by Renee Rose
It wasn’t a question, so she didn’t respond.
“Why did you pretend you couldn’t understand us when we found you?”
Chapter Three
Four months earlier
CASS
The pirates had beaten her severely, but she still refused to enter the code that would override her lock on the ship’s controls and allow them to land on any planet they chose.
She knew once the ship touched down, they’d form a raiding party. She couldn’t forget the havoc they’d wreaked on Daan 57. When they returned to the ship after that raid, the monsters bragged about the Daanan males they slaughtered as they tried to defend their homes. The females they raped.
Locked in her quarters, enraged at her helpless, she tried to block out the screams of the ones they’d dragged back to her ship. The pirates had crammed them into the hold along with her crew members, planning to use them as entertainment on the voyage then sell them as slaves on another world.
She’d been thrown in with the others, at first. Though they hated to admit it, her captors discovered they needed her expertise on the bridge. Her vessel, the Luna, was a Class IV Nebula Cruiser, part of a new fleet outfitted with technology far beyond their capabilities. After their leader dragged her to the bridge and threatened to harm the hostages unless she cooperated, she agreed to teach them how to use the auto-navigation system. The pirates found a nearby solar system with several occupied planets and headed toward it. The first chance she got, she secretly set a new course and locked the controls. Better to doom everyone on board to die in the empty expanse she’d condemned them to at the edge of the known Universe than to let them destroy another world.
The pirates had a taste of her stubborn resolve when the cruiser came within range of a new target. By now, the course she’d set had taken them beyond the galaxies she’d studied at the Academy. Her navigator was a prisoner in the hold with the rest of the crew, so she had to depend on the meager information in the on-board mapping system to identify the planet as Cephaia. Scans detected precious mineral deposits and multiple life forms, including creatures classified as sentient beings.
The pirates’ leader, Magnus, a rail-thin Earther with only one hand, ordered her to engage the landing protocols. She refused. Enraged, he backhanded her across the face, sending her crashing into the console. Cass swiped a trickle of blood running down her face and staggered to her feet. She lifted her chin and squared her shoulders, assuming her best military posture.
His eyes raked her up and down and he gave her a cold smile.
“Engage the landing protocol, Commander.” He made her rank sound like an insult.
She shook her head. “No.”
And so the game began. Magnus took great delight in delivering the beating himself, one-handed, as though he needed to prove to his crew he was still in charge. He’d give the command, she’d refuse. In the beginning, two other men held her arms behind her back. Later, they held her sagging body upright so he could keep punching her.
It was only when Magnus dragged her first mate in and held a photon Taser to the woman’s head that she gave in. When she looked into Mandy’s eyes, saw the terror and the pleading there, she couldn’t let them murder her crew member in cold blood. She stumbled to the control panel and entered the code then slumped to the floor, feigning unconsciousness.
It wasn’t far from the truth. She slid in and out of the darkness, as snatches of their conversation pierced the fog around her brain. When they left the bridge, she crawled to her command post.
Opening the hidden compartment under her seat required two methods of identification. Voice recognition and a palm scan, complete with a pulse, to make sure her hand hadn’t simply been cut off to use. In an emergency, sitting in her command post, she could slide her fingers along the seat on either side and find the slight ridges where the sensors had been installed. With her hand in place, the next word she uttered would open the panel, giving her access to an EBR Blazar. The weapon, part of the ship’s high-tech equipment, blasted pulses of extragalactic beta rays, instantly vaporizing any target.
She pulled herself up, slumped into her seat, and fumbled to find the sensor pads, leaving a trail of blood along the slick surface. Through swollen lips, she muttered the pet name her father had given her.
“Casseopeia.”
The compartment sprang open.
Having the weapon in her hand gave her strength. For a moment, she considered engaging the controls and taking off. Her crew and the other prisoners would be safe. But she knew she’d never sleep at night if she left the unsuspecting inhabitants of Cephaia at the mercy of the pirates. Marooned there, outnumbered, the raiders would be defeated eventually. But how many innocent lives would be lost along the way?
She hauled herself to her feet and made her way to the landing portal, leaning on the walls for support. From the bits of conversation she recalled, the pirates left a skeleton crew onboard. The rest of them, roughly thirty in number, divided into half a dozen raiding parties, planning to strike all at once before an alarm could be raised.
Based on the life form scans, the Cephaians were a peaceable alien race, similar in form to humans. According to sketchy information in the onboard database, they lived in small groups, without benefit of advanced technology. If she made it to one of their settlements and warned them, the inhabitants could send word to the other villages. They’d all be able to flee. Then she’d head back to the Luna. Now that she had a weapon, she could lie in wait near the ship and wipe out the pirates as they returned. With the Blazar’s ability to vaporize its target, there’d be no bodies left lying around to alert them to any danger.
She heard voices ahead and peered around the corner. Two men stood guard at the portal. Cass sighted her weapon and fired, never hesitating. They disappeared in a cloud of mist.
She scanned the outer perimeter from inside then opened the portal and stepped out. Darkness had fallen on Cephaia, and it was hard to make out much about her surroundings. Twin moons cast a faint purple glow on the landscape. A warm breeze hit her face and she inhaled, wrinkling her nose at the odor of brackish water nearby. Ferns the size of small trees warred for space with massive reddish brown trunks that reminded her of giant cypress back home on Earth.
