ALIEN ABDUCTION (Captured by Aliens) (18 page)

“I
thought you were waiting to go last?” Ebony asked Damon, craning around to look
at him.

“A slight
change of plans,” he said.

A low hum
seemed to rise up through the decks and walls of the flyer, quickly becoming so
high-pitched that it was impossible to hear.  Ebony shut her eyes as the flyer
seemed to rise up and sway left and right for just a moment, and then she sat
back as the craft began to move forward at a faster and faster pace. 

Suddenly
the entire seat clamped itself around her legs and shoulders, holding her more
firmly than any safety belt could; and then the flyer tilted back and shot
forward into the sky.

After the
initial fright of the launch, the flyer leveled off and flew very smoothly, and
the seats relaxed their grip and went back to their normal shape.  Ebony and
the other women found themselves resting quite comfortably in the big soft
seats, and it wasn’t long before Ebony actually found herself dozing off.  She
was, though, still awake enough to smile at the thought.  Perhaps she was still
feeling the effects of her “drunkenness” from earlier that evening!

Ebony did
not know how long she slept...but she was suddenly awakened when the seat
clamped down and the flyer made a violent dive and a sickening turn, and all
the other women screamed.  She saw Damon run past her to the cockpit door and
pull it open.  The craft continued to rise up and dive again, and Ebony was
afraid she might actually be sick.

Damon
came back, holding on to the side of the seats as he continued to stand during
the craft’s wild and bumpy flight.  “What is it?  What’s happening?” cried
Ebony, over the cries and screams of Cassie, Jane, and Famke. 

He shook
his head.  “We’ve been spotted,” he said, through gritted teeth.

“Spotted?
 By who?  Or
what?
”

“Zhala
riders.  Our pilots are trying to evade them.  Hold on!” The craft bucked and
then dove yet again, and Damon threw himself back in his seat. 

Ebony
turned to look at Damon.  “Hey, screw these evasions!  What about that big
freakin’ weapons system we saw?  Why not use that instead of diving like a
drunken sparrow?”

Damon
glared at her.  “Hold on!  All of you!” he ordered the women.

In the
seat beside Ebony, Cassie began to weep.  Ebony put her arm around her.  “Look,
we’re all scared,” she whispered, “but you’ve got to get it together.  Now.  We’re
gonna need all the help we can get, and that help might only come from us.  We’ve
got to help each other.  There’s really nobody else.”

Cassie
clutched Ebony’s hand and shut her eyes tight.

The flyer
made one more drop and dive--and then suddenly there was a tremendous noise and
the whole craft shook.  For a moment Ebony thought something had hit them, and
the other women screamed louder than ever.  Then she twisted around to look at
Damon and saw the look of cold satisfaction on his face.  “Well, it’s about
fucking time somebody fired the fucking weapons!” Ebony yelled, in both anger
and relief.

But there
was no way for anyone inside the cabin to see anything except the solid silver
walls.  All they knew was that the shooting and the evasions continued for what
seemed like hours.

Then
there was a loud noise above the flyer--a different noise, as though something
had slapped it hard.  The women screamed again as the lights inside the cabin
went out, leaving only the faintest glow from the panels set in the walls.

Ebony
cried out, too, as the front end of the flyer pulled up and the whole craft
made a sickening drop--far worse than any roller coaster.  Then the back end
struck the ground hard, bounced a couple of times, and went sliding and
spinning into what could only be oblivion.

She did
not know how long it was before the flyer finally jerked to a stop.  Slowly
Ebony raised her head and saw that the cabin was very dark.  There was dust or
smoke swirling in the air, faintly outlined by the dim glowing light from the
wall panels.  She could hear coughing from the men in the rows behind her, but
otherwise it was quiet inside the downed flyer.

There was
a hard pull on the back of her seat.  Damon hauled himself up and stood right
behind her, looking around.  “Is anyone hurt?  Look at yourselves.  Then look
at the one next to you.  Help the ones who need it.  And wait here!”  He
stepped out into the aisle and pushed open the door to the cockpit.

