Natalie leapt to her desk and swung her console around. She hit the command prompt, and the screen blinked on. “It’s the NCQ585! They’ve been spotted leaving the Lornax Cluster.”
Kyan dashed to the door, and it opened for him. He and Natalie rushed down the passage to the lift and up to the command bridge. Commander Axilon paced back and forth in front of his screen with his arms crossed over his chest. “Flank them, Corporal. See if you can cut off their retreat.”
On the screen, a grey hulk of a space vessel lay against a backdrop of stars. It whizzed through the blackness and changed direction in the blink of an eye. It flitted back and forth with lightning speed. The Mixtidelin did its best to match its movements, but in the end, the Toom ship outmaneuvered it and disappeared into a nebulous cloud of space dust.
Commander Axilon drove his fist into his palm. “Curses! These Toom have all the advantage of technology. We’ll just have to get them next time.”
He caught sight of Natalie standing in the doorway. “Has Kyan briefed you on the situation?”
Natalie stepped forward. “Yes, he has. He told me I might have to go undercover again to rescue my friends, and I told him I would only do that if he went with me. We would play the same game we did before, where he pretends to take me to the gathering as a slave.”
The Commander nodded. “That’s the only way we can rescue your friends. I wouldn’t suggest it if there was any other way, and I wouldn’t send you into danger without Kyan to protect you.”
Natalie glanced over her shoulder. Kyan watched her from his station. Excitement burned her heart. “I’ll do it.”
“There is one more thing we have to arrange,” the Commander told her.
“Anything, Sir,” Natalie exclaimed. “I’ll do anything to find my friends and get them away from the Toom.”
“The gathering we have in mind takes place in two weeks,” Commander Axilon replied. “It takes place outdoors on the Magellan home world. It’s a large gathering spanning ten days, with thousands of representatives.”
Natalie’s eyes widened. “That’s bigger than anything I’ve seen before.”
The Commander nodded. “This is the biggest gathering in the galaxy. They hold it once a year on the Northern Promontory and all the representative come. It’s the place to see and be seen. The Toom never brought more than one slave at a time to a gathering. Maybe they worried about losing them. But if they have two Earth females in their possession, they’ll bring them both to this gathering.”
Natalie made a face. “Double the profit.”
“Exactly,” Commander Axilon replied.
Natalie brightened up. “But that means we can get both Amber and Melanie out at the same time.”
Commander Axilon held up his hand. “That’s the problem. One operative won’t be able to canvas the whole gathering alone.”
“There will be two of us down there—me and Kyan,” Natalie argued.
Kyan interrupted. “We won’t be able to separate. We have to keep up the appearance of master and slave. You have to stay with me at all times. Even with the two of us, we won’t be able to cover the whole Promontory in the available time.”
Natalie frowned. “So what are we going to do? Can you scan the gathering from orbit so we know where to look?”
“We could,” Commander Axilon replied. “But we would still need more than one pair of operatives to retrieve your friends without tipping off the other representatives. We’ll send two teams down. You and Kyan will form one team, and....”
Natalie interrupted with a gasp. “You can’t be thinking of sending Tina! She isn’t ready. She can barely leave her quarters after what happened to her. You can’t send her back.”
Kyan laid a hand on her arm. “Take it easy.”
Natalie ripped her arm out of his grasp. “Take it easy! We just risked our lives to rescue her from the Toom, and she’s been a recluse ever since. Now you want to send her back? She would be traumatized for life. What happened to all that flowery talk about helping us reintegrate into society? What happened to helping us recover from our experiences? It was all a bunch of hot air.”
Commander Axilon nodded. “I understand how you feel, but it’s the only way we can rescue the other two females. Perhaps if you explained that to your friend, she would return to the gathering on her own free will.”
Natalie smacked her lips. “You’re out of your mind if you expect me to even suggest something like that to Tina. Who do you have in mind for her partner—another Eblian?”