She followed a trail of broken fronds to the water’s edge. The pirates had landed near the shores of a shallow lake. Across the wide expanse of water, flames from a dozen different fires lit up the night. She stood still, listening. No faint screams, no shouts. It looked as though they’d found a settlement, laid waste to it, and moved on already.
It took hours to get near the village. Hours of wading through knee-high water along the swampy shoreline. If not for her injuries, she’d have covered the distance in less than a quarter of the time. A dagger of pain stabbed her in the side with every breath. She was sure Magnus had cracked at least one rib and if she tried to venture into deeper water and cut across the lake, she wouldn’t be able to swim for long. The blows to her head left her with blurred vision and a headache so severe she wanted to lie down and cry. It was all she could do to put one foot in front of the other.
Twice, she stumbled and fell, stirring up a foul-smelling mass of decaying vegetation on the bottom. Dawn was breaking by the time she reached the settlement.
It was worse than she had imagined. The houses were nothing but smoldering remains, with a stone chimney still standing here and there. Bodies lay strewn on the ground. All male. They looked very similar to humans, though larger in stature, with bald heads and a faint purple cast to their skin. She rounded a corner and fell to her knees, retching. The little ones and the females too old to sell as slave labor had been dragged into a clearing in the middle of the settlement and slaughtered. She’d heard the tales. But seeing the destruction firsthand made her physically ill. She knew the alien pirates who roamed the Universe were vicious. The fact that fellow Earthers could be capable of such savagery came as a shock.
Shakily, she got to
her feet and backed away. Cass headed back the way she’d come, trying not to look at the bodies. As numbness wore off and the horror set in, she moved faster. Soon, she was running full out, heedless of the knives stabbing into her side, desperate to get as far away from the carnage as possible.
She ran blindly, splashing through the shallows and heading deeper into the swamp that lay along one side of the lake. Finally, the sheer agony of gasping for breath, her heaving lungs jarring the fractured rib with each intake of air, left her unable to take another step. She bent over, hands on her knees, and forced herself to breathe in and out slowly.
As the pain dulled, she became aware of her surroundings. The enormous reddish brown trunks supported trees reaching fifty feet in the air, branching out high overhead into a canopy that blocked most of the light from Cephaia’s sun, already high overhead. When the hot air hit the water, still cool from the night, it created a low fog hovering several feet above the surface of the swamp. Thick vines with purple and blue leaves hung from the trees. Here and there, they dangled all the way down to the touch the water, forming giant living walls.
She couldn’t see the village, couldn’t even see the shores of the lake. It was like being in one of the huge mazes back in England. Every way she turned, she faced an impenetrable barrier of slimy foliage.
Cass forced herself to stand still and listen then wished she hadn’t. Once she quit moving, whatever creatures she’d frightened with all her splashing and panting for breath resumed their routine. All around her, the swamp came alive with faint plops in the water, rustling, squeaks, and hisses. She gritted her teeth, put her back to the largest tree, and began walking forward with her Blazar in her hand. If she had to, she’d blast her way through the thick curtains of vines to maintain her course.
It was important to head in a straight line. The biggest cause of being lost was going in circles. If she could find her way back to the shores of the lake, she’d be able to get her bearings. Head back to the Luna and lie in wait to ambush the raiding parties as they returned to the ship.
She walked for what seemed like hours. Her head still throbbed and with blurred vision, the occasional swaying vine looked like a purple and blue snake slithering down from the trees. It took every ounce of courage she had to keep going.
A sizeable ripple in the water to her left stopped her dead in her tracks. She turned and peered through the gloom but didn’t see anything. The low grunt on her right had her whipping back just in time to see a huge pair of jaws coming at her. She aimed and fired. Saw enough before it vaporized to identify the creature as reptilian. A monstrous beast, like a prehistoric alligator or giant lizard, with at least three rows of teeth and thick green-gray scales.
Behind her, a high-pitched shriek split the air. She jerked around. Another of the beasts, equally as large, had risen half out of the water. Making a strange howling noise, as though she’d killed its mate. The creature stopped and fixed its eyes on her. Cold dead eyes that held her in a trance. She was living out a horrible nightmare. Paralyzed, unable to move.
It lowered its body back into the water and came toward her. Swimming. Every sweep of the powerful tail sending out silent ripples.
Silent ripples. Her rational mind snapped back into focus. Those ripples she’d been seeing. The beasts had been hunting her! Stalking her through the swamp. Working as a team, one drawing her attention while the other attacked. Her sudden awareness broke the creature’s spell, and she sent blast after blast toward it, firing long after her predator disappeared. A cloud of vapor swirled on the water’s surface, blending with the wispy fog.
She took a few steps then screamed as a cold, slimy creature landed on her from above and wrapped itself around her neck. Panicked, she dropped the Blazar to claw at it. Her fingers sank into the skin without any resistance, and a foul odor hit her. She brought both hands up to her face. Bits of purple and blue clung to her fingers, staining them. Cass tamped down a burst of hysterical laughter. It was nothing more than a thick, rotting tendril from one of the vines.
