Page 19 of Protected By the Alien Commander

Olivia

I stretched,arching my back, and groaned in happy satisfaction. I felt lazy and relaxed, like I had just gotten the best massage. Which I had, from the inside. Boy, did that man know how to give a good time. I grinned and sat up but didn’t see Doshax in the room.

“Doshax?” I called, getting out of bed.

No answer.

Had he left me? My heart was hammering. No. I willed myself to calm down. He couldn’t have left me. He wouldn’t have done that. Not the way he had cared for me and saved my life more than once. Dumping me in an abandoned ship was not something he would do, I just knew it.

Then I saw a well worn book of some sort on the end of the bed. Doshax had to have found it after I passed out from all those orgasms. I moved and groaned at my sore legs but kept crawling down the bed and picked up the book. It looked like it could be a journal. It was worn, weather-beaten, and torn. The hard cover was a faded shade of brown, with a black leather flap on one side.

I opened it. The journal’s pages were dry and oddly cool against my fingers. I turned the pages, then nearly dropped it. I recognized the writing! How could that be? I picked it up again and flipped through the pages. Yes, this was a language I recognized, which made no sense. How did anyone in this Delta System, nowhere near Earth, know the Japanese writing of kanji characters? Thanks to four years of Japanese in college, I could read it.

I quickly flipped to the back of the journal, to what looked like the last entry. The date was old, over a decade ago. It wasn’t written in a shaky hand like I had expected, but in the same steady hand as the earlier entries. I read the last few entries which told of normal ship activity, whatever normal was for a freighter ship. Each entry had been filled in at the end of each day.

The last entry was dated in some format that I didn’t recognize. I didn’t know what the order of numbers meant. But the entry had to have been made the night before whatever had happened to the ship. The captain noted they were on a delivery run to some word I couldn’t make out; it wasn’t in kanji. Then the rest of the entry said they would pick up another cargo and leave Delta System. I caught my breath as I read on.

"I am nervous about taking the shortcut by the planet Yazell. I have heard rumors that there may be some truth to the tales about the planet. I am glad that I never took up the offer from the IGS to colonize it. I have had enough strange things happen to me already since I had been taken from Earth. But nothing should happen to this ship just by going near the planet. All the strange things I've heard have happened on the planet itself. The shortcut will be fine. It will save us at least eleven hours of transit time. The bonus for delivering the cargo early will take care of the crew’s nerves over getting too close to Yazell. I told the crew the rumors were stupid children’s stories and not to put any belief in them."

I wasn’t sure what stuck out more, that this captain had been taken from space near Earth like my friends and I, or that I finally knew where I was: Yazell. What strange things had happened here? They had to be bad if they’d scared the crew of a freighter ship.

I shivered and put the journal down. I had to find Doshax. But I could not stop thinking about what I had just read. This was not info I had wanted to know. Crashing on a planet was one thing, and crashing so far from Earth that Doshax hadn’t recognized any planet names was another. But crashing on a planet that scared locals? Yeah, I wasn’t a fan of that scenario.

I got off the bed and looked closely at everything in the room. That journal freaked me out. Could Doshax have read it? Probably not, it was in Japanese. But then again, somehow we had gone from our solar system to this Delta System far from home. And so had the author of this journal. I’d have to ask Doshax if he had read it. I wish the captain could have made another entry after their ship crashed. What had happened to the crew? I was freaking myself out. I decided to think about something else.

Dressing quickly, I put on my dirty clothes, which was gross, but there was literally nothing else to wear. When I was finally ready, I picked up the captain’s journal and waved at the door, which opened. I hadn’t realized how nervous I was that it wouldn’t open until just then. Get it together, Olivia. You need to stay calm and keep your head if you want to find your friends again. And get help for Emma.

Once I left the room, I had no idea how to find Doshax. I guess he could have left me a note, but I wouldn’t have been able to read it. I didn’t like the idea of wandering around an abandoned spaceship, but I knew he had to be in it somewhere. I’d just follow the sound. And hope it wasn’t someone other than Doshax that I found.

I stepped out into the corridor, which was lit by a series of small lights high on the wall, aimed at the ceiling. Then I noticed the wide colored stripe on the corridor wall. How could I have not noticed that earlier?

I started walking down it, toward the bridge. I couldn’t hear any sounds, except for my own footsteps thudding against the metal floor. It was very still. I followed the stripes of color on the wall, red and blue. When I reached the intersection, the blue stripe went left and the red to the right. I chose red because it seemed to go in the general direction of the front of the ship. I hoped they were some sort of guidance and not actually decoration.

It was spooky walking in an abandoned ship that was so quiet. Though I had only been on one spaceship before this, the booze cruise ship, I knew there should have been background noises like the hum of engines and ventilation systems blowing. It was unnerving. I kept looking around and behind me as I walked. Then I heard a noise, a voice.

I tiptoed to minimize the sound of my boots on the metal floor and crept closer to the cockpit. Then I nearly smacked myself on the forehead when I recognized Doshax’s voice. I was turning into a nervous wreck. I walked the rest of the short distance at my normal pace and turned into the cockpit, where Doshax sat in the pilot’s chair. Had he been able to reach someone?

"Is anything working? I heard you talking. Is someone coming to rescue us?"

He looked over at me with a smile, his teeth gleaming white against his blue skin. I sat in what had to be the co-pilot’s chair next to his. It wasn’t very comfortable, a silver metal frame with cushions of a canvas type material that looked like a burnt lavender color. Or maybe the cushions were just really dirty.

"You heard me talking to myself. I cannot get the comm to work. There is only static. There is something on this planet causing interference."

He turned back to the dashboard and pushed a button. Static squealed. I covered my ears. Doshax glanced at me and turned the volume down.

"Are there channels just for emergencies?” My friend was a pilot, and I knew certain radio bands were for emergencies only.

"Yes, I first tried both the military and civilian emergency channels. Nothing but static."

I sat back in the chair. Would we ever get rescued off this planet? And back to Earth? I turned to look at Doshax. Did I want to go back to Earth? I didn’t like my job, my boss was a jerk, my parents overlooked me and forgot my birthdays in favor of my younger sister. Frankly, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to return. Plus, all my close friends had been on the booze cruise with me.

As I watched him work, I noticed how unusual his fingertips were. The final knuckle was bigger only on the back of the finger. The fingernail was thick and came to a curved dull point. They weren’t claws, but I didn’t know what they were. Whatever evolution's reason, I was sure glad his fingers were like that. They had felt fantastic and hit that spot inside me perfectly.

Doshax tapped a screen and the static squeal changed. I looked out the window to the odd orange landscape and purple sky. “Does this ship have any way to tell if anyone or anything is near it?”

"Yes.”

Finally, good news! I felt like jumping up and celebrating. We could easily find my friends now.