Page 1 of Furi

Chapter One

She knew 0504 was trying to help her. Emotionally she was a mess. But who wouldn't be after what she'd been through? Not that he showed any emotion but 04 was desperate to try and make things right for her.

They all were.

She just didn't really want to hear it. But he was right, she was alone now with her little sister to care for with only two of her father's old retainers still here.And in all honesty they were getting on a bit to not much cop. If anyone had come looking there's no way that she could say that the two older men and her had pulled in this crop. But results were better than explanations in this world.

Don't rock the boat or make it too obvious something was amiss and people tended to leave you alone.

It had been a shitty three months.

Her father dying in a freak storm had shocked them all and sent her mother into early labour. Not surviving it, her mother leaving her with a newborn three months ago. She’d gone from being so happy to being inconsolable and so much less.

But she had her ‘friends’ who kept her busy and her baby sister. Emily.

The days after her mother was gone had been a steep learning curve. She’d no idea how to look after a baby and her mother with a menopause pregnancy it had not been easy on her. They’d joked that it should have been her pregnant not her near 50-year-old mother. They’d laughed and cried together. After trying for so long to give her a brother or sister her parents had given up and concentrated on living.

It was quite the shock to both her parents to find she was expecting after all that time. Over 20 years later from her own.

She’d admit it was a little embarrassing to think of her parents having sex but it was life.

They’d all been so full of joy that none of that mattered. A child was a child and a gift.

Until it did matter….

Her mother's body no longer young and strong, worn down by all the work over the years and the shock of losing her husband, so full of grief, she’d had no fight left when the baby got into trouble. Their ‘friends’ medics, aiding where they could but in the end, they’d had to cut her sister out, her mother unable to push any more the light in her eyes dimming.

Thinking on it, tears hit her eyes and she wiped at the. Her mother had never recovered.

Her grief hit her again as it always did when she thought on it.

Feeding Emily she cooed at her carrying her in her arms. It seemed she forever either feeding her, changing her, rocking her to sleep or carrying her around. Hardly leaving her for a moment. Well, when she got a look in.

It had been stupid to sell so much grain in one place.

0504 told her as much but she didn’t listen and knew better than that. With Emily to deal with, she couldn’t afford to leave her behind in case someone came looking for her parents and found no one but two old men and a child on its own.

That wasn’t the case of course.

Her ‘friends’ would care for Emily better than she could, but they couldn’t expose themselves. Taking her was the only option but doing that a dozen times couldn’t happen. So she’d taken a risk and taken a lot more.

And that hadn’t ended up well either.

Cory had followed them back…..

She knew him to look at. He’d once been a friend to her father or so her father had said but that had been a long time ago, before he’d been caught stealing, drinking to excess putting the animals at risk and himself with the machinery. Her father had had to let him go. But she saw the interest in his eyes when he saw her alone with the baby and the amount of grain they had.

He knew their capacity only too well.

He’d been a young man when working the farm. As was her father, old school mates that didn’t make it past those youthful days. And a decade before her father discovered the broken space ship and the men in it while looking for some of their lost herd.

And on seeing them, her father knew why he couldn’t find them.

A large group of men were trying to fix a damaged craft and eating the protein to stay alive and heal their injuries. Telling him their story, it was stark and horrifying. Slaves to a company called Earth Corp. Her father knew they had created the colony program way back when. And those he’d found had been sent out generations before to secure a world lightyear’s away never making it. The craft damaged by poor workmanship and an asteroid field no one expected, they’d limped along for decades trying to fix one error after another, some sacrificing themselves for others to go on. Eventually, as things started to go from bad to worse, they’d found her planet and crash-landed.

They’d never had Cyborgs on her world before that and seeing as they were prized, likely hunted, her father agreed to keep their presence quiet.

Offering an exchange, meat and protein-rich goods for men helping him, they worked out a deal. And they moved in to one of the barns on rotation still trying to fix their ship. Some 30 years later they were still here.