Dr. Lain Brousseau
“Hello, Earth females,” the Thressl’n voice from the night before said cheerfully over the speaker. It wasn’t the masculine voice I’d craved for the rest of the night though. It was the first one.
“I hope you are having a pleasant morning.”
Whether it was morning or not, we wouldn’t have known. The area where we were kept was darker than the deepest cave on Earth. But one thing was for sure – pleasant was not on my list of adjectives for this experience.
Throughout the night, a few women had panicked, shouting and rattling against the metallic tables we were chained to. A glow would light the room, and then a sweet purple fog would put us all back into the same paralyzed trance we’d been in when we arrived. Soon, we all learned it was better not to make a fuss. It was one thing to get kidnapped and then get knocked unconscious. It was quite another to be responsible for a collective coma shared with the other abducted women in the room.
“By now I’m sure that you have all had sufficient rest. We will be arriving at our destination soon. Please be prepared to encounter the unknown. Again, keep in mind that the females who keep calm will be rewarded. Thank you, and enjoy the rest of your travels.”
“Enjoy?” the woman next to me whispered hoarsely. All of us were parched. In fact, I couldn’t remember ever feeling so thirsty before. The combination of the strange gas and the stale air in the room was enough to make my lips crack.
“Do you think they’ll hurt us?” another woman whispered.
“It’s hard to say,” someone else said.
“I knew we shouldn’t have let the Vellreq stay on Earth so long!” a loud, angry woman across the room said shrilly.
“This ship doesn’t even belong to the Vellreq!” someone else retorted, mirroring my exact thoughts.
“They were probably gathering intel to sell us out to the highest bidder!” the angry woman exclaimed.
I couldn’t see her, but I formed a picture of what she looked like in my head. She sounded like she was in her mid-forties, and probably had frown lines on her lips and scowl lines on her forehead. She seemed like the kind of woman who would jump on the bandwagon and start a riot over something very little. Maybe her hair was dark brown, or perhaps dirty-blonde and shoulder length. Her face wouldn’t be friendly, and maybe she’d be overweight. She would look like the kind of person who could chew you up and spit you out on a whim. But she was probably sweet as sugar to the people closest to her.
Of course, I had no way of knowing any of this. I was learning a lot about my own nature, as well as the nature of other humans and Thressl’n from being confined in the dark, with nowhere to go but my own mind. I was used to the isolation, but the darkness was something new entirely. We had trained for similar situations for Project Orion, but the darkness only lasted for about thirty minutes. Once you were in the deep black room for over 12 hours, strange things started happening in your head. I was surprised by my own biases when people spoke and I attempted to match their voice to a face. It was such a human instinct for me to have, but it was one that was off base and hardly founded in reality.
“The Vellreq did this to us, I’m sure of it!” the angry woman cried.
“Please lower your voices or face the consequences,” the cheerful voice said over the loudspeaker.
We all held a collective breath. If the gas was going to come again, I was going to miss my first time ever landing on another planet. I couldn’t think of anything more disappointing. As horrifying as the experience was, I would be able to publish an entire book series out of just the last few hours. The knowledge I’d bring back to Earth would be coveted for generations to come.
Fortunately, nobody else said anything, and we were all conscious as the spacecraft shook rapidly upon entering the atmosphere of what I could only presume was the planet Jenal’k. After about 12 minutes of furious shaking, the craft came to a complete stop, lowering with ease until it stopped moving entirely.
If I wasn’t so damn intrigued, I would have been a lot more scared about the situation I was in. As it was, I was terrified, but also, secretly, a little bit thrilled. My head was full of notes I was taking as the night wore on; little observations I made about the speech patterns of the Thressl’n, the names of the women I was with and what they had been doing when they were abducted, and the effects of the needle versus the gas that flooded our room when things got too out of hand and the Thressl’n decided that we needed to be subdued.
The craft was still for a moment when suddenly a voice rang through the speaker. It was the one I had been waiting for, and a surge of unanticipated desire electrified me as the masculine voice began to speak.
“Hello, Earth females. This is Commander Zerk’k Arkti speaking. As second in command of my empire, I’d like to officially welcome you to the planet Jenal’k.”
And with a click and the crackle of static, the voice was gone.