#2
We rush toward it, a little strength returns to me with each step. The sooner I am away from prion the better. Though I do have a stoppered test-tube of the stuff in my pocket. Might come in handy.
I blink in the harsh light even though the suns are setting.
It’s a while since I have seen them or the mountains.
I gulp in air, filling my lungs and then blow it out imagining all the tiny molecules of prion leaving my body with the exhalation.
I then pick at my fingernails flicking away tiny fragments of prion that are lodged there. The breeze takes them.
“That stuff is strong.” The younger of my rescuers puts his hands on his thighs and tips forward, breathing deep. “We should have put masks on.”
“Yes, we should have, if we’d had any,” the other responds.
“Who are you?” I ask.
“I’m El-Frankin,” the older one says, tapping his chest. “This is In-Sar.” He sets his hand on In-Sar’s back as though comforting him.
“And now what?” I straighten and set down my shoulders, something I haven’t had the energy to do for a long time.
“Now we get you to him,” El-Frankin says.
“How?” I study their fine clothing and their shiny hirion leather boots. Even their horns and tails are polished and their skin is smooth and clear—they don’t have ink like mine which scrawls up each arm and across my chest.
“We have contacts at the military border, we can smuggle you across.” El-Frankin nods seriously.
“Really?” I scoff. “That border might as well be a few million miles across it’s so heavily guarded.”
“Of course it is, it’s the only passage through to the Uncivilized Tundra. It has to be heavily guarded.”
I nod slowly and bite my lip. He’s wrong.
There is another route through. But I am one of the few souls who knows that because I happened to be there when the explosion created it.
Some time ago the guards gathered to rip the rock away from the end of a long tunnel and expose more prion seams. They packed too much explosive in, and it blasted a hole to the surface as well as a shaft to a low mountain pass that had been previously blocked by a landslide of primordial lava—which still burned—making it impossible to cross.
But I didn’t say any of this. Why should I? I didn’t owe them anything. I didn’t ask to be broken out of my prion prison.
And Dan-Y will be waiting for me, with whatever it was he has that they want back.
I’ll make sure he can keep it.
El-Frankin hooks his hand under my elbow and steers me to a dark vehz. I let him. I am still weak, my tail dragging on the dusty ground. I need to think and let the prion wend its way from my system so for now I will go along with their plan.
I am pushed into the back and the two males sit in the front. The vehz hovers left and right and then takes off east.
It has been a long time since I’ve traveled in a vehz and the motion makes me a little nauseous at first.
I rub my eyes and think of my parents who had lived on this side of the border, not far from here. But when we’d left, Dan-Y and I, along with Dan-Y’s mate, King Athos had captured our father and tortured him for information on our whereabouts and our plans.
My blood boils, an emotion the prion has dulled for so long. I want to go to the palace and kill him, slit his throat, rejoice in covering his shiny morri marble floor in purple blood.
I growl.
In-Sar turns to me. “What’s up?”
“I have things to do.”
“We haven’t time.”
“Since when were you in charge of me?”
“Since we broke you out and made a promise to your brother, Dan-Y.” El-Frankin throws me a steely look.
Dan-Y’s name calms me. He always tells me there is time for our revenge, that we must pick our moment.
I sit back and flick my tail. It’s quivering at the end, the life coming back to it. Be patient. I must bide my time. I am out of the prion mine and my brain fog is lifting by the second.
Very soon I will be back to my fast-thinking, fast-acting, rebel Jakarty self.
Nina
I sit outside the militarized border with my head in my hands. Since I spoke to Sophie at the medical clinic I have been in a state of despair. She’d told me her mate came with copious amounts of purple spunk yet my mate…nothing.
And it clearly was nothing. We’ve been fucking three times a day, morning, noon, and night, and I am still not pregnant despite being certified as fertile.
Ca-Tain the medic says to keep trying. It will happen eventually.
But he’s a fool who doesn’t understand Earth women. I need sperm, I need semen, nothing is going to happen with these puffs of air that breeze from Fa-Ling’s cock when he orgasms.
I flick the off switch on the vehz. I’ve become accustomed to driving it, if you can call a hovering egg driving. I’ve come to the militarized border every day for weeks in the hope that an extra fuck once a day will do the trick.
But it won’t.
Ever.
And now I just need to decide what to do. I came to Planet Hade to start a family with a good male, and that hasn’t happened for me.
