Ice Planet Barbarians: A SciFi Alien Romance

Part One

GEORGIE

Up until yesterday I, Georgie Carruthers, never believed in aliens. Oh, sure, there were all kinds of possibilities out there in the universe, but if someone would have told me that little green men were hanging around Earth in flying saucers, just waiting to abduct people? I would have told them they were crazy.

But that was yesterday.

Today? Today’s a very different sort of story.

I suppose it all started last night. It was pretty ordinary, overall. I came home after a long day of working the drive-thru teller window at the bank, nuked a Lean Cuisine, ate it while watching TV, and dozed off on the couch before stumbling to bed. Not exactly the life of the party, but hey. It was a Tuesday, and Tuesdays were all work, no play. I went to sleep, and from there, shit got weird.

My dreams were messed up. Not the usual losing teeth or naked in front of the class dreams. These were far more sinister. Dreams of loss and abandonment. Dreams of pain and cold white rooms. Dreams of walking in a tunnel and seeing an oncoming train. In that dream, I tried to lift my hand to shield me from the light.

Except when I went to raise my hand, I couldn’t.

That had woken me up from my slumber. I squinted into the tiny light someone was shining in my eyes. Someone was . . . shining something in my eyes? I blinked, trying to focus, and realized that I wasn’t dreaming at all. I wasn’t home, either. I was . . . somewhere new.

Then the light clicked off and a bird chirped. I squinted, my eyes adjusting to the darkness, and I found myself surrounded by . . . things. Things with long black eyes and big heads and skinny pale arms. Little green men.

I’d screamed. I’d screamed bloody murder, actually.

One of the aliens tilted its head at me, and the bird chirping sound happened again, even though his mouth didn’t move. Something hot and dry wrapped over my mouth, choking me, and a noxious scent filled my nostrils. Oh shit. Was I going to die? Frantically, I worked my jaw, trying to breathe even as the world got dark around me.

Then, I went back to sleep, dreaming of work. I always dreamed of work when I was stressed. For hours on end, angry banking clients yelled at me as I kept trying to tear open packs of twenties that wouldn’t seem to come open. I’d try to count out change only to get distracted. Work dreams are the worst, usually, but this one was a relief. No trains. No aliens. Just banking. I could deal with banking.

And that brings me to . . . here.

I’m awake. Awake and not entirely sure where I am. My eyes slide open, and I gaze around me. It smells like I’m in a sewer, I can feel a wall behind me, and my body hurts all freaking over. My head feels blurry and slow, like all of me hasn’t quite woken up yet. My limbs feel heavy. Drugged, I realize. Someone’s drugged me.

Not someone. Something.

My breath quickens as a mental image of the dark-eyed aliens returns, and I look for them. Wherever I’m at, I’m alone.

Thank God.

I squint in the low light, trying to make out my surroundings. It seems to be a large, dark room. Faint orange light is emitted from small running tubes in the ceiling about twenty feet above. The walls themselves are black, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say this looks like a cargo bay from some weird science fiction movie. On the wall opposite me, I count six large six-foot metal tubes lined up against the wall like lockers. Orange and green lights run up and down the sides of the tubes in a variety of squiggles and dots that might be some sort of alien writing. On the far wall, there’s an oblong oval door. I can’t get to the door, though, because I’m behind a metal grid of some kind.

And there’s a god-awful smell. Actually, it’s not just one smell, it’s several of them. It’s like a piss-shit-vomit-sweat cocktail, and it makes me gag. I try to cover my mouth with my hand, but my arm is slow to respond and all I manage to do is flail a little. Ugh.

I swing my drugged, heavy head, looking around the room. Actually, I’m not alone, now that I look around. There are others piled onto this side of the grid, bodies curled up and asleep. In the low light, I count seven, maybe eight forms about my size, huddled together like puppies. Seeing as how we’re all on this side of the metal grid, I’m starting to suspect I’m in a jail cell of some kind.

Or a cage.

I guess if I have to be in a cage, it could be worse. There’s room enough to stand, though not much more than that. At least there are no aliens in here with me. I want to panic, but I’m too out of it. This is like going to the dentist’s office and getting a dose of laughing gas. I’m having a hard time focusing on anything.

My bare upper arm aches, and I sluggishly rub my fingers over it. There are several raised bumps on my arm that weren’t there before, and I rub it harder, feeling something hard under the skin. What the fuck? I try to peer at it in the dark, but I can’t see anything. Images of the aliens and the light shining in my eyes, the nightmares, the terror—it all rises, and I panic. A whimper escapes in my throat.

A hand touches my other arm. “Don’t scream,” a girl whispers.

I roll my too-heavy head until I can look over at her. She’s about my age, but blonde and thinner than me. Her hair’s long and dirty, her eyes big in her lean face. She glances around the room, and then puts a finger to her lips in case I didn’t understand her earlier warning.

Silence. Okay. Okay. I choke the cry rising in my throat and try to remain calm. I nod. Don’t scream. Don’t scream. I can keep my shit together. I can.

“You all right?”

“Yeaaah . . .” I slur, my mouth unable to form words. And… I drool all over myself. Lovely. I lift one of my heavy hands to swipe at my mouth. “Thorry—”

“You’re okay,” she says before I can panic again. Her voice is pitched low so as to not wake up the others. “We’re all a bit hung over when we wake up. They drug everyone when they arrive. It’ll wear off in a bit. I’m Liz.”

“Georgie,” I tell her, taking time to sound out my name properly. I rub my arm and point at it, at the strange bumps. “Whattth going on?”

“Well,” Liz says, “you were abducted by aliens. But I guess that one was obvious, right?”

I smile wryly. Or I try to. I probably just end up drooling on myself again.

Liz shifts next to me. “Okay, let me see if I can hit the big highlights. Everyone else here?” She thumbs a gesture at the others piled into the cage, still sleeping. “They’ve been abducted, too. All Earth, most American. I think there’s a Canadian in there. You twenty-two?”

“Yeth?”

“Yeah, I thought so. We all are. Let me also guess: live alone, not pregnant, no major health issues, no nearby family?”

“How—”

“Because we’re all in the same boat,” Liz says, her tone bleak. “Every girl they pick up has the same story. Except for Megan. She was pregnant. Two months along, she said, and they vacuumed her out like it was no big deal.” Liz shudders. “So I’m guessing that wherever they’re taking us, they don’t want pregnant girls. Just young and healthy.”

Oh God. I swallow hard, fighting the urge to puke. There’s really no place to do it, though I’m starting to suspect I know why the place smells like sewage. Liz’s scent isn’t exactly pleasant. “How . . . long you been heeere?”

“Me?” she asks. “Two weeks. Kira’s been here the longest that we know of. She’s the one with the earpiece.”

I look around, but I don’t see an earpiece on anyone in particular.

“It’s a translator,” Liz explains. “You’ll see soon enough. I’m throwing too much at you at once, aren’t I? Okay, let’s try this again. See those tubes?” She points at the far wall, at the things that reminded me of oversized lockers. “Kira saw what was in them. She said they’re more girls, just like us.”

I gasp, the sound watery and overloud. More people?

Liz waves a hand at me, indicating we should be quiet, and I nod, rubbing those itchy bumps on my arm. She peers around to see if anyone’s coming, and when no one appears, scoots even closer to me. I smell her body next to mine, her scent sweaty but human. “Yeah. So . . . they picked up Kira and she said they kept talking to her and she couldn’t understand them, so they took her by the ear and more or less stapled in some sort of ear-piece that translates things. But I guess they only had one of the suckers, so she has to translate for the rest of us.”

