In the cold of space you find the heat of suns

Thank you for the reviews. They inspire me to continue the story.

Apologies if the characters have grown differently in their new environment.

Spacer crews travel the Far Borders and the Fringe of occupied space, trading. Spacing is an ancient and honourable profession carved out by millenniums. Most spacers start out as fourteen-year-old boys seeking a future. Few survive a decade spacing.

Warning: non-consensual sex happens ‘off stage’ near the end of this chapter

73. Caring

---

Once Naruto was sure Sasuke was asleep he went to check the babies, only to have his stomach remind him that he had missed his midday meal. He crept out of their room, sliding the door open and closed as quietly as he could, and made his way to the galley. Iruka was working at the table rather than in his office. He pushed aside his portable console as soon as he saw Naruto.

“Let me get you something to eat,” he insisted.

Naruto sat down, “That would be great, Iruka-sensei. Thank you,” he replied.

The speed at which Iruka produced a platter of food and a mug of soup confirmed Naruto’s suspicion that he had put food aside for him and Sasuke.

“How is he?” Iruka asked.

“Sleeping. He finds anything about Itachi difficult.” Naruto knew that there was more to it than that. He replaced the bread he had been about to eat on his plate. “When we were locked in the safe room I told Sasuke that I blamed him for what happened, because it was his idea to let Kabuto onto the ship.”

Iruka gave him a reproachful look. “Oh, Naruto, that wasn’t fair.”

Naruto felt his cheeks colouring. “I know. Whatever I do or say now, I still said it and he still feels it. Now they are torturing Itachi and he is blaming himself. And he hasn’t thought yet about the babies that won’t work but when he does, he will blame himself for those too.”

“What babies that won’t work?” Iruka asked, obviously alarmed by the notion.

“That’s how they make hybrids,” Naruto told him. “They don’t know how to do it properly, like Bara did. Instead they start hundreds of babies. Most of them don’t grow right. Some die but the others they decide if they will kill them or let them grow into babies that don’t work. Gaara was one from five hundred. The other four hundred and ninety-nine died or were killed.”

Iruka flinched.

“Rin thinks Kabuto will have started babies from my cells, because there were cells for that in the tissue bank.” Naruto blinked back tears. “I want them all to die ‘cos otherwise, when we find them, they’ll be growing into babies that don’t work. What do I do then? Do I kill them? Or do we try to raise baby narutos that don’t work?” His eyes pleaded with Iruka. “Killing them would be best, I know that, but I don’t want to kill babies.”

Iruka moved so that he was sitting closer. He took Naruto’s hands. “Worrying about it will not help,” he insisted. “Perhaps they haven’t started cloning you. Perhaps they haven’t even got the tissue bank open. Perhaps a Bara hybrid can’t be cloned.”

Naruto did not think those options were very likely. “Maybe killing them doesn’t count because they aren’t human,” he suggested. “Like me.”

The last thing Naruto expected was for Iruka to let go of his hand, slap him around the face and then wag a finger at him. “Don’t you dare say that, Naruto. Don’t you dare even think that. I am ashamed of you.”

He rubbed his sore cheek. “Iruka-sensei?” he queried.

“Don’t you ‘Iruka-sensei’ me, Naruto. You are as sacred and as valuable and as precious as any purebred human and if there are any baby narutos we will love them as much as we love those little Uchihas in your nursery. And if they aren’t as perfect as you, it will not matter, because they will be as perfect as themselves.”

“But what if there are hundreds of them?” Naruto asked.

Iruka swallowed. “Then it will be a very big litter but we will cope,” he insisted. “We may have to hire some help,” he admitted.

Naruto hugged him. “Thank you, Iruka-sensei.”

“You are welcome, Naruto-kun. Now put me down and eat your food.”


Naruto could not believe how much better he felt. He found himself telling Iruka about the plan they were developing.

“We will avoid gates with relays, so we can control when they think Kisame receives the message. And everyone thinks that there is only one hole in the Jewel system, the gated one, but Shi-chan says there is another we can use because we have the improver, so we can sneak up on them. And Kabuto will come to a meeting with Gaara and we will plant transponders on him. Then we’ll be able to find them when we get to Jewel.”

