Grown Men

determined that . . . perpetuating your genetic material . . . would be of minimal advantage to our Andromeda Enterprise and planetoid HD10307-E’s developing ecosystem. We are confident that you and your new cofarmer will find your skills complimentary. HardCell means business! ”
    Shitwits. The terraform managers had run short of viable female clones and they’d sent this goon to keep a fucking eye on him! Two freaks on a rock. How was he supposed to make babies? Great . “Dispatch must hate one of us.”
    The beach was quiet now except for the surf. HardCell had tuned the planetoid’s manmade climate to tropical paradise and the sea had cooled to an endless rolling pound the temperature of arterial blood.
    His unwanted, unfemale cohort scowled at him for that, eyes alert. The transport drugs were wearing off.
    Don’t spit on the fresh meat .
    “Sorry.” Runt squinted across at the new cofarmer the corporate chuckleheads had sent. “Oi! Can you talk?”
    The gigantic man shook his skull and shivered again. His deep-set eyes and blunt features made him look like a husky, hairy infant.
    “Do you have a name?” Runt asked, crossing his arms.
    The behemoth nodded once but said nothing. He held a hand in front of his lips.
    “You can’t tell me?”
    The man stared blankly.
    Great. Just perfect.
    Apparently, his ears worked fine, but he was a mute. After eighteen months of solitary confinement with bugs and eels, Runt had landed a partner who couldn’t speak ?
    “Can you even write?” Runt’s sarcasm bit the air. Where had they dug this meatbox up?
    The naked stranger didn’t flinch. Using one blunt finger, he wrote something in the sand in blurry demi-Arabic, it looked like: Oqsun ? Ou’kzon, maybe? Runt’s Arabic was for shit.
    “Oks’ayn?” Runt scowled at the blurry cursive abjad. “Shit. What kind of name is that?”
    The thick digit tapped the name’s tail end, then tapped the broad chest.
    “Ox.” Runt looked up from all that intimidating brawn and hair, all too aware of his own shortcomings. “People call you Ox. Well, that makes sense. You are a big ugly beast.”
    But Ox turned to look at Runt with a solemn expression, bulldog eyes asking a question.
    His rugged face was creased, but unscarred. And the heavy stubble pushing through the square jaw was as dense as the whorls of hair over his heroic pectorals and gargantuan legs.
    How had HardCell Terraformation convinced this brute to slave on a backwater planetoid? He was too freakish to have been genetically engineered or vat-bred, and yet . . .
    Light mist had begun to crawl up from the tide pools, softening the sharp edge of the cliffs and the manmade structures nestled around the cove.
    “Yeah. Uh. I’m Runnan, but mostly I’m called Runt. For obvious reasons, yeah?” Runt dropped his eyes, embarrassed. His legs were still rigid with tension, and he relaxed them. No one was getting murdered tonight, apparently.
    Ox stared at him, face calm as granite. They needed to get indoors and pull some polyblankets before the big man went into shock. He was too huge to drag and Runt was too tired. The twilit ocean seemed unnaturally loud, like a crowd roaring behind a wall.
    Runt jerked his head by way of a suggestion. The second sun had fallen and a few glowing bee-moths had begun tending the crop terraces in the middle distance.
    Ox finally managed to rise. All the way up, towering over everything. He nodded, once.
    Odd’s Gods!
    Runt had to tip his head back to look at him. When he did, he realized that Ox wasn’t ugly at all, just unbelievably oversized.
    Gah.
    Ox stood easily two and one third meters tall; dense muscle wrapped his bones like tectonic armor. A narrow strip of pale skin and trimmed hair f ramed his heavy privates . . . that meant the rich tan was fake-bake, which meant he’d probably sold his sex recently. Most likely he’d been used for stud service in one of HardCell’s baby farms or a sex resort;only bodyworkers could afford such careful ultraviolet irradiation. Small wonder, with that DNA! Even soft, his bull cock was half the length and girth of Runt’s forearm.
    Runt looked away and felt a droplet of sweat slither down the side of his close-cropped head and down his neck. He was starting to get a complex. Not only had his bosses openly called him a misfit, they’d sent this fucking XYY troglodyte with a meter on him in height and enough testosterone for four colonists to kick his ass with size twenty-two