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There's no dreaming in cryogenic sleep. No real rest for that matter, either. It simply begins and ends, with an indeterminate void where the dreams should've gone, and a vague sense of stasis in exchange for a meaningful rest. When you wake up, there's no feeling that time has passed. There's only the wish that it could've lasted for longer.

For Adder, waking up from cryosleep meant returning to that place, to the Fifth Star, and for all the good fortune that he had simply to be alive, he wished only that he could go back to sleep. He missed dreaming. They all did, he suspected.

The process of waking was neither gentle nor swift. It began with a slow, uneasy transition back to awareness. Subtly, he realized he was, in fact, still alive, with the vaguest notions of his own nausea being the first thing that he felt. Vision wouldn't come until at least a few minutes after the thaw, but his hearing returned swiftly. His round, sensitive ears could pick up the soft "pop" of the compression seal being undone, of the antifreeze fluid being evacuated, and his pod being exposed to the cool air of the cryobay.

Awake. You're still alive.

Gingerly, he forced his half-frozen muscles to move. Fingers first, with each furry knuckle popping as blood surged fresh and hot through them after so many years. Then the extremities, carefully, one at a time. Even the tail. He'd never properly learned how to move the thing, but he did his best to wag it left and right. Good enough. By the time he'd worked through his muscle sets, his vision began to return. That was also good. It meant that the blood vessels in his eyes hadn't frozen and shattered during the long years of his sleep.

From the reclined seat of his pod, he could just make out the bleary shapes of the other six cryosleep units situated within their stasis bay. The others would be going through the same motions as he was, right about now. They'd done it too many times to count. Amusing, considering how long their voyage was originally slated for. His eyes blinked rapidly, and he brought up his hand - no, not quite a hand anymore - to look at it in the dim light of the bay.

It was strange to think, as he looked at the five, furry little digits, that he was once a regular human. His vision came into focus slowly, revealing the pale fur on the back of his hands, the black claws, and the soft, pink pads that lined his fingers. Human, once. It could have been a motto for Red Crew, if they'd somehow managed to keep their sense of humor.

"Status report," a gruff, hoarse voice called out from nearby. Commander Arkady. Somehow, he still sounded strong, authoritative, even though he'd just gone through the same process as they had, even though he was likely just as exhausted. He was always the first to pull himself free from the pod. Elliot had told him once that the act was all about 'reassurance'. Leadership things.

Their voices sounded out in routine, one after the next from their own respective pods. Adder said his part, as he had many times before.

"Adder Arias. Technical Engineer. Present."

"Elliot Pramber." The voice coughed weakly, and a sound almost like a whine echoed in the bay. "Medical and Personnel. I'm here. Is everyone alright?"

"Ilya Vinogradov. Maintenance. I'm not dead yet."

"Arkady Bay. Navigation."

Adder noted the brief pause between his own response and Elliot's. There had once been six of them. Wren and Mathis would have made their report in that space, decades ago. It was a strange thing. Due to the cryosleep and how it changed their perspective of time, it seemed as though they'd died only recently.

"Good. Good. All accounted for," Arkady continued. "Fifth Star, Red Crew personnel is ready to begin their shift."

A single, electronic ping resonated throughout the hollow chamber as the ship's computer noted the entry in the log, and then they all climbed out from their pods. Adder wasn't in any hurry. He took his time, having learned long ago the pains that one acquired from rushing the process. The antifreeze had never been kind to his muscles, and he wasn't young anymore, hadn't been young, even before the voyage. With a soft grunt, he pulled himself free from the cryo unit. All around him, the other crew members did the same.

They were no longer human. The Fifth Star, like the rest of the Fleet of Seven, was piloted and staffed by Mods who could supposedly complete their duties with more efficiency than their purely human counterparts. As he looked around at the others, he was reminded of just how far they'd gone to save humanity, and ironically, how much they'd redefined humanity in the process.

Of the three of his crewmates, only Elliot met his gaze in return. He'd been transfused with DNA from various members of the Canidae family, and his grinning, wolfish face was still just as bright and ridiculous as ever, if only accompanied by a few more gray hairs than in years past. Supposedly, the inclusion of canine genes made him more empathetic, and they encouraged a higher emotional connection between himself and the rest of the crew. Adder knew that the smile was a mask. He'd never forgiven himself for Wren and Mathis, but he kept up appearances of positivity for the sake of everyone else.

