by Stone, Layla
Unexpected Commander
Unexpected Series Book 3
Layla Stone
Prompt Penworks
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2019 Layla Stone. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Prompt Penworks
ISBN-13: 978-1-7335787-2-1
Cover design by Croco Designs
Created with Vellum
Contents
1. Brica Mines - Fifty Years Ago
2. Brica Mines - Fifty Years Later
3. Guilt’s Captive – Two Months After Being Rescued
4. Memories
5. Saved Again
6. Allus Traits
7. Where are the Mountains?
8. Ask Your Question Carefully
9. Where I Belong
10. Crew Complaints
11. Cerebral’s Help
12. Where is Yelena?
13. What Happened?
14. Forgiveness Not Permission
15. Abandoned Lab
16. Help
17. Lucky Day
18. Actions Speak Louder
19. Confessions
20. The Third Planet
21. Shadows
22. Boore
23. Not Me
24. Without Yon
25. Beautiful Disaster
26. Ansel’s Experiment
27. Federation Approved
28. Interrogation
29. A Messed-Up Numan Family
30. Promises Worth Keeping
31. Outworlds
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
1
Brica Mines - Fifty Years Ago
Veeda’s red androids rushed Yelena off the transport. She and the thousands of others like her with glowing skin walked single file, following the directions of their captors. Yelena was confused and worried because she had no idea what was going to happen. She didn’t know why she had been kidnapped and experimented on. No one had explained what was going to happen to her, or why she had been shipped out of the labs to this new planet that looked like a barren rocky desert.
It was cloudy, and the wind gusts blew right through her thin clothing. She kept her head down and wrapped her arms around her body, trying not to scratch the new skin that glowed. It was sensitive and bled easily. Another thing she’d noticed about her body since being shipped out of the Numan lab was her insides never stopped shivering. She had never been so cold and unable to warm herself.
Her captors led Yelena into a darkness so deep she reasoned it could be a dungeon. Her steps slowed, not wanting to go down into a chamber of terror.
Taking one step after another, she was thankful for the illumination her new skin gave off. The dark cement stairway didn’t feel as horrible as it likely would if she and the others weren’t lighting the way with their brightly glowing skin.
The air was heavy with the smells of dirt and something else. Something she couldn’t place.
As she and the others stepped out of the stairwell, there was a long line of Red Demon males dressed in black uniforms lining the walls, looking foreboding.
“Keep moving forward.”
It didn’t take long before the hall flowed into a large room, a cavern with glistening lights along the wall.
The space had curved seating rows, like an auditorium. The males and females were being packed tightly together on low benches by a copper-skinned guard. It was the first time in a long while that Yelena had touched another being. At first, it felt awkward. But when the connection brought warmth to her bones, she didn’t care who was touching her as long as she was warm.
The room filled up fast. A large, translucent sphere with an open door flap sat on the stage. Inside the large circle was a black rock propped on a three-pronged stand. The mineral shimmered green, blue, and purple.
After everyone had been seated, a tall, yellow-skinned Krant with a grim scowl walked in and stood in front of the sphere. His mouth was closed, but Yelena could see the tips of his teeth.
The air seemed to rush from the room.
He held up his hand and swept it in the air at them. “I’m Ruegg. You are now Brica miners.” He pointed to the rock in the sphere. “This is what you will be mining. It’s called phosephenite.”
Ruegg looked at a guard to his right. “Get me two miners.” The guard strode to the benches and roughly grabbed a short older male with white hair by the arm.
The male protested, but the guard smacked him in the mouth. On the way down, the same guard grabbed a female with a bandage around her arm.
Both the male and the female were pushed through the door of the sphere. The guard grabbed the flap, sealing it shut.
After a moment, the leader said, “Pay attention.” As he spoke, the sphere began to turn and contract. The people inside looked at the walls, clearly frightened. With each revolution, the space got smaller, forcing them to move forward, closer to the ominous stone.
Then, all of a sudden, with an audible pop, the two people inside turned into flashes of red. The ball stopped moving, and chunks of skin and bone and blood slid down the sides of the sphere’s walls.
A murmur of shock and alarm rippled through the room.
“What was that?” the female to Yelena’s right whispered. The same one she had followed from the transport ship to their current spots.
“I don’t know,” Yelena answered.
Ruegg sliced the air with his hand. “Silence. Now that I have your attention, let me explain the rules. You will not break proximity while in the mines. You will stay at least five feet from any other person at all times.” Pointing at the remains pooling together, he added, “Phosephenite is temperature-sensitive. If it reaches ninety-one degrees, it explodes. This is the reason your physiology was changed, and your core body temperature lowered. However, the body of one individual is within norms and won’t affect the material. Two or more in close proximity will raise the temperature. The result of that has been demonstrated.”
