.”

Ruby glanced down, seeing her clenched fists, and realised he’d released the control collar. She let out a breath, relaxed her shoulders and uncurled her fists. Unable to talk she glared and at the same time nodded.

“Good, come.” He clipped a gold chain lead on to her collar, tugging at it to make her follow behind.

Okay, so she didn’t have much of a life back on Earth, being a frumpy woman with a bookstore and two cats. But still, it was better than the humiliation of this life she’d been rudely thrust into. Honestly, she didn’t know how much more of being a fish man’s pet she could take. But she had to take it, had to survive.

There had to be a way out of this mess. One way or the other, she was determined to find it.