Movement to my right has me peering out.
Another vehz is hovering nearby. Unusual. Two men get out, not military, and huddle together, deep in conversation.
I’ve never seen them before and they are not in uniform. One is younger than the other, leaner too, but just as handsome.
Why couldn’t I have gotten paired with an alien like that? I’d surely be pregnant by now. Twice over most likely.
They move toward the entrance to the military zone and where my mate, Fa-Ling, is on duty.
I step out of the vehz but don’t walk anywhere, not yet, Fa-Ling will be busy with the visitors so I wait under the setting sun and watch a stone spider walking slowly toward a boulder.
I wish I had a cigarette. On Earth, I enjoyed a smoke when I was feeling antsy. Wondering what to do. It helped. But I don’t so I stroke the small tattoo on my inner forearm that says To Live For The Hope Of It All.
Suddenly there is a sudden movement behind me and a big hand slaps over my mouth. There’s something there, stinky, scratchy material, between the hand and my mouth.
Instantly I try and scream and I squirm. But my movements lock me against a big solid body and a tight arm spans my waist.
I kick and throw my head back but it’s no good. Whoever has me is strong. Very strong.
Panic rushes into my veins. Fear snaps into every nerve in my body. My feet are no longer on the ground.
“Keep quiet, Earth woman.” A harsh deep voice I don’t recognize.
Who the hell has me? What is going on?
I go for another head butt with no success. There is a strange smell. An odd taste. It’s the kerchief.
And then it’s as if the energy is being sucked from me. The vital life force that keeps me conscious and coherent is being drained away. I am sure I’m being drugged as the feeling is worse with every breath I take.
I stop breathing until my lungs complain violently. But still the sensation stays, it worsens.
My eyes are closing.
I am being lifted.
Vaguely I am aware of hitting the backseat of the vehz, of my legs being folded up and my right arm locking uncomfortably beneath my ridiculously heavy body.
My last thought is I am going to die before I ever have a child.
Yar-Sh
I have an Earth woman! The greatest prize of all!
I don’t even know how it happened. I was sitting there watching the two mercenaries wander toward the militarized border, the most stupid place in the world to try and cross to the Uncivilized Tundra, when I saw her.
She just stepped out of a parked-up, hovering vehz, and stood there, for the taking.
And take I did.
As I sneaked toward her the sight of her female body had excitement rushing through me. It had been so long since I had even seen a woman and now I was so close I could smell her.
An unusual scent, sultry, sweet, musky, but then she is an alien so bound to be different to my senses. And her hair, short and tufty and sitting close to her small head and dainty neck. Her shoulders are dainty too, as is the slope of her back and the curves of her hips.
She must have been in a daze because she didn’t hear me approach with the prion-sprinkled kerchief.
And now I have her small, wriggly body with only two breasts—what is that all about?—flopped behind me, out cold.
I hit the control panel and shoot off, heading in the direction of the new pass. I am wide-awake, alive. Excitement that I haven’t felt for so long combines with hope and I have a desperate need to see my brother, show him my treasure.
But my hope is soon dashed. I glance at the screen and see that my two rescuers are not content to let me rescue myself and are in hot pursuit.
I speed up and then take a left down a gulley, hoping to shake them.
But they are determined and follow me even when I take a sharp hairpin toward a cliff and then an almost vertical ascent.
I swear in my native tongue.
She is still out cold, the prion kerchief around her neck doing the trick. I don’t want to give her too much, I don’t understand her biology, but I do want her compliant until we reach Jakarty territory.
And compliant means being drugged like a ragdoll.
The vehz behind me has slowed a fraction.
I make the most of it and swing around a large boulder.
I am pretty sure I am nearing the entrance to the secret passage now.
I’ve only been once before, when we were instructed to collect the prion that had blown into the entrance by mistake, but I have a good sense of direction.
I slow and scan the area, looking at the screen that has an image of the topography.
And then I see it, the pile of rubble the explosion created, the lava stream and the scar in the landscape that leads beneath the mountains.
“Yes.” I am hopeful again. Almost jubilant. Soon I will be home, off this dictatorship land and with my brothers in arms.
I pull the vehz to a halt. The entrance doesn’t glitter the way the entrance to the mine does because this tunnel isn’t full of prion. That suits me well. I need to keep my strength up. I have cargo.