Commander Arkady and Ilya sat upon the lip of their pods, with the latter holding his long, hairy face in his hands. They'd been given 'stable' herbivore genetics, from Elephantidae_and _Equidae, respectively, but the treatment had been harder on them. They'd both grown, and the discomfort of their unnatural musculature and bone density made their bodies ache constantly. Arkady bore it with more grace. His placid, emotionless face showed no signs of pain or concern, and for the better. Adder couldn't imagine the stress that he faced, leading this charade of a voyage.

As for Ilya... he only glanced at Adder briefly, as though merely to check that he was still alive, and begrudging him for being so. His dark, brown eyes, nearly black, were just as hateful as they'd been when they'd gone into cryo a decade ago. Adder tried not to look at the man. He couldn't trust himself not to stare at the ungainly thing between the horse's legs, or to hide his body's reaction if he did so. They were animals there, too.

Eventually, Arkady broke the silence between them. This was customary. "It's just another shift," he said. His voice, low and hollow, sounded near to cracking. Like a heavy piece of metal, bending under some immense weight. "Fifth Star, system check. Please."

A ping of acknowledgement. Then, with a monotone voice, the ship's computer read off to them the current status of the vessel. Blessedly, navigation and life support for crew decks were still online. Hull integrity had suffered no noteworthy damage from astral collisions or burns. One at a time, it listed in methodical order the condition of other systems of varied importance. All the while, they sat in silence, listening. Elliot gave him that doggish, reassuring smile; Adder was sure most of the computer's technical jargon went over his head. Ilya and Arkday looked up towards the voice, listening with more purpose. Eventually, the voice stated what they'd all been dreading.

"Power systems continue to decline due to the damage to the vessel's forward solar arrays," it said. Its voice was perpetually cheerful. "To preserve primary system functionality, passenger cryo bays nine and ten have been shut down. Total passenger loss has been logged for both decks. Passenger count is now at six hundred and four."

A dead silence followed. The three of them looked over at Arkady to gauge his reaction, but as usual, the elephant had a stone visage. For a moment, no one spoke. They'd started their voyage with over five thousand people: the best and brightest that the world had to offer. When the damage began, the ship had started cutting them off, one bay at a time, to mitigate the loss of essential power. It was cruelly efficient, determining which group of passengers would be the least essential to the colonization effort. They weren't immune to the culling, either. There'd once been a Yellow Crew too, and a Blue Crew.

Arkady spoke. "There'll be a memorial service for the lost bays in one hour. I expect everyone to be dressed and in attendance." He paused, breathing in. "We cannot... we need to keep with protocol."

Pointedly, he looked at Ilya. A stern warning. "They were people. The last. We must remember that."

With that, it seemed as though there was nothing more to say. Pushing himself up, the commander stood on his thick, misshapen legs, teetering only for a moment before stoically mastering his half-woken muscles. They flexed mightily beneath his bristly, gray hide, and Adder had the decency not to stare as the commander then walked past them all, exiting the chamber's airlock. Clothing interfered with the cryo processes; they slept in the nude.

Elliot followed soon after, pausing only to touch Adder his shoulder, gently. "Let's talk after the service," he said. His voice was a soft, slurred sound. For him, talking was a messy affair, with his tongue accounting for all the shapes that his canine lips couldn't properly form. "Play a little catch-up... see how you're holding up."

Adder nodded noncommittally. Internally, he wasn't thinking about therapy. He was busy considering what the computer had said about their damaged systems, and what he could do to repair them. Precious little, he figured. Elliot made his way out of the room then, leaving just him and Ilya. That was good. He needed to clear the air.

Alone, finally, the two men looked at each other. Adder could smell him from across the room, even above the reek of the antifreeze formula. The stink of animals was a profoundly ugly and unexpected consequence of Mod therapy, and it was worse than most with Ilya. Adder had never seen a real horse in person before. They'd gone extinct centuries before the Fleet of Seven had lifted off. All the same, he couldn't imagine an animal that stunk worse than Ilya.

Eventually, Adder stood from his pod. "We're not doing this again, Ilya," he said simply. "I won't do it. That's all I have to say."

The horse-man said nothing in turn, simply staring. An ugly grin hovered about his fat, equine lips. Adder didn't bother to play his game. Turning, he fled from the room, feeling Ilya's eyes on him all the while. He didn't care. He had tasks to attend to.

---

"It's kind of a surreal thing, don't you think? To be alive for centuries, centuries... and not feel any older... hell, I guess I feel a lot older actually, but not _that_old."

