Cloned their bodies for profit.

"You explain it Momo, you're the doctor." The tall Helcion tells her companion.

"Sure, sure Captain." Momo agrees and turns to me with a sigh. Her voice is much higher pitched than the captain's, almost childish. "Well bitches mean riches here in the Zeta sector as everyone says. That is to say a female **** gets three or four times the price at Jafar or down on Alescia than selling a prick back home on Helcion four. Trouble was all those escape pods we swept up were full of pricks. Some off your ship and some from the raiders"

Momo, apparently the medical officer on whatever ship this was spoke slowly with exaggerated patience. I got the impression she did not rate males, or pricks as she called them intelligence very highly. It was going to get annoying very quickly if she was going to womansplain everything to me as if I was stupid. Especially as the skintight ruanite leotard, squeaky voice and pink hair made her look and sound like a bimbo hologirl.

"Anyways, on account of me being a real genius with nanobot programming and healing pods we could fix that real easy." Momo continued. "We just had to substitute yours and the rest of the pricks DNA and with something superior and though I say it myself there ain't no hotter female DNA in the galaxy than Helcion. So when the nanobots go to work the just remake everything to the new DNA."

"You made all the survivors copies of the Captain?" I asked incredulously.

"Of course not stupid." Momo says in exasperation. "We all donated some of the good stuff. So there's a two or three of the Captain and two or three of the rest of the crew too."

"But you can't just change men into women because you can sell them for more." I protested.

"Are you sure it was this one that is a grav drive engineer?" The Captain asked Momo. "We obviously can, you just explained it. Is she stupid?"

"Nah, I think she meant ethically or morally or some shit like that rather than technologically." Momo answered.

"Ethically, morally?" The Captain frowned for a moment as though having trouble understanding those words. "Answer still stands, we obviously can. But enough about that, listening to that whining coming from a **** with my face is making me nauseous. You just shut those sweet lips and fix the grav drive. You dig?"

I nodded rather sullenly, resenting being referred to as a **** but wary of upsetting the Captain any further. Despite the Helcion's assumption of their superiority the pair had given away some important facts. If each of them had been the DNA template for two or three escape pod survivors it meant the slaves on this ship outnumbered the crew by that ratio. The pursuit ship had a crew of twelve and the raider fighters were one man ships. So by my reckoning that meant the Helcion crew only numbered six, or there abouts. Also if any of them had much knowledge of grav drives they never would have got me out the healing tube.

"Yeah, I dig...Captain." I said, then I held up my wrists. "So how about taking these off. You said I wasn't to be sold if I agreed to get the ship running."

"Haha, no!" The Captain chuckled with amusement. "What I said was you fix the grav drive and then we wouldn't sell you as a ****, you ain't fixed shit yet."