Iruka frowned. “Will Gaara-san be able to manage at a meeting? If he wears his controller, he may pass out. If it doesn’t, he may kill Kabuto, which would stop us using him to find their base.”

“Someone will have to go with him,” Naruto improvised. “And it will probably be best if Kabuto thinks the controller is the normal type. We were careful not to tell him about mine. I wore the leather collar with my plaque to cover it.”

“Have we decided who?” Iruka asked.

“No,” Naruto admitted.

By the time they had eliminated everyone that Kabuto had met and anyone who was obviously Uchiha, it was a very short list: Iruka, Shino, Haku, Anko, the cats and Sumaru.

“Not the cats or Sumaru, they are too young,” Iruka pointed out.

“A search would show you up as having been in the same place as Kakashi for a long time,” Naruto added.

Iruka nodded and put a line through his own name. “Shino has been with us for a while,” he mused, “and Anko being female may make her too identifiable.”

Naruto frowned. “We’ll run searches to check what an outsider would find. They could look different. Shi-chan can plant new identities in the data streams. Shino looks different without his visor and lenses. Haku can look totally different.” He considered. “Haku may like to help.”

They were silent for a moment, thinking about how subdued Haku had been lately.

“It has been hard,” Iruka confessed. “What with cycling the three ships to the data relays and then splitting us up to man the ships to oversee the gating of Kaze.”

Naruto agreed. Even now, those manning the Dart were away for days at a time. He yearned for the time before Kabuto, when the whole family was always together and they spent most of their time training, eating and fucking. “Maybe, after this, we could go to Tarrasade,” he suggested.

Iruka squeezed his hand. “That is an excellent idea, Naruto-kun,” he agreed.

---

Kabuto had decided that a sample of one was unscientific, so he had told the bullmen to find him three young males, late adolescent or older, from districts of the city where disappearances were common. The symbiote had spread through their systems quickly but, like the hybrids, their bodies were fighting it. Kabuto tanked them and suppressed their immune systems. He was beginning to think that the woman might have a genetic predisposition to accept the hybrid. Either than or there was a specific treatment that was required. He sighed. It could be worse. It could have been Itachi Uchiha, or even him.

Thinking about Itachi Uchiha reminded Kabuto that he had run out of excuses for keeping him tanked. He did not dare share the real reason with Orochimaru; suggesting that he was too dangerous would only make the idea of playing with him more attractive. Kabuto put the thought aside and walked the laboratories. Most of them were empty; Orochimaru had killed all the experimental hybrids while obsessing about the fox hybrid. Only the standard models, those housed in the kennels, like the bullmen and the mink, had survived.

There was a movement in the corner of his eye. “Kiba, come here,” he ordered.

The dog-human hybrid slunk into his field of view. Kabuto did not blame him for being so stealthy; Kiba’s survival depended on being expert at not catching Orochimaru’s attention. Kabuto helped him as much as possible; Kiba had been Amachi’s assistant and without him Kabuto would have never coped when Amachi died.

That had been five standards ago. Kiba had grown from a young adolescent into a powerfully built young adult. He could almost pass as human; unlike Orochimaru, Amachi had valued functionality over exotic appearance or superhuman abilities. There were his canines, the furry texture of his hair and a certain dogginess about his eyes. Otherwise, Kiba looked human; he didn’t even have whiskers and he was no more hairy than most human males. His senses, however, were extraordinary and it was his sense of smell and his hearing that allowed him to avoid the danger that was Orochimaru.

“Do you have anything to report about the kennels?” Kabuto asked him.

Kiba considered. “The next batch of mink hybrids is ready for decanting. Do you want me to round up the adolescents and freeze them?”

“Yes. Don’t start gestating another batch. If things go well you will be too busy to care for them. Come with me,” he ordered and started walking towards the main laboratory. He could see how reluctant Kiba was to follow; Orochimaru regularly visited the main laboratory. “Kiba!” he insisted.

When they entered the laboratory Kiba sniffed the air and listened carefully. Then he settled, content that Orochimaru was not in the vicinity. He went to one of the gestators and looked down the viewer.

