Alien Prince: (Bride of Qetesh) An Alien SciFi Romance (3 page)

Except that’s never how things work out, is it?

The transport vessel didn't get far before it was intercepted and ripped violently out of lightspeed travel, slamming to a lurching halt. I’d strapped myself in, and I gritted my teeth against the force that pressed me forward into my restraints as my stomach pitched and turned over when I settled back again.

I wasn’t alone in the passenger’s quarters, and the other three people looked just as green as I felt. We were seated in a small chamber with a foot or so of space around each of us.

“Oh, God,” I muttered, and turned as far as my chair would allow to be sick onto the cold metal flooring, away from the rest of the passengers. “Sorry,” I murmured, but the act had a sort of chain reaction, and the blonde Europax sitting next to me vomited up bright green bile. For a second, I thought I recognized her from somewhere, but couldn’t place her.

When I was confident that the vessel wasn’t going to shoot back into faster-than-light travel, I unlatched my harness and scrambled to my feet, shaking as I walked.

“Where are you going?” one of the passengers demanded, a human woman who was about ten years my senior.

“To see what the problem is,” I replied, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. “Don’t worry, I know the pilot.”

I made my way forward, and rapped lightly on the door to the cockpit. Tel threw it open, looking just as shaky on her feet as I was. Behind her, the control console glowed and buzzed in protest, all sorts of alarm lights blinking. Her co-pilot furiously flipped switches and typed in commands, his broad shoulders hunched forward. I furrowed my brow. “What’s going on?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Tel breathed, steadying herself in the doorway. I tilted my chin toward her co-pilot.

“What is he doing?”

“Trying to get our nav system back online.”

I started. Our navigation was offline? Tel registered the fear on my face, and her stern look told me well enough to keep my shit together lest I incite a panic in the rest of the passengers. I looked past her to the co-pilot, who eventually turned to look at me and Tel. He was a human male, mid-forties probably, with salt and pepper hair and a five o’clock shadow. If I weren’t terrified, I may have thought he was kind of cute, in a “daddy issues” kind of way.

“I got nothin’,” he said, throwing his hands up in resignation. “Whoever snagged us has totally overridden our controls.”

“Send a distress signal to the
Atria
. We can’t be more than a couple clicks away, and they should be able to send someone to our coordinates with some speed.” Tel sucked in a deep breath before she moved into the passenger seating area. The faces of the three other women turned up to look at their leader, who presented a demeanor of calm. But I knew Teldara well enough to know that she felt anything but.

“Ladies,” she said, pressing her fingers to her lips for a moment as though she were going to be sick, “we’ve been thrown out of hyperdrive, and someone has taken remote access of our navigation. I have my co-pilot sending a distress signal back to the
Atria
, along with the names on our passenger roster and our cargo list. I’m confident that we should be on our way in short order.”

The other women began to chatter amongst themselves in desperate whispers, even as Teldara turned her attention to me. “Keep them calm,” she muttered, and all I could do was nod, my jaw hanging slightly agape. But when Tel turned to go back into the cockpit, I caught her by the arm.

“Tel,” I whispered, “what do you really think is going to happen?”

She considered me levelly, and spoke: “I think we’ll be boarded, and I think all our cargo will be taken. If we’re lucky, we’ll leave with our lives.”

The Keldeeri, not to paint with too broad a stroke, are not exactly what you would call a peaceful people. At least not historically. Their war-torn planet had necessitated the evacuation and relocation of some three million Keldeeri. And while their women are not extinct, per se, they are so few in numbers that they have been continuously petitioning the Echelon for a cross-breeding program, the same way they did for the more peaceful Qetesh. The Echelon, however, have denied this request, saying that it is too invasive a maneuver for a ratio of three males to every one female, and that the Keldeeri would do well to try to fix the problem on their own. This has been met, thus far, with begrudging compliance.

The Keldeeri are also not what you might call a beautiful people, what with the mandibles and carapaces. They tend to be on the stouter side, rippled with muscle, and looking rather like someone had crossed an insect with a lizard. Hairless and aggressive, with a sibilant style of speech, the Kaldeeri I had known had never really become my best friends.