He was with Elliot once again, the both of them now floating in the portside maintenance bay. For all intents and purposes, it was Adder's home-away-from-home when he was on shift. At that moment, he was busy taking apart a power cell from one of their exercise machines, while Elliot hovered in the air next to him, lazing upside-down. The maintenance bay's simul-gravity unit had shut down ages ago, and they'd lacked the parts to fix it. That was Adder's struggle now. He had all the knowledge to fix things on the Fifth Star, but only so many parts.

"Sometimes," Elliot continued. "I wonder what's going on back on Earth, you know? Like, are they still there? Or has it all gone cold yet?" The Mod looked up wistfully at the banks of monitors upon the wall, their lights like so many little stars.

"I'd like to think they're still fighting it..."

Adder looked up from the power cell long enough to give a pointed look at the canine. The other Mod was almost boyishly cute, at times, with his long, floppy ears waving about in the zero-g. It was one of the reasons he tolerated him so much.

"Isn't this supposed to be my therapy session?" he asked.

"I'm sorry, I was feeling wistful. Would you rather we skip right to fucking?"

"Forget I said anything."

Nowadays, this was what constituted the mental health program aboard the Fifth Star. Long ago, "Doctor" Pramber had once been considered something of an expert in his field. He had doctorates from prestigious universities, the kind that you couldn't just buy your way into like Adder had, and there'd been some considerable excitement among Red Crew when he was selected from the pool of candidates to join the team. He'd been equipped with the height of medical technology, the best medicine mankind had ever developed, and even more, he was a student of ground-breaking Mod science. He was pioneer 3rd gen.

"So... no to the sex, then. Guess I have to put those degrees to work."

Of course, none of those credentials mattered now. All of that fancy medical equipment had been scrapped for parts in the first century of their voyage, after exoplanet Zeus-5 was deemed uninhabitable from solar radiation. The anti-depressants and anxiety medication didn't last much longer either, and the last of it vanished shortly after they lost Wren. Elliot himself had nearly overdosed on the stuff. Now, he had little to offer them in terms of 'professional' psychological aid, since he himself wasn't in any better shape than the rest of them. Given an hour or so, they'd probably wind up having rather ungainly sex atop the same exercise equipment that he was currently dismantling.

It was therapy, in an animal sort of way.

"Is Ilya alright?" Elliot suddenly asked, surprising him. Adder clamped a loose wire before looking back up, setting it aside so it wouldn't float into his face later. The dog could make better facial expressions than most of them, and a look of concern hovered on his greying muzzle. Adder did his best to appear unconcerned by the question.

"What makes you ask?"

The other Mod shrugged, lightly pushing off the wall to maintain his spot in the air. Idly, his malformed tail wagged behind him, flinging odd strands of fur to go spinning off into the ether.

"He declined therapy this morning."

"You still call it that?"

"It makes me feel better. He was never very enthusiastic about it to begin with, but... this is the first time that he's ever said no, outright. He seemed tense."

Adder frowned, returning to his work. The world was simpler when he was here, fixing things. It made him feel as though he was doing his part, as though he deserved to be there. The skill was why they'd hired him, him, out of the tens of thousands of other applicants. Occasionally, he wondered if things would be so broken if they'd made a better call.

"Of course he's tense," Adder finally said. "We lost more people, and Almighty-349 is still lightyears away."

The dog's head cocked. "Did the ship's computer name it that?"

"How the hell should I know? Ask the commander."

At that, Elliot's tail stopped wagging. Adder could feel him staring as he returned to his work, and shortly after, he heard the soft "pat" of that canine foot pushing off against the wall of monitors. Then, that gentle weight settled on his back, light as a breeze, the other man hugging him from behind. Adder stopped working.

"What's the matter, Addy?" Elliot asked. There was a soft whine in his throat. It was a reflexive thing, he'd been told, something that canine Mods couldn't hide when they were concerned.

"Nothing," he lied.

The canine's paws tightened around his slim midriff. They were both naked, prepped for therapy, as it were. Adder could feel the soft shape of the other male's genitals, pressing into the small of his back. Inhuman, like the rest of him. It no longer disgusted him, but it was never an easy thing to forget.

"I can feel it between you two, you know. Arkady knows that something's going on, too."

"There's nothing going on. We've fucked. I didn't care for it. That's it."

"That's it?"

"Yes."

