Devil in the Hold: A Scifi Alien Romance (Fated Mates of Breeder Prison Book 3)

by Tammy Walsh

  The deadline would be the moment the sun rose.

  Then, I would be trapped with no chance of escape.

  A shout issued from one of the other rooms.

  Maybe it was one of the guards on duty, I thought. I lowered my head and returned to considering my situation.

  Another voice shouted in the dark.

  It was loud, frantic.

  The translator chip in my arm couldn’t understand it.

  For once, I understood the sound from the alien’s throat better than the device did.

  It sent a shiver up my spine and chilled me to the bone.

  The scream was one of fear and pain.

  I didn’t need to know what the word was.

  I didn’t want to know what it was.

  It couldn’t be anything good.

  Then another shout rang out, louder this time, closer, from a different throat.

  Men burst from the neighboring rooms, boots scuffing the soft sand outside.

  Should I go out there?

  Did I even want to see what was causing the commotion?

  I moved to the front to peer through the slit when a helmet slipped inside.

  “Ah!” I said, starting back.

  “You must leave now,” the guard said, voice hissing via his communicator. “You must leave now.”

  He reached for me and I pulled back.

  The guard stretched inside further, and then stopped, unable to come any closer.

  He shuddered and paused for a moment.

  He glanced over his shoulder and then turned back to look at me.

  Although I couldn’t see his expression, I knew terror when I saw it.

  He shot back, quick as a flash, into the darkness beyond.

  The flap waved gently, disturbed by his rapid departure.

  He hadn’t chosen to leave.

  Something had forced him to leave.

  I swallowed and gingerly pressed the fabric aside.

  My breath rasped loudly in my ears.

  I peered around it, at the campsite beyond.

  The fire was still lit but it’d been disturbed, knocked aside, forming a speckled line of flickering flames that dwindled as they reached for the darkness.

  Another scream.

  Lumbering armored prison guards bolted to their feet and peered at their surroundings, shock rifles raised and aimed.

  Something seized one of the guards.

  He fell, sprawling to the sand.

  He spun around and clawed at the ground as the thing pulled him into the black.

  Another guard chased after his comrade, peering into the shadows, but unable to make anything out.

  He fired a single shot, not for the damage it might do, but for the light it shed on the surrounding area.

  And that’s when I saw it.

  The monster.

  Thick tendrils writhed in the orb of light cast by his rifle, there one moment, gone the next.

  I blinked, disbelieving what I’d just seen.

  It looked much like the Desert Flower vines I had the misfortune of running into before.

  Only on a much larger scale.

  Its tendrils were as thick as my arms, whereas the ones from earlier had been little thicker than my thumb.

  The prison guards unloaded, firing at the flailing arms of the invisible beast.

  The guards weren’t used to being outside for extended periods.

  If they were, they would have known not to place their camp so close to the sand dune mountains.

  That was where the beasts lived.

  And this monster was the king of monsters.

  I ducked my head as streams of yellow-blue lightning zipped overhead, crackling and making my hair stand on end.

  I stood, shocked, surprised the prison guards were so ineffective at protecting themselves from the creature.

  Only Egara could protect me.

  But he was light-years from here.

  One of the thick tendrils slithered across the sand in my direction.

  It couldn’t be aware of me as I hadn’t moved an inch.

  It slid inside an upturned regulation issue boot before pulling back and knocking the boot aside.

  I was frozen, unable to move a muscle.

  It was an unexpected benefit of being so terrified you couldn’t bring yourself to do much more than breathe.

  Otherwise, I would be running for the sand-dashed hills and I knew how that would turn out.

  The tendril caressed the sand like a snake crawling on its belly, only it was far stronger, faster, its movements sharp and dangerous.

  And it was drawing close.

  It swayed side to side, its tip pointed and arched, turning as if it could see—or smell—something there.

  My nostrils eased open and shut, the only movement I was capable of, save for my bulging eyes.

  The tendril moved toward me and rose to my height.

  If it had eyes it would be staring at me.

  It must sense me somehow, I realized.

  My incessant screaming instincts begged me to run, and its cries were growing louder.

  Unable to control myself any longer, I inched backward.

  I knew it was a stupid thing to do but I couldn’t help it.

  If the creature was aware I was there, I had no choice.

  I wasn’t thinking.

  The tendril stiffened, turning to my quivering foot, and shivered with excitement.

  It eased back like a python preparing to strike.

  “Arghhhh!” a prison guard said, bolting from the darkness.

  He ran toward the creature and unloaded multiple shots into it, most finding their mark.

  The creature flailed, retreating back, and accidentally ran over the sporadic fires.

  It sprung back.

  “Run!” the prison guard bellowed.

  He wasn’t just any prison guard.

  It was the leader.

  He turned and continued firing at the tendril as it shirked from the light.

  And still, I couldn’t bring myself to move much more than a couple of inches.