Given all that, I had to say that I wasn’t entirely surprised when a contingent of Keldeeri smugglers strode aboard our tiny little transport vessel. I was, however, slack-jawed with shock when Teldara’s co-pilot strode over to them and shook hands with one.

“Five females, three Europax, two Human,” the co-pilot said, and I saw Tel’s jaw tense with the onset of her rage.

“Fitz, you disease-ridden son of a whore,” she spat, and her co-pilot, Fitz, just chuckled low and shrugged.

“It’s nothing personal, Tel,” he said, “It’s just business.”

“You promised us six, Fitzgerald,” one of the Keldeeri hissed, his words caught in the trap of his mandibles. His eyes looked like those of a bee, and they were trained intently on Teldara. “The difference will come out of what you’re owed.”

“How about,” Fitz offered, holding his hands out to the side, “I throw in the cargo. We’ve got Earth wine, Qeteshi greenery, clothes, electronics, some Keldeer grains.”

“He’s lying,” Teldara spat, looking smugly satisfied as he absently tapped the place on her hip where her gun would have been if this hadn’t been a standard run with someone she trusted. “We haven’t picked up our cargo yet.”

“I meant,” Fitz insisted, “that I would bring it to you after I picked it all up.”

“No,” the Keldeeri said. He led the contingent, and gripped a large rifle in his three-fingered fists. “We will take the girls and dock you for one.”

“Fine,” Fitz conceded, and another Keldeeri, with scales the color of piss, began to swipe his fingers over his communications tablet.

“Your account number, please,” he said to Fitz, who took the tablet in hand.

“You’ll explain to everyone what’s happening, won’t you, Tel?” Fitz asked as he handed the tablet back to the Keldeeri, and secured a cloth over his nose and mouth.

“She can explain it,” the Keldeeri in charge interrupted, “after she wakes up.” The Keldeeri put their gas masks over their horrible faces as Fitz disappeared into the cockpit. Then, one of the smugglers rolled a small silver ball into the middle of the room. When it stopped, it hissed and sputtered as smoke began to rise out of it. In an instant, everything went black.

I clawed my way back to consciousness, and awoke on the metal plates of the bottom of a cage. I sat upright, and rubbed at my eyes; I could feel my heartbeat in my temples, hard and fast, and my head ached from the sudden change in angle. The cage wasn’t large enough for me to stand in, and if I stretched my arms out at my sides, I could touch both ends with my fingertips. I tried to force myself not to panic.

“Lore!” I blinked rapidly at the whispered hiss of my name, and made my eyes focus on the space around me. Teldara hunched over to my immediate left.

“Tel!” Glancing around, I saw the other three women: two other humans and one other Europax, all of whom slowly roused to consciousness. “What’s going on?”

“Slavers,” she said. “I knew immediately when they walked on board.”

“How did you know?” I asked, willing myself to focus even though my head swam from whatever it was they’d drugged us with.

“Insignias on their uniforms,” she said. “The crossed-crescent — they’re the Quarter Moon slavers.” I’d never heard of them, but Tel’s expression told me that they were not to be trifled with.

“Where are they taking us?”

“To Keldeer, probably,” she said, curling her delicate fingers around the bars of her cage. “That’s where they’ll have the most need of us.”

“What will they do with us?” I asked, envisioning fields to plow, cargo to hoist, that sort of thing. Manual labor. Maybe some house service. I knew I’d burn if they had me working outside too long, and assumed that they did not provide sunscreen to slaves. Housework, that I’d be better suited for. I began to construct a little speech in Keldeeri to convince them to keep me indoors.

“They’ll test us for fertility,” Tel said, “and if we’ll breed, they’ll send us to the auction block. If not, to the brothels.”

I started. “Fertility?”

“Yeah, Lore,” Tel said gently, catching onto my naiveté even before I fully did. “They’ll want to see if we can produce offspring.”

“Oh, shit,” I muttered, eyes so wide that they began to sting from the air. Of course they wouldn’t have been seeking a group of women to put to work in fields or factories. In houses, yes, but it wasn’t cooking and serving and cleaning that I’d be doing there. I swallowed hard. “What do we do?”

Tel’s gaze darted furtively around the expanse of the room. We were five women in a room approximately thirteen or fourteen square feet. The six cages — with one left empty — were the only things in the room. There was a small console next to the door at the front, and an air vent on the back wall, and that was it. Everything was metal. Nothing gave us any indication about the Quarter Moon’s intentions.