Of course, that wasn't all there was to it. They'd fooled around, yes. They all had, at some point or another, through combinations of boredom, desperation, or a hopeless search for something more meaningful. After the first century, sexuality hardly even factored into it any more. He knew to a certainty that the commander had been married before his Mod treatment, and that Ilya had made more than a few comments about his female conquests in the days leading up to the departure. Adder had no interest in being a trophy, and yet he'd slept with the beast all the same. It sickened him. Sickened him more to know that he'd probably do it again.

Elliot's head came down to rest upon his narrow shoulder. A soft sigh blew out from his wet nose. Briefly, Adder thought about doing something romantic, like kissing him, but the idea came and went. They'd each had phases of such flings before, but in the end, it only complicated things. As it was, he simply leaned his head over, resting it against Elliot's own.

"I miss Wren," the dog said finally.

"Yeah," Adder replied. "We all do."

---

They each had their own role to play upon the Fifth Star, although what that role was exactly had changed over time. Elliot had once been the crew's psychologist and doctor, tasked with keeping them in shape both mentally and physically. Now, he was little more than a whore, although only Ilya called him that to his face. Sex had proved an adequate enough substitute for drugs, and it turned out to be one of the only pleasures they could partake of in space. There'd been no rations for alcohol, for obvious reasons, and they'd blown through any medication which could provide a survivable high.

Arkady spent most of his time alone in the terminal which housed the ship's computer. There, he busied himself with typed reports on every miniscule change which'd occurred to the ship over their voyage. It wasn't as though the reports mattered. There was no one waiting in Almighty-349 that'd be expecting it on their desks. There was no one there at all, in fact ; it was simply the next best option for a habitable planet, the third option after their first two had been failures. Adder was sure that Arkady was aware of this. He simply had to find ways to occupy himself, to appear busy. A leader had to look busy. It was his turn for 'therapy' at the moment. If Adder listened, he could probably hear the commander and Elliot, even then.

Ilya was their maintenance engineer, which was to say that he and Adder shared most of their responsibilities. Between the two of them, they fixed whatever systems had become inoperable during their cryosleep, cannibalizing non-essential equipment to do so. More recently however, the things that they needed to fix began to outpace the tools with which they had to do so, and so now Adder was able to complete most of the repairs himself. Ilya, meanwhile, now did nothing, lurking in dark corners of the ship, masturbating to the sight of the nude passengers in their pods. It was no secret that he'd killed Mathis. No one talking about it.

Adder paused in his work. In that moment, he was in passenger bay twelve, rewiring a switchbox used to control the cryosleep pods. He looked up at the face in the nearest pod, blissfully unaware, frozen, and saw his own reflection in the glass. The hint of a frown creased across his whiskers. His whiskers... yes, he had those now. He was a far cry from the man he'd once been. The committee which had spearheaded crew selection for the Fleet of Seven had determined that engineers in his class needed to be small and flexible to better access narrow corridors in zero-gravity. Towards that effort, he'd been given Mod treatment with DNA from various members of the_Rodentia_ family.

A rat in a cage, some humorous part of him noted.

He was already short before the treatment. Nothing new there. But now, a thin coat of grey, wiry fur covered his lithe body. A long, thin tail sprouted out from directly atop his buttocks. That'd been tortuous to grow. Whiskers, long and perpetually twitching, sprouted from a vaguely ferret-like face, complete with beady, black eyes. He was a third-generation Mod. They all were. Aesthetically pleasing. Functional. He could still recall with horror the failures of the first and second generations, and a part of him was grateful for how well the therapy had gone, if nothing else.

There were some inconveniences, however. He was a perpetually anxious creature now, when he recalled being rather unflappable in his youth. His heart tended to flutter weakly in his chest these days, as though it couldn't keep up with his body. He shed. But worst of all, he had a particularly attuned sense of smell. He could smell everything. The odor of plastics, of metals, and rubber, each highly accentuated to his sensitive nose, each maddeningly clear. He could smell the others, too. Their scents were engrained into him. He knew where they'd been, and how long they'd lingered there, or if they'd bathed that day. He knew when they'd fucked recently, and who.

His sense of smell was how he knew that Ilya was coming for him. The hackles of his fur raised long before he became conscious of the scent, and without his consent, he felt himself stiffening at the thought of what the other Mod was likely after. Like the others, the Mod treatment had changed that part of him too, and without thinking, he reached a hand down, as though to keep at bay that squat, ugly little organ from emerging from its sheath. Ilya always came for him when he was working on the cryo-pods. Unsurprisingly, it was easier for him to get off when he was looking at a naked woman, and the lady in the pod before him could hardly protest.