The Blazar! She dropped to her knees in the water, feeling around. Came up with handfuls of mud and slime. She kept on, searching blindly in wider and wider circles. When she brought up one handful and couldn’t flick off the brownish goo, she realized it was some sort of giant leech. Horrified, she jumped to her feet and tried to brush it off her hand. The blob split apart, becoming dozens of smaller creatures. Squirming under the sleeves of her uniform to begin working their way up her arms.
She shuddered and started picking them off, barely noticing the first sting. Or the second. By the third, her arms were on fire. The creatures burrowed along, heading toward her neck and chest. Frantically, she began peeling off her uniform, scraping them away before they got to her breasts.
That’s when she heard it. Another low rumble.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” she shrieked. “How many more disgusting creatures does this planet have? You want a piece of me, too? Fine! Here I am. Come out and get me, whatever you are. I’m through being scared.”
She got into a kickboxing stance and whirled in a circle, yelling at the top of her lungs—and blanched when a seven foot tall alien with a tinge of purple to his skin stepped out from behind a tree thirty feet in front of her.
Obviously one of the inhabitants of Cephaia, although, standing up, he looked a whole lot bigger than the dead ones she’d seen. A very hostile inhabitant, judging from the expression of pure rage on his face. She didn’t blame him. If he’d been to the village, seen the massacre, any stranger would immediately be a suspect, especially one who was not from his world.
She sized him up, preparing to defend herself. At the Academy, Cass had learned several forms of unarmed combat, including Japanese martial arts and Tridacian wrangling. But she’d never faced such a daunting opponent. He probably tipped the scales at around 250 pounds, nearly double her weight. All of it pure muscle. There wasn’t an ounce of fat anywhere on his body. Of that, she was certain, since she could see nearly all of it. A fine sheen of sweat glistened on his bald head and torso, as though he’d recently pushed his body to its limits.
He wore nothing but a short garment, slung low around a leather kilt or skirt of some kind. Powerful shoulders and arms, a broad expanse of chest narrowing down to impressive abs. Thighs the size of tree trunks back on Earth. Except for his skin color and the missing mane of tangled dark locks on his head, he could have passed for a gladiator from ancient Rome, straight out of a holographic museum exhibit back home.
He opened his mouth and made some unintelligible noises. Speaking Cephaian, she assumed, although she wouldn’t be able to understand his language until she’d been hearing it for hours. The Tellex chip surgically inserted deep in the auditory canal of her left ear needed prolonged exposure to a language not in its database before it began seamlessly interpreting the sounds into words.
He raised one arm, and she swallowed a scream. No one would mistake him for a primitive being with the very modern, lethal-looking weapon he pointed at her. Slowly, she put both hands out in front of her, palms facing him, in the classic “I come in peace” gesture.
His deep-blue eyes narrowed and raked down her body. She didn’t need a translator chip to interpret that look. He might be an alien but he was all male.
Suddenly, she hunched forward, wrapping both arms around her body. No wonder the huge being was ogling her. She’d forgotten that in her frantic effort to get rid of the stinging leech-bugs, she’d yanked her uniform nearly all the way off. It was wadded around her knees, just above the level of the swampy water.
Under it, she wore nothing.
Cass pulled herself together. Showing weakness was always a mistake. She couldn’t afford the luxury of modesty, not when she was staring into the barrel of an unfamiliar and probably deadly weapon. Slowly, she dropped her hands to her sides.
Dripping wet, stark naked except for the bunched-up uniform around her knees, Cass took a deep breath, straightened her
spine, and faced the hostile alien.
Chapter Four
CASS
Her nipples had puckered into tight little buds with droplets of water clinging to them. His focus left her face and he stared at them like a horny adolescent seeing tits for the first time then moved his gaze lower. He seemed especially fascinated by the mass of dark curls between her thighs. His interest was understandable, since from what she’d seen of the bodies in the village, none of the Cephaians had hair anywhere.
She stood before him calmly. Hard as it was to put up with his insolent stare, she dared not show any defiance and give him a reason to use his weapon. Perhaps he’d never seen a naked woman. It was hard to determine how much clothing the females on his planet usually wore, since the bodies she’d seen had their clothes torn off –at least the bodies that were still in one piece.
She winced, reliving the horrific scene in her mind, then forced herself to put the memory aside. When she opened her eyes again, Cass gasped. She rubbed her forehead, blinked a few times, and risked another look.
Magnus must have done more damage with his beating than she realized. Before, her vision was blurred. Now, she was seeing double.
Two identical aliens stood before her, side by side. She inspected one then the other. It was impossible to tell which was the real being and which the illusion her injured brain had conjured up. They both looked so lifelike.
When one of her illusions turned and spoke to the other, she bit back a cry. Dear heaven, they were both real. Identical seven foot twins, right down to the fury in their cold blue eyes. Either that or she was hallucinating.
One of them spoke again, gesturing toward her. She addressed them in Andromedan, a widely spoken language in the galaxy. “Greetings, sentient beings. Blessings and peace to all creatures in the Universe.”