Kidnapped: A Science Fiction Adventure (Reborn Starship Book 1)

by Reilly Lexington

  I glance across at the control panel and wonder if I could make it across the platform and get then elevator moving in time to escape back down the way I have just come.

  The sound of exploding cat screams shatters the air and I look around to see the bigger alien push the other two towards me.

  They move forward, reaching out to grab me.

  I turn and flee.

  But before I can take more than a couple of steps a massive gray colored hand descends onto my shoulder with bone crunching strength.

  I try to shrug it off, but it locks onto my flesh like a vice grip.

  I cry out in pain, and then cry out again as another alien hand grabs my other arm.

  The hands lift me from the floor as I try to run and my legs are suddenly flaying around in thin air.

  I struggle and try to twist my way out of their grip, but two more gray alien hands gab my hips, sending more stabs of pain shooting through my body. Yielding to the inevitable I flop limply into the grip of the two aliens.

  An intense burst of cat squealing assaults my ears as the bigger alien stomps up to us. I try to cover my ears, but my arms can not reach past the alien arms that surround me.

  The two aliens answer back and I wince with the pain of stereo cat squealing right in my face. The noise of the aliens talking is even worst than the pain of the harsh grip of their clammy, but incredibly strong, hands on my aching flesh.

  I try to twist free once more as a cacophony of cat screams and squeals erupts around me, echoing between my ears and vibrating my entire body with the intensity of the noise.

  I am guessing that the aliens are not too pleased to see me roaming around their spaceship. But it is hard to think straight with the barrage of squeals bouncing around the inside of my head.

  The larger one squeals at the two that hold me.

  They squeal back and turn to carry me down the corridor, the other alien stomps off without looking back at us.

  The two aliens carry me into a compartment and unceremoniously dump me in the middle of the floor.

  I cry out. But the two aliens are squealing at each other and take no notice of me.

  My head feels like it is being sliced in two wiht al of this alien speak. But luckily one of the aliens turns and leaves and the other falls silent.

  For a moment I am grateful for the respite. Their speaking was making my head feel like it was about to explode.

  But then I feel the bruises on my body from where the aliens had grabbed hold of me. Both my hips and my upper arm and shoulder are throbbing. I sit up with a grunt and rub my bruised body.

  The room we are in is quite empty. There is a stack of small packing crates stacked against one wall, with secure looking straps binding them together. Some kind of work bench against the other. And a row of what looks like storage closets along the third.

  But before I can examine the contents of the room more closely I notice that the that the alien that was left to guard me is looking intensely at me.

  I look back for a moment.

  He snarls around the crooked tusks that protrude from his mouth.

  I make a half hearted attempt at a smile.

  He snorts, winkling up his snout as he looks intently at me.

  I get a very uneasy feeling. Alien or not I suddenly know what is on his mind.

  "Now look," I gasp as I crawl backwards away from him. "You don't want to damage the merchandise." But the tremble in my voice only seems to encourage him.

  He takes a step towards me and pulls open the front of his padded flight suit, which releases a foul smell that makes me gag.

  I close my eyes and cover my mouth as I roll onto my hands and knees.

  Then I realize the position I am in and I twist around into a kneeling position.

  The alien has continued to strip and no I see his exposed, gray skinned body. All winkled and with tufts of hair sprouting randomly from it. And, more importantly I see his cock hanging from between his legs. Except it is not hanging very much a sit starts to swell up. He stands up straight and pushes his hips forward as he performs a very human gesture of taking it in his fist and stroking up and down on it.

  He lets go of his cock and I see that a bunch of what look like straight cat whiskers are now sticking out from it at all angles. They are randomly spaced along the length of his cock. And they look very sharp. Needle sharp.

  Are these the spikes that I remember Angela talking about earlier?

  While I am looking at his bobbing, needle lined cock, the creature finishes pulling the suit down to his feet and steps out of it. He kicks the suit away and steps towards me, snarling quietly under his breath as he reaches for me.

  I open my mouth to scream, and suddenly all hell breaks loose.

  Chapter Four

  I am thrown to one side as the floor tips up to an almost vertical angle.

  The alien is also thrown against the wall, causing it to let out an ear breaking squeal. That is almost instantly drowned out by a siren that seems to physically thump against my head. It is so loud that I can almost feel the sound waves hit my body.

  The floor rights itself we fall back onto it. Once again the air is knocked out of me.

  The alien pulls himself to his feet snarling something at me.

  But I can not hear, never mind understand, what he is saying as I feel like I am being physically hit with the noise of the siren that fills the air.

  The alien turns from me to grab his flight suit. But is thrown against the wall as the starship rocks violently from side to side and then tilts on its side once again. I slide across the floor and hit my shoulder hard against the wall.

  I yelp with pain, but can not even hear myself with the noise of the siren.

  The ship rights itself and the alien grabs his flight suit again, hastily jamming his foot into one leg.