“S-stapled?” I repeat, horrified at the thought.

“Yep. Tagged her like a cow.” Liz grimaces. “Sorry, I’m from Oklahoma. I guess that visual doesn’t bother me as much as you. Where you from?”

“Orlando.” I’m not sure if my mouth will work around ‘Florida’ without a spray of spit.

She nods. “We’re kind of scattered all over the place. Anyhow, from what Kira’s been able to pick up, our new friends are smugglers of some kind. Guess what they trade in?”

“Girls?”

“Ayup.” She points at the lockers again. “My guess is that they came here to pick up six, then had such a good run that they decided to squeeze a few more into the hold and make out like bandits or something. Kira says someone new pops up every other day or so. We figure they’re going to pack us up like sardines and then sell us off to . . . I don’t know. Wherever.” She shudders. “I’m trying not to think that far ahead because I’ll just start screaming, and you don’t want to know what happens when you start screaming.”

Oh no. “What—”

“You’ll see soon enough,” Liz says in a sick voice. “Just trust me. The skinny ones don’t like noise. Remember that, okay?”

I remember her warning from before. “Okay. My . . . arm—”

“Little bumps on it? Yeah. They have a doctor of some kind—or a veterinarian, who knows. He shows up when we first get here, jabs a bunch of needles into us, sticks the silver thing in your skin, and leaves. I’m thinking it’s kind of like when the vet shows up at the farm, inoculates the cows, and sticks a tracker in the ear. Except ours is in the arm. But there I go comparing us to cows again. I probably shouldn’t, right?”

“Cuz . . . we . . . eat . . . cows,” I mumble between drooling on myself.

Liz snorts. “Yeah, pretty much. But I think they’re taking too much trouble with us to eat us. Unless we’re a delicacy of some kind, which I wouldn’t rule out. But . . . yeah.”

“Yeah,” I echo.

“Try and get some sleep if you can,” Liz murmurs, patting my sore arm. “Sleeping’s pretty much the only escape we have. Enjoy it.”

That Liz, such an optimist. I wrap my arms around my chest and notice I’m still wearing the sleeveless shorty pajama set I’d gone to sleep in. It’s not very warm or very concealing, and I absurdly wish that I’d gone to sleep in a big flannel pajama set.

And then I want to weep. To think I haven’t dressed properly for alien abduction. My shoulders shake with mirth until mirth turns into tears. So yeah. Yesterday? I didn’t believe in aliens. But that was yesterday.

I quietly weep myself back to sleep.

???

I figure out a few things over the next day on the spaceship.

I figure out that there’s no toilet. It seems our captors hadn’t thought through the whole stuff-the-hold-full-of-stolen-girls thing. We have to make do with a bucket in a corner, hence the sewage smell. Dignity? Gone. Nothing like waiting your turn on the poop bucket to make you lose what little humanity you have left.

I figure out that food is tiny little bricks that look like dried seaweed and taste like shit. We get two of those a day. Water? It’s dispensed from a faucet of some kind that reminds me of a gerbil feeder set in the wall.

The welts on my arm go down over the next several hours, though one rough little bump remains. Through feeling it and peering at the other girls’ arms, I’m guessing it’s some sort of electronic tracking device they’ve implanted. Cattle tags, as Liz had called ‘em. At the moment, I think it’s pretty damn apt.

I figure out that there are two kinds of aliens. There are the fragile green ones that seem to be in charge and the basketball-headed ones that are security. I call them basketball heads not because they’ve got oversized brains, but because of the pebbly, hairless orange-ish texture of their skin. It looks bizarre above the collar of the gray bodysuits they wear day in and day out. The basketball heads are pretty horrific, no matter the stupid name. They have weird little bug eyes with an opaque eyelid over them and needle-like teeth. They have two fingers and a thumb instead of a normal hand and they’re tall. The little green men, the ones that make the bird noises? They’re not more than three feet tall or so, and they rarely show up. The basketball heads, though? They’re in the hold constantly.

Everyone’s terrified of them, too.

I figure this out when I wake up the next morning—though I suppose it could be the afternoon—and see everyone else is awake. The last of the dopey meds seem to have worn off, and I stifle a yawn, blinking. I want to be silent, because silent is good. It takes me a moment to realize everyone’s moving to the far side of the cage, huddling away from the bars. The hairs on the back of my neck rise, and I follow the others, heading to the back. I want to ask what’s going on, but the moment I open my mouth, Liz shakes her head silently, her gaze fixed on something over my shoulder.

I turn and flinch at the sight of a basketball-headed alien peering through the bars at me. I flinch again when he gives me a leering grin, and I scoot closer to the others.

“No screaming,” someone murmurs as a warning.

God, this is freaking me out. I nod. No way am I making a sound.

The ball heads remain in our room all day. It’s like they’re waiting for something. I’m afraid to wonder what it is. We huddle in the corner of the cage, on edge, and another unconscious girl is brought into the room after a few hours. No one even tries to escape when they open the door. We just sit and watch as they shove the newest girl inside and close the door again.

I can guess why no one wants to attempt a break out. Where would we go? And the consequences of disobedience must be bad, because everyone in the cage is utterly frightened by the basketball heads.

Someone grabs the new girl by the arm and tries to pull her into our huddled pile. She’s about my age and has pretty red hair. I notice the ball heads keep coming back to the cage and commenting on her in their weird garbled language, making hand gestures from time to time. Then they laugh, a high-pitched, eerie sound that grates on my frayed nerves.

It’s almost like they’re taking bets on the new girl.

A few hours later, she wakes up. I’m hunkered down next to Liz, and I startle out of my stupor when she inhales sharply.

The girl sobs aloud, her eyes going wide.

“Don’t scream,” I hear a low voice hiss. I can’t make out who’s said it, but I know we’re all thinking it.

The redhead isn’t listening, though. She takes one look around her, panics, and begins to scream. Her shrill cry echoes in the hold. She won’t stop, even though others are waving their hands and touching her, trying to calm her down. She’s hysterical, her cries getting louder and more panicked the more awake she gets. She flails and thrashes against our warning touches.

Something beeps overhead.

The others in the cage go utterly still.

Weird bird-like chirps fill the air from the intercom.

One of the ball heads touches a panel that lights up, and he gargles a response. The crowd of girls seems to shrink back as the other ball head approaches the cage and opens the door.

It’s freedom, but no one’s reaching.

The redhead is snagged. She’s a fighter, I’ll give her that. She thrashes and flails as they touch her, screaming obscenities in French and shrieking for help. Everyone else sits quietly, watching.

I can’t stand this. I try to get up, to go help her. Liz grabs my leg. “Don’t,” she hisses. “Don’t call attention to yourself, Georgie. Trust me.”

Even though it goes against everything inside me to do nothing, I’m terrified too. It’s too easy to sit down and huddle with the mass of girls again. To sit and wait and see what happens when someone disobeys the unspoken gag order. And I hate myself for it.

A moment later, the redhead’s dragged to what I thought was an examining table. I watch in horror as one of the ball heads slaps some sort of mask over her mouth. When she goes silent, I realize it’s a muzzle of some kind. My own mouth thins, my teeth clamping together. I feel sick as her hands are stretched over her head and bound at the far end of the table with a cord that snakes around her wrists. Her hips and legs hang over the edge and I start imagining the worst.

