by Mara Frost
Alien Space Pirates:
Captured
By: Mara Frost
Copyright © 2015 by Mara Frost
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Please note all persons portrayed are 18 years of age or older.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
To be continued... | Alien Space Pirates Book 2: | Sold | http://www.amazon.com/Alien-Space-Pirates-SciFi-Romance-ebook/dp/B01A7VAI4O/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1452977933&sr=1-1
About the Author
Prologue
Space. The final frontier...
These are the voyages of me getting kidnapped in space by intergalactic smugglers.
Yep, you heard me right. Kidnapped. In Space.
Who gets kidnapped in space?! What is that about? Kidnapped in France by a sex slave crime syndicate? I can understand. I can’t understand being kidnapped while on the International Space Station. That just breaks an extra special set of laws.
And yet here I am – being flown across the galaxy towards my doom. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s start at the beginning.
It all started a long time ago in a galaxy far, far...
Okay, no. Wrong story.
It was actually less than a week ago and 240 miles away from Earth on the International Space Station. I was the lucky lottery winner who won a roundtrip ticket to space. Crazy, right? To be totally honest, I’m probably the least qualified person to ever be allowed outside of Earth’s atmosphere. I’m not particularly physically fit, I have no advanced degrees, I’m 27 and my biggest accomplishment to date is doing Bob’s Super Atomic Hot Wing Challenge at my local bar. So no, I’m not an astronaut and I definitely don’t have the “right stuff”.
Fortunately, the space program wasn’t looking for astronauts and they didn’t want the right stuff.
Apparently the space program was in need of some cash flow and they thought a friendly lottery would be the cash injection that they needed. And boy, did it work. World wide, millions of people submitted their names into the lottery along with a small $50 registration fee. So you do the math – NASA was back in business and a sudden interest in space exploration was reignited.
Score for space!
So after my name was selected on live television – and I had the appropriate freak-out – I underwent a vigorous eight-month training process to prepare me for both the physical and mental rigors of space travel.
Too bad their training didn’t include space abduction...
Chapter 1
Dani
“I’m going to puke.”
“Again?”
I pause for a minute, trying to use sheer force of will to make the nausea go away. And I almost succeed until an even stronger wave of queasiness decides to creep up on me.
“Oh God, I’m going to puke.”
Jordan, one of the three science officers for the mission, squints her eyes in sympathy as she watches me fight for control over my body. Either that or she was looking at me in disgust. It’s hard to tell since I had to close my eyes while I privately begged my body to stop waging a revolt against me.
“Are you alright? Do you need anything?”
I shake my head and raise my arms, as if my arms can magically stop me from floating in the air.
“Some gravity might be nice.”
“Gravity? Gravity I can’t do I’m afraid, but I can give you Dramamine? How many times did you do the zero gravity simulator during training?”
“I don’t know, a thousand maybe? Or maybe closer to 20, ” I grumble as I swat at a spoon that is floating by my face. The whole station is full of floaty things and my brain isn’t reconciling the whole zero gravity thing very well.
Jordan smiles. “So only 15 times more than the average trainee?”
“Yeah, well I guess the guys at NASA didn’t think I was having enough fun...or puking enough the first 5 times and decided to throw another 15 at me.”
“You know, we’ve been up here for a few days, you should have definitely gotten used to the environment by now. I’ve never seen anyone respond so negatively before,” Jordan replies as she expertly pushes off a wall in the galley and grabs an MRE from the food station. With her long blonde hair floating in the air, she looks like a gorgeous mermaid swimming in the water.
I watch her and fight a grumpy growl that is threatening to surface. It almost seems unfair that there are women like her alive. Gorgeous, nice and brilliant? Not. Fair. I mean, I’m no slouch. I’m relatively fit...now that I just underwent 8 months of government sponsored training. And I’ve heard people call me “cute” before, although to be fair that was when I wasn’t puking my brains out in space or...grouchy, hungry or stuck with a never-ending bout of car sickness.
I sigh as I watch her with both disgust and longing as she begins to dig into her MRE. I haven’t been able to keep any food down in days and this has been my latest attempt. I glance down at my own MRE and roll my eyes as I brave another bite.
“Where is everyone else anyway?” I ask with a mouthful of dried banana.
“Miller and Brown are doing some tests on rock specimens, Johnson is exercising, the Captain is resting and everyone else is in the Rec area.”
“Great,” I mumble.
Not everyone was particularly thrilled about my presence on the station or the lottery program. Most saw it as sacrilege and thought that they were turning NASA into an amusement park, while others saw it as a necessary evil to keep the program alive.
Then there were others like Jordan who were completely flexible and open to the lottery and quick to be friendly. And that’s exactly why she was my one and only friend on this mission.