“This is new,” he observed.

Kabuto switched on the holoprojector. “They are clones of this,” he informed him.

Kiba briefly studied the holoprojection of the fox-human hybrid. He wondered why it was blond and blue-eyed. “Neat,” he declared and went back to viewing the embryo before moving onto the next. “How many are you planning to take through?”

“There are eight very promising ones of the fourteen we have in gestators,” Kabuto told him. “Out of sixty-four. An excellent return. They will need to be raised carefully, Kiba, with much stimulation. Can you manage that?”


Kiba nodded but his mind was elsewhere. He did not like the idea of six less than promising embryos being gestated. It was not fair. It was better to let them go early, before they could sense their surroundings or feel.

“This one looks like it is going to have a tail,” he observed. “Does that make it not-promising?” he asked.

Kabuto had a look. “No, a tail or other fox features are fine. At the moment, not promising is a developmental error.”

Kiba was looking at one with two heads. Only Orochimaru would have wanted to gestate it. He would have to see to it.

Both Kabuto and Orochimaru believed that embryos with developmental errors had a low probability of surviving to term, which was true, but only because of Kiba. He took pride in the fact that all his hybrids could run about, keep themselves clean and feed themselves. True, some of the mink hybrids were irredeemably stupid, but that was life; some purebreds were pretty dumb.

He viewed all fourteen. All six that Kabuto had described as non-promising would have to be seen to and he wasn’t sure about two of the others. “How many have been lost since you put them in gestators?” he asked.

“Three,” Kabuto admitted.

Three was good; if they had lost three already then losing more would be unremarkable. “Is there a reason for the high success rate?” he asked and noticed Kabuto’s hesitation before replying.

“The original is of ancient design,” he admitted. “The embryo must have been in stasis for millenniums.”

Even Kiba, who was usually only interested in practicalities, found that interesting. “Neat,” he acknowledged.

---

Itachi woke on a bed in a windowless room. He was alone, which was a relief. He had no wish to repeat his encounter with the bull-human hybrids. He tried moving, which went well and confirmed that he had been tanked. The movement also caused a clanking sound.

His wrists and ankles were tethered to the wall but the chains were long enough for him to move about comfortably and use the sink and lavatory in the corner. They were easily long enough for him to strangle someone and he resolved to stay alert for any such opportunity.

He wished he could remember how he got here, or what had happened before that, or anything coherent. He wondered if Kabuto had done something to his memory. He knew who he was, Itachi Uchiha, and he knew that Kisame should be with him. He could remember more about people and places than events, more about individual scenes than sequences. He thought of his father and shuddered. He recalled Sasuke waving to him, held up by Mikoto-san so that he could see Itachi for longer as he and Kisame walked away. There were others, some only faces and some with names. The rest was fragmented, like shattered glass.

He moved an arm and the chain rattled. He knew he was a prisoner. Prisoners escaped.

---

Anko stared at her image in the mirror. She had silver-blond curly hair and a green tint to her brown eyes. It made her look like a bimbo and, worse, Shino seemed to like it. She closed her eyes and counted to ten. It was worth it. There was no way she was allowing Shino to go on a dangerous mission without her.

As for Shino, he had only relaxed when Haku had tinted his hair and found some coloured contacts for him to wear. Anko thought it was sweet that he could not cope without something between him and the world. She definitely liked the idea that a Shino without his lenses was for her alone.

Most ways for getting transponders into Kabuto involved distracting him, so Haku’s disguise had been designed for that purpose. It had certainly been effective; even Shino’s eyes had been riveted to his butt. Unfortunately, Gaara had passed out, so they had to rethink. Now Haku’s outfit included a coat. If circumstances demanded, the coat could be shed.


Gaara had discovered a new emotion: embarrassment. It would appear that embarrassment was uncomfortable, making him squirm inside, but it did not make him pass out. He felt it when meeting Haku-san again after the incident.

He was not entirely sure what had happened during the incident. He did recall that it had started with Haku bending over to pick something off the floor and had ended with confusion, fear, anger and darkness. He knew it had something to do with sex.

