Alien Enslaved--Rebellion: Birth of a King
Title Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Epilogue
Alien Enslaved—Rebellion:
Birth of a King
By
Kaitlyn O’Connor
© copyright Dec. 2019 by Madris DePasture writing as Kaitlyn O’Connor
Cover Art by Ginny Dixon, December 2019
ISBN 978-1-60394-
Smashwords Edition
New Concepts Publishing
Lake Park, GA 31636
www.newconceptspublishing.com
This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and not to be confused with fact. Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely coincidence.
Chapter One
“Star light, star bright. First star I see tonight. I wish I may. I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight.”
Emmaline felt a little hollow and a lot uncomfortable in the silence that followed that recital her grandmother had taught her long, long ago.
She was feeling sorry for herself, she realized with a flicker of irritation.
She didn’t know why it was that Christmas made her feel like that. It wasn’t as if she was used to being surrounded by a large, loving family, after all.
It wasn’t as if she wasn’t perfectly content with her solitary life in a general way, either.
She loved her cabin in the deep woods!
She loved that she never had to deal with people unless she just wanted to or needed supplies.
She thought she must have been predisposed to be a loner, to enjoy the kind of pursuits that didn’t require a partner—like art and reading and nature studies.
And of course, having been reared by two parents who were brilliant academics and spent the majority of the time off in their own little worlds had just reinforced that disposition, she was sure.
Her only sibling, a younger brother, was the complete opposite—outgoing—a real social ‘butterfly’, but as self centered in his own way, always off in his own little world where she was a complete outsider.
She shook the thoughts as the star that had inspired the recital from her early childhood caught her attention again with another twinkling flash of light.
A frown drew her brows together as she slowed the car and stared at it, hard, through her windshield. “That looks bigger,” she muttered.
After staring for a long moment, wry amusement replaced her confusion. “Way to go, Em! Wish upon a helicopter, or whatever that is!”
Of course, she wasn’t daft enough to think her wish would have come true if it had been a real star that had caught her attention. Her amusement deepened. “I forgot to make the wish anyway.”
But she hadn’t, she realized immediately. She just hadn’t voiced it. It was still floating around in the back of her mind. ‘Bring me someone to love who will love me back.’
Her throat closed as she acknowledged the wish from her heart.
How long had that been there, floating around, unacknowledged?
Maybe always, she though glumly.
Maybe she wasn’t actually a loner by choice after all?
She didn’t pursue that thought.
Because she abruptly realized the bright object was getting brighter and bigger and that meant closer.
Silence engulfed her like a cotton blanket as she brought her electric car to a stop. It was downright deafening.
It wasn’t a helicopter or a plane.
And it was coming straight at her!
She didn’t think it was just going to pass over really close.
It was coming down!
Sucking in a panicked breath, Emmaline threw the car in reverse and began to back up, dimly aware that the thing was moving so fast it would hit her before she could turn the car around.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t really that good at backing up in the broad daylight on a straight road. The curvy country road defeated her. The car jolted when it left the pavement, redirecting her attention for several critical seconds. She slammed on brakes, then thought about the meteor she’d seen heading for her and whipped a terrified look around just in time to see the thing slam into the trees on the other side of the road. Leaves and broken branches flew in every direction. One small piece of flying debris hit her windshield hard enough to crack it, drawing a gasping scream out of her, but mostly she was just paralyzed with shock, too stunned with what had happened to actually assimilate it.
As silence settled around her again, though, her brain finally threw out a possibility.
She’d seen a plane or helicopter crash.
The engine, clearly, had stopped and that was why she hadn’t heard anything.
The object was too big to be a meteor.
Well, of course, it could have been even bigger and still been a meteor, but it would have left a crater where she was sitting if it had been. The thing had … well, seemed to have slowed.
That had to be wrong. It had to be a trick of the mind caused by shock.
But it was a crash of some sort and there would … or could be people that needed help!
Almost before the thought had fully formed, she bailed out of her car and charged toward the crash site. She’d already crossed the road and plunged into the brush on the other side before it occurred to her that she’d left her cell in the car. It wouldn’t have occurred to her then except she discovered it was pitch black the moment she got under the tree canopy. She checked, momentarily distracted by the lack of a way to make light, but shook it off fairly quickly.
She thought speed might be more important. If she found someone in dire need, she could run back for the phone.
There was a full moon and a clear sky. It wasn’t enough light for surgery, but it was plenty to see her way and she discovered fairly quickly that the thing she’d seen had cleared a path as it came down.