A moment passed, and then the sound of Ilya's approach rang out down the corridor. The sound of those ungainly hooves, clattering on surfaces, pushing in zero-g. Adder could picture the ridiculous sight even then, that muscular frame of his haphazardly making its way down the tunnel. He didn't need to picture it though, as soon enough, the man himself turned the corner. Adder shut the panel that he'd been working on. There wasn't going to be any more work, now. He knew from experience.

Turning around, the rodent looked up, defiantly meeting the larger Mod's eyes... or at least, what he could see of them. Ilya's mane was an unkempt mess of long, stringy hair, and it fell over his elongated face in a coarse black veil, nearly obscuring those hateful eyes of his. Nearly. Like the rest of them, he'd long forgone the encumbrance of his flight uniform, and even now his nude form was on full display before him, his bulging muscles hidden beneath a layer of thin, black hide. A damp layer of sweat clung to him, stinking. Already, the maintenance terminal reeked of him. It would for hours later, Adder knew.

"Did you have fun with Elliot?" the horse-man asked, pushing himself further into the narrow space between the pods. Adder stepped back. There was hardly enough room in the maintenance slot for the both of them, and he quickly found the wall with his tail.

"It makes him feel better," Adder replied. He tried not to look so small, and failed. "You know that he's still torn up about Wren. So is Arkady."

Ilya grinned, looking up past him towards the woman in the pod. His teeth were an uncomfortable fit for his mouth, wide and flat. Pearly. The ship's foods had neither acid nor sugar.

"He took the easy way out. Guess Elliot's just jealous."

"Fuck off, Ilya."

"You read my mind."

The larger male pressed in closer, trapping him against the corner of the maintenance canal. Adder felt dials and switchboards pressing into his back now, his front hemmed in by a wall of hot, stinking horseflesh. He hated himself for not fighting back harder. His whiskers twitched madly.

"I don't want-"

"You said that last time, remember? You're not really convincing anybody. Just stop talking."

It was an ugly truth. None of them were fond of Ilya. He didn't work. He had terrible standards of personal hygiene. He was rude, arrogant, and unpleasant in conversation and manner. He'd killed Mathis, and now the crew had no comms specialist to keep in touch with the other vessels from the Fleet of Seven. Adder could forgive him for most of those things; he'd dealt with unpleasant people before. The old world was full of them, teeming with them. He couldn't forgive himself, however. Like usual, he took the easy way out.

Ilya quickly closed the distance between them, and as the horse pressed forward, Adder found himself getting acquainted once more with those flat teeth of his, and the thick, equine lips that covered them. He leaned up into the kiss with more eagerness than he ought to; his therapy session with Elliot earlier had been a sad, routine affair for them both. With Ilya however, it was never routine. The larger man swept him up in his arms with terrible ease, practically swallowing him. He was forced up against the cold, metal wall, unforgiving matter on both sides. The wall might as well have been a plate for him to be served upon.

Making love - if that's what it could still be called between him and Ilya - was a strange matter in zero gravity. Every surface became a floor, and as he clung to Ilya's broad, sweaty chest, they rolled together across banks of panels and switchboards, careless of what sensitive instruments they may have broken. They could always fix it later. Another motto for the crew.

To Adder, sex wasn't much different in a Mod body than it'd been as a human. His parts still functioned more or less the same way. It'd been one the big perks that they'd advertised back when they were still pushing the treatment; for millennia, mankind had dreamed of giving themselves bigger cocks through hokery or medicine, and science had finally provided. Adder's fingers went down like they were pulled by gravity, finding Ilya's soft, leathery flesh, and feeling it stiffen under his touch. The horse-man didn't return the favor. He wasn't much of a giver. Adder didn't really care.

Ilya wasn't human down there any more than Adder was. A thick, voluminous sheath had swallowed up his manhood, fat and indolent when it was soft. Below that, a heavy set of testicles floated amidst his seeking fingers, the baseball-sized orbs twitching in their sack as he fondled them. Ilya nickered gently against his lips. He was sensitive down there.

"Not really fighting it now, are you?" he teased. Adder bit him on those fat, plump lips of his, but all it did was make the other Mod kiss harder. That was the thing with bigger Mods like Ilya and Arkady... you couldn't hurt them, even if you tried. Mod treatment widened the gap between the weak and the strong, as wide as the starscape, now. He surrendered to it, to Ilya's strength, which may have been one of the only constants on the ship.