The three
other women were crying, but unhurt, and Ebony was more shaken than she’d ever
been in her life.  “I think this is worse than getting grabbed by the Grays,”
she said, leaning forward and looking at Cassie and Jane and Famke.  “At least
the Grays drugged us up before the trip.”

“Yeah, I
think I’m going to suggest that for the next trip on this airline,” said Jane
nervously.  She wiped her eyes before twisting around in her seat and peering
towards the back of the craft.  “Nobody’s hurt, though--not that I can see.”

“But what
do we do now?” wailed Cassie.

“Be quiet. 
Wait.  See what Damon says,” ordered Famke, and the four women and all of the
men sat and waited in tense silence.

Suddenly
there was a roaring sound and a great rush of air from outside the craft.  Then
the same sounds repeated on the other side, and Ebony and everyone else inside
the craft felt pure terror at hearing the same sounds again from the directly
above them.

“What is
that?” Ebony cried, as Damon came back inside the cabin.  “What’s going on?”

His face
was very still, but his eyes held the same fear as the rest of the passengers. 
“Zhala,” he whispered.  “Many Zhala.  They are landing right outside.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Ebony
forced away the restraining armrests of her seat and jumped up.  The others did
the same.  “Zhala!” she whispered.  “Then--we’ve been caught?  We’re all Kore’s
prisoners again?”

The women
wept openly at that, clutching each other, and all of the men behind them began
talking and muttering among themselves.  They started to get up out of their
seats, but Damon quickly took control. 

“Listen
to me!” he barked.  “Sit down!  All of you!  You must not panic.  Yes, there
are Zhala riders outside--ten, perhaps twelve.  That loud noise you heard
during flight was a direct hit on the roof from an acid-breathing Zhala.  It
was enough to break the controls and force us down.”

Ebony
closed her eyes and sat down, and Cassie grabbed her arm and held tight to it. 
The cabin fell silent.  Ebony realized it was because everyone was too
frightened to say a word--too frightened to breathe--and so was she.

“The
flyer is badly damaged and cannot fly again without significant repairs,” Damon
went on.  “But even if we could repair it, we are surrounded by the riders and
we are not far from the City of Anetahr and Auresial Palace--maybe fifty miles,
at most.”

“Can
Fallon send the other flyer for us?” asked one of the men in the back.

Damon
shook his head.  “It is too far.  One flyer cannot fight off that many Zhala
alone--as you have seen.”

“Yeah,
just how
did
those goddam things get through the weapon systems?” Ebony
demanded, sitting up.  “When you gave us that little demonstration back at the
cave, I saw just one shot blow up a whole stand of trees!”

Damon
shot her a cold stare.  “Zhala can fly with absolutely no lights or sound.  They
are alive.  They are not machines.  A couple of them
were
destroyed by
our weapons, but that was not enough.  One direct spray of acid was enough to
disable our flyer.”

Then the
entry door slammed open and some five Zhala riders climbed up into the cabin.  The
first thing they did was shove Damon out of the way and grab the four women
sitting in the very front row, dragging them towards the door.  The fifth one
kept his small silver gun pointed at Damon.

As soon
as she was outside, Ebony turned back towards the flyer.  A few high wispy
clouds covered some of the red and blue stars, but there was enough light for
her to see the still-smoking burn mark on the top and side of the flyer from
the acid breath of one of the Zhala.

In a
moment, Damon stumbled down the steps with his hands bound behind him.  The
Zhala rider had his own weapon jammed into Damon’s back.  Damon fell hard to
the ground but immediately rolled to his feet and started towards the four
women.  “Ebony!  Run for the woods, all of you!  Do not let them take you
captive again!”

But
before any of them could move, one of the mounted riders forced his snarling
Zhala around to face Damon.  The rider used his long, metal-shod stick to goad
the beast into opening its fanged and drooling mouth.