She continues to kick and flail as one of the aliens grabs her skirt and rips it from her body.

“Don’t look,” Liz whispers to me.

I look, though. Someone has to look. Someone has to see.

Sick at heart, I watch as the redhead bucks and tries to free herself. I watch as the first alien undoes the front of his uniform with a touch at the collar. I watch as his friend makes laughing comments as he mounts the gagged woman.

I watch, dry-eyed and full of hate as they laugh and get on top of her over and over again. It seems to go on forever. At some point she stops fighting and goes limp, and I hope she’s passed out. I hope she doesn’t remember any of this.

Liz squeezes my hand. “Kira says they have standing orders that they’re allowed to ‘discipline’ any misbehaving captives.”

I nod and finally look away as the aliens talk in their weird language and switch places once more. I’m guessing she’s good and ‘disciplined’ by now. I want to scream, but loud noises aren’t allowed. I dig my nails into my palms and gaze down the row of pale faces in the pen with me, trying to figure out which one is Kira. A girl at the end with silky, flat brown hair is weeping with her hands pressed to her ears. It’s as if she can’t stand to hear what’s going on, but the redhead is silent. There’s only alien chatter.

That must be Kira. She’s the only one who can understand them, thanks to the device implanted in her ear. I scan the others. They’re in shock, eyes averted. One girl wears a look of horrified grief, and I wonder if she was a screamer, too. I decide I don’t want to know. I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to drown out the world. Trying to exist in a quiet bubble where none of this is real. Where if I pinch my arm hard enough, everything will go away and I’ll wake up.

But when I close my eyes, I see the redhead’s face as she’s raped. I see the ball head’s face as he jokes and yammers away in his alien language as he rapes the girl. As if it’s no big deal, just another day at the office, typical water-cooler shit.

Liz is right. We’re nothing but cattle to these things. They’re going to sell us to someone else to rape, to eat, or both. Or something else more horrible that I can’t even imagine.

I’m not going to take my fate sitting down, though. I cross my arms tightly over my pajamas, draw my legs up, and study my surroundings. I look at each nook and cranny of the strange walls, trying to determine if there’s anything I can grab that can be used as a weapon.

Because I’m going to kill those pebbly, gross bastards if they ever try to touch me.

? ? ?

No one else comes on board the ship for the next week, so I’m starting to suspect we’re “full.” Which is good, considering that our tiny hold gets more and more crowded-feeling with every hour. Now with Dominique—the brutalized redhead—squeezed in with us, we feel like sardines.

Not that anyone is jumping up to complain.

Liz and I talk quietly during the night, when the guards leave us alone. We must be heading out to space now. Our ears have been popping repeatedly during the last few days, and we suspect we’ve begun traveling at a high speed.

And we don’t know what to do about it.

“We start with killing the guards,” I tell Liz and Kira for the second time tonight. “The little green men seem to have the basketball heads doing all the grunt work. I think if we get rid of the orange ones, maybe we can bully our way into demanding a return to Earth.”

“Tiny flaw in this plan, Georgie,” says Liz, ever the practical one. She gestures at the bars of the cage. “We’re on this side, and they’re on the other side. With guns.”

“We need to do something to prompt them to open the door.” Kira’s quiet voice cuts through the darkness. “I would say we could wait for another captive to show up, but . . .”

“Yeah,” I say thoughtfully, my gaze sliding over to where Dominique huddles in a corner, alone. She’s been a straight-up mess ever since they’d returned her to the cage. She’s quiet now, of course. She spends her waking hours with her fist stuffed against her mouth and biting down on it, tears streaming down her face. And she resists all attempts to befriend her or calm her down. It’s going to take time and patience, and because we’re all crammed into something the size of a closet, patience is running short at the moment.

I look back over at Kira and Liz’s grim faces, thinking hard. “What if we all pretend to be sick the next time they come to feed us?”

“That won’t be too hard,” Liz says. “Those seaweed bars are fucking nasty.”

But Kira shakes her head. “And what if they decide that since we’re all sick, they’ll just dump everyone into space? We’re extras, remember? As long as they have their quota in those pods, we’re expendable.” She gestures at the lockers on the opposite side of the room.

I can’t forget them. I don’t know if I’m jealous that they’re completely unaware of our situation or even more horrified at what they’re going to go through when they wake up. But she’s right. The pod people being safe and secure makes us superfluous, and I’m not willing to add ‘sabotage the pods’ to the escape plan. Nor am I willing to leave them behind. We’ll simply have to factor them in. “Well then,” I say. “What if we scream?”

Kira swallows audibly. “That terrifies me.” She peers over my shoulder at Dominique and shudders.

“I don’t like it either,” I tell her. “But what are our options? One misbehaving person ensures that everyone else stays safe, right? So we get their attention, get them to open the doors . . .”

“And?” Liz prompts. “What? Get raped?”

“No.” I don’t even want to think about that. “We need a distraction of some kind. We can rush them when they open the doors. There are more of us than them.”

“But they have guns,” Kira points out.

“But if we all rush them—”

“Then the ones in front get shot,” Liz says. “I don’t want to be here, but I don’t want to die. And I don’t know that the others do, either. They’re not really fighters. None of us are.”

“But what choice do we have?” I protest. “We can be good little slaves and still get raped and still get sold off for God knows what. At least if we fight back, we have a chance.”

“No, you’re right.” Liz draws her knees up close to her chest, thinking. “So we make a distraction, have them open the doors, rush them, take the guns, and take control. We just need to make sure Kira’s protected through all of this.”

“Me?” Kira looks surprised. “Why?”

“Because you’re the one with the translator,” Liz says grimly. “We’re not going to be able to convince them to turn around and go back to Earth if you get shot and we can’t talk to them.”

She has a point. “I’ll be the distraction. It’s my plan.”

“You sure?”

God, no, I’m not sure. Every part of my body vibrates with terror at the thought of those pebbly-skinned creatures touching me. But what choice do I have? Sit back and do nothing? Roll over and let these creatures decide my fate? Screw that. “I’ll do it.”

As if agreeing with me, the ship lurches and dips, sending us all sprawling.

Not a single person screams, of course. We know better.

···

For the second time that day, the ship lurches. Turbulence is a little ridiculous, considering that we’re in space. Isn’t it supposed to be a smooth ride? My stomach lurches along with it, but I ignore it.

It’s almost time for our plan.

I stare at the guard pacing outside of our cell. It’s what we consider “bedtime,” in which we’ve received the last seaweed bar of the day and the guards are getting bored with harassing us. Normally after the last feeding, they change our waste bucket and then head out.

But tonight, things are off. Even though our waste bucket is nearly full, the ball head isn’t coming to get it. Chirping sounds keep coming over the intercom, and the guard in the room is more and more agitated as the minutes tick past.

And the whole time, the ship keeps lurching.

“What’s going on?” I whisper to Kira as we watch the single guard pace back and forth, distracted. “Where’s the other basketball head?”

“I don’t know,” she admits, her hand pressing to her ear and the silvery device curled there. “Some of the words don’t translate over. Or they do, but I don’t know what they mean.” She shakes her head. “I think there’s something going on with the engine, though. They keep talking about detaching the cargo and offloading to a safe location.”

The pit of my stomach curdles. “Um, we’re the cargo.”

She grimaces. “I know. Apparently they’re going to miss a ship date if they do, though, so they’re trying to work around it.”