Their foreplay never lasted for long. When Ilya broke their kiss, idle drops of saliva and sweat flicked off from their faces, and a single, thin line of it hung between their lips like a bridge. There was a sickening look of triumph on his long, equine face.

Look at you, it said. Not so high and mighty now. Practically as bad as Elliot.

He was turned around then, with no warning, and suddenly Adder found himself face-to-face with the woman in the pod. He stared, unblinking, at her frozen visage, while behind him Ilya rummaged through the rodent's utility bag, searching for his tool grease. It wasn't a sterile substance, but they had it in spades, and it worked for what that was worth. He was glad that the woman couldn't see them. He'd seen her, every waking day since he'd first came onboard the Fifth Star, and abruptly Adder realized that he didn't even know her name, or anything about her other than the meaningless serial code attached to her pod.

"Yeah, she's got some nice tits, eh?"

Ilya's voice came hot and heady upon the back of his neck, and he winced as the horse bit him there. His whole body went rigid. Those wide, flat teeth could really dig in when they wanted to. Then, before he could even get used to that, fingers. Long and thick, with dense, black nails that would've accounted for the DNA of hooves, digging mercilessly beneath his tail, spreading that gunk around. Readying him. Adder bit his lip and said nothing. The woman was well-endowed. A part of him wished that she wasn't.

"Why don't we let her out, Ad? Bet she'd be good for it."

Adder's head jerked around on his shoulder. It wasn't the first time that Ilya had suggested it. "You know I can't do that."

The horse snorted against his back. Another bite, this one hard enough to draw a sound from his throat. He tried not to hear the subtle, high pitch in it, courtesy of those ridiculous genes he had comingling with his own. Ilya didn't enter him right away. He pushed himself up first, letting his hips swallow Adder's own, letting his sheath squash up underneath his tail so that he could feel the _weight_of that flesh against him. He flexed, and Adder could practically hear the bastard smiling.

"Her loss... and yours. It's gonna be a lot more uncomfortable for you."

Behind him, Ilya made a brief adjustment, and then he pressed in again. Adder sucked in his breath, but there really was no preparing for it. That wide, blunt head hurt like hell every time. Ever wanted to be hung as a horse? The ads wrote themselves. Ilya didn't take it easy, or give him time to settle. He grunted heavily in his ear as he thrusted again, and again, and Adder felt himself being filled, until at last that broad, flat chest pressed up against his back, and there was nothing empty left in him.

"There ya go," Ilya breathed into his ear. "Like a glove, huh? You know you fuckin' love it." He could tell the horse was looking at the woman. His cock was flagging inside of him, a sure enough sign. Each jerk made him wince and see stars. His prostate may as well have been a punching bag for whatever hellish muscle in the horse's groin allowed such power in the movement. A low, weak sigh escaped him. It felt good.

It didn't seem as though Ilya was in any hurry, because then they simply floated there, with Adder bracing himself against the pod, while the horse floated just behind him, the pair anchored together by half a meter of flesh. Occasionally, Ilya moved his hips by the tiniest of degrees, micro-thrusts, just to edge himself while he gawked at the woman in the pod, and at the others nearby. He had an iron grip on Adder's shoulders all the while, those thick fingers clenching hard enough to bruise.

"You know... bay nine was mostly guys."

He thrust in hard at that. It was a pointless gesture, considering that he was already buried in up to the sheath, but the movement still served to push Adder up against the glass of the pod, walled in by horseflesh.

"With them gone, there's only, what, a hundred or so men left in the ship? Odds are getting better."

Now he pulled out. Not all at once, but enough. A few long inches, which may as well have felt like a mile. He pulled out slower than he went in, and they both felt it together, Ilya groaning in pleasure, while Adder shuddered and gasped. Then a quick thrust back in, burying it once more. The slap of hips against ass sounded too loud in the silence of the bay.

"You know Mods can still breed, right?" Another withdrawal, and this time Adder couldn't hide the squeak in his throat when it was shoved back in. "I've been watching this one for a while. I've picked a few out already. I think I'll give them a foal when we, ergh, when we land."

There're not yours, Adder wanted to say. They're people. We're people. You can't treat people like that. Like this.