And naturally I latched onto her like a baby Koala bear latching on to its momma. Without her, things would have been like high school again and I would have been a pariah who had to eat in the bathroom.
Which sounds totally gross if you think about.
“You know, the others aren’t so bad. They’re just a bit upset about the changes that have been going on within the organization. It’s nothing personal against you.”
“Oh sure! They just see me as evil incarnate all wrapped up in an over-commercialized bow.”
Jordan nods and shrugs as she continues to chow down on her liquid burrito in a tube.
“If you think about it, this really isn’t fair. Isn’t NASA just one giant nerdfest? What are they doing being such jerks to me? Didn’t they spend half their lives being ostracized for being different? I’m not exactly the epitome of cool. I’m just not as smart as you genius weirdo’s that’s all,” I add grudgingly. Jordan just smiles, but says nothing. Which isn’t particularly helpful.
I glance back down at my bland, tasteless, completely dehydrated banana chips. My stomach seems to be accepting them so I go for another mouthful.
This is for space. This is my dream. This is for space. This is my dream.
I keep repeating this mantra, hoping that my stomach will listen and continue to be cooperative as I s
hove more chips into my mouth.
“You know, these aren’t so bad when you-“
Suddenly, a very loud and very unsettling cracking noise echoes through the galley and cuts me off. I instantly freeze – at least as much as a person can freeze while floating freely in zero gravity – and shoot a look at Jordan, immediately expecting her to know what caused that noise.
Since our mission began, it has never escaped my notice that we were essentially in a tiny little fish bowl and naturally, if anything happened to that fish bowl, the fish (us!) would be screwed. So every little creak and knock I hear in the station naturally gives me mini anxiety attacks.
“What was that?” I ask stiffly. “It didn’t sound very...normal.”
“I don’t know...”
So, she isn’t much help. Why did I have to become friends with the resident geologist instead of the crew’s engineer or Captain or someone remotely useful?
We both pause for a moment, remain quiet and look around the module, silently waiting for something else to happen.
After several seconds of silence, I decide that it’s at least safe to talk.
“Well, maybe it’s just the old pipes breathing. The pipes in my grandparent’s old house would always do that.”
“Pipes in space don’t do that, Dani.”
“Alright, so that means we should go talk to one of the engineers and see if they heard –“
Before I can finish my thought, I’m thrown across the galley and I slam against the wall. I blindly try to find something to hold onto, but everything is too chaotic. Things are flying through the air...Jordan is flying through the air...I’m flying through the air. The entire station is shaking and rocking so violently, it feels like it’s about to be split open.
Oh good. We’re going to die. The fish bowl is breaking and I’m going to die.
“Dani, hold on!! We have to try to get to the main module of the station!”
“O-okay!” I yell back.
That makes sense in theory. I know that makes sense, but at the moment I’m not entirely sure how I’ll ever be able to pry myself from the tubing that I’m holding onto let alone actually working my way through the station to the main module.
Does she not see the station shaking like it’s in the middle of some sort of space earthquake? Space quake? Can that happen? Although, that doesn’t make much sense...quakes happen when there’s friction and...
“Dani!”
“What?!”
“You have to let go! We need to get to the main module!”
“Yeah!! I heard you the first time! But why would I want to leave this perfectly good tube?! It’s keeping me in place!”
And in my irrational mind, as long as I’m holding on to this little tubing I will stay safe while the station is being ripped apart.
“Because...”
She might have finished her sentence, but I didn’t hear her. The second my ass slammed onto the floor, I wasn’t paying attention to anything except for the sudden pain to my tailbone.
And then the shaking stops.
I look over to Jordan and see her looking completely dazed and holding her head as if she banged it on something. I look around and notice one very magical...one very wonderful thing.
“We’re not floating!! Jordan, we’re not floating!”
“W-what?” she asks, still a little confused and obviously a little out of it.
“Gravity! We have gravity! We’re on the floor!”
I look at the floor and see a notepad next to me and throw it unceremoniously into the air and watch almost gleefully as it plops right back down on to the floor.
“There’s gravity!” I repeat happily and then I stop short. “Wait, what? Why is there gravity?”
“I-I don’t know...” Jordan replies, glancing around and finally noticing that we were on the floor and that things weren’t exactly normal.
“Okay, let’s get you to the main module and see how everyone else is doing. Maybe we can get some answers.”
I stand up and walk over to her and she unsteadily accepts my hand. Unfortunately, as we walk towards the doorway, the hatch shoots down and closes right in front of us – locking us in the galley.
I freeze as I stare at our now blocked path. I turn and look at Jordan blankly.
“Well, that’s different. What is this?”
“It’s part of the system’s protocol. The subdivisions of the station shut down as a safety precaution.”
“Oh...okay, that’s really...awesome....”
My words trail as I think about how incredibly not awesome that actually is.