Moonlight gleamed on the surface almost as if it was wet, clearly illuminating the condition of the thing. She could see some damage, but it seemed remarkably intact considering it had fallen out of the sky.
It hadn’t landed gently. She recalled the vibration she’d felt at impact although she hadn’t realized that was what it was at the time—or hadn’t been aware of it.
But it also hadn’t landed as hard as it should have in an actual crash.
There was no sign of smoke or fire and very little damage.
“The question is, what the hell is it?” she muttered.
It wasn’t a helicopter or a piece of one.
It wasn’t the fuselage of a plane—minus wings and tail fin.
It damned sure wasn’t anything like any satellite she’d ever seen pictures of.
And it sure as hell wasn’t a weather balloon.
A shiver skated down her spine.
What it was, was something she had no desire to examine too closely.
Ok, well some desire, but she damned sure wasn’t going to.
It looked like bad news.
Even as she tensed for flight, though, she heard a sound that made her heart trip over itself and then just stop dead still in her chest.
The whimpering cry of a
frightened baby—a young one.
She froze. Every ounce of her being focused on her ears, strained to hear the sound if it came again.
It didn’t and it left her torn.
Had she imagined it? Or was it something in the woods that made that sound?
That made sense—a lot more sense than the possibility that she’d heard an actual baby.
She’d heard wildcats were known to scream like a woman.
She didn’t remember hearing about anything that sounded like a crying baby.
But there was something in her that absolutely compelled her to check. She discovered that, as strident as her survival instincts were screaming at her to run that she couldn’t. She had to know what had made that sound.
“I’m here, baby!” she called out, beginning to pick her way around the strange, lozenge shaped object that she knew with every fiber of her being wasn’t of human origins. “I’m coming.”
Almost as if it responded to her, she heard the whimpering cry again.
It sounded close and she saw why as she rounded the end of the ship and was able to see the other side. It was damaged, fairly extensively.
The craft was dark inside.
The hair on the back of her neck stood up. Her belly knotted with fear.
Because she heard a furtive, shuffling sort of sound.
But she also heard a faint whimper and that time there was absolutely no doubt it was coming from inside the vessel.
She thought if her sphincter hadn’t knotted with terror she might have soiled herself.
Or wet her pants.
Or ran.
Or all three at once.
She couldn’t seem to make herself move in any direction for many moments.
But the cloud of terror parted sufficiently to allow brain function—of a sort—and it occurred to her that it was frightened. That’s what she’d heard that had, almost literally, scared the piss out of her.
It still took all she could do to force herself to follow the sounds inside.
As she stepped through the tear in the side of the thing, a few lights flickered on—and kept flickering.
There was almost nothing inside.
Nothing but the thing that looked more like a casket than anything else that came to mind.
The lid, which was transparent, was standing up—fractured, no doubt, by the jarring impact.
That thought produced her first fear—that someone was hurt and needed help.
It made it possible to inch closer to the casket thing. She strained from what she thought might be a safe distance, to peer inside.
And then she saw it.
It was a little thing … relatively speaking.
Maybe a baby.
Definitely alien.
Logically, she decided, it was so small compared to the size of the thing it was in that she must conclude it was a baby … alien.
At that thought, she whipped a sharp look around in fearful search of the parents.
The infant, though, if it was an infant, was the only occupant. The craft looked more like … well, she supposed a raft. There was the one thing inside it that could contain a life form and nothing else—no seats or other caskets.
The baby had been in the life raft inside a hibernation unit, she thought, convinced of that assessment even though she had no certainty of where it had come from.
Hollywood, she supposed.
Trying to convince herself nothing truly horrible, deadly, terrifying was going to jump out at her, she moved a little closer and crooned soothingly as she had before. “It’s ok, baby. Are you hurt, sweety?”
Two huge eyes stared at her solemnly from the shadows, unblinking.
But she thought those eyes were full of tears and that shot straight through her heart.
She moved a little closer. “Come here, sweety. I won’t hurt you.” Then she muttered under her breath, “Please, please don’t hurt me. I’m just trying to help.”
The tiny being studied her for several long moments and then shuffled a little closer, out of the shadows and into the flickering light.
It was so alien—humanoid, but clearly alien—her blood froze in her veins. Goosebumps broke out all over her and raced around in a cascading way that made her teeth begin to chatter.
It was cold as hell, she reminded herself, trying to dismiss her terror.
And she could see the poor little thing was next door to naked.
It was shivering.
“I should’ve learned a long damn time ago not to make stupid wishes,” she muttered under her breath.