“I apologise, Haku-san,” he said at their second meeting, looking at some point over Haku’s shoulder.

“There is no need, Gaara-san,” Haku assured him. “I took it as a compliment.”


Haku still felt a little guilty; he had been unable to resist.


Neji’s plan involved a rendezvous with Kabuto in the bar of a hotel that was so highly priced that it could be guaranteed to be almost empty. The hotel was part of a space station, Celeste, that was far from Jewel using gated holes but easy for Kabuto to reach with his Mulligan drive. Gaara, Anko, Shino and Haku would travel in the Dart, one cabin of which had been adapted to Gaara’s needs. Like Kabuto, they would jump into the system through a gate, giving the impression that the Dart was a conventional vessel.

The transponders were self-assembling from nanobot components and would be powered by the host’s body. They had to be injected or introduced through an orifice. Ideally Kabuto would accept a drink. If not, they would need to be creative.

---

Kabuto had been relieved to realise that there was an ungated route to Celeste that involved six jumps but would only take two days. He had not expected the tanuki-human hybrid to request a meeting so soon or with so little warning. In retrospect, he regretted mentioning the communication to Orochimaru; a lot could happen during his four-day absence from Jewel.

The sheer luxury of the hotel served to distract him from his worries. Kabuto had done some checking and knew that the hybrid’s ‘sister’ owned a planet in the Kaze system, so such wealth was to be expected.

The hybrid was certainly interesting. For one of Amachi’s, he was surprisingly exotic. Apparently he dealt with his tendency to turn berserk by wearing a modified controller; each of his three companions had an activator.

Kabuto guessed that the woman was a bodyguard and the man was an advisor. As for the girly-boy, he was introduced as a personal attendant but Kabuto had no doubt as to his function. He was utterly gorgeous; Kabuto was mesmerised by his eyelashes.

---

Haku smiled. Neji had been correct in his analysis. Kabuto was, indeed, the type of man who liked girly-boys. He was also vain. Eyelash fluttering and flattery had given Anko the opportunity to introduce the nanobots into his drink.

It had almost been too easy.

---

Kiba hated it when Kabuto went away. Every one of his encounters with Orochimaru had happened when first Amachi or then Kabuto was absent. This time there was the added complication of the prisoner. Kabuto had given the man five days’ worth of survival rations and told Kiba not to go near him; under no circumstance was he to open the door.

That had suited Kiba.

Only Orochimaru had to play with him. He had ordered the bullmen to drag him from his cell and chain him to the bench in Orochimaru’s room so that Orochimaru could fuck him.

This time he managed to kill one of the bullmen and severely injure three others. The astonishing thing was that the kill was on the way back to his cell when any normal person, hybrid or purebred, would have been incapacitated by what Orochimaru had done to him.

Then Orochimaru had called for Kiba and told him to treat the prisoner’s injuries.

Kiba had been suitably subservient but inside he was angry. If Orochimaru had told him earlier he would have sedated the man when the bullmen had been chaining him to the wall of his cell. Now he would have to open the door. He couldn’t even order the bullmen to help him because the adult hybrids had standing orders not to obey him.

He opened the small hatch in the door and peered in. The man appeared to be unconscious. Kiba could tell he was pretending from the sound of his breathing. He shut the hatch but reconsidered and opened it.

“Hey, mister,” he called. “I’ve been told to treat your injuries. I could wait until you really go unconscious rather than pretending, but you might die.”

The man tried to sit up but couldn’t. Kiba wasn’t surprised. He had sometimes helped Kabuto after Orochimaru had fucked him and, from what he had smelled and heard, this was a lot worse.

“Who are you? Where is Kabuto?” he asked.

“Kabuto-san isn’t here. I’m Kiba. I look after the hybrids when they are young.”

The man looked towards the door. “In you come, then,” he said in a surprisingly smooth voice.

Kiba actually considered it before waking up to reality. “I don’t think so,” he decided.

“Damn you, why not? I’m hurting and bleeding. You yourself said I might die.”

“Because you’ll kill me,” Kiba answered and shut the hatch. Then he went looking for his blowpipe. He would have to guess the dosage.

---