Skin harvesting on a pretty blue planet

G’lak T’ung really thought the humans were disgusting, ever since he’d been on the expedition that surveyed the pretty blue planet they inhabited.

And he certainly couldn’t imagine why so many on the Thringian home world would want to wear things made out of their skin.

But they did. Belts, mandible covers, and this year, stink-sac harnesses made out of human leather were particularly in vogue, even if a few bleeding-knark entertainers protested the fashion fad.

G’lak T’ung preferred a synthetic combat carapace, but then again, he was assigned to a harvest team in the northern quadrant of the most isolated continental mass. Though their puny human defenses had been easily overrun during the post-survey phase of their colonization, there were many humans who still had primitive slug-throwing weapons available to them. Primitive, but effective at killing the unwary Thringian skin-harvester.

G’lak doubted the Thringians who wore the skin would want to do his job. And he thought the main reason the protesters (and the wimpy gorilloids in the Euronga system) didn’t like the human skin trade, was because the best skin came from the human larvae; and of course, the only real way to get the skin without ruining it was bashing their fragile heads in.

If he was being honest, G’lak had to admit that it really bothered him when they looked up at him with their hopeless two eyes.

But then he had larvae at home that had to eat.

Ahem, some authors require sustenance too: check out one of my novels, Marvellous Hairy or The Amadeus Net.

Alltop must eat your clicks. Originally published, August 2008.