“Lucky us,” I murmur, glancing at the one guard. Only one. Normally there are two. My body tenses with realization. If we take down the one guard . . . there will only be one to deal with later. Our odds are much better if we divide and conquer.

And if we have his gun.

“I think we should move ahead with our plan,” I say in a low voice as the guard begins to pace again.

“I don’t know,” Kira says, chewing on her lip. But Liz nods at me.

“We’re going for it,” I whisper to the others in the cage. The girls look uncomfortable, but they move aside to give me room. If I’m willing to be the sacrificial lamb, they’re willing to let me sacrifice myself.

So I steel my courage, head to the cage bars, and stick my face between the slats of the prison. “Hey.”

The guard doesn’t turn. He keeps pacing, his gaze flicking at the ceiling as if expecting more of those weird chirping orders to come down.

I try again. “Hey. Over here.” When he doesn’t pay attention to me, I admit I’m surprised. Normally they take any excuse to punish us. I’ve seen another girl raped over the last week because she’d cried out in a nightmare. So I try a new tactic to get his attention.

I hock a big wad of spit at him.

It lands on the back of his big bald head, and he stops in his pacing. His weird little fish-eyes get round as he turns to glare at me, then stalks across the storage bay toward our cage.

“Good job, Georgie,” Liz breathes.

I suck in a deep breath and nod. I don’t feel so good about it, but hey. I retreat to the back of the cage like we’ve planned—so he’ll have to come in after me—and when the other girls close ranks around me, I haul the shit bucket up into my arms.

The idea we’ve come up with is that I’ll throw the crap on him to further distract him, and then the others will use that time to jump him. We’ll overwhelm him and take him down, then strip him of his gun. Not that we know how to shoot an alien weapon, but one step at a time. As long as he doesn’t have it, that’s half the battle.

Of course, hefting the shit bucket into my arms shows just how heavy it is and just how weak and lethargic I am from the shitty rations they’re giving us. I stagger under the weight of it, wincing when some slops over the edge and onto my arm. Fuck it.

He growls out something that sounds like a cuss-word in alien-ese and unlocks the cage.

Unlikehow we’ve planned, the other girls fall back, cringing, leaving me there with the waste bucket and a stupid expression on my face as he slams toward me.

I throw it at him just as he grabs for me, but it’s too heavy and ends up slopping on both of us. He grabs my arm, and I shriek in surprise as his fingers dig into the meat of my bicep. Not only is his pebbly skin ugly, it’s rough and tears at my skin like it’s sandpaper.

He spits an epithet at me and drags me forward.

“No,” Liz says, grabbing my other arm even as I twist in his grasp. Where was our big fucking attack plan? Why are the others all huddling like scared rabbits? I look to Kira, my other co-conspirator, but she has her head tilted, a funny expression on her face as she stares at the ceiling. Faint birdlike chirping comes from above.

“Detachment commencing?” Kira asks, a confused look on her face.

The entire floor shifts to the side, and we go flying.

I slam across the room, my body soaring through the air. I land hard against the stasis lockers, and all the air leaves my lungs.

The entire world tilts, topsy-turvy, and the hold is filled with screaming women. Splashes of something wet hit my arms, and the waste bucket flies past overhead. Then everything hangs in the air. The lights go out, leaving us in the darkness.

A red light flickers on. Oh, that’s not good. Red lights are always emergency lights, aren’t they?

I stare into the now-red room, watching as globules of waste soar past. In the background, someone tumbles in the air. We’ve lost gravity.

What the hell?

I try to focus my eyes as something dances past my head. Black, oblong, with a thick barrel.

The gun.

Holy cow. I push off of one of the lockers and swim through the air for it, just as gravity kicks in again. I slam to the ground on top of the gun.

A few feet away, the guard slams down as well. All the while, that weird, birdlike chirping keeps going over the intercoms.

I grab the gun and look for a trigger as the guard groans and shakes his head, trying to gather his thoughts. There’s no trigger. Well, fuck it. It’ll work just as well as a bludgeon. Grabbing it by the thick, heavy base, I raise it over my head and bring it down on the guard’s head.

CRACK.

The guard flails.

I don’t stop. I hit him again and again. Crack. Crack. Over and over, I slam the butt of the rifle into his head. He doesn’t move, but I don’t stop. I’m terrified he’ll somehow have a granite skull and will roll over and overpower me. So I just keep hitting him.

Hands grab mine. “Georgie. Hey, Georgie, stop. I think he’s dead.” Liz’s voice cuts through the haze in my brain. “You can stop now.”

I slow, staring blankly at her then down at the guard. Or what’s left of the guard. His face is nothing but a pile of meat atop his neck.

I stare. Then I throw up.

“You did it,” Liz says, rubbing my back. “Holy shit. You did it, Georgie! You’re a fucking Billy Badass!”

I don’t feel so badass. I feel sick. I’ve just killed a man. Kinda a man. Sorta. Definitely a rapist.

Still, a living creature.

Was. Was a living creature.

My stomach roils uncomfortably again, and I go to wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, then stop. It smells like sewage. Ugh. I’m covered, too, and the cabin is splattered. “What the heck happened?”

“I don’t know,” Liz says, helping me to my feet.

I ache all over, my ribs feeling bruised from where I landed on the gun. I hold onto it, though. I don’t care if it’s covered in poop and brains and everything else, it’s mine now.

A metallic sounding chirp blares over the loudspeaker, just as my ears pop hard. Liz clutches her ears at the same time as I do, and we look at each other in surprise.

Kira comes running out of the cage. “Ladies! We’ve got bigger problems. The message overhead is now saying ‘Prepare for re-entry.’ I think that means we’re crashing!”

Fuck.

We pitch again, and I tumble through the air, banging into the lockers. Something smacks my head, and everything goes black

? ? ?

“Hey.” A familiar voice sounds in my ear. “Hey, wake up. Are you okay, Georgie?”

I slowly come to and groan at the fierce stab of pain shooting through my forehead. Then, a moment later, the pain isn’t just in my head. Every part of my body aches, my wrist most of all. It throbs with an uncomfortable fire that seems to radiate all the way up to my elbow. I squint up at Liz as she hovers over me. “Ow.”

She grins back, displaying a fat lip and a growing bruise on one cheek. “You’re alive. That’s always a plus.” She sits back on her haunches and offers me a hand. “Can you sit up?”

With her help, I get to a seated position, wincing. Sitting up just makes everything hurt even more. “What happened?”

“We crashed,” she says. “Most of us got knocked out from being bounced around. There are a few broken bones, a few bloody noses, and two who didn’t make it.”

I stare at her in shock then scan the cabin. “Two people . . . died? Who?”

“In addition to the guard you took down, Krissy and Peg. Looks like broken necks.” She nods over at the far side of the room. “Poor kids.”

I swallow the knot of grief in my throat. I didn’t know them well, but I knew their terror and fear. I’m just glad I’m alive. I hug Liz, and she hugs me back, and for a moment, we’re just relieved to be breathing and mostly whole. Over her shoulder, I squint, noticing that the entire cargo bay seems to be slanted at an angle. The metallic floor is covered with debris, tilted, and icy cold. I get to my feet with her help, wobbling, and gaze around in shock.

Several of the girls cling together in a corner—Megan is hugging Dominique and trying to calm her, the latter choking back braying sobs. Other girls are still sprawled on the ground, unconscious, and I see two bodies piled in the corner next to the dead guard. Krissy’s dark hair tumbles over her face, obscuring her features. It’s for the best. I look away. Over off to the side, Kira’s trying to help another girl straighten an obviously broken leg. Kira’s own face is bruised and blood’s running down from her ear implant.

