Far Away

Chapter 17

Drew's POV

Boss. The goddamned bastard. He rules over the whole ship and kidnaps creatures to enslave them or sell them. He has an obsession with it.

When I was taken, he offered a position to lead under him. I was his second in command. I didn't know, at the time, what the position had in store for me. Kidnap, enslave, torture, sell, and then profit. Thats what we did. I didn't enjoy it but it was better than being tortured, myself. It was torture or be tortured.

We had two types of torture, physical and then psychological. I didn't know which one was worse. Watching the beatings and injections or watch them slowly give up hope.

Boss soon grew bored of our old methods of torture and was always looking for new technology. He loved to torture. He had a sick infatuation with it. I think he wanted to find each species weakness. He wanted to see what would make them break.

He treated them like lab rats.

As we kidnapped more species, boss would find supporters to his cause. They would supply him with knowledge and power. In turn, he would give them technology that he was already bored of. He was trading his old toys for new ones.

I remember traveling with him to a planet named Xelas. It must have been my third week being his second in command. We came upon a flower that would cause powerful hallucinations. The flower would induce you into a comatose state and then show you your worst fears.

Boss was pleased with finding this flower. He made a deal with one of the world leaders to harvest the flower and ship it to us. In exchange, we gave them some of our 'new' technology. Well okay, it was new to them.

If anyone ate the pollen of the flower, the fear hallucinations would start. We soon realized this after a few test subjects tried it.

Depending on the size of the organism and how pure the pollen is, we had a whole list of effects and side effects of the substance. For example, if a 180 pound human male had consumed a teaspoon of the pure pollen, the side effects would be shortness of breath and shaking. Other side effects would be cold sweats, bruising, seizures, projectile vomiting, and death. It was a nasty sight.

Boss grew so fond of the flower and it's pollen that he would mass produce it and then use it on his employees, aka his underlings. He would make me hold them down as he force fed them the nectar. He would only do this if he didn't get the results he wanted. Say if you were slow with production, you would get the pollen. If you didn't do a good enough job? Pollen.
Anything that he saw as an inconvenience? Pollen.

After a while of him doing this, the employees revolted but, sadly, they didn't succeed. I think that might have been the only time that we almost ran out of pollen. Sometimes I can still hear their screams. I can imagine them thrashing on the metal bed, handcuffed to the railing being fed the pollen.

Hopping from planet to planet to capture slaves, Boss finally found the perfect species...the Cokara. They are submissive, making them susceptible to manipulation. Boss decided that they would make great underlings. One by one, each former employee got killed or placed in a habitat depending on how useful they were.

Of course, being his former second in command, I was placed in a habitat. He didn't have the guts to kill me.