Second Earth: Part One (Second Earth Serial Book 1)
Page 8
My mind was truly blown. They had a damn landing strip! These primitive bears had a landing strip for aircraft. Nobody back home, human or otherwise, would believe what we were seeing. It just wasn’t fathomable.
“Welcome to your new home. We have beds, food and television,” the bear said, turning from the controls and facing me and my crew, who were all a little terrified. Dale was staring wide-eyed at the bear. Jess, my second-in-command was looking at the floor in disbelief, Raj was staring at me and I was shaking my head.
“How the hell do you have all these things? What’s the meaning of this? You Ursines are supposed to be big and dumb. You’re not supposed to have technology. You’re not supposed to be able to land ships. And you certainly aren’t supposed to have cities that look like they belong on Earth!” I said, walking toward the Ursine, and giving him a full bodied look. I examined every inch of its big brutish body. The other Ursines watched on in curiosity. Their faces didn’t hold expressions like human faces did. It was difficult to gage whether they were angry, sad or happy. You had to stare into their eyes. And even then, it was difficult to work out.
“You seem surprised?” the leader bear said to me, raising his paws slightly from his sides.
“I am,” I replied. “I’ve never seen something like you.”
The Ursine in front of me, along with its three other friends made a weird sound in unison. It sounded like chirping at first. But then I recognized what it really was. They were laughing.
“I don’t know why you so surprised. That is problem with you humans. You humans too stupid for own good. You humans think that you are center of universe. Universe doesn’t care about you. It never did. It also doesn’t care about us. It never will. Do a favor to yourself humans. Forget about what you think you are. But remember what you are up against.”
Suddenly, we were being pushed out of the ship forcefully by the bear creatures. It was like a switch had gone off in their heads, and now they were angry. I didn’t know if it was something I had said or done. But I knew that we weren’t coming onto this planet as guests. We were coming onto this planet as prisoners.
They frog-marched us off the ship. We’d waited a few minutes for the airlocks to open and the ramp to go down. It made for an uncomfortable feeling among me and the three crewmen by my side. We were then prodded down the ramp. The air around us was muggy and hard to breathe. It had a certain smell to it. A smell that I wasn’t all too familiar with. I couldn’t really pin point the odor, but if I had to describe it, I’d say that it smelt like burnt meat. Not a great omen while stepping foot onto an alien planet for the first time. It was an even bigger omen considering we weren’t walking around freely. It was obvious from the very moment we set foot on their soil that we were going to be treated like dogs.
A group of bear creatures, just like the ones that were escorting us down the ramp were awaiting our arrival. One of them looked remarkably different compared to the rest of them. It was wearing a black hood and it was holding some weird looking energy lassos. They were transparent, yet looked like electric thread at the same time. I didn’t quite get what they were until I reached the bottom of the ramp. The bear in the black hood grabbed me by both arms and snapped the energy lasso around my wrists. The electric thread tightened and looped itself around my arms, binding my wrists like handcuffs. The bear pushed me away and I was escorted through a crowd of Ursines. These aliens were jeering and chirping at me. I turned my head and saw the black hooded bear slap the electric lassos on my crew. Each one of them was bound and pushed toward me.
After a few seconds, all of my crew were now back at my side. We were pushed and prodded by the bear creatures until we reached some sort of building. We were on the outskirts of their city and didn’t have much of an opportunity to walk through it before we were taken into a building. From what I did manage to see of the city, it looked just like any regular Earth city from the pre-space travel era. It had billboards, cars and pedestrians. But instead of the pedestrians being people, the city was full of bears. It was such a surreal sight. To know that there was a civilization in space that was more or less mimicking another was astounding. I wondered if they even knew what Earth looked like, or if they had an idea of how similar their cities looked to ours.
But I didn’t have time to ask any questions. The Ursines escorted us through the building, which looked like some sort of prison. It had cells with metal doors on them. The metal doors had small square flaps in them, just like a prison cell. We were walking on a platform, just like a catwalk in a cell block. On the far end was another hooded bear. He was also holding something. It looked like pillows and blankets. We reached the bear, and he handed us a pillow and a thin blanket each. He then opened a cell door and pushed us all in. The cell door closed behind us and everything went dark.
We were not only prisoners on an unknown and hostile planet, but we were prisoners to the facts. Why were they treating us like this? What could they gain from locking us up? And what the hell was Pilgrim Tech thinking, giving a technologically advanced ship to a sub-tech species like the Ursines? What possible good could come from such a thing?
It was rattling me something fierce. My mind was rushing with unprofessional thoughts of vengeance and violence. I could hear the collective fear of my crew around me. We didn’t even say a word.
We just sat there in silence until everything sank in.
Stasis, out now on Kindle! Search L.D.P. Samways, or Luis Samways on the Kindle store now!
More books by this Author:
Out Now:
Second Earth Part One
Dirty Cash
Stasis (Alpha Ship One book 1)
The People Outside
Grave
The Evil Indie Author
A Very Machete Christmas
Wide Awake
Nails In A Coffin
The Casual Killer
Plenty Of Pain
25th Of Dismember
Ice Cold Case
All F**KED UP
Stranger At The Door
No Pulse
Other Series:
Beacon Of Light: Season One
Das Death I
Das Death II
Standalone short stories:
Cobwebs
Death Roulette
Killer Christmas
Coming soon:
Episode 2 Second Earth Feb 15th 2016
Destroyer of Worlds – March 2016