She was about ready to weep herself when those were brought out. Everyone else dealt with the horror of it in their own way—some cursing, some crying, some glaring stonily at the aliens as if they’d like to rip their hearts out.
Water was brought out after the buckets.
Everyone decided to wait a while before they indulged in something that was going to lead pretty quickly to initiating the buckets.
When Niki’s feet began to feel like blocks of ice, she sat down on the floor and tried to rub circulation into her feet to warm them. The metal decking just seemed to suck the heat right out of them no matter how hard they worked to stay warm. Finally, desperate and still feeling stupid, Niki started jogging to generate some warmth. Most of the other women followed suit.
As they jogged by them the guards fell into blank faced stupors.
As if they’d been hypnotized.
It was all the bouncing breasts, Niki thought wryly.
Taurin and Jurik arrived and stopped the parade by stepping in front of them. He glared at them fiercely until his gaze dropped from her face to her chest or, more precisely, the nipples tenting her shirt. She crossed her arms over her chest—which broke the mesmerization. When he met her gaze again, she looked at him hopefully. “C-cold. I’m freezing. We all are.”
Reaching toward him tentatively, she grasped the fabric of his sleeve. “Clothes? Please?”
He looked down when she reached to pinch the fabric and then met her gaze again.
She hesitated and then reached again, that time settling her hand on his. “Cold.”
He jumped when he felt her icy fingers, but when she snatched her hand back, he caught her wrist and examined her hand. His lips tightened. “What idiot chose this place for them? She is freezing.” He lifted his head and saw all of the women were pale white to blue and shivering as Ni-cole was. “They will die if we leave them here.”
“I am the idiot,” Muck growled challengingly. “What is wrong with it?”
Taurin glanced at Jurik, but he was focused on feeling as much of Ni-cole’s skin as he could.
Taurin punched his shoulder and he released her. “It is too cold for them,” he responded to Muck. “They need more clothing to keep them warm or they must be moved.”
In truth, it was premeditated cruelty as far as he could see or total stupidity. He would not wish to leave an animal in such conditions. There were buckets for their needs, for Jebel’s sake! A common watering bucket guaranteed to spread disease if any had one.
Muck was silent for so long Taurin thought he had decided to ignore him, but he discovered fairly quickly that he had no such intention. He wanted to get up close and personal.
He stalked into the area and right up to Taurin and got in his face. “You dare to call me stupid?” he bellowed loud enough to blow Taurin’s hair back.
“I beg pardon, commander,” he said through gritted teeth. “I had no clue when I called the one responsible an idiot that it was you. I thought it was one of my men.”
Muck frowned, apparently turning that over in his mind for flaws and realized fairly quickly that Taurin had not apologized at all.
He had begged pardon, though, and Muck decided to leave it at that. Turning, he beckoned to Ni-cole. “Come here, my little pretty,” he said in a purring voice Taurin had never heard.
He stiffened, clenched his hands into fists and struggled with the urge to grab the bastard and choke the life out of him.
Nicole glanced from the frog man to Taurin and then Jurik. Neither would meet her gaze. Both were staring coldly into the distance, but she saw Taurin’s hands were clenched so hard his knuckles were white.
She had more of a desire to run away than approach the creepy alien, but she was pretty sure that would not end well for her or Taurin or Jurik. Gathering her nerve, she moved closer to him and held her breath while he felt her up.
“It is her hands that are cold,” Taurin pointed out.
“And her feet,” Jurik added.
Muck made a sound that was sort of like a creepy laugh when the two giant aliens spoke.
And then he took her hand and squeezed it.
“Where do you suggest we put them, hmmm?” he asked in that same purring voice that Taurin found more repulsive than anything he had experienced of Muck thus far.
In truth, he had no clue—only that the women would very likely succumb if nothing was done. He did notice, however, that Muck did not offer to allow them to get their clothing.
That was hardly the best solution in any case.
“We will give them our quarters,” he responded after a lengthy pause and added when Muck whipped a look at him, “we are more accustomed to less than ideal conditions than they are. We will stay here.”
Muck narrowed his eyes at him speculatively. “Actually, I had been toying with the idea of offering the females as mates. You and your men are way overdue for some sort of … recognition for your … loyalty to the Delizo Empire.”
Taurin’s throat closed as if Muck had wrapped his hands around it and was trying to squeeze the life out of him.
On some level, he knew that was exactly what the bastard was doing, that it was a test.
He liked testing people.
Unfortunately, Taurin had been thrown so deeply into shock he had no wits to plumb the depths of the bastard’s depravity and figure out what course to take to evade the death trap he had set.
“Your … generosity overwhelms me,” he said in a voice he hardly recognized as his own. “They are not madrone, however much they look like us, though, and there could be no mating.”
Muck stared at him blankly. “I was offering them for fucking,” he said testily, but then looked thoughtful. “Although … you are none of you young anymore. It would not be a bad thing to breed more … warriors while their sires were still vigorous enough to train them.”