And then I come up with a brilliant plan to overcome our new obstacle. I bang on the door and yell my brains out. Seemed like a logical next step.
“Hey!! Can you anyone hear us?! Is anyone out there? Hello! Miller? Can you -”
“There’s no use. The doors are made out of two feet of pure magnesium alloy. It’s the strongest and lightest metal known to man...and two feet of it isn’t going to let you play a game of ‘telephone’ with anyone on the other side let alone allow them to hear your banging.”
I stop.
Two feet of pure solid magnesium for a door? Now, that just seems excessive, doesn’t it? But hey if that’s what keeps the fish in the fish tank I suppose I can accept it.
“Alright then, well I guess we should just wait for the system to...unlock itself.”
I try to act peppy and confident to reassure her, which is really odd considering she’s the astronaut and I’m a lowly lottery winner, but I can see how shaken up she is so I put on a strong face. Even though I really really want to freak out.
I walk us across the galley and glance around. There’s nowhere to sit. I laugh, which sounds borderline hysterical. Really? Nowhere to sit? Of course there wouldn’t be anywhere to sit. You don’t need chairs while you’re floating, do you?
“I guess you smarties didn’t plan for spontaneous gravity in your little simulations, huh? Some chairs would have been asking for too much?”
The pretty science office chuckles as she lowers herself to the floor.
“No, I suppose we didn’t figure that in as one of the possible scenarios. If you’d like, you can write a letter when we get back.”
I smile back somewhat uncomfortably. At least she thinks that we’re actually going to make it back. That’s positive. I should be more positive. I should probably keep the Oh my God, we’re going to die in space!! thoughts down to a minimum.
Feeling a bit antsy and nervous, I walk over to the small circular window and dare myself to look out, although to be honest, I’m afraid to do it. What if I see half the station floating around in chunks? Or worse, what if I see the crew floating around in chunks...
I try to glance out of the tiny circular window and I’m immediately struck by what I see. Or rather what I don’t see – which is space. I don’t see space, Earth or the stars. I don’t see anything. At. All. It actually seems like something might be blocking the window entirely from the outside.
“Uhm...Jordan...”
“Yeah?”
“Can you come here a sec?”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“Oh, nothing...I just don’t see –“
The floor under my feet suddenly lurches forward and I instinctively jump for the wall to find something secure that I can attach myself to.
Not again! I close my eyes and try to brace myself for the worst.
But the shaking and lurching stops as quickly as it began. I open my eyes and look around, trying to control my heart and convince it not to beat out of my chest entirely.
“Okay, I –“
Suddenly a screaming sound of metal grinding against metal echoes through the room and interrupts me from saying whatever nervous nonsense that I was about to say. Then a loud scraping at the hatch quickly follows.
None of it sounds right or normal.
I run. I don’t have many places to go, but I run as far from the hatch as possibl
e and get to the other side of the galley. And Jordan runs after me and we latch onto each other.
“What the fuck is that? What’s going on? Why is the hatch wheel turning? Is it supposed to be doing that?”
“No! I don’t know!”
“You don’t know?! You’re an astronaut, Jordan! You’re supposed to know! That’s from the outside, right?! Could that be someone from the crew trying to get in from outside?”
The second I said it I knew it was a stretch and highly unlikely. The chances that someone from the crew could get geared up in a space suit and make it all the way over to the galley while space walking outside in under five minutes is not only unlikely, but impossible. I knew that. My brain was just grasping at straws.
And that’s probably why Jordan ignored my question and chose to stare wide-eyed at the hatch door as it continued to unlock. She also had a look of total and complete terror. That definitely didn’t help.
And all I can do is watch as the lock slowly turns. Different thoughts race through my head, but almost all of them involve us being sucked out into space.
I whimper and hold onto her a little tighter.
After several more painful seconds, the hatch wheel stops with a loud resounding thud, indicating that it reached the end. My heart stops.
I don’t even care that Jordan is digging her fingers into my arm so hard that she’s cutting circulation to my hands. It doesn’t even matter. Besides, you don’t really need use of your hands when you’re dead and floating in open space, do you?
Jordan whimpers and buries her head into my shoulder. I imagine it’s an attempt to “hide” from whatever it is that’s about to happen next. Honestly, I wouldn’t mind hiding either, preferably under my bed in Ohio.
Well, this is it. At least I’ll be in the history books? The first big NASA lottery winner and I get to die a horrible spacey death. Yay?
My brain is frantic and I try my best to stay calm while not peeing my pants. I see flashes of my life and quickly realize that what they say is true - your life really does flash before your eyes when you’re about to reach your end. Except, for some reason, one particularly loud thought still dominates over all the other thoughts – I’m really freakin’ thrilled that I’m not nauseous anymore.