  The starship rocks again and I am sent skittering across the floor once more, ending up in the middle of the room. The alien is tangled in his flight suit now. One leg in and one leg out as he too is thrown across the floor. I can see the alien's mouth moving and flecks of spittle flying out as he snarls to himself. Luckily for me all his anger seems focused on his flight suit as he sits in the middle of the room next to me and fights to get it back on.

  The noise of the siren suddenly cuts off, and I am so relieved that it feels like I am floating.

  Then I realize I am floating as the deck slowly drifts away from me.

  I reach out to grab it. But there is nothing to catch a hold of as my fingers slide across the smooth metal. The deck continues to drift away from me until I can just barely touch it with my fingertips.

  The alien starts screeching, sounding like a sack of fighting tomcats. He has forgotten his flight suit and is slapping at the floor, also trying to find something to grip onto as we both float away up into the air. But despite the stream of alien screeching and the strangeness of his face, I can tell that he is terrified. I am guessing that the artificial gravity on a starship is not supposed to fail.

  The siren hits me with a wall of sound just as I am slammed back onto the deck. I feel like I've been hit with a sledgehammer as I fight to catch my breath.

  The alien lands heavily beside me and the smell from his escaping breath almost makes me vomit as I struggle to catch my own breath.

  He snarls something at me, and I try to reply, but before I can form even one word the floor tilts up once more and sends us sliding across to smash into the wall once more.

  I almost black out with the impact of the alien landing on top of me.

  I can hear him snarling and can feel the clammy slime of his skin, peppered with harsh tufts of hair, pressing into my face and hands. I can even feel it through the fabric of my t-shirt. He rolls off me and once again my stomach convulses as my lungs struggle to draw in some breath.

  The floor rotates to be under us once more. The alien pushes me away and climbs to his feet as I roll onto my stomach trying to regain control of my body. I am vaguely a
ware of him grabbing his flight suit and pulling it onto his legs. But I just lie face down on the floor and try to catch my breath and keep my stomach from heaving up once again.

  But then all I have eaten is that strange fruit. Maybe I would be better vomiting it up before it poisons me, I think to myself. My stomach ties itself in a knot of cramp, and I wince with the pain.

  And then I clamp my hands over my ears as another caterwauling screech of alien voice echoes around the room. Fucking hell! I think, as I feel my eyes water with the impact of the noise. What kind of ears do these creatures have?

  The alien stomps to the door, struggling to get his arms into his flight suit. The door swishes open, he steps through, and the door swishes closed again. Leaving me alone in the suddenly silent room.

  I lie on the floor for a time. What the hell just happened? I think to myself. Did an alien just try to rape me?

  Part of me just wants to curl up into a little ball and die. Another part of me wants to rush after the Alien and tear his head off. Or better yet rip his cock off and shove it down his throat until he stops breathing.

  But the floor tilts up and I slide across the slick surface to collide with the wall once again. A bolt of pain shoots down my arm, and I cry out.

  Moments later the floor tilts the opposite way and sends me skidding across to land feet first against the closed door.

  I clamber erect, as the floor once again rights itself and press my hand against the control panel. Discovering that once again the door is unlocked.

  Don't these Dracktari understand the concept of locking doors to keep their parishioners from escaping? I think as I rub my aching arm. But the clouds of toxic looking smoke that billow in from the corridor make me think that perhaps the aliens flying the ship have more to worry about that little Earth girls escaping their evil clutches.

  I look up and down the corridor, holding my good hand in front of my mouth to protect myself from the acid smelling fumes. But the smoke is much too dense to see more than a few feet in either direction. This can not be good, I think to myself. Their starship must really be falling apart.

  An ear splitting siren echoes along the corridor. But even that is not loud enough to drown out the screeching of angry sounding Dracktari voices coming from both directions.

  "Fuck what am I to do now?" I ask, as I take a step out into the corridor.

  A billow of smoke blows over me, and I bent over as my lungs seem to catch fire. I try to cough, but I can't seem to get any breath into my lungs. I stumble forward and fall to the floor. And find sweet respite as the toxic smoke is replaced with cleaner air which I can breathe. I take a couple of deep breaths of life saving air. But then catch a lungful of foul smoke and begin to cough. After a few minutes I get my breathing and coughing under control.

  I lie still on the floor, trying to catch my bearings. There is maybe a foot of clean air down where I am, but above me is a swirling mass of black and brown smoke too thick to see through. Every now and then some downdraft, or new explosion of fumes, sends a cloud of smoke down into the layer of clean air, like some inverted volcanic eruption. I slide over and press up against the wall to avoid these surely toxic downdrafts.

  Moments later I feel the thumping of heavy boots and see several pairs of legs, wearing the alien's regulation orange suits, come running past, leaving twisting eddies of black smoke in their wake.

  If I lie here on the floor I am going to get trampled, I think. And I'm not sure that the Dracktari would even notice stepping on me!

  I start to climb to my feet, but I am thrown against the floor as yet again the deck of the ship pitches up at a steep angle. Is this caused by the ship accelerating or is it the artificial gravity malfunctioning? I wonder as I lie on the floor once more.

