CHAPTER TWO
NORA
I am Nora Reed from Earth. I was abducted from there by alien slavers which is still hard to believe even as I write it. A nurse by profession, I lived on the edge of our small southern Ohio town where the rural delivery mail route begins. I stopped my car at the end of the drive and got out to pull any mail out of my box, and a dark SUV pulled up beside me. The middle-aged man rolled down his window and zapped me with some kind of stun gun.
The next thing I knew I was waking up in a large room filled with bunk beds three high strapped to one. My own clothes were gone, and I was wearing a dress made diaphanous material under which I was naked. I felt like I had a bad hangover, and there was a spot behind my ear that was sore. Shortly after I woke, a being that looked like a catfish with arms and legs came in and told us we were no longer on Earth and were slaves of the Sargus Empire.
Now I’m not usually a crier, but I just burst into tears like many of the other women. How could this happen? I always thought those alien abduction stories were a load of crap. But there I was.
After fish guy left the room, the straps holding me fastened to the bunk were released automatically. I sat up and looked around me. All of us looked relatively humanoid, but we were clearly not the same species. I saw three other humans nearby who looked like they were from Earth. The rest even those that looked human had peculiar colored skin and wildly bright colored hair. Teal seemed to be a recurring color, neon yellow, purple, orange and blue. Skin colors varied and some of the females had ridged foreheads, and some were light purple and bald.
There was one pretty little alien that was telling us all, “Don’t worry. My father is governor of Halor, and he will send someone to rescue us. This lot has taken the wrong female.”
I hoped that was true. But even if it were, would they take us back to Earth?
I climbed down from my bunk and padded over to two of the women who looked like they were from Earth. They seemed as disoriented and disheveled as I felt. I introduced myself, and they told me their names, too. There was Scarlet Andrews, a tall blond with short cropped hair, Harper Avery, almost as tall with longer blondish hair, then Zoe Addison about my height with medium length black hair.
We decided we were either on some sci-fi movie set or these were for real aliens. They looked pretty real to me. Even with the evidence right in front of us, we found it hard to believe it was really happening. We each had a story remarkably similar. We’d all been grabbed off the street going about our daily routine. They took me with my car still running in the driveway. I wondered how long before it quit or someone noticed I was gone.
I don’t know how long before we got to the planet where we would be sold. It was at least a few weeks, and that was an ordeal in itself. We were stuck in one large room with bunks the only furniture. Twice a day an auto-cart brought food in the form of hard biscuits. Scarlet said they tasted like the dog biscuits you buy in the bulk food department. They were dry and bland, but we ate them because that’s all they gave us with bottles of water to wash them down.
It was probably just as well. We only had four toilets between at least one hundred of us. There was little for us to do to pass the time but tell stories. By the time we shuttled down to that world where we were going to be auctioned off, the four of us from Earth had shared our life stories. Sometimes we speculated about what was going to happen to us.
It didn’t make sense they would kidnap us to be working slaves when they had the technology to go between star systems. Of the four of us, my profession was probably the most technical, but undoubtedly their practice of medicine was far in advance of ours. Kyanna Evzen of Halor told us that the Sargans used slaves for all types of manual labor as well as entertainment and breeding more slaves.
It sure didn’t sound good. The journey seemed endless, but we had developed a daily routine and social structure. I was amazed to find that most of the females of the other humanoid species were reared in families, not unlike ours. Sure, they had different social customs, and some had different marital practices. Some were matrilineal, and some were patrilineal. Sexual practices varied where courting was initiated by the female instead of the male. One species practiced group marriage with multiple males and females.
As for the Sargan’s, they came in a variety of humanoid species. Some were actually homo sapien where others closely resembled humans. The royal family were tall, slender, elongated humanoids with skin colors varying from blue gray to blue green. Their anatomy was compatible with humans, but they were not genetically compatible. That didn’t stop them from using humans as sex toys.
We knew the game was over when we landed. They made us all get naked and put us through a mass washing system sorta like a car wash. Then they gave us back the filmy sack dresses to wear then took us to this building and lined us up.
Shortly after that, all hell broke loose. We could hear weapons fire and there was a small explosion. A few minutes later this big robot came strolling into the corridor where we were waiting for the auction to start. He stopped in front of Harper and then his helmet folded into itself and revealed a big gorgeous man under there.
He seemed kind of stunned as he looked at Harper, then seemed to mentally shake himself before he called for Kyanna Evzen. She was telling the truth. Her father had sent Commander Zared Maktu and his mercenaries to rescue her and her friend, but he said that we could come too if we wanted to be free. Damn, right we did!
It was cold walking outside with no shoes and no coat or even real clothes. But no one was complaining as the hot commander led us to a shuttle. There was only seating for about twenty-five, and there were a hundred of us. Most of us ended up sitting on the floor in the cargo hold, but we were damn glad to get away from the slavers.
Accommodations on their warship, I heard later it was called a dreadnaught, were not as good as the slaver’s bunk room, but we didn’t care. We were so relieved not to be sold into slavery. Soon after we arrived, a young mercenary came for Harper. Zoe, Scarlet, and I gave each other knowing looks and giggled because we knew the moment that hot commander set eyes on her that he wanted her. She looked as stunned as he was.
When she came back just after it felt like the ship took some kind of hit, she was blushing, and she looked like she had been thoroughly kissed.
“He said I am his soul mate, and he wants to court me,” she told us. “Just like that.”
“What did you say to that?” Scarlet asked.
“He didn’t give me time to say much of anything before he was kissing me,” she said, blushing.
“And of course, you beat him off,” Scarlet teased. “Does he kiss as good as he looks?”
“Way better,” Harper laughed self-consciously. “The thing was, he was dead serious. He wants me to be his mate.” She shook her head.
“So, then what happened?” Zoe asked. “Why did he bring you back?”
“We’re under attack. But he said not to worry. The people after us can’t do much real damage. We’ll lose them when we jump to FTL,” she explained. “Things just keep getting crazier. He thinks our planet is called dirt.”
We all laughed at that---but not at what she said next. Our rescuers had never heard of it and didn’t know where it was. That meant it must be far from where we were and not likely that we would be getting back there anytime soon, if ever.
The hot commander came back a few minutes later and confirmed what we had pretty much concluded. Harper broke down crying first, and the commander held her and just let her cry. The rest of us huddled together and had a good cry too.
It just kept swirling around and around in my head that we were never going home.
We were never going home.