The Krant dropped his hand. “Each instance of a miner breaking proximity counts as one errant. When the number of errants reaches fifty, you will witness two random workers put into the sphere to die.”
Ruegg paused and scanned the room. Yelena could feel his eyes searching for something or someone. She hoped that he didn’t find what he was looking for in her. She didn’t want to be a random death.
“Each night, you will be brought back into your designated sleeping caves, where you will be housed in groups of ten. Get used to your group because you will be eating, sleeping, and working with them.” Ruegg snapped his fingers at the guards and then said, “Begin.”
The head guard pointed as he counted off. “One…two…three…” And so on. Every ten people were sent forward with a new guard and then taken deeper into the mines, silently walking with their shoulders slumped and maintaining their five feet of separation.
2
Brica Mines - Fifty Years Later
As the days ticked by, weeks turned into years until time ceased to matter. Yelena became accustomed to her cold body and accepted that she would never be warm again. She’d also learned to live with ten strangers in a cramped cave. Nine females and one male. All nine females were Terran. The male was a Sennite, and he had mated one of the Terran females in their group.<
br />
Yelena got along best with Cami.
After dinner, Yelena and Cami usually returned to the cave early to talk without anyone else hearing. But tonight, Yelena had a surprise.
She looked around to make sure that none of the guards or other workers could see her as she pulled a small bundle from her pocket and handed it to Cami. “I saved this for you.”
Cami took the little cloth-wrapped bundle and unfolded the present with a gasp. “You didn’t eat your sweet bread? I could eat an entire loaf of this.” Putting her head on Yelena’s shoulder, she said, “You are the best person I’ve ever known.”
“I’m not the best. But I know you like that sweet stuff,” Yelena said. Seeing Cami happy made her happy.
Cami sat up and took a bite of the bread, then closed her eyes as she chewed. She finished the treat in three bites. “That was so good. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Yelena pulled her small blanket over her body and shivered. “I hate being cold.”
“I can’t say I hate it. It’s better than always being hot.”
“You say that, but you’re not as cold as I am, which still confuses me.”
Cami shrugged. “Me, too. But it could be that I grew up in the South, and you grew up in the mountains. It’s colder where you lived than where I did.”
Yelena knew the South meant a place on Earth that had a humid climate. Over the past fifty years, Cami had explained at length how horrible the humidity was. Yelena didn’t think so, but then she’d grown up in a place that didn’t have that. The air never felt thick and sticky in the mountains.
Yelena had a strange thought and asked, “Do you think it’s hot or cold at the top of Brica? I remember it being cold and windy, but it could have been the time of year.”
“I don’t know, but we will find out soon enough.”
“What do you mean?” Yelena asked, lifting her head from her blanket cocoon.
“From what I heard, we’ve mined the last of the phosephenite here. And since it’s a rare mineral, I doubt they will need us after this. Hopefully, Ruegg will send us home.”
Yelena didn’t know what to think about that. She hadn’t heard anything like that, but then again, it would make sense because the majority of the miners were Terran. Out of the thousands of miners, there were only eighty that weren’t.
Cami was seventy-eight years old, and Yelena hoped for her sake that they were sent home. With that thought, she said, “If we’re sent home, I’ll go with you. If I go home, I would have a hard time finding a mate now. Especially with all…this.” Yelena exposed her arm and the glowing, swirly lines under her skin. “I’d be an outcast.”
Nodding, Cami said, “You would be a novelty on Earth. We don’t see many aliens—I mean other kinds than those from where I’m from. But any man would be happy to have you. You’re too sweet not to love immediately.”
Yelena covered her arm back up and noticed that the mates were walking towards the cave. “I hope so. It would be nice to have a mate.”
Cami hesitated before she responded. “I agree, it would have been nice.”
As the Sennite and his mate walked in, the guards shouted, their voices echoing throughout the caves. “Lay down! No talking for the rest of the night.”
The message was repeated all around. Cami moved to the next mat and lay down. Yelena tucked in her feet, curled up in a fetal position, and thought about what it’d be like to no longer be in the mines. She felt herself smile, thinking of the possibilities.
Too bad the next day changed everything.
* * *
Yelena and her cave mates had the responsibility of keeping the air vents free of debris so all levels could get oxygen. The lower they went, the less air quality there was. Today, the mine needed an old compressor changed out.
Yelena pushed the wheeled cart down the tunnel on a set of rails. It was connected to magnetic wheels so no heat was exchanged as it moved. Halfway down the section, the cart stalled in the middle of tunnel west forty-six. Yelena pulled back the cart and moved to the front to see what the problem was.