  Luckily the ear splitting siren cuts off, without the accompanying loss of gravity, and I can begin to think clearly once again. I remind myself that I am still looking for an escape pod. I feel it's now or never if I am to get off this ship alive. The air is a bit clearer down here on the floor, so I decide to crawl along the corridor and see what is happening.

  A cacophony of cat screams tells me that the aliens are close by, but the smoke above my head is thick, and I can not see further than the length of my arm.

  Two pairs of heavy looking alien boots thump past me. I snatch my hand away just as the thump down onto the deck beside me.

  The aliens run bay without even slowing down. Either they didn't see me through the smoke, or they just don't care about me.

  But then the deck rushes up and smacks me in the head.

  I feel like someone has just dumped a ten ton weight on to my back, as I am pinned flat by some invisible force.

  Luckily my forehead bangs into my soft fist and not the hard metal of the ship's floor. Thought I am still seeing stars and hearing ringing in my ears. It takes me a moment to realizes that some of the ringing in my ears are mechanical sounding alarms.

  More heavy thumps of alien footsteps rush past me. And through a gap in the smoke I see what must be the inside of the alien ship's bridge. There are walls filled with flashing displays and control panels. And aliens.

  The smoke swirls over my head and blocks my view once more. I crawl along the floor hoping for a better look and find myself at the threshold of an open door. I peek through, grateful for the fresh air as much as for being able to see.

  The large alien that ordered me captured in the corridor is sitting on a chair in the center of the room, obviously in command. In front of her is a holographic projection of a planet. There are four other aliens sitting around the room at various control stations. There are another half dozen empty control stations. All the stations have cryptic looking graphs and readouts written in the alien script.

  One control panel directly opposite me is belching out toxic looking smoke. Though none of the aliens seem to be paying it any attention. But considering the bewildering array of data being displayed across all of the other control panels and the symphony of contrasting alarms sounding, maybe they have more important things to worry about.

  A toxic cloud of smoke swirls around my head and I start coughing once more.

  The alien sitting in the middle snarls something and points at me. Another alien takes a moment from typing rapidly at a keyboard to snarl back at them before resuming its rapid typing.

  The ship rocks again, and the big alien loses interest in me as another set of lights start to blink rapidly, and another alarm starts ringing.

  All the aliens start squealing at the same time, and everything goes black.

  The alarms have fallen silent, and I feel like I am falling once again.

  But there is no relief for my ears as the aliens are still squealing at full volume to each other.

  The lights come back on, and I am slammed into the floor, all the breath knocked out of my body.

  The electronic alarms start sounding once more, and the whole ship shakes and shudders.

  The alien captain shouts some order to the rest of her crew and they all rush out of the bridge.

  And I am left alone on the bridge.

  Chapter Five

  I stand up and look around at the empty, and smoke filled, bridge. First I thought, So this is what the bridge of an alien starship looks like. Then I thought, Any big red buttons for me to push? I stand in front of a panel that has five touchscreens arrayed across it, all of them showing complicated looking graphs and diagrams, or filled with scrolling text in an alien script.

  But before I could make my move one of the aliens comes back in, snarls loudly and snatches me up like an errant child. I feel even more like a helpless child as it tucks me under its arm and rushes out of the bridge once more.

  I start to struggle, but the alien's grip is too tight. And only gets tighter the more I struggle. So I just go limp. But then we are walking thought more clouds of toxic smoke and I am too busy coughing and closing my eyes against the caustic fumes to worry about escape, or where I am being taken.<
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  When the smoke clears, and I can take a breath of clean air again, I find the alien is climbing up some kind of access tube. With me still tucked under its arm. At the top we climb into what looks like some kind of smaller spaceship. But while I say smaller, it is still thirty feet long. At the front are half a dozen seats, arranged in front of control panels and all facing a big window that stretches the width of the ship and curves up to from the first part of the roof.

  I feel my jaw drop as I look out and see the crystal clear array of stars in the vacuum of space beyond. But what really shocks me to the core is the green, brown planet that takes up half the window.

  "Fuck," I whisper to myself as I realize that I am no longer in orbit around Earth.

  One part of me realizes that we must have jumped to another star system while I have been trying to find an escape. But for now I am so overawed at my first view of an alien planet that I can not even think of anything except staring out the window at the amazing sight of brilliant white streaks of clouds floating over the alien terrain.

  Not that I was given much time to contemplate the deep spiritual significance of my first interstellar space flight. For I was unceremoniously bundled into the back of the spaceship and secured against one of the side walls with some strong bindings. Automatically I try to pull free. But while there is a little give in the cords I can not break free. I look at my wrists. The straps which hold me seemed to be a cross between plastic webbing and bungee cord. I have been secured in a sitting position with bindings across my body and arms, but my legs left free. So I suppose that I could try to trip up one of my captors. Not that it would do me much good as I can not break free of the straps no matter how hard I try to pull and wiggle.

  There are some scuffling sounds from the front of the craft and I see the other Earth girls being led up the access shoot, which is basically a hole in the deck of the craft. The last captive to be led up the ladder is the girl who had been unconscious when I had left the holding chamber.