Everyone looks beaten up, bruised, and damaged. I gaze down at my own legs, but they seem to be okay. My wrist, however, is swollen and getting a little purplish, and my ribs feel like they’re on fire. “I think I broke this,” I say, holding my bad arm out. I gingerly rotate my wrist and nearly pass out at the shockwave of pain it sends through my body.

“Guess you won’t be clubbing any more aliens then,” Liz says cheerfully. “If it’s not broken, it’s sprained pretty bad. You should see my toes on my left foot. They look pretty awful, too. Like they tried to make a strategic retreat into my foot and failed.”

I glance over at her skeptically. “Then why are you in such a good mood?”

“Because we’re free,” she says enthusiastically. “We are fucking free, and we’ve landed somewhere. I already count those as better odds than what we had before.”

“How do you know we landed?”

Liz hobbles to my side, favoring her leg. “Because the floor’s tilted and cold, and because of that.” She points at something behind me.

I turn and look. Overhead, it seems as if one of the compartments has peeled partially away, leaving a long, narrow scrape in the hull of our storage bay. Through the scrape, weak light filters in and what looks like snowflakes drizzle down. I gasp and push forward, trying to see. “Is that snow?”

“It is,” Liz says happily. “And since we’re all not asphyxiating from breathing methane or something, there’s also oxygen coming in.”

Hope thuds in my heart, and I stare up at the ceiling. I turn back to Liz, full of excitement. “Do you think we landed back on Earth somehow?”

“I don’t think so,” Kira says, her soft voice interrupting my thoughts. I glance over at her and wince. She looks pretty rough, the entire left side of her thin face purple and bloody. One of her eyes has a broken blood vessel, the red stark against her pale skin. And she is limping, too, her knee swollen.

“How do you know we’re not on Earth?” I ask. I refuse to give up hope just yet. “How many places can have snow and oxygen? We just might be, I don’t know, in Canada or something.”

“Except I heard through this thing,” she says, pointing at the bloodied earpiece still attached to her head, “that they were dumping us at a ‘safe location’ for a return pick-up at a later date.”

Liz crosses her arms, frowning. “Return pick-up? So they dropped us so we can sit pretty, and they’re going to pick us up again in a day or two? Fuck that.”

“I don’t know when,” Kira says, her face solemn. “But when they mentioned this place, it definitely wasn’t Earth they were referring to. They kept talking about a particle cloud, but the only particle cloud I remember from science class was on the edge of our solar system: the Oort Cloud. And if we’re getting that much light,” she says, pointing at the scrape in the hull, “We’re not anywhere close to Pluto. I don’t think we’re on Earth at all. I don’t think we’re in our solar system, either.”

“Gotcha,” Liz agrees. She sounds glum.

I’m still skeptical. Glancing up at the snow falling into the crack, it’s hard not to get excited. We had to be home, didn’t we? It’s winter out there. They could have dropped us in Antarctica. Right now I’d take Antarctica over a random planet. “I don’t want to stick around until they come back.”

“Me either.” Kira sighs and winces, rubbing her shoulder. “But everyone’s hurt. I don’t know how fast we can move, or if it’s even safe to move. For all we know, we could be floating on a sea of ice filled with man-eating ice-sharks.”

“Good God, you’re Suzy Fucking Sunshine, aren’t you?” Liz says, staring at Kira.

“Sorry.” Kira grimaces, pressing a palm to her forehead. “It’s been a hell of a day, and I feel like it’s just going to get worse.”

She looks so morose that I want to hug her. I refuse to be down about this. One guard is dead, we have his gun, and for now we’re away from our captors. “It’ll be fine,” I tell them brightly. “We’ll figure something out.”

“Can we figure out food?” Megan calls from the corner of the slanted storage bay. “We’re pretty hungry.”

“Food is a good start,” I agree, nodding at Liz. “Let’s see what we have if we’re supposed to ride this out and wait for the little green men to return.”

An hour later, though, things are looking grim. We’ve found enough bars for a week, and we have enough water for approximately as long. Beyond that, though, there is nothing.

In addition, other than what belonged to the guard we’d killed—well, I’d killed—there were no weapons and no additional clothes. We went through everything, pounding on walls and trying to find hidden compartments in the shuttle bay, but we didn’t find much. The only discovery was some sort of thick plastic-like sheet material, but it wasn’t warm or flexible enough to be used for much of anything.

“Pretty sure Robinson Crusoe wasn’t nearly as fucked as we are,” Liz jokes.

I haven’t read Robinson Crusoe, but I agree. It’s clear we’re not equipped for survival. We’re not equipped for anything, and it’s getting colder in the hold by the minute, thanks to the snow and cold air that steadily trickles in from the gap in the hull.

“I mean, I don’t understand,” Liz says, handing out a few seaweed bars. “If they want us to sit and wait, don’t you think they should have left us with more supplies?”

“You forget that we’re the extras,” I point out, waving away my bar. Someone else could eat it. My stomach was upset enough as it is. “As long as they’re intact, that’s all that matters, right? And they’re not eating.” I thumb a gesture at the lockers still lining the wall. “They’re still in perfect condition.”

Naturally.

“Should we wake them up now?” The thought of a handful of women floating in stasis a few feet away with no comprehension of what was going on is rather unnerving to me. If I’d crash landed, wouldn’t I want to know?

“God no,” Liz says. “How do we even know that they’re aware of where we are? For all they know, they’re still tucked into bed and little green men don’t exist. How would you like to wake up to find all this and oh, by the way, we’re stranded and don’t have much to eat?”

“Good point.” I gaze around the empty room, tapping my bare foot and thinking.

“So what do we do?” Kira asks, sliding in next to the other girls huddling together for body warmth. She looks exhausted.

Liz glances at me, waiting.

Am I the leader now? Crap. But . . . someone’s got to do it, and I’m tired of no one having ideas. I consider our options for a long moment. “Well, if we’re on a planet with oxygen, I’m guessing there are other things living here. I don’t know a lot about science, but if Earth can support all kinds of life, doesn’t it stand to reason that this planet could, too? We could be really close to a city for all we know.”

“A city full of aliens,” someone mutters.

“True,” I agree. “But we can’t stay here and starve to death. Or freeze. The sun’s shining right now, but we don’t know how long we have until night—”

“Or how long night will last,” Kira adds.

“Maybe you quit helping out,” Liz tells her.

“I’m just saying.” Kira’s face is solemn.

“I think we need to scout around at least,” I suggest. “Find out our bearings, look for food and water, and report back.”

“But most of us are injured,” sniffs one girl. Tiffany. She looks like she is fresh off the farm and utterly terrified. Some of us have taken our captivity with grim determination, and some have completely fallen apart. Tiffany’s in the latter category.

“You should go, Georgie,” Liz chimes in.

“Me?” I sputter.

“You’re kind of our leader.”

God, I hate that I’m not the only one who thought that. I glance up at the snow pouring through the crack overhead. It looks cold, and I’m in shorty pajamas. “How am I the leader? I’m practically the last one to arrive.” Only Dominique was captured after me.

“Yeah, but you’re the one with all the plans. You’re the one who killed the guard, and Kira needs to stay here in case the others return because she’s got the ear thing. And my foot’s all jacked up. I wouldn’t get very far. Besides, you’re the one who’s good with the gun.” Liz flutters her lashes at me.

