Harper
I was taking out the garbage that evening in early May just as the sunset was painting the clouds in the western sky in golden hues. I paused for a moment to admire it before I tied off the bag and went back to get the recycling bin off the back porch. Cherry Street was three blocks and a quick left off Main Street, and we often got traffic stopping and asking directions for other nearby streets. It was pretty easy to miss the turns if you didn’t pay attention.
So, when someone pulled up in a new looking Chevy, I wasn’t concerned. I can’t say what exactly happened. One minute was reciting the directions he asked for and pointing, then nothing.
I woke up strapped to put down bunk with a helluva headache. I could barely move my head, but from my peripheral vision I glimpsed two stacks of cots attached to the opposite side of the room. They were all full. Some of the others were moaning as though they felt as bad as I did. I figured I had been drugged but I didn’t know by whom or why. The fact that I was strapped to a bed and felt like I had a drug hangover was not a good sign.
It happen while I was giving those guy directions, but I couldn’t remember what. Someone had kidnapped me and stuck me in a room with a bunch of other women. I figured it was human traffickers as soon as I saw the others, but I sure wasn’t thinking of alien slavers. I assumed they were human, human traffickers. Then this big ugly guy, and I use the term loosely, with a face like an orange catfish, kind of slimy looking, came in and started doing a bed check.
The creature walked on two legs and had two arms that looked like seal flippers with fingers and a thumb. He wore a beige tunic with a belt that had something holstered at his hip. “I am the keeper,” he said in a gurgling voice. “You have been captured to serve the Sargus Empire. You have all been inspected and injected with micro translators so you can understand me and you will understand your new Masters. You will listen and obey or you will be punished. You will now be released within this chamber. Escape is not possible. We are in deep space traveling within a space ship so even if you could escape this chamber, there is no place to go. When I leave this chamber, the straps will release and you may move about the chamber.”
At the end of his little speech, he turned abruptly and left through the sliding door. The straps holding on the bunk released and reeled into the side rail like a car seatbelt. I just laid there stunned. I was going to be a slave. How could this be happening? I was too stunned to even cry. Kidnapped by alien slavers.
I slowly sat up and realized my baggy t-shirt and yoga shorts were gone. I was wearing a shapeless loose dress of thin material that went to my knees and nothing else. As I looked around the room, there were about twenty of us, all wearing the same shapeless shift. I guessed it was probably one of those one size fits all.
Seeing all the women appeared to be between twenty and forty and average to very attractive, I suspected we were headed for sexual slavery. Even if I was wrong, slavery was slavery---one being owning another. My life was no longer my own.
It looked like there was a window at the end of the room. I climbed down the ladder from my bunk and padded barefoot over to the rectangular view port. I didn’t see stars, but a conglomeration of color waves that could easily have been special effects designed to make us think we were in space. But catfish guy certainly looked real enough.
I stood by the window for a few minutes trying to reason things out. Then I turned and looked around the room. Not all the other women looked exactly human. A couple of them were purple with teal colored hair and large eyes with pink pupils. They had a single row of ridges that extended from their hairlines in the center of their forehead to the middle of their noses, and pointed elfin ears. They were exotically beautiful with high pitched childlike voices. One of them said her father was governor of some Consortium world and he would pay a high reward to whoever rescued her.
I could tell they weren’t talking American English, but I could still understand what they said. As I got closer, I studied them carefully to see if they looked like they were wearing makeup or prosthetics to make them look as alien as they appeared. They were genuine.
The two of them looked at me suspiciously. I imagined I seemed as strange to them as they did to me. I smiled hopefully and said, “Hi, I’m Harper Avery from Earth. I don’t mean stare, but I’ve never seen anyone who looks like you before. May I ask where you’re from.”
“I am Kyanna Guryon from Halor of the Transtellar Consortium. My father is governor of our world and this is my friend Sowia Garvo we were going to meet my betrothed for a holiday on Plotain Pleasure Station when we were taken. They will all pay for this.” She said quietly. Her fiancé had arrived at the Plotain Pleasure Station just after it had been raided by the Sargan slavers.
“We were well within Consortium space when we were taken,” Sowia added. “They have already broken the treaty by entering our space. That means the war isn’t over.”
“So you think we’ll be rescued?”
“My father will stop at nothing to get me back from these monsters. If you are fortunate we will all be rescued together. Slavery is illegal in the Consortium. We have the technology, we don’t need slaves,” Kyanna murmured vehemently.