  The leader took a break from his Rambo routine, grabbed me by the scruff of the neck, and shoved me to one side.

  “I said go!” he yelled.

  The forced movement created a domino effect.

  Once I started, I couldn’t stop.

  I ran.

  Lessons from a distant—and I thought forgotten—gym class suddenly became the most important lesson I had ever learned.

  How to run efficiently.

  I pulled my arms back, encouraging my legs to stretch as far as they could.

  I held my head high, my neck long, and breathed in through the nose and out through the mouth in a circular pattern.

  The sand turned blurry beneath my feet as I passed over it.

  I never lost my feet, not even once.

  A real wonder for me.

  Before long, my breaths rasped in my throat and my body ached.

  I didn’t stop.

  I wouldn’t stop.

  Already I could feel the pleasant effects of making love to Egara wearing off.

  Soon, I wouldn’t have enough oxygen to power my lungs never mind my muscles.

  I wished I could reach the prison and the safety of its impenetrable walls.

  Funny how obstruction could suddenly become protection.

  I checked over my shoulder, just once, and noticed the roaring fires were now nothing more than tiny islands in a vast and endless ocean of darkness.

  I had run so far, so fast, I hadn’t taken notice of where I was heading.

  Surely the tendrils couldn’t reach this far?

  I slowed, my lungs already aching.

  I placed my hands on my head to expand my lungs the way Egara had taught me.

  The breaths rasped loudly, already hoarse.

  I had no idea how long I’d been running.

  I didn’t know if having my hands on my head like this was helping or hindering.r />
  Black spots danced before my eyes, a sure sign of an impending headache, but I would take it over the fate of the prison guards any day.

  Right now, they were being dragged across the sand toward a creature that would swallow them whole… and then slowly digested for countless years.

  The thought alone made my skin crawl.

  Then I heard it.

  A shout for help.

  It came from my left, invisible in the darkness.

  Still, the moons weaved between the charcoal grey clouds like they were traversing a slalom course, illuminating only tiny patches of wind-swept sand dunes.

  Had I imagined it?

  The silence pressed in, turning the desert silent once more.

  I didn’t know what was scarier; the shouts of a man fighting for his life or the silence immediately after it.

  I decided I must have imagined it and turned to continue walking—I dared not run in case I lost my breath again.

  I still hadn’t fully recovered from my earlier exertion.

  Then that shout came again.

  Louder, clearer.

  Closer?

  I was in two minds about what to do next.

  The shout wasn’t part of my imagination.

  It was real.

  And it was happening right now.

  To a prison guard intent on dragging me back to the prison.

  Should I help them?

  Could I help them?

  Before I knew what I was doing, I began to walk toward the voice.

  It developed into a slow and steady jog.

  The cry for help came clearer now but I was heading in the wrong direction.

  I turned and kept moving.

  Here, I thought.

  The voice came from around here.

  I peered at the pool of darkness but saw no sign of the guard.

  No track in the sand, no footsteps.

  A moon swept past a cloud and found a crack in its facade, spilling silver light over the scene.

  Over the horrific scene.

  “Help me!”

  The prison guard struggled against the thick line wrapped in a vice grip about his leg as it pulled him up the gently-sloping incline.

  “Don’t struggle,” I said. “Struggling only makes it squeeze tighter.”

  The prison guard released his hands from the vine and raised them, ready to attack again if my advice turned out not to be sound.

  But it was, and the relief was etched on his face.

  The vine squeezed him so tight it’d crushed the armor plate around his leg, snapping his bones like twigs.

  His arms didn’t fare much better.

  One dragged uselessly behind him while the other brandished a bloodied knife.

  “Give me that,” I said.

  I dropped to my knees and placed one hand on the vine.

  I set to sawing at with the knife.

  The vine bucked, knocking me aside.

  I got up, planted my feet in a stronger stance, and continued hacking.

  Thick green-tinted water spilled from it, dousing the sand like blood from a gaping wound.

  It quivered and retracted into the night.

  “Can you stand?” I said.

  The guard leaned back, relieved at having been rescued.

  “Yes,” he said. “I think so. If you help me.”

  He never reached his feet.

  Quick as a flash, another tendril snapped around his shattered leg and continued dragging him up the incline.

  “No!” he screamed. “No!”

  He reached for me and accidentally knocked me off my feet.

  He pummeled at the arm with a fist and it squeezed so tight I heard the guards’ bones snap.

  An enormous creature emerged from the gaping hole at the top of the mountain.

  At least four times larger than the one that’d snagged me.

  With four times the number of tendrils, swirling into the night sky.

  A second moon drifted from behind the cover of clouds and joined its sister to peer upon the field of war.

  Four other victims were clutched in thick tendrils, each dragged up the incline toward the gaping maw.

  One of the bodies barely struggled while another didn’t move at all.

  Before, I had run.

  I’d run but didn’t realize I’d been heading directly toward the mouth of the beast.

