The Pets Keepers ch1
#1 of The Pets Keepers (Abandoned)
This was a spinoff of my beloved pet series which I could only complete three parts of before I lost interest. They roughly corespond to the first three chapters of The Beloved Pet.
Posted to DA on 7/8/08
"Capture"
Our work is steadily becoming more difficult. As the Terran civilization becomes more technologically advanced we are allowed to capture less and less subjects, and the process for those we do capture is much more difficult. We can only capture them in isolated locations as the mere sight of us by the locals would explode all over their information networks. Even in the developing world access the such networks is becoming more commonplace. Our thermoptic camo makes avoiding being sighted a little easer, however there are nuts out there who would look at a shimmer off our camo and cry bloody murder. We should be grateful though; those working in the Centuri star cluster have a much harder time, having to keep their ship cloaking devices on almost constantly. Any ways my partner an I have been shadowing one terran who looks to be a perfect subject. Hiding in a wooded patch 100 yards from him, we survey the field to make sure he's alone. The field is located outside a settlement of roughly 40,000. With this done I take aim with my mass driver which is loaded with a small dart containing a fast acting sedative. The process is quite painless as the dart decelerates just before impact. The dart attaches and infuses the dose through the skin without any penetration. Most of the time they don't feel it. Carefully placing the cross hairs on the back of his neck, I pull the trigger. There is no recoil and the projectile makes hardly any sound. The subject is briefly aware of the dart before slipping into a barely conscious stupor. We approach along with the retrieval team to examine our catch. He's on the edge of sleep and lightly moaning. He should be out cold for about 20 hours. With this our group is tele-ported up to our ship and we depart Ergotha. The rare pet dealers will pay a lot for this fellow. Having conducted a brief check on his health, we bind his wrists and ankles and place him in a cage should the sedative wear off. After a brief transit from the outer mid rim, to the Ergotha in the core region, We arrive at our client's rare pet dealership. Our catch is still out cold as we give him over to the owner. After he gives him a quick look over, he pays us a generous 300,000 credits, and we depart for earth to find our next catch. Hopefully we won't have to track him for a month.