The man at the helm swung his chair around and stood up to face her. He was big, even for an Eqel, and the phosphorescent ceiling lights shone off his bald head. His leathery tanned skin bore the deep creases of his species, and the dark blue blood in them glistened when he breathed.
His heavy brows loomed over his black eyes, and the exposed holes of his nostrils occupied the center of his face where a nose ought to be. Every breath rumbled out of his enormous chest and filled she silence.
None of the Eqels Natalie had seen at the gatherings struck her as quite so foreboding as this one. Then again, she never really got that close to any of them. Sure they bought her along with all the others, but she never before faced any of them as real, flesh-and-blood men. Not only was he flesh and blood, he had designee on her friend—the friend whose well-being was Natalie's personal responsibility.
Now the rough look, the burning eyes, the hairless skull and the gleaming veins covering his body sent a shiver through her bones. He wore only a crossed leather harness over his massive chest, and his shoulders bulged on either side of the straps with thick ropes of muscle.
Natalie stared at him. “You can’t be serious!”
“Arno has been undercover at the gatherings before,” Kyan told her. “He knows how to blend in and he knows what to expect.”
“He was with the Police who busted up the gathering where we rescued Tina,” Natalie pointed out. “The other representatives will recognize him.”
“He was wearing his riot helmet,” Kyan replied. “No one will recognize him. He’s the perfect choice for Tina’s partner.”
Natalie rounded on him with clenched fists. “He won’t be Tina’s partner because Tina isn’t going. That’s all there is to it. End of discussion.”
Kyan shook his head. “You and I can’t go to the gathering alone. We need at least one more master-slave pair. It’s the only way we can get the other two Earth females out.”
“You just said it yourself,” Natalie shot back. “You called her a slave. You want to make her a slave again after she just escaped from the Toom with her life barely intact. How can you even think of doing that?”
“She won’t be a slave,” Kyan replied. “We won’t be making her a slave again any more than we’ll be making you a slave again. She’ll be going back of her own free will for the express purpose of rescuing your other friends from captivity.”
“If you really think she would sacrifice her freedom to go back,” Natalie snapped, “then by all means, go ahead and ask her. I can tell you right now what she’s going to say.”
Commander Axilon exchanged glances with Kyan. Then Kyan stepped closer to her. “Actually, we need you to talk to her. We need you to convince her to go back. The mission won’t succeed without her.”
Natalie’s mouth hung open. Then she threw up her hands whirled away. “Forget it! I wouldn’t even suggest she go back. You know how fragile she is. She can barely leave her quarters, and she won’t even speak to anyone besides me. Asking her to pretend to be some behemoth’s slave and go back to the gatherings is the absolute last thing I would ever do to her.”
Kyan started to say, “Natalie....” But she didn’t wait to listen to him. She stormed off the bridge.
She didn’t wait for the lift. She skimmed down the access ladder to the next level and strode down the hall toward the medical bay. Who did these people think they were, to play God with a person’s life? A male was a male, no matter which corne
r of the galaxy you found him in. They didn’t care about any female’s feelings. They couldn’t understand how hard it was to yank a woman away from her home planet and throw her headfirst into sexual slavery with vicious space traders like the Toom.
Now they wanted Tina to go back! Never! And they wanted Natalie to do their dirty work to convince her to throw her life away all over again. They wanted her to strip Tina of the progress she fought to make since they rescued her. Well, Natalie would never do that to her friend. No one understood better than Natalie what Tina went through at the hands of the Toom. She held Tina’s hand every step of the way since she came on board the Mixtidelin, and she would defend her friend with her very life if necessary.
Chapter 2
Natalie turned a corner by the medical bay, but she stopped at the entrance. Maybe she should go check on Tina after all, just to find out how she was doing. Tina ought to know what these Galactic Police were up to, in case they decided to send some other, more willing stooge to convince Tina to go undercover.
She retraced her steps to the crew quarters and found the compartment assigned to Tina. She touched the door panel and waited for the signal to translate into the room. Natalie heard the alert even through the Mixtidelin’s solid steel walls. It sounded once, twice, and again a third time, but Tina still didn’t answer the door. She didn’t even call out to unlock it.