It was the fear that Muck might order his scientists to take them apart and study them to discover if it was or was not possible that held his tongue between his teeth. He bowed. “You are most gracious. We will do what we can to breed fine warriors for the Delizo Empire.”
Jurik gagged for him, pardoned himself, and departed quickly.
“It is settled then. You can keep them warm in your quarters. And they will need no more than they have at the moment.”
Taurin managed to curl his lips into a semblance of a smile, bowed again, grasped Ni-cole by one arm and departed with her before the bastard could change his mind. He paused when he reached the door and addressed his men. “I assume you heard. Choose a woman for your duo and take her to your quarters to keep her safe and comfortable.”
He had no real hope that his men—no doubt in the throes of delirium at this point—would grasp the subtle hint to protect the women, not to maul them, but he could do nothing else at the moment with Muck watching.
Not for a moment did he believe the lying bastard about giving the women to them for their ‘loyalty’ to take as mates. He was not even convinced that Muck had meant what he had said about breeding them.
Although that sounded far more like the creature he was more familiar with than he wanted to be.
The one thing he was certain of was that it was an entrapment of some kind. And that they would deeply regret it if they took his word at face value.
* * * *
Niki was alarmed at the turn of events. She had no idea, of course, of what was said between the giant aliens and the frog alien, but there was tension in both—in all of the giant aliens—and anger and cold acceptance/capitulation on Taurin’s part.
And, into that hostile equation, she sensed something … treacherous about the frog alien’s body language.
Maybe she was reading something in to it that wasn’t there. She was repelled by the reptilian aliens—especially the one that was apparently the leader, but she had gotten the sense that Taurin distrusted him.
And, of course, she knew him no better.
He could be worse than the re
ptilian alien for all she knew.
She didn’t know what else she could have done, though. They were cold beyond just a little discomfort. She was close to hyperthermia herself and she didn’t doubt that many of the women were and some possibly in worse case.
She didn’t know whether to be relieved or more unnerved when she discovered the women were all being escorted by pairs of warrior aliens along a corridor and then through a door and up a flight of stairs to another level.
It was noticeably warmer, though, and she began to feel some of her extremities thawing from the deep freeze. The corridor on the upper deck was narrower and Jurik dropped behind her and Taurin as they passed one door after another and finally stopped before one. Taurin placed his palm on a panel and the door opened.
It was living quarters, she saw, and contained two very large bunks and very little besides that beyond a single easy chair and two metal trunks.
Taurin hesitated once inside and finally guided her to one of the bunks and urged her onto it.
Niki’s belly had done a summersault the moment she realized it was sleeping quarters and probably theirs. She cast an uneasy glance at them, swallowed a little convulsively and then climbed onto the bunk.
Taurin didn’t meet her gaze. Instead, he grabbed a thin, folded blanket and thrust it at her and then straightened and moved to the easy chair.
Jurik settled on the other bunk with his back to the wall.
Niki glanced from one to the other and finally unfolded the blanket and wrapped it around herself.
The three of them sat in stiff, uncomfortable silence for a few minutes and then Taurin rather violently removed his translator/communicator from his head and tossed it onto a small table beside the chair.
Jurik followed suit. “You think it is a trap?”
“If you do not think so, I wish you would convince me,” Taurin growled.
Jurik glanced at Ni-cole several times and finally moved to the bunk where she sat and took her hand, pressed it between his and then released it and grasped her foot, curling both hands around it for a long moment. “She is better now, I think—not as cold. She is not shaking.” He said nothing for a moment. “Not with cold, at any rate, I do not think.”
Taurin scrubbed a hand over his face tiredly. “Do you recall our first mating?”
Jurik uttered a snort of amusement. “Not with a great deal of clarity, unfortunately.”
Taurin studied the toe of his boots. “That is the ‘conditioning’ if I am not mistaken. Soon we will have no memories at all. And I am fair certain that I will be summoned after this day’s work for another session.”
Jurik nodded. “And then our world will be truly dead and gone.”
Taurin did not argue the point. He was as certain as he had ever been that Muck had all but confessed that he had destroyed their world—after he had held that over them for so long to keep them in line. “Can anything the bastard says be trusted, though? Was it a deliberate ‘slip’, do you think? Something else to slip us up?”
“Mayhap. He knows as long as we have doubt—either way—we are trapped.”
“We have been neatly snared with the females, I am thinking,” Taurin muttered. “Already I cannot bring myself to abandon her to that bastard’s tender mercies when she should mean nothing to me. And I would not mate the pretty little thing if I could, though Jebel help me I want to so badly I can taste it. She would be more vulnerable if she was heavy with child and of no more use to the Empire once she had dropped it …. And then I would have the blood of two helpless innocents on my hands.”
“Gods! Even that bastard would not …. A child would need a mother to nurture it or it could not survive—not even ours.”
“Our spawn would mean no more to the Empire than we do. They have no pity for their own. They would have less than that for ours.”
“Will they be better off, do you think, if he sells them at the slave market?” Jurik asked pensively.