“No!”
all the women screamed
at once, for they knew right away what he intended to have the Zhala do to
Damon.  The rider turned and looked at them. 

“Very
good!” he said with a laugh.  “Listen to them, Damon, my friend.  They are very
right.  My fine beast here would be happy to spray you, too, with his
blistering breath, just as he did your little flyer just a short time ago.  And
you saw what his breath did to
that.
”

With a
look of pure hatred, Damon slowly got to his feet and stood tall and alone
beside the crippled flyer.  A couple of the Zhala riders ran up the steps
inside the flyer, and in a moment the other men began filing out to gather near
Damon.  Their hands were bound behind them, too.

Then came
a heavy shuffling sound from out in the darkness.  Ebony turned to see what it
was, and thought she would scream again.  She saw four more of the enormous
Zhala walking awkwardly on their hind legs, wings a little raised to help them
balance.  Their riders were steering them straight towards her and the other
three women.

The Zhala
riders halted their four beasts just a few paces away.  Seeing them up close,
Ebony saw that the Zhala were huge and ugly and even more frightening than she
had known, with snarling heads, thick coarse feathers covering their long
reptilian bodies, and enormous skin-and-feather wings.  And their riders were
no better, with long black leathery coats and thick boots and heavy leather
helmets with something like silver-rimmed goggles. 

Before
any of the women could move, a couple of the other riders grabbed each of them
from behind, carried them to the waiting beasts, and lifted them up onto the
leather saddles strapped to each Zhala behind its rider.  “Hold tight,” the
rider said to Ebony, glancing back at her through the goggles with a little
sneer, “and don’t look down.”

Ebony
shut her eyes and found she was too terrified to scream.  She threw her arms
around the rider’s waist, over the long, thick black leather coat he wore, and
held on for her life as the monster beat its huge wings against the air and
rose up into the deep darkness of the night.

***

The awful
beasts flew and flew, and Ebony tried not to think of how far up above the
ground she was.  She was grateful for the warm gowns that Fallon and Damon had
given to her and all of the women, for the wind was very cold as the Zhala flew
through the night.

Eventually,
when she realized that they were, finally, coming back down, she dared to open
one eye ever so slightly.  Ebony saw that the dawn was beginning to show along
the horizon--the horizon just beyond Auresial Palace. 

For an
instant, she was ready to throw herself from the Zhala and just fall to the
palace walls below.  At least her suffering would be over and she would never
again have to live as a prisoner...as a slave...

But she
simply could not make her arms let go of the rider’s waist.  As Fallon had once
said to her, the pull of life was too strong, and so she rode the terrible
Zhala all the way down to the inner courtyard of the palace.

In
something of a state of shock, all four women were soon surrounded by five of
their old familiar guards and walking through the old familiar marble hallways
once more.  To Ebony it was almost surreal, almost as strange as her initial
capture, and she saw the same look of shock on the faces of Cassie, Famke, and
Jane. 

But
before they reached the harem itself, they were pushed into a smaller side room. 
Ebony recognized it as a storage room for clothes and jewelry.  One of the men
guarding them raised his weapon, and for a moment Ebony thought he and his
guards meant to rape them.  But all he did was wave the weapon towards four
small stacks of sheer silk-like fabric on the nearest shelf and order them to
change into those clothes--into harem clothes.

Weeping
and angry, the four women took off the fine heavy gowns and beautiful necklaces
and soft leather boots that Fallon and the other men had given them and dropped
it all in one large heap in the middle of the room.  They each picked up the
little stack of fabric assigned to them--orange for Jane, blue for Cassie,
white for Famke, and red for Ebony, just as before--and found only a sheer silk
bikini that could only be fastened by tying the bottom piece together at the
hips and fastening the top behind the neck and the back.  The women did not
even have the long sari-like skirts and veils that they had had before, and
were barely covered at all. 