I snort. “Good at bashing things, you mean.”

“Hey, you did better than the rest of us, Georgie. Seriously.” She mock-punches at the air, pretending to box. “You want me to hum you some ‘Eye of the Tiger’ to get you pumped up?”

“Gee, thanks,” I tell her, trying to be upset that I just got volunteered. But it kinda has to be me, I think. Other than Kira and Liz, the others aren’t much of leaders. Everyone is hurt, and I want to point out that my wrist is fucked and my ribs ache, but . . . everyone is hurt. Liz is limping, Kira’s got a busted leg, and the others are a mess. Do I want to leave my fate in the hands of another and hope she could scout decently? “Anyone in here have any survival experience?”

Someone sniffs back tears. Other than that, silence.

Yeah. No one is equipped for this.

At my side, Liz hums “Eye of the Tiger.”

I shoot her the bird. “Okay, fine. If I’m going out in the snow, I need a couple of bars, the gun, and some water.”

“We don’t have canteens,” Liz points out. “Just eat the snow.”

“Not the yellow snow,” someone else quips.

“Oh sure, everyone’s a comedian now that I’m the one going out to scout,” I grumble, but I stretch my legs and test my wrist and ribs, wincing. It sucks, but we’re low on options. “Okay, I’m somehow going to climb out of that hole in the roof, I guess. I need some clothes.” I gaze down at my dirty shorty pajamas. “I’m guessing these won’t cut it.”

“I know where you can get some nice warm clothing,” Liz says, and points at the dead guard.

“Ugh,” I say, though I was thinking the same thing. “I was kinda hoping someone would miraculously spring out a parka or something.”

“No such luck,” says Tiffany, getting to her feet. “I’ll help you undress him.”

A short time later, Tiffany and I have stripped the body of his clothing and try to figure out how to put it back on me. There are weird invisible buckles and fastenings instead of the usual zippers and buttons, and it smells like sewage and blood and some other spicily-nauseating scent, but it’s surprisingly warm and lined. The jacket’s a little tight across my breasts and makes me look like I have a uniboob, but I’m not wearing this for fashion. The biggest problems are that there are no gloves for my hands and the shoes are designed to fit something with only two big toes instead of five little ones. I squeeze my feet into each shoe, but it hurts.

Still better than nothing, I suppose, which is what I had before.

“Keep your hands tucked in your jacket,” Tiffany suggests. “Your body warmth should help.”

I nod and shove the gun down the front of the jacket, too, letting the long barrel rest between my boobs. I braid my dirty hair to get it out of my face, take the bars Liz offers me, and suck in a deep breath. “I’m going to go as far as I can,” I tell the others. “I’m going to look for help. Or people. Or food. Something. But I’ll be back. If I don’t come back by tomorrow, um, well . . . don’t come looking for me.”

“God, I wish I had some wood to knock on right about now,” Liz says. “Don’t say shit like that.”

“I’ll be fine,” I tell her, bluffing. “Now, help me get up to the ceiling so I can climb out.”

We maneuver the table over, and two girls hold it in place while I climb and Liz and Megan push me higher. My wrist screams a protest, but I keep climbing, wiggling my way to the top of the breached hull. The scrape is big enough for me to squeeze through, and by the time I make it up to fresh air, my wrist is screaming in pain and it’s getting colder by the minute. I’ve wrapped my sleep shorts around my neck as a scarf and hood, the extra fabric bunched around my exposed throat. My face sticks out of a thigh hole. I’m sure it’s not a sexy look, and the shorts are filthy, but I’m glad for them. The wind is bitter, and I haven’t even stuck my head up through the hole yet.

I put my hands on the icy metal, hissing when my fingers stick to it. I pull them away carefully, wincing at the needle-like feelings pricking at my skin. It’s not only cold out there, it’s damn cold. I use my good arm—now sleeved in the thick, jacket-like uniform of the alien —to propel myself up a bit higher. As I hoist my torso through the crack in the hull, I have a momentary vision of sticking my head out and having an alien chomp it.

Not helpful, Georgie, I tell myself. I shove the image out of my mind as I push through the gap and stare around me.

The good news is that the wind isn’t as bad up here as I thought. Instead, the snow falls in quiet, thick flakes, the two suns shining high overhead.

Two suns.

Two freaking suns.

I squint up at them, making sure I haven’t hit my head in the crash and am now seeing double. Sure enough, two of them. They look almost like a figure eight, with one tinier, much duller sun practically overlapping a larger one. Off in the distance, there is an enormous white moon.

“Not Earth,” I call below. Fuck. I fight back the insane urge to weep in disappointment. I’d so wanted to climb out and see a building in the distance that would tell me oh, it’s just Canada or Finland.

Two suns have pretty much destroyed that hope.

“What do you see?” someone calls up to me.

I stare around the crashed ship at the endless drifts of snow. I look up. In the far distance, there are other mountains—or at least I’m pretty sure they’re mountains—that look like big icy purple crystals the size of skyscrapers. They’re different from this mountain. This one is nothing but barren rock. There are no trees. Nothing but snow and jagged granite. Our tiny ship looks like it bounced off of one of the nearby jaggy cliffs; that was probably how it had torn open.

I look for living creatures or water. Something. Anything. There’s nothing but white.

“What’s it look like?” Someone else calls up.

I lick my lips, hating that they already feel numb with cold. I’m a Southern girl. We do not do well with cold. “You ever see Star Wars? The original ones?”

“Don’t tell me—”

“Yep. It looks like we landed on fucking Hoth. Except I see two itty bitty suns and a huge-ass moon.”

“Not Hoth,” Liz yells. “It was the sixth planet from its sun, and I don’t recall it having a moon.”

“Okay, nerd,” I call back to her. “We’ll call this place Not-Hoth then. You guys cover this hole with the plastic while I’m gone. It’ll help keep things warm.”

“Stay safe,” Liz tells me.

“Your lips to God’s ears,” I yell. Then I haul my ass out of the protection of the ship.

? ? ?

Walking out into that snowy landscape with nothing but borrowed alien clothing and a gun I don’t know how to fire? Pretty much takes every ounce of courage I have in my body. I tremble as I trudge through the snow. I don’t know squat about winter conditions. I’m from Florida, for chrissakes. Palmetto bugs, I can handle. Gators, I can handle. My pinching boots sinking up to my knees in the snow with every step? I cannot handle that.

But there are half a dozen girls waiting for me back at the spaceship, depending on me to find something. Anything. And we don’t have much in the way of options. I can always turn around. I don’t think anyone would blame me for being afraid.

And then I’ll just sit in the cracked hull and slowly starve to death with the others. Or we’ll get picked up by the aliens again.

Or I can risk freezing and try to do something out here.

So I walk on.

I’ll say one thing for the ball-headed alien I killed: His clothes are decently warm. Despite the fact that every step is a struggle and I sink into the powder with each one, my feet are doing all right.

My face feels like a block of ice, though. My hands, too. The sleeves are too tight for me to pull them down over my hands, so I walk with one hand tucked inside my shirt and the other under an armpit. When it gets too cold, I switch them out. My bad wrist hurts like hell, and my ribs still burn. Actually they burn worse, now, because I have to take deep breaths, and that makes a stabbing pain shoot through my chest each time.

Most of all? I just want to curl up and cry.

But there are others depending on me. So I can’t.

