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I feel a fresh rush of affection and an intense bonding, knowing how rare a moment like this is for her, and how much it means for her to demonstrate such trust.
I slide her from my lap gently and put her into bed. I have learned much about this little human and her life before me today. I know the ways she has been hurt, and how she has been failed. I know that she has been brave, and reckless, and bold and uncontrollable — and that those traits have been her salvation.
How can I hope to control someone who has only ever found safety in being uncontrollable? She will resist being disciplined to her very last breath. She will reject order. She will find her own way. She will fight authority, because authority has failed her.
I listened to Rex talk. He told me of her father’s power, how he is effectively a warlord, a charismatic and brutal man who has pulled together remnants of multiple warring forces to create an enclave under his control in the city. He is dangerous, and he controls not only men, but machines. He has no idea where his daughter has gone, and even less idea where his soldiers have disappeared. As far as he is concerned, the moment his daughter and his troops left the city, they were erased from existence. I feel a brief blip of empathy for him, but it is quickly extinguished by the fact he was trying to force Stella into marriage. She is too wild and fine and beautiful a creature to be bullied into taking a mate.
Stella lets out a little moan and shifts under the covers in her sleep.
She’s still not a suitable pet.
But she’s still mine.
And now we have humans who have to be handled.
* * *
Again, I go to Arkan, but this time it is for the last time. There is a finality to this conversation which now takes place on the bridge of our ancestral ship. He has made sure that his pet is stowed away safely. Now I think about it, he has jealously guarded her from the human soldiers the entire time they’ve been on board. His instincts told him what his arrogant conscious mind refused to acknowledge: these creatures are dangerous to us, and our mates.
“Do you understand now why we absolutely cannot bring these soldiers back to Euphoria?” I open the discussion with a question.
Arkan sighs, running a hand through his hair. “What do we do with them if we do not bring them back? Thy cannot go to Earth. They will tell stories of our kind. They may lay traps for future visitors. They are sullied by us and the experiences they have had with us. And they may have already observed more than is safe for them to have seen. Some of those soldiers are technicians. They’ve taken things apart in some places on the ship to see how they work, I’m sure of it.”
“Then we eliminate them,” I say. “As threats.”
“I don’t like that idea,” Arkan says.
“I don’t like that idea either.”
That’s the sound of Rex, a man who should not be here, speaking up from a dark corner of the room. This is the problem when maintenance starts getting missed, and lights aren’t replaced in a timely fashion. You end up with a bridge with a literal blind spot on it, where a tactically minded human can lie in wait while setting up an ambush.
There are three access points to the bridge. Each and every one of them slides open simultaneously, revealing a contingent of soldiers. They are armed — with our weapons. No doubt they were retrieved on one of their very many excursions about the ship. Arkan and I are surrounded. If Stella were here, she’d describe the situation even more succinctly.
Arkan and I are fucked.
“See, you aliens, you have an arrogance about you that’s always going to be your downfall,” Rex says. “You always…”
As he embarks on what is clearly a prepared speech, I realize that the situation is even worse than I suspected.
He’s going to bore us to death.
11RESCUE
Stella
One moment I am asleep in the arms of my alien lover with a sore ass and a very satisfied pussy — the next I am waking up in a bed that does not have an alien in it. It’s a small, stiff, white bed in a small, stiff, white room. From the moment I open my eyes it is clear that I am on a much smaller ship. Everything about it feels wrong. There’s a weird taste in my mouth and a sort of fuzziness in my head. I’ve been drugged. It’s not the first time. I know how that feels. I don’t understand how. Did someone jab me with something while I was asleep? Why the hell would they do that? Surely Kahn wouldn’t…
“Kahn?”
I call his name, but there’s no answer.
I put my hand to the collar, but I don’t feel anything. That’s weird. Usually there’s sort of a residual hum, a sort of being. I never really noticed that before — but I note its absence now. The collar doesn’t feel alive anymore. It feels like a thing.
Dread forms in the pit of my stomach.
Something is deeply, deeply wrong.
I get up and leave the room, finding myself in a claustrophobic little corridor which leads to a very small bridge. There I find Rex and two of his soldiers. They all look worse for wear, bruised and bandaged. They look like they’ve been in one hell of a fight with something designed by nature to do damage.
