Fae’s in for medical observation. The Irvine, her companion, ran afoul of a pirate raiding party, and though the Reckoner did her duty, she took some heavy hits in the fight and came back to the Southern Republic of California in serious condition. Her hide still stinks of smoke where the pirates’ rockets hit her, and her keratin plates bear the singe marks to match. She’s gotten cranky after an entire week away from the Irvine, and I know for certain she’d try to rip off my arm if I got in the water with her now.

Just in case, I switch the Tanto to her signal set and flash a quick burst of light and noise that tells her to leave me alone. She huffs and clicks loud enough that I have to cover my ears. A rumble from below the water on the other side of the divide marks Durga’s reply. A mewl rises from the pups’ pens, and I start off toward the research facility, letting the noises of my monsters put me at ease.

My mother’s lab is on the second floor of the building, fortified by cement walls and a scanner that reads my palm before unbolting the massive steel doors. A blast of warm air hits me as I step inside.

“Mom, something’s up with Durga,” I call, peeling out of the top half of my wetsuit.

Artificial wombs line the walls of the lab, nearly all of them occupied with incubating Reckoner pups. They float in the canisters, tethered by an umbilical line that supplies them with nutrients. At this stage, they’re nothing but little nuggets of flesh and nerve, each ready to develop into a beast capable of ripping a pirate ship to shreds. Some of them are brand new, barely the size of my thumb, with no distinguishing features. Others have already gestated to the point that their type is obvious. My gaze lands on a terrapoid embryo whose forelegs are twitching as if the little turtle-type is already dreaming of the day he sees battle. In the womb next to it, a cephalopoid slumbers with its stumpy tentacles wrapped around itself. Farther down, I spot the familiar knot of a serpentoid embryo’s twisting coils. We’ve developed so many breeds, each uniquely crafted to serve the companies that commission them for their ships.

The gel in the womb gives off a soft glow. It keeps them at a suspended stage of development, curbing them until the day we transfer them to a big, leathery purse and let them grow until they’re ready to hatch. Ready to train. Ready to destroy.

Until then, they’re all just waiting.