When they saw me talking to the aliens, some of the other women came to join us. Scarlet Andrews, Zoe Addison, Nora Reed were from towns not far from where I lived in the middle of Ohio. Scarlet had been walking her dog when someone in a nondescript SUV stopped and asked for directions.
Zoe had gone out to get mail out of her rural mailbox when they picked her off the street, and Nora was jogging in the park a few blocks from her house. The common thread was that we were all from small towns where people were friendly and didn’t expect to be snatched off the street in daylight.
We were easy pickings for them. I hoped Kyanna was right and we would be rescued. If not, I hoped at least for a kind owner. Mostly I tried not to think about it and just wished I would wake up and this would all have been a dream. In my wilder fantasies I hoped for a big hot alien warrior to rescue me and tell me I’m his soul mate and we are meant to be together. The way my luck was running, he would probably look like catfish guy instead.
Time passed slowly in that large room with one bathroom and a small dining table where we sat to eat the food cakes they gave us to eat twice a day with a fruity drink in squeeze pouches. The cakes were kind of a cross between meatloaf and pound cake that came in packages. They gave us the same stuff to eat every meal in a couple assorted flavors in both the cakes and the drinks.
Mostly, we talked among ourselves about our lives wherever we were from. About half of us were from Earth and the other were from various other worlds in this Consortium that Kyanna told us about. They were all female and basically humanoid mammals. They told us about other alien species like catfish man who was a warm blooded amphibian born in water like tadpoles then turned into a walking land creature that could also breathe underwater. His sub species spend most of their time out of the water.
Despite Kyanna’s assurances that her father the governor of Halor would send rescue, the longer we were locked up there together the harder it became to believe we would be rescued from becoming slaves. Even Kyanna began to despair when we landed on Ursaga the world known for their massive slave trade.
We were in the room lined and tagged like cattle ready for auction when the raiders came to the auction house. The security guards were no match for the armored military types that over ran the facility. At first, I thought they were robots but these were men inside a special armor.
That became apparent when one of them came to where we were huddled in a corner trying to keep from getting caught in the middle. As he stopped in front of us, the helmet that covered his head entirely like Iron Man, opened and receded into his armor. I’m sure my mouth dropped open as I stared at him. In the wake of this mayhem my first thought was he’s gorgeous.
My second thought was, no---this is just crazy. But almost as soon as the helmet came off, his gaze riveted to me, as he seemed to sniff the air. He was definitely alien, over six feet tall with almost fluorescent yellow hair cropped close to his head. His skin was pale blue gray and his eyes were a shade of violet I’d never seen as an eye color. Despite his alien appearance, his face was beautifully sculpted, strong jawline, full mouth---and those purple eyes.
Suddenly I knew what it was like to be riveted under the intense stare of one magnificent hunk of man. He’s the one, I thought, unable to take my eyes from his. He looked as stunned by it as I felt. All of the noise and confusion in the background faded.
He seemed to give himself a mental shake and cleared his throat. “We are here to help. Come with us. You will not be sold as slaves. We will take you to a safe place.”
“Who are you?” I asked in a shaky voice.
“I am Commander Zared Maktu of Farseek. We have come to rescue Kyanna Guryon, but we are taking all of those stolen from their homes. There will be no slaves sold here today,” he said in an authoritative tone. “Come, we must go before reinforcement arrives. Please follow me.”
Anywhere! I thought and stepped away from the group. “Pleased to meet you, Commander, Harper Avery, from Earth.” I would have offered my hand but his were covered with dark metallic gloves.
“You are from Dirt?” he smirked a little. “Where is this planet Dirt?”
I chuckled in spite of myself. The translators were working quite literally. “It’s what we call it, Earth, not dirt. Where is it from here? I have no idea. I don’t even know where here is.”
He gave a slight nod and something in his gaze told me we weren’t done by a long shot. “Come, all of you. We will organize this mess after we leave this planet.”
He turned and started walking toward the door, and we all fell into step behind him. It was a little chilly outside the building for the way we were dressed, and the ground was rough on our tender feet. But there was no whining of complaining as we stepped briskly behind him, determined to keep up.
We got to their ship as Kyanna arrived with other armored soldiers.
“See,” she said all smiles. “I told you they would come.”
Yes, she did.