For a moment, he thought Taurin might go ballistic, but he tamped the rage with an effort. “Do not remind me of how helpless I am or you will find yourself alone.”
Jurik stared at him in disbelief, realizing in that moment that they were, indeed, standing on the edge of a precipice if Taurin could speak of leaving him an only. He could no more survive without Taurin than vice versa. They were duo. “What of the others?”
Taurin shook his head. “They must live with their conscience. I warned them. I cannot make them guard themselves from … this.” He was silent a moment. “In any case we are only awaiting Muck’s next move. If it becomes a case of damned if we do, more damned if we do not, then we will have to choose the road of lesser evil. I will have to abandon my lofty principles of protecting the woman by leaving her untouched, and we will … deal with it the best we can.”
* * * *
As uneasy as Niki had been when she realized they’d taken her to their sleeping quarters, she was … disconcerted when all they did was toss a blanket at her.
Boy did they ever know how to make a girl feel undesirable, she thought unhappily.
Not that she had wanted anything to happen!
Sure they were gorgeous giant aliens like Annette had pointed out, but she’d seen plenty of gorgeous regular Earth men that she hadn’t jumped at the chance to screw.
But she felt very … deflated that they’d brought her to their sleeping quarters and then basically ignored her.
In her experience intimacy always led to more misunderstandings and tension, not less—mostly because she became emotionally entangled—or detached—and neither ever seemed to mesh with her partner’s goals, so it was better that they hadn’t, she was sure.
Her situation was fraught with enough danger as it was.
She had no idea why she didn’t feel like she was a lucky girl.
She decided that it was because she just didn’t trust her situation. She wasn’t convinced that they really meant to leave her alone. They’d boarded the ship—taken everyone and everything. How could she relax and believe she was safe?
Get warm.
Because as soon as she thawed and began to feel warm, she relaxed in spite of every effort to remain alert and on guard and, little by little, she sank toward the bedding beneath her until she was lying on her side, curled into a tight, protective ball and then she simply winked out.
“She has fallen asleep,” Jurik observed neutrally. “Do you think she is alright?”
Taurin sent him a wry look. “I do not. I think she will not be alright again.”
Jurik frowned. “I meant ….”
“I know what you meant.” He was silent a moment. “We did not yank her out. I assume the pod she was in was controlled by the ship’s computer and performed as designed. In which case, she should be. Mayhap she is weakened by it, though, and must have a little time to recover? I honestly do not know, but I have observed the others and most seem to me to be weak since they were removed. I can only say we will know in a few days’ time.”
He thought they would live.
He thought they might be better off if they did not.
But he also thought that they wanted to live else they would have tried harder to die in the capture.
Chapter Five
The room was darkened when Niki woke, but she discovered after a few moments that her eyes had adjusted and the room wasn’t as dark as a cave—as it should have been. There was some low level source of light coming from somewhere—enough that she could see that one of the alien men was sleeping on the other bunk and the second in the easy chair where Taurin had been seated when she fell asleep.
Both of them were stark naked.
She wouldn’t have realized it, though, if Taurin hadn’t made some movement that ‘woke’ the lights. When they flickered on, he stood up from the chair, stretched all over and then crossed the room to a tall locker.
A jolt went through her when her eyes adjusted to the sudden brightness and revealed him in all his glory.
&n
bsp; And it was glory, she reluctantly admitted.
She had thought he must be exceptionally well built, but it had also occurred to her that the suit he wore might have enhanced his appearance.
That suspicion was proven false … and then some.
Despite the fact that his hair was very long—at least as long as hers—and inky black, he had little or no body hair.
Except around his phallus.
That had just jumped right out at her, snagging her undivided attention until he’d turned away and headed to the locker.
Like the rest of him, it looked human enough to be human.
Except disturbingly super sized like the rest of him.
It was … startling and confusing to find a race that at least appeared so human.
It certainly supported the theory of panspermia—the same building blocks of life spreading all over the universe, from planet to planet, which meant that their world would have to be a close twin of Earth to produce twins of such human-like evolution.
Otherwise they would’ve looked like the frog men.
Who actually looked more like snakes except she hated snakes and didn’t want to think in those terms. Frogs she could deal with and just be a little freaked out. Snakes really, really made her skin crawl.
She wondered if they could possibly have evolved on the same planet.
Her gut told her no, but then how would they have gotten together? Become … allies, she supposed.
Which confused her, because it was clear that the giants were warriors and that would suggest they were also the ones most inclined toward conquest.
But the lizard people had the technology and were also aggressive? Hence the alliance?
Taurin returned to the chair when he had gathered the clothing he wanted, dropped them onto the floor and began a series of stretches that absolutely hypnotized Niki. It was only when he sat, and she noticed movement behind him that she winked back to reality. Then she discovered Jurik had gotten up and was selecting clothing. He returned to the bunk, dropped the clothes as Taurin had—except his landed on the bunk—and then commenced the same stretches and twists that Taurin had—and that sent her into a trance all over again.
Alien Warriors: Invasion Page 4