Natalie smacked her lips. This happened all the time. She pressed her thumb against the door panel. “Medical override.”
As Natalie expected, Tina wasn’t dead on the floor. She hadn’t strangled herself with her belt. She sat on the couch in front of the window with her eyes fixed on the stars. She didn’t turn around when Natalie entered the room. She sat there, day after day, unresponsive to everyone except Natalie. And she only responded to Natalie when she overrode the door lock to enter her compartment and sat in front of her and forced her to talk.
She didn’t take her eyes off the stars when Natalie sat down. What did she see out there? Did she see her old home on Earth, the one to which she could never go back? Was she hopelessly damaged?
The Toom regeneration beds altered her beyond the point where she could call herself human. Of everything the Toom did to her, this cut the deepest. The Galactic Police always referred to Natalie and her friends as Earth females, but they weren’t anymore. The Toom robbed them of their humanity. Their own species would treat them as aliens if they ever set foot on their home world again.
Natalie leaned back into the couch. Even if Earth never accepted them again, human company gave her comfort. She and Tina shared the horrendous experience of being abducted by the Toom and kept captive on their ship for months. No matter how much she cared for Kyan, no one could share that experience with her. That’s why she had to find Amber and Melanie. Whatever else happened, she had to bring them back.
Natalie gazed out at the stars, too. They didn’t reveal their secrets to anyone, especially not to her. She drifted on clouds of star particles. She had to use all her strength to anchor herself in to the present. “What’s on your mind?”
Tina didn’t answer.
Natalie studied her face. In the three years Natalie knew Tina on earth, nothing rattled her. She could handle anything. And now look at her. She didn’t even answer when Natalie spoke to her, and she never set foot outside her quarters if she could avoid it. Natalie cringed at the sight of her. “I’m worried about you.”
Tina still wouldn’t look her in the eye. “I’m okay. You don’t have to worry about me.”
“I wish I could do something to make this easier for you,” Natalie went on. “Getting you away from the Toom has been so hard on you.”
Tina brushed her bangs out of her eyes. “I just can’t believe it all happened the way I remember it. It seems like it happened to someone else. And now here I am, out in space, and I’ll never get back to Earth again. This isn’t what I had in mind for my life.”
“It’s terrible, I know,” Natalie replied.
“It’s actually not so terrible,” Tina countered. “I can think of worse things that could happen. It’s just such a big surprise. I didn’t expect it. I can’t really get my head around it.”
Natalie’s head shot up. “What do you mean, it’s not so terrible? What could be worse than this? We were abducted by aliens and sold into sex slavery.”
“I know it’s pretty bad,” Tina replied. “But at least my family is okay back on Earth. None of them is dead or hurt. My family home didn’t burn down. I would rather be here now than for something like that to happen. At least I’m the only person this is happening to.”
“Actually,” Natalie murmured, “you’re not the only person this is happening to. Amber and Melanie are still out there somewhere. We have to rescue them.”
“Yeah,” Tina replied. “I’ve been thinking about them a lot lately.”
“You don’t have to worry,” Natalie went on. “You won’t ever have to go back to the Toom. We’re working on a plan to rescue Amber and Melanie, but you won’t ever have to put yourself in danger again. I promise you that.”
Tina turned her head and fixed Natalie with bright green eyes. “What do you mean—we’re working on a plan? You’re not a member of the Galactic Police Force—at least, you haven’t told me you are.”
Natalie blushed. “No, I’m not, but I went undercover with Kyan to raid the gathering and get you out. We’re going to do the same thing to rescue Amber and Melanie.”
Tina’s eyes flashed. “You’re going back? You’re going to risk everything you’ve accomplished here, just to help Amber and Melanie?”
“Sure,” Natalie replied. “I would risk a lot more than this to save them.”
“What are you going to do?” Tina asked. “Tell me everything.”