And they
were once again entirely barefoot

Ebony was
humiliated and furious, as they all were, but there was nothing she could do
without risking all of their lives.  The four of them walked back into the
great harem room and heard the huge heavy doors slam shut behind them.

***

For the
next few hours, Ebony and the three other captives got reacquainted with the
other women of the harem and tried not to think about what their lives might be
like after this.  Their harem sisters still had long skirts and sari to wear,
though they were still barefoot, and they were shocked at seeing the four
recent captives forced to walk around virtually naked.  “It’s so cruel,” one of
the women said.  “And humiliating.”

“Sure it
is,” said Ebony, sitting down on a pile of the thick soft cushions that always
covered the floor.  She picked up one of the red velvet pillows and held it in
her lap, feeling at least a little more covered up.  “It’s punishment and it’s
humiliation and it’s to keep us from trying to run away again.”

“We will
never leave this place,” whispered Famke.  Her eyes had a haunted look.  “We
will be slaves and prisoners here until we die.”

Ebony
tried to smile at her.  “Hey, Miss Sweden, now, don’t give up yet.  Things are
a little different now, remember?  Remember the men that we bonded with--yours
was Vin, right?  Do you think he’ll want to leave you here without a fight?”

Famke’s
eyes flicked toward Ebony.  “I--I do not know.  I am not sure what any of them
can do.  Even that flyer’s weapons were as nothing against those Zhala.”

“Yeah,
well, it isn’t just Vin by himself,” Ebony said.  “It’s Ryan and Brenzir and
Damon and Fallon who will be looking for us, too, and all the rest of Fallon’s
men.  And I don’t think they’ll give up too easy.”

Famke
smiled faintly, but her eyes still had that look of vacant despair.  “I hope
you are right, Ebony, but….”

Just then
the tall, heavy doors of the harem were pushed open and several guards came
walking through them.  Ebony sat up very straight and covered as much of
herself as she could with the pillow. 

And then
King Kore came striding into the harem right behind the guards, grinning and
smirking and looking very, very pleased with himself. 

The other
harem women drew back at the sight of him, but the four newly returned captives
gathered close together around Ebony.  Kore stopped in the middle of the huge
room with his hands on his hips, his long, heavy, red-and-black silk robes
swinging around his ankles.  He looked straight at Ebony, Cassie, Famke, and
Jane, and gave them an especially leering grin.

“Fine
clothes you wear today,” he said, looking up and down at the thin strips of
silk that were all that covered the four women.  “And such beautiful shoes.”

Ebony’s
lip curled as she stared back at him with a cold glare of undying hatred.  She
did not have to see the other women to know that they all looked at him the
same way--she could feel the rage and hate pouring off of them.  But all of
them remained silent, and waited.

“You’ll
be glad to know,” Kore went on, “that it took only a short spate of torture for
your two pilots to give up the location of your home base.  I know that it is
the abandoned chalcedonite mine only a short distance from here.  It will be no
trouble at all to destroy it.”

Ebony
looked away from him and kept her silence, though she ground her teeth in anger
and frustration.

“And even
better, that big one that was on the flyer with you--the one who tried to fight
back, but failed--he told me some even better news.  He told me that your
leader is a man named Fallon--a man we all thought was dead--a man who is my
own twin brother and who tried to take my throne from me.”

All of
the women looked up at him, stunned.  Kore’s eyes shone with pleasure at the
sight of their fear.  Ebony felt cold all the way to the bone, and it was not
just from the thin bikini she’d been forced to wear.  He was talking about
Damon. 

“Where--”
Ebony began.

Kore cut
her off.  “Where is this man who was with you, you ask?  And all the other men,
too, I suppose?  Oh, they are very well, very well indeed.  That big one took almost
no torture at all to get my brother’s name.  We scarcely had to do more than
threaten him, and he talked right away.”  He laughed.  “Strange how their
bravado disappears the instant the tables are turned.”