“We do what they want,” Tel said, “we keep a low profile. And we figure out where the escape pods are aboard this ship. Then we take any chance we can get to make a break for one. If one of us gets away, then that’s good news for all of us.”

I nodded, and Tel began to snap her fingers to get the attention of the other women. One of them was crying and trembling in her cage, and the other two were quiet, calm, but plainly terrified.

“Listen to me,” Tel said, “Hey!” she whisper-shouted at the crying girl, “Hey, I need you to focus for a second, ok?” The crying girl sniffled, but nodded her head. “All right. I need you to cooperate with them, ok? I need you to do what they want, until we can figure out where the escape pods are. If you find them, you run any chance you get. You get off this ship, you get to the nearest planet, and you send up your distress beacon. After that, you hide and you wait for someone to come find you. Got it?” The women nodded. “And then you have to help them find the rest of us. What are your names?”

None of the women spoke; they all looked like petrified children, and I’m sure I was no different. Tel, on the other hand, was in total command. I swelled with pride in that desperate moment to see her shine under the weight of leadership.

“I’ll start,” Tel went on, and pressed her fingers to her sternum. “My name is Teldara Kinesse. All right? I need you to remember each name. Teldara Kinesse. Say it.” She paused, then said again gently, “I need you to say it.”

And we did, all of us together in a chorus of tremulous voices: “Teldara Kinesse.”

“Good,” Tel said, and looked at me to go next.

“I’m—” I cleared my throat. “I’m Lorelei Vauss.”

“Lorelei Vauss,” they said, with Tel’s voice coming in strong.

I looked at the familiar blonde Europax next to me, and she cast a series of dubious glances around the group of us. She was exquisite, with skin the color of peaches and cream, her blond hair hanging past her waist to trail its delicate tendrils on the cold metal floor. Her cheekbones were high and pointed, and her eyes glittered a limpid blue. “Tierney Mafaren,” she said, trying to make her voice sturdy, trying to make her posture sure.

“Tierney Mafaren,” we all said. And I suddenly realized why she looked so familiar: her mother, Mireena Mafaren, was my mom and dad’s boss in the Echelon. Truth be told, I was grateful she was with us, even if I didn’t know why she was there; if someone as important as Mireena Mafaren’s daughter was missing, the entire galaxy would be looking for her.

Next was the crying girl, red-haired and freckled. She was human and very young, not more than seventeen or eighteen years old. She was thin and reedlike, no more than five feet tall. A wisp of a girl. “Ciara Zehr,” she choked out between sobs.

“Ciara Zehr,” we said.

And last was the human woman who was older than I was. She had black hair and brown almond eyes, and lines around her lips from years of smiling. She reminded me a little of my mother, if my mother had been twenty years younger. “Sara Yve,” she said, her voice quiet but strong.

“Sara Yve.”

“Good,” Tel said at length. “Hold those names in your mind like a mantra. Know nothing but those names and your own survival. And when they come for you—”

And like we’d summoned them, they came. The door to our makeshift prison whooshed open, and two Keldeeri Quarter Moon slavers came into the room. They went to tiny Ciara Zehr’s cage first, and I watched her scramble against the back bars. For my part, I leaned forward to watch, gripping the bars with a white-knuckled fist as they opened Ciara’s cage and dragged her literally kicking and screaming.

Ciara shrieked, flailing, kicking her feet as one of the Keldeeri gripped her under her armpits and the other clung to her ankles.

“Make it stop wiggling,” one of them said in irritated Keldeeri.

“You want I should make an example of it?” the other asked. “Put a bullet in its skull?”

“Ciara! Stop fighting!” I shouted, and after a moment she stilled herself, her eyes locked on me. Clearly, she didn’t speak a word of Kaldeeri.

“Worth too much,” the first slaver said, as they hauled Ciara bodily out of the room. “This one is the youngest.”

And as soon as they’d cleared out, two more came in. This time one of them was slightly orange in color, and the other — more grey — had had his mandibles ripped off so that it left two gaping scars on either side of his face. He glared at me as he and his compatriot approached, and opened my cage.