“The Mixtidelin tracked the ship that abducted us,” Natalie replied. “The Toom are going to a big gathering on the Northern Promontory of the Magellan home world, and they’ll bring Amber and Melanie there. We’ll go undercover to find them. It’s a big job, because this gathering is much bigger than anything you or I ever went to. Commander Axilon wants to send two teams to cover the area. He even had the wacky idea to send you down there, but I told him there was no way I would let that happen. Protecting you is just as important as rescuing Amber and Melanie.”
Tina stared straight into Natalie’s eyes. “He wants to send me back to the gatherings?”
Natalie nodded. “He wants to pair you up with a big Eqel they’ve got on the crew. His name is Arno. He was on the team that rescued you, but he was wearing a riot helmet during the raid. You wouldn’t recognize him.”
“And Commander Axilon wants to pair me with this Arno to go to the gathering?” Tina spoke so softly Natalie could hardly hear her. “He wants us to pretend to be master and slave, and put on a show for the representatives?”
Natalie cradled her head in her hand. “Don’t talk about it. It’s too terrible to think about.”
“But you’re going,” Tina pointed out. “You’ll be with Kyan, and doing all the same things the other masters and slaves are doing. You’ll be performing for the representatives the same way you did with Fo and Te.”
“Yeah, but....” Natalie began.
“If it’s not too terrible for you,” Tina replied, “it’s not too terrible for me.”
Natalie stared at her. “What are you saying? You can’t seriously be considering going back.”
“Why not?” Tina asked.
“Because,” Natalie stammered. “You’re fragile. You haven’t reintegrated since you left the Toom. You should stay here, where it’s safe, so you can get your life back. You can’t throw yourself into danger so soon, when you aren’t even stable enough to handle life on board this ship.”
Tina shook her head and looked back out the window. “I’m not fragile. I’m lost. I got used to my life with the Toom, and then you and the Police Force came along and yanked me out of that.”
“Tina....” Natalie began.
Tina cut her off with a wave of her hand. “I’m not blaming you. You did the best thing you could by rescuing me the way you did, and I’ll always be grateful for the risk you took. But I didn’t want to be rescued. I don’t think I could explain this to anyone in the world but you, but I enjoyed my life with the Toom. I enjoyed the gatherings, and I enjoyed my training sessions with Fo and Te. And....” She paused. “I especially enjoyed the regeneration beds.”
Natalie stared at her. “You did?”
The faintest hint of smile crept over Tina’s face. It was the first time Natalie saw her smile since they left Earth. “Didn’t you? Didn’t you enjoy it, too? You can tell me. I won’t think less of you. I’ve never experienced anything like the bliss I felt in the regeneration bed, and now I’ll never experience it again. I never knew my body could feel such intense passion and excitement.”
Natalie blinked. “I thought I was the only one.”
Tina gazed out at the stars. “It sounds terrible to say the Toom kidnapped us from Earth and used us for pleasure and profit. It sounds awful to say they sold us to the highest bidder at the gatherings, and the representatives used us from every angle for hours and days on end, and then the Toom regenerated us with those beds. They modified our cellular structure to suit their purpose, and they changed us so we’re no longer human. It sounds awful, but I loved it. I loved every minute of it, and I would give anything to go back.”
Natalie sighed. “I know. If I didn’t have Kyan to keep me grounded, I would probably feel the same way.”
“I don’t know how you live on this ship without a regeneration bed,” Tina went on. “I don’t know how you can live without that pure ecstasy and joy. My body aches for it. I don’t think I can live without it.”
“But you wouldn’t have a regeneration bed if you went undercover at the gathering,” Natalie pointed out. “You would have to perform with Arno without the stimulating effect of the bed to boost your sensations.”
Tina shook her head. “It would still be worth it. It would be the best thing I could do. And like you said, in the end, we would get Amber and Melanie back.”
Alien Romance Box Set: Eblian Mates Complete Series (Books 1 - 3): A Sci-fi Alien Warrior Invasion Abduction Romance Page 9