But he didn't say that. Couldn't, because in that moment Ilya reached over to pull his chin upwards, and craned that long neck over to kiss him. Those thick lips swallowed anything he had to say. There was no interval between the pull and the push, now. He was thrusting with power and efficiency, a stallion in the shape of a man, and in seconds Adder found himself pressed flat against the pod, clutching it for dear life as Ilya bred him from behind.

A coy sort of pleasure began to well up inside of his belly as his prostate was viciously assaulted, again and again, until at last a weak spasm shook him, and he felt himself spilling crudely against the sanitized glass surface of the pod. They could both smell it. Ilya's wide nostrils flared as he took in the scent. Almost as if to punish him, the kiss was then broken off, and those flat teeth came back down, now biting hard on his ears. Adder screamed at that, knowing the others would hear.

"You know," Ilya taunted, punctuating his words by hilting himself and flexing, deep, sending shockwaves of pain and pleasure through him once again. It was, really, the only time that he felt anything anymore.

"You wouldn't have to go through with this if you just let me have one... it's not like Arkady has to know... I can keep her quiet..."

That was it. Adder was sure of it. The only reason why Ilya targeted him like this; he was the only one who could open the passengers, not that Mathis was gone. Mathis had probably said no too. He hissed through his teeth, closing his eyes, and gripping harder to the pod. He wished that he could brace his legs against something, but they flailed, helpless in zero-g, and only occasionally pushed back by Ilya's knees.

"Fuck... no," he managed to grunt. "No. Just finish and let me do my job."

Another punishing thrust. This time, he felt their balls connect: a wet, heavy slap that scattered droplets of sweat into the air. Embarrassingly, he realized that his tail was hiked up high of its own accord, curled around the horse's waist, pulling him in deeper. Ilya probably noticed it too. Those mobile, equine lips came back down again, this time to suckle the sweat from the back of his neck.

"Keeping them on ice for me... I like that. You oughta get a reward."

His rough voice hiked on that last word, and inside, Adder swore he could feel him swelling. He wasn't well-versed in what horses were like back when they were still around, but if Ilya was anything to judge them by, they never ended things with grace. Adder felt as though Ilya was practically blossoming inside him, and then, on the apex of one final, gut-punching thrust, a flood of warmth filled him. The horse wasn't shy about making the most of his orgasm. He bellowed out, the sound half man, half animal, a ululating, utterly satisfied cry. Adder simply hung his head, letting it fill him. He was still hard.

---

When it was over, Ilya left him there alone in the bay, floating. He felt rather embryonic in such moments, half-formed, curled in upon himself in the cold, sterile air. Particles of their sweat and mess floated around him as he drifted, like filthy little constellations to remind him of his sins. He wished for a cigarette. A weak laugh eased past his blunt little fangs. He hadn't smoked in centuries, he realized.

"Stop feeling sorry for yourself," he muttered. Self-therapy now. He was doing Elliot's job for him. "You're still alive. That's what matters. You're still alive."

He told himself that, knowing full well that there were probably people who deserved it better. Wren deserved it better. Mathis too. There were definitely a few on the Yellow Crew who would've worked harder, who wouldn't curl up into a ball of defeat whenever they felt sorry for themselves. At his side, the unfinished panel of the pod blinked, a gentle reminder that it was broken. One of a thousand broken things on the vessel. He supposed, in a fair world, that they'd all have blinking lights themselves. He turned his head just to the left to look out one of the bay's portside windows. A vast sea of darkness waited outside, given some form by odd stars here and there. Unfamiliar stars. When their shift was over, and he went under once again, he'd lose them.

"Fifth Star," he said aloud, waiting for the ping of acknowledgement from the ship's computer before continuing. It had eyes and ears everywhere. He supposed that it'd recorded everything between him and Ilya.

"How far away is Almighty-349?"

The system beeped cheerfully. "Star system Almighty-349 is now six light-years from our current position."

Adder sucked on a tooth. His lower belly felt uncomfortable. Sooner rather than later, he'd have to go void the mess that Ilya had just deposited in him.

"How long will it take us to get there?"

Another cheerful beep, now with a hint of irony. "Accounting for the current condition of the Fifth Star, estimated arrival time is in eight thousand, two hundred and three years."

Eight thousand years. The thought nearly took the breath from his lungs. That meant over eight hundred more shifts... nearly six thousand days. Fifteen years, give or take, in and out of stasis. He looked up at the woman in the cargo pod. She was frozen in time, ignorant of how she'd beaten the odds. What made her so special, that the ship sacrificed so many others, and not her? Was she some sort of politician? A family member of the selection committees? A scientist? He supposed that it didn't matter.