The infant seemed to sense the anger in her tone even though she hadn’t frowned or yelled. It almost seemed to shrink away from her.
Or maybe it did because it saw her as alien?
“Come on, sweety. You’ll freeze in here. I can’t leave you. There’s no telling when someone will come looking for you.”
If ever.
Because she knew as soon as she said it that it was true.
Why would they have put it in something like this and sent it off by itself unless it was the best and maybe only chance for survival?
“I’ll bet you’re hungry, too.”
And what the hell was she going to do about that?
She glanced away from the baby and searched the area for anything that looked like supplies.
She wasn’t really surprised when she didn’t see anything when she’d already deduced the child had been put in some sort of suspended animation, but she was damned disappointed.
Now she had to worry that anything she gave it to eat might kill it.
And, when all was said and done, she didn’t know a damned thing about human babies!
Don’t panic! One thing at the time.
Decisively, she moved to the side of the containment and held her hands out. “Come on and let me look at you, baby. I don’t know if you’re hurt or not, but I have to get you out of here and someplace warm. Ok?”
The poor thing launched itself at her, making her heart contract painfully before she realized it was just desperate for anyone.
She caught it and lifted it out of the casket carefully and then pulled it close to her chest and wrapped her jacket around it.
It was a big baby, and heavy!
But she was convinced it was a baby.
She had a hell of a time getting back to her car with it. It was so heavy it made her awkward. Finally, huffing for breath, she managed to maneuver both of them through the door when she discovered it was clinging too frantically to peel it loose.
“It’s ok. This will be better anyway since I don’t have a car seat, but you’re going to have to let me move you from between me and steering wheel or we aren’t going anywhere.”
It was a long, awkward drive, because she realized as soon as she pulled up in front of her house that it was pointless to get out.
She didn’t have anything for a baby—any kind of infant.
She sat staring at the cabin for many minutes, trying to think how she was going to pull this off—a shopping trip with her carrying a baby alien.
That looked alien.
She hadn’t even gotten a good look at him yet and there was no doubt in her mind.
In the bright lights of a store …?
But she couldn’t leave him alone at the cabin or in the car.
Shaking those thoughts, she backed the car up and turned toward town. “We have to get some things. I don’t have baby food or bottles or diapers—car seat or crib. I hope to god I have enough money in the bank ….”
The monologue brought her to an abrupt realization—she couldn’t just load up on baby stuff in the tiny town closest to where she lived. She might be a loner, but she was willing to bet everybody in town knew everything about her.
And they would know she didn’t have a child.
Quite aside from the sudden need for all the baby stuff.
She made the turn just before she got to the city limits that would take her to the city a
couple of towns over that was big enough to offer some privacy from prying neighbors.
Of course, there was always the chance that some of the townspeople were over there shopping, but she had to get supplies somewhere.
Thankfully, she didn’t see anyone that looked even vaguely familiar.
Then again, she didn’t look.
She tucked the baby into her jacket and shielded his face and head with one hand and steered the buggy with the other. Heading straight for the baby section, she made sure she got enough supplies for several weeks, deciding to wait on a car seat and crib since she didn’t see any way in hell she was going to load or unload them with the baby in her jacket.
Diapers, bottles, formula and food.
She didn’t have a clue of how old the baby was, but she knew how damned heavy he was because her back and shoulders felt like they were on fire long before she managed to get back in her car and point it toward her cabin.
Her luck held, she thought, until she was about a mile from her cabin.
That was when she ran into the military road block.
Chapter Two
Shock jolted through Emma, suspending brain function for critical moments, but, in the back of her mind she almost instantly connected the young man in uniform to the little bundle sleeping in the seat beside her wrapped in her jacket.
She eased her window down about an inch when he stepped up to her door.
“Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to turn around.”
Emmaline gaped at him. “But ….” She almost blurted out that she lived down that road and had no other way to get home. Fortunately, her survival instincts were in full possession of her tongue. “What’s going on? Why?”
“Sorry, Ma’am. I haven’t been issued that information. Orders are to clear civilians from the area.”
“So … there’s danger.”
“Again, Ma’am. If you’ll just back up over there and turn around. This area may be clear by morning. You can try again later.”
Emmaline had to struggle with the urge to demand answers. Instead, she swallowed the urge, nodded, and put her window up.
Because the baby stirred and that brought danger to the forefront of her mind.
She was glad he’d told her to back up. That made it impossible for him to take note of her tag number and she hoped by the time she had backed into the driveway he indicated that she would be far enough away to prevent any chance of reading it.
Birth of a King Page 1