Getting on her knees, she held up her arm to give more light to illuminate the insides of the rail. She saw that an accumulation of rocks had closed the segment, making it impossible for the metallic wheel to fit underneath. She needed to clear it.
Without a starting point, she used her nail to scratch at the debris. Unfortunately, it was more than a few pebbles; the mass was solid and compact. She would need something more than her flimsy nail.
She heard a thud from behind her. She turned just in time to see one of the diggers trip and fall forward, his hands flailing, and his head on a one-way crash course with the lip of the cart. She jumped forward and pushed the male’s shoulder so he didn’t hit the lip of the conveyance and crack his face.
As soon as she touched the male, she jerked back. Remembering that she was not allowed to break proximity.
The male’s eyes widened, probably realizing the same thing as she had. They were surrounded by the temperamental mineral and could have just set off an explosion. The male scuttled back on his hands and feet.
She backed up too, waiting for the inevitable boom. The air around her stilled as if it were not sure what was going to happen either.
One moment passed, then another. Nothing happened. That’s when she noticed that the other male diggers had stopped working. Turning her head, she scanned the rows of slaves. They all had eyes on her. Worse, standing at the end of the laborers was a mine guard, his massive arms crossed over his chest, eyes pinned on her.
She swallowed.
The guard moved from his post, stalking forward. She felt her head lower, terrified of what he would do to her. “Why are you on the ground? You have work to do.”
Pointing at the spot on the rail, she answered, “It’s clogged.”
“Get it unclogged.”
She kept low and moved in the dirt. Hands on the ground, she grabbed for more rocks. The guard hung over her, and she jerked when she heard a click. A flash of silver gleamed in her periphery.
Taking a chance, she peered up. The guard was holding out a knife. “Cut it out with this.”
Her hand covered in fine black dust lifted up, trembling. Yelena clasped the grip of the knife. Bringing it down, she dug the rocks out, the whole process taking longer than it should have. But once she’d finished, she handed the cold metal back to the guard and then backed up to the cart.
She didn’t know the procedure for breaking proximity, but she had, and the guard likely noticed. Thankfully, he didn’t say anything as she slithered by with the cart and rushed to the west fifty compressor unit. Exchanging the machinery took the rest of the day.
On her way back up with the old compressor, she noticed that she was the last one out. All the diggers were already gone. When she reached the top levels and didn’t see anyone around, she slowed down.
Ahead, near the shed where the old compressor would be stored, stood the guard from earlier. Yelena stepped forward, trembling. In all the years she’d been here, the workers rarely disobeyed proximity. In fact, it had been several years since anyone had broken the rules. Five years actually, and in that time, their errants were at forty-nine. Everyone knew what would happen if anything happened again.
Today, she had infringed on proximity, making it fifty.
Without a word, she knew that the guard was going to escort her to the spear, and she would die. Her stomach rioted at the idea, and her insides turned to ice.
The guard pushed the cart with the old compressor into the shed and then led her to the gathering cavern. As she walked in, her gaze was on the ground, and all she could think about was leaving. Fear of losing her self-control, she didn’t look for her best friend. But when the guard grabbed her arm, stopping her from moving on, she looked up at him.
“Take a look at the miner who broke proximity today,” the guard said to the crowd. As if that weren’t bad enough, the large, yellow leader
stepped in front of her, his beady eyes boring into hers. She had to look away.
“I saved you a front-row seat. I hope you learned your lesson.”
Yelena didn’t understand. What lesson? The guard moved her to the front row and pushed her onto the plank seat. She pulled up her knees and wished she could disappear as the guard loomed over her. He didn’t whisper when he said, “One mercy deserves another. Don’t you think?”
She didn’t respond. When he stepped away, she saw inside the tube. Two people were already in there, staring down at her with terror-filled eyes. One was her best friend–Cami. Yelena dropped to her knees, about to move when a hard and heavy hand clamped down on her shoulder.
“Don’t move,” the guard said.
Yelena could feel his grip tightening. “It was my fault,” she said, knowing the guard could hear her.
“Yes, it was. But just as you had mercy on someone, I took mercy on your friend. She’s old, and she won’t make it in the other mine that you will be sent to. It’s better for her to die quickly rather than slowly and painfully.”
Yelena didn’t believe the guard was showing her friend mercy. Didn’t agree with it at all. Cami was still able to work, not as fast as some, but she was strong enough. And what did he mean that they were going to be sent to another mine? Weren’t they supposed to go home after this?
“Begin,” the leader called, and Yelena felt the pain in her shoulder scream as the guard held her down, not letting her go to her friend.