After walking for what feels like forever, the ground starts to slope a bit more, and I follow it down. In the distance, I see stalk-like, tall, skinny things that I think are trees. At least, I hope they’re trees. There’s no other foliage to be found, so I head toward them. The wind is picking up, and my suit—no matter how well it endures the weather—is starting to feel cold. Actually, I’m cold all over. It sucks.

I wish I was back at the hull. I turn around and squint up the side of the rocky hill. The hull is like a small black dot against the hillside. It looks fragile from here. Broken. And there’s still no food or animals or even water. Just snow.

Well, shit. I guess I’ll keep walking.

The stalks are further away than I realize, and it feels like I’m walking forever down the slope of the mountain. As I do, I start to see things. Foliage-looking things. At least, I think they’re foliage. There are tufts of pale pinkish-purple that look more like feathers than actual leaves, but there’s a veritable forest of them. These must be the trees of this strange place. As I pass through them, I touch one. The bark—if you can call it that—feels moist and sticky, and I wipe my palm with a wince. That was gross.

Okay, I’ve found trees. If there are trees, I’m hoping there’s a way the trees are getting nutrition. Trees need sunlight and water. I squint up at the double suns. They’re moving toward the edge of the sky, and the enormous moon is rising higher.

A sudden thought occurs to me. What if I’m out here alone overnight? “That’ll suck,” I mutter to myself. I pull out the gun just because it feels good to have a weapon at hand. It means my fingers feel like ice as I hold it, but I don’t care. I’d rather have a shitty weapon than no weapon.

As I trudge onward, I’m starting to feel despair. What if they dropped us here on this planet precisely because we won’t be able to fend for ourselves? Even as the terrible thought occurs to me, I hear the sound of trickling liquid.

Water?

I stop, my heart hammering. Oh, please let it be water! If it’s water, that means it’s warm enough to not turn to ice. That means something is warm. And right now? I’d take a hot drink.

I rush forward. The water sound seems to be coming from the same direction as the weird, tall stalks. The stalks keep growing bigger the nearer I get, and by the time I find the edge of a burbling, steaming stream, the stalks are taller than some buildings. They tower over me, like a forest of bamboo shoots that stick out of the water. Each one is tipped in a pale pink, sluggish-looking thing. It’s rather bizarre looking, but maybe it’s normal for this place.

There are a few stalks close to the muddy bank that are human-sized. I grab one. It’s warm under my hand. That’s a good sign that the water’s warm too. Maybe too warm to touch. I lean down to the surface, holding on to the stalk.

As I do so, I realize there’s a face on the other side of the water staring back at me. A face with a huge mouth, jagged teeth, and bulging fish eyes. And the stalk I’m holding? Appears to be attached to its nose.

I scream and stumble backward just as the thing lunges forward, snapping at me.

I keep screaming and crab walk back, away from the edge of the water. The thing stirs, moving slightly away from the surface, its nasty mouth working. Then it sinks in and the stalk gives a small shiver before moving back in place.

Holy fuck.

Holy . . . fuck. I just nearly got eaten by an alien fish . . . thing.

I stare, wide-eyed, at the happily burbling stream. At the enormous stalks sticking out of it. At the ones that are taller than a two-story building. Are all of those . . . monsters?

I turn and run. Breath huffing, I sprint as best as I can through the snow, back up the hill. Back through the feathery blue-green trees. Screw all this. I am not equipped to deal with alien life forms on an alien planet. My lungs rasp and my ribs hurt like the blazes and I landed on my wrist back there and none of that matters because I am not stopping.

As I pass one of the strange trees, something whips around my ankles.

I barely have time to scream before the thing drags me backwards and I’m hauled, upside down, into the branches of the tree, my feet caught and bound together.

I scream over and over again, twisting, turning. The ground is at least a foot or two below me, and I can’t touch it. Down there? My club-slash-gun. I dropped it when whatever this is hauled me backward.

When nothing happens, I stop flailing and panicking and try to figure things out. I bend over, flopping through the air, and get a good look at my feet. They’re tied with something that looks like rope. If I wriggle enough . . . that definitely looks like a knot. The other end of the cord is tied higher in the branches. I whimper and fall quiet, and I just sway back and forth gently in the tree.

I . . . I’ve walked into a snare of some kind.

On one hand, this is encouraging. There’s intelligent life here, right? Which is exciting because it means we’re not alone.

But I can’t overlook the fact that I’m in a hunting snare and something could decide I’m dinner. I remember a scene in Star Wars where Luke found himself upside down in the snow creature’s cave. And I start panicking again, because I know how this sort of thing goes down. Luke’s able to free himself before the creature eats him because he’s a Jedi.

Me? I’m just a Floridian in a stolen space suit with no weapon and a busted wrist. I know how this is going to end.

I whimper and wriggle some more, working my feet and trying to free them from the noose that’s holding me fast, upside down.

I don’t want to be here when the owner of this trap comes back looking for dinner.

Wiggling my feet doesn’t work, so for the next minute or two, I concentrate on trying to stretch far enough to reach my gun. Not that I know how to fire it, but I’ll feel better if I have it. It’s getting harder to think, though, and the longer I hang here, the harder my head pounds.

It’s probably not good for me to hang upside down for a long time, I realize. How long can a human hang upside down before all the blood rushes to their head and they die?

I twist even harder, and as I do, I realize there’s something new on the edge of my vision. I stop moving and stare as a white, furry figure approaches.

Shit. It’s too late. I’m dinner.

“No,” I moan and struggle again. But my body can’t keep up with the demands I’m putting on it. My head throbs, and then I pass out cold just as the monster starts to move toward me.

At least I won’t be awake to feel it eat me.

VEKTAL

I don’t recognize the . . . thing . . . squirming in my trap.

This is new.

I approach it cautiously, my blade drawn. A moment ago it was dancing and writhing, and now it’s gone limp. The smell is sa-khui and yet . . . not. Curious. I poke it with the tip of my sword to see if it will jump once more, but it does not. The wind is picking up, the cold air preparing for the little moon’s arrival, the twin suns heading to their beds.

With the tip of my sword, I slice the cord binding its legs, and it flops to the ground, lying in the snow.

And then I am shocked anew as my khui resonates inside me. My inward being, which has lain dormant for so long, which recognizes no mate amongst my people? It vibrates and sings at the sight of this new creature. I stare at it.

My thoughts confused and whirling, I snatch it into my arms and sprint for the nearest hunting cave.

It is the bitter season, when hunters must be cautious when journeying out far from the home caves. There are a series of hunting caves that only see use on the coldest of nights, when a hunter is many sprints away from home. They are ingrained into my brain after turn upon countless turn of hunts, and I find the nearest one’s location easily. I push aside the leathery flap protecting the entrance and set my burden down on the floor. A quick shake of the furs does not reveal hidden occupants, so I move the she-creature—for it must be a she—to them. Her teeth clack together, making the cold sound that young sometimes make before they’re sa-khui, so I touch her eyelid and pry it open to see if she is lit from within.

The eye underneath is white, dull. There is no khui inside her, or if there is, it is dead. She will need to be treated as if an infant, then. I make a fire quickly and wait for it to warm her. And because my curiosity has the best of me, I examine her. I tell myself it’s simply to determine if she is wounded, but my mind sings with curiosity, my khui vibrating within my chest with a song that’s growing greater with every possible moment.

She is making me resonate. She is mine.

I run a hand over her limbs. She is wearing some sort of clothing that stinks of old, bitter memories. I want to rip it off her, but if she is as helpless as a kit, she will need it. So I take time to find the fastenings and undo them, revealing the flesh underneath.