  I was as doomed now as I had been back at the camp.

  The tendrils slithered like angry snakes from an overturned nest and headed directly for me.

  My breaths rasped in my throat.

  I had no more fight left in me.

  Egara

  The shuttlecraft complained when we re-entered the atmosphere.

  Fire leaped over the windows and trailed over its external shell.

  Something crunched, snapped, and then splintered off completely.

  I shut my eyes and ignored it all.

  I wasn’t sure the craft would survive the trip.

  But that didn’t matter.

  What mattered was finding Agatha.

  I had spent less than ten seconds staring at the emptiness of space.

  The only thing emptier was the hole left inside me, an emptiness I had lived with my entire life.

  All the booty in the world couldn’t fill it.

  Neither could the accolades of being the most fearsome pirate in the galaxy.

  Only she could give me meaning.

  Agatha.

  She was my only chance to turn my life around, to do something else.

  I only hoped it wasn’t too late.

  I had no plan of how I would break into the prison, how I would locate her.

  None of that mattered either.

  The craft screamed and I gripped the base of my chair with both hands.

  I must have looked like a ball of molten fire as the shuttlecraft streaked across the night sky.

  Within seconds, the fire was doused and I was falling head-first into the giant sand dunes below.

  I seized the controls and pulled up, easing the shuttlecraft into a gentle glide.

  Far below, the frozen ocean splayed out before me as far as the eye could see.

  “Locate Ikmal prison,” I said.

  “Ikmal prison located,” Computer said.

  A holographic skin dropped over the windscreen and a three-dimensional image swelled from it, revealing the contours of the desert below.

  A beacon alighted in the far distance, a simple yellow arrow pulsing on the horizon.

  I brought the shuttlecraft down closer to the surface, hugging it as closely as I dared.

  I peered at the undulating waves and focused on heading toward that beacon.

  The prison guards had the use of land vehicles.

  There was no doubt in my mind they would have used them and returned to the prison far faster than we had escaped it on foot.

  It was a miracle they hadn’t discovered us before they had.

  And, small though it might be, there was still a chance they hadn’t yet reached the prison.

  As I sailed overhead, I noticed a few pinpricks of light on the surface dotted like acne on a teenager’s face.

  I reduced speed and pulled in closer.

  I couldn’t make it out with my naked eyes.

  “Computer,” I said, “zoom in on those fires.”

  Computer brought the images up on screen.

  A flurry of fires had been tossed across the sand like breadcrumbs.

  A handful of fabric fluttered like ghostly apparitions.

  It made no sense.

  Why would anybody come here to camp?

  My answer came in the form of a vehicle trapped in the sand.

  Its front corner was buried deep in a sand trap.

  I recognized the vehicle type.

  It was what the prison guards used when they made their rare trips into the desert.

  Could Agatha be down there? I wondered.

  But where was the
movement?

  Where were the drones buzzing overhead?

  At least one would have spotted me and pitched in my direction, scanned my underside to pick up the vehicle’s identification number.

  But there were no drones.

  It was eerily quiet without those buzzing hornets overhead.

  And there.

  I noticed something, half-buried in the sand.

  It was…

  It was…

  Dear Creator, no…

  The blood froze in my veins.

  A body.

  The armor glowed brightly in the roving moonlight.

  “Computer,” I said in a hoarse voice. “Zoom in on that fire.”

  Computer brought the image closer until the sprawling mass made sense to my eyes.

  A dry and shriveled and black form.

  Vines.

  A Desert Flower had attacked them.

  It had attacked and killed some of their number.

  But there had to be at least half a dozen prison guards.

  And that wasn’t counting the drones they had at their disposal.

  There could only be one form of Desert Flower that could do this to such a heavily armed crew.

  The Desert Monarch.

  I shut my eyes and shook my head.

  Oh, Agatha, I thought. What have you got yourself into?

  Upon initially discovering the prison guard camp, I’d been excited.

  There still might be time for me to save Agatha.

  But that time had just been cut drastically short.

  The Desert Monarch was a formidable opponent.

  You could destroy it, if you knew how.

  Did these prison guards know how?

  It didn’t appear so, not with the dead bodies strewn about the campgrounds.

  “Computer,” I said. “Find the camp occupants.”

  “Searching…” Computer said.

  Computer scanned the curves of the sandy valleys tossed by scurrying feet.

  If I was on the surface, perhaps I could track them myself, but I had no intention of wasting more time than necessary.

  The image suddenly shifted forward, following a series of footsteps, and lines that looked like scars across the desert’s surface.

  I put the shuttlecraft into drive, turned the controls, and pursued those zigzagging lines before Computer validated the tracks.

  Was Agatha the cause of those markings?

  Had she learned from her last encounter with a similar creature?

  And did she have a weapon to hand to hack at them in case they seized her?

  Dare I even hope for such a thing?

  I increased speed and the shuttlecraft responded quickly.