"Fifth Star," he added. "What are the odds that Almighty-349 will have a habitable exoplanet?"

Another ping. "Almighty-349 has one planet which sits within the habitable temperature range of its star. Long-distance scans indicate a primarily nitrogen-based atmosphere. There is a 15% chance that bodies of water exist on its surface. Chances of successful habitation for human population are at 7%."

Adder gave no response. It was better than zero.

---

Their shifts ended after about a week of such work, if it could be called that. For most of it, they kept to themselves, interacting only when necessary. Adder managed to avoid Ilya for the majority of his remaining shift. Elliot didn't say anything about the matter, although he certainly knew; his nose was even more sensitive than Adder's, and there was no amount of vac-cleaning that would get the stench of horse out of his fur. The only blessing of the cryo-pod was that the smell wouldn't survive the decade of cold and antifreeze chemicals.

On the final day of their shifts, they all met back up in the crew quarters. They'd long-since moved to other parts of the ship, to private places where they could be alone, and now the old quarters served merely as a place for more formal meetings, usually demanded by Arkady. Adder was the second to arrive, and he found the commander in his full uniform, as usual. Adder had dressed as well, if only so that he wouldn't have to stomach his own nudity in front of Ilya any more than necessary.

The commander nodded at his arrival. "The ship says that you asked about our arrival time."

"I did."

A soft, almost-indiscernible sound came from the other Mod's throat. "You know that doesn't help."

"I was curious."

The others came in, with time. Their cryosleep was a non-negotiable fact of their lives. It was the price of their extended existence, without which they'd have perished centuries ago. As they all stood there in the pod chamber, staring at their beds, Adder wondered if they were all thinking the same thing. Did any of them still deserve to be alive?

"Maybe I'll have a dream this time," Elliot said. He was smiling again, panting, as dogs did, but the words had no joy in them. Ilya snorted, and was the first to undress and climb into his pod. Arkady said nothing.

"I don't think they'd be good dreams," Adder finally offered. Arkady was next in, but he and Elliot hesitated.

"You don't know that," the dog said. "I'd like to see Earth again. Even the bad parts."

"Idiot," Ilya said, leaning back into his pod. "We brought that with us."

Neither of them had the care to respond. Ilya didn't look at any of them as he laid back, and with the flick of a finger, set the pod into its active stasis. No one watched as it froze him, sprays of chemicals filling the pod, and hiding him from view. When his pod finally went silent, Arkady looked pointedly at the both of them. There was some subtle grace to his form that they lacked, something in the bearing. His heavy, grey eyelids dipped.

"It was never easy to be human. Ilya recalls this." He undressed as well, and leaned himself back, that great, grey form settling heavily in the pod. "It isn't easy to be this, either, but that has always been the way of it. Of living. You both know this."

He flicked his own switch, and together, they both watched as the commander went under. His face, stoic and resolute, as always. A part of Adder wondered at the man he must've been before, to have been chosen by the committee for such a task. Then the fluid washed over him, and the freeze, and it was just himself and Elliot. The dog stared at the pod as though it was his death. For all they knew, it was; the computer may simply decide a crew was no longer necessary, one of these days.

"Ilya wants to get the female passengers out of the pods," he said suddenly as he took off his clothes, surprising himself. Elliot looked up, ears perking, eager for anything to say that may have delayed their cryosleep.

"What did you tell him?"

Adder stepped into his own pod. Its cold, metal walls were more familiar to him now than any home he'd had back on Earth. He felt his balls shrink inwards at the frigid contact.

"I told him no. C'mon, let's hit the sack."

"I wonder where that expression came from... hey, do you mind if I keep talking to you while it goes?"

Adder allowed himself a ghost of a smile. "Sure," he said.

Together, they both settled in. Even as the glass tubes slipped overhead, Adder could still hear Elliot prattling on in the pod next to him. He'd always been scared of the pods. He'd heard the rumors about what the early ones could do if they malfunctioned.

He wasn't listening though. His eyes stared ahead, unseeing, as he flicked the switch that would activate his cryosleep. It would be just like blinking, he told himself. Antifreeze rushed into the chamber, chilled, acrid.

I'll blink, and I'll be awake again. I'll wake up. I will.

Then the freeze hit him, and there was no more thought.