She’s smooth. Not like a sa-khui. Her flesh is almost completely hairless, save for the long, flowing locks on her crown and a small tuft between her thighs that’s revealed as I pull her leathers from her. I snort with amusement at that small tuft.

Adorable. Adorable and nonsensical.

She has no ridges under her skin to define her muscles, and the overwhelming sensation I have as I view her body is one of softness and weakness. Perhaps she has been sick, and that is why her khui is gone. I run my fingers over her strange face. It’s smooth too, her brow flat. She has no ridges anywhere. Just softness.

How did one so weak as her find their way to the outer hunting grounds? It’s a mystery, almost as much of one as the fact that she’s making my khui resonate hard in my chest. It’s thrumming with the call, and the need to mate slams through my body as her soft, rounded thighs part and her scent fills my nostrils.

A groan escapes me as my cock grows hard, the ridges on it swelling.

I bury my face between her legs so I can taste all of her.

GEORGIE

Pretty sure I’m dreaming.

Maybe that’s all this is. One big, bad dream. I’ve just been stuck in the bad part of my head for a while, and now I’m getting to the wet part of the dream. Because I’m pretty sure I’m naked, and there’s a mouth between my legs, licking me like there’s no tomorrow.

I moan softly, because this? This is a much better dream than that spaceship crap.

Something slick with hard, nubbed bumps runs up and down my pussy. A mouth, a tongue. It glides through my folds, and I press a hand to my forehead because it feels so good. A flash of pain shoots up my wrist, but it’s quickly buried under another round of pleasure. Soft rumbling sounds come from nearby, almost like language, except I can’t understand a word of it. This guy is eating my pussy like a champ.

His head lifts, and he nuzzles at my bush, mumbling something again. My hands go to push his head back down to where I want it.

Except I encounter horns.

I jerk awake, realizing it’s not a dream. None of this is. I look down at my body in shock. I’m naked. I’m naked, and there’s some guy with a pair of massive curled horns rising from his head between my legs. As I watch, his tongue drags over my pussy again.

“Oh my God,” I whisper. I push at his head, trying to shove him away. This is not normal. This is not normal.

He looks up at me, and as he does, I gasp.

He’s not human. I mean, I knew that with the horns and all, but looking at his face, I can tell he’s really not human. Horns rise from his hairline and curl around his scalp like a spiky, lethal helmet. He’s blue, for one thing. Well, bluish-gray with a black mane of hair that reminds me of a lion’s mane. His brows are heavy, heavier than any human brow I’ve seen, his face rugged like it’s carved from stone. Going straight down his forehead to the tip of his nose is a striated pattern of ridges of some kind, his bluish-gray skin slightly darker there.

And his eyes are a glowing shade of blue that I’ve never seen. Blue like Caribbean waters but completely without pupils of any kind. And they’re glowing as if from within.

A small whimper escapes my throat as he rises up over me. I see the shaggy white furs covering his shoulders, and I realize I saw them from hanging upside down. It wasn’t a monster come to eat me. It was this monster.

Who’s come to eat me out.

It strikes me as incredibly ludicrous, and I want to laugh, but I’m too terrified. “What are you going to do with me?” I ask softly, my eyes wide. The refrain of please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me echoes through my head.

He says something and runs a hand down my stomach. Then those weird glowing eyes break my gaze and his head dips.

And he begins to lick me again. Long, slow, delicious licks right down the slick folds of my pussy.

I can’t help it. I start to giggle. It’s ticklish and it makes me squirm and I should be screaming no, help, rape and instead, I have the giggles. Because he doesn’t want to eat me. He just . . . wants to lick my pussy. I’ve dated guys that I haven’t been able to convince to go down on me, and this one’s doing it as a greeting.

Laughter sweeps through me, relieved and absurd all at the same time. I might be a bit hysterical. It somehow doesn’t matter. I’m not going to die yet, and a strange guy with horns is determined to give me oral pleasure. It’s just that . . . out of all the worst-case scenarios I’ve come up with since being abducted by aliens, being licked until I come isn’t anywhere on the list.

And he’s really, really good at licking.

Something ridged and slightly knobbed slicks against the entrance of my core, and I realize he’s got a texture on his tongue. And it feels incredible. And even though my every instinct is telling me to find my clothes and get the hell outta Dodge, I don’t move. I’m barely even breathing.

When one big hand pushes on my thigh, urging me to spread my legs wider, I do so. I’ll get up and protest in just a minute.

Just.

A.

Minute.

He licks me again, and his tongue grazes my clit. And I can’t help it. An undignified squeal erupts from me. My clit’s especially sensitive, and he’s been avoiding it until now.

The horned man’s head jerks up, and he looks at me in what I can only assume is surprise. I quiver because those weird eyes are staring at me, and I press my good hand to my mouth, determined not to make another noise and startle him. What if he gets mad and, like, gores me with those gigantic horns?

But he only looks confused for a moment. Then, as I watch, big fingers spread my folds, and he studies me intently. Humiliation burns, and I try to snap my legs closed. Fuck all this. His big hands hold my legs down, though, preventing me from doing that, and he goes to spread my folds again. He looks shocked—downright shocked—at the sight of my clit. He says something that sounds like sa sa, and it’s definitely a question.

I try to clamp my legs shut again and rise. “Now is not the time for an anatomy lesson, buddy.”

The big alien pushes me back down on the furs with a stern word.

I shove at his hands, but he’s much stronger than me and determined. He keeps my thighs pried apart, and I can’t help but notice that his hand is enormous, like a baseball glove. How tall is this guy? His hand spreads the folds of my pussy again, and to my utter humiliation, he touches my clit like it’s going to bite him.

I remain perfectly still.

That doesn’t satisfy him. He mutters something, and then he begins to rub the hood of my clit, as if trying to figure out the right touch to make me react again.

And I respond despite myself. I close my eyes so I don’t have to see the look on his face. He continues to touch me, stroking my clit very carefully. I’m doing pretty good at controlling my reaction, even though every touch of his fingers makes me want to moan.

Then I feel his mouth on my clit, and he sucks it gently.

My hips buck against him, and I cry out.

He murmurs something and sounds pleased, and continues to lick and suck at my clit until my thighs are shaking. I’m going to come. Damn him. Damn him and the fact that he’s making me feel incredible. Those bumps and ridges on his tongue move against my clit, and my entire body quakes, and then I’m coming hard. Over and over, my pussy clenches and the orgasm rocks through me, my entire body locked and tense with the strain of it.

I collapse on his furs, exhausted. My hand goes over my eyes, and I rub my face.

Okay, so I just did that. I just had an orgasm from an alien. I have no idea how I’m going to explain this to Liz and the others.

The alien says something else, and I open one eye to peek at him. The look on his face is fierce, and there’s no mistaking the masculine look of pride on his inhuman face. He’s pleased he made me come. I shoot him the finger. “You’re an asshole,” I mutter.

In response, he says something else. Then he grabs me by my hips and pulls me toward him.

I know what’s coming next. And even though I just came, a girl’s got to have boundaries. I don’t want to have sex. Oral is okay as long as I’m the recipient, but this is too much, too fast. I twist in his grip, then kick and lash out at him. My foot connects with his chest.

It feels like I broke it—my foot, that is. Not his chest.

It feels like I kicked iron. I give a cry of pain and collapse on the blankets again, my leg throbbing and my ankle shooting pain clear up my entire body.

When I look up, the alien’s furious.