by Lily Thomas
“Cwad?”
“I don’t know what you’re saying. Just come on.” She waved him forward with her. She’d made the decision that she needed him to save Chloe. She wasn’t willing to lose a woman in the group when they might still contaminate this alien society. “Come with me.” Olivia started walking towards the forest to see if he would follow her.
Vlek shot to his feet and approached her but shook his head. That she could translate easily. He didn’t want her leaving them.
“I have to go back.” She tried to use her eyes to convey her urgency. “All the others are going to worry about me if I don’t show up. They might even think I’m dead, and I wouldn’t blame them. Without you nearby, I would’ve died. I have to get back before they continue on to find the missing women.” Because she had no doubt Liam would want to continue, especially now that he didn’t have her in the group. She could see him being pleased with her being eaten by a panther.
He just stared at her blankly.
“Just trust me. I have to go. Maybe we’ll see each other again.” Olivia gave him a wave, a smile, and turned to leave.
His hand whipped out and snatched hers his black claws lightly scraping against her palm. She turned to look at him, and he shook his head at her.
“Prie.” His other hand pointed to the ground at their feet.
She got the feeling he was telling her to stay. “You aren’t about to let me just walk out of here, are you?” She sighed as her chest tightened. The group was going to think she died.
To test her theory that he wouldn’t just let her walk away, Olivia took a few more steps towards the rainforest. Before she could blink, Vlek swooped in and tossed her over his shoulder, and brought her back to their camp. Once he set her back down on her feet, he motioned for her to sit back down.
Olivia complied. She wasn’t about to outrun this guy. He was in shape, and she wasn’t. He also knew this land unlike herself.
Another alien strutted into the camp and started talking loudly about something while pointing wildly from where he’d come from in the forest.
Something was happening. Something big, and her eyes pricked to alert.
Olivia stood and looked around. Was something coming for them?
Vlek strode back over to her, took her arm, and led her into the other side of the meadow, where he pushed her into a squatting position behind heavy ground foliage. She glanced around to watch all of the aliens squat down, hiding themselves from something.
“What is…”
He placed a hand over her mouth silencing her.
Okay, then. No talking. She understood what that meant perfectly well.
Olivia faced forward and watched the clearing they’d just left. She expected a wild animal or a rival clan to enter, but instead, it was just her people who slowly filtered out of the rainforest and into the meadow.
She attempted to rise from her crouched position, but a hand from Vlek prevented her. Damn, he was strong!
“They’re my people.” She whispered to him past his hand. She motioned to herself, and then back to the four guards and the women who were now looking around the abandoned campsite.
Scarlett’s voice reached her ears. “This looks like a small camp from some natives and the fire pit is still warm.” Her hand was held over the coals of the fire as she looked around. “We must have just missed them.”
Vlek rose and slowly made his way out of the trees.
“Wait,” Olivia whispered harshly, but he ignored her and kept walking to the clearing.
Olivia tried to follow, but one of the other aliens grabbed her arm. Turning to look over at him, he shook his head at her. He was warning her to be silent.
She could holler to let her people know she was here, but Liam was unpredictable, and he might think she was being held captive. She didn’t need him killing natives. Or she could stay quiet and still not be able to predict Liam. He was a grenade just waiting to go off, and he had more impressive weapons than the natives.
Vlek broke through the trees, and Olivia heard the guards sound the alarm.
“Back up ladies!” Liam hollered.
Olivia peered out from behind some trees and vines. Liam and the other three guards had their plasma guns pointed at her alien savior. All he had was a spear against four plasma guns. He had no chance if Liam decided to shoot.
“Who are you? Have you seen a human woman around?” Liam asked.
She opened her mouth, and a hand clamped over it. She glanced over at the other alien man. Then she turned back to continue watching Vlek.
“Cwad?”
“What did he say?” Liam asked the women.
“I don’t think our translators are working,” Brooklyn spoke up since she was the resident technology expert of the group. “Which means none of us are going to understand him, and he isn’t going to understand us.”
A couple more of the aliens decided to join Vlek out in the meadow, and they made their way closer to Liam and the guards.
Before she could blink, Liam opened fire. The women let out screams and dashed for cover, but the guards just continued to rain plasma bolts at the aliens. Vlek sprinted for cover and let a spear throw loose, spearing one of the guards straight through the stomach.
Olivia ducked back behind the tree trunk and felt her stomach heave. She wasn’t a soldier, and she wasn’t used to such a gruesome sight.
Her alien guard left her side, and she squeezed her eyes shut as she listened to yelling from Liam and his men and the aliens. Within minutes everything fell quiet.
Olivia’s eyes popped wide.
Had the aliens won or Liam?
Breathing in and out of her nose she steeled herself for what she might see when she turned around.
Olivia leaned over, a hand landing on the soft decomposing leaves on the ground and peered out from behind the tree and saw all four of the guards lying on the ground. Dead. She rose and slowly walked back into the clearing. A couple of the aliens had been hit, but their wounds didn’t look too serious.
The guards, however, were riddled with arrows and spears. They looked like those old school pincushions she’d once seen in an antique store.
“Scarlett? Brooklyn?” Olivia called out even though her eyes couldn’t leave the horrible sight in front of her. She’d grown up expecting to be shot with a plasma gun at some point in her life, but she’d never thought she’d witness someone being shot with an arrow.
Heads popped out from behind trees on the other side of the meadow.
“Olivia?”
“It’s me.” She confirmed.
“We thought the panther got you.” Scarlett rushed into the clearing and eyed the aliens around them. “You met some of the natives, I see.”
“Yeah. They saved me from the panther.” Olivia said numbly as she finally dragged her eyes off the sight in front of her.
Chapter 6
Vlek had no idea what the flying blue balls were, but the moment one of his men went down in pain, they faded back into the forest and let loose a barrage of arrows. The blue balls were some sort of weapon he’d never seen before, and he didn’t understand them, but he did understand they were a threat.
Vlek hefted his spear and threw it at the chest of one of the males. It landed true, and the strange male went down, blood gurgling up and out of his mouth as he wrapped his hands around the spear piercing his abdomen.
He ducked down as a shot seared past him and hit a tree near him. He inspected the black scorch mark on the trunk and could hear the sizzle. Whatever weapons they were using, they were definitely powerful, and that scared him a bit.
“Pass me one of your bows.” He barked at Kriiv.
Kriiv threw a bow and some arrows to him without a second thought.
Notching an arrow, he held his breath, spun out of the cover of a tree trunk, took aim, and shot. The arrow landed true, straight through one of the men’s neck.
Vlek ducked back into cover as more blue shots rained down on him.
His men continued to shoot arrows from several vantage points, while hidden in the lush rainforest, causing the strange males to have to shoot in several directions. It didn’t take long for them to put down all the strange males. That now just left the rest of the strange females.
“Stop!” He barked at his men. “Don’t harm the females.” As far as he’d seen the females hadn’t been armed with anything.
The males had been the ones to attack, not the females, and he was still curious about them. The only way he was going to find out more would be to keep them alive. There could be a possible threat to his village if these strangers were moving into their forest, and he needed to know more about them.
Now that they had killed their rather pathetic males, he knew the females were going to fear him and his men. He could tell, because they still hadn’t popped their heads out from behind the trees, and he was eager to see this Olivia again. Her name was just as bizarre as she was, but he wanted to know she was safe.
Vlek motioned his men to stay put. “Stay at the edge of the forest. I will go forward.”
“The females could be armed.” One of the men cautioned.
“I doubt it. If they were fighters, they would’ve done so by now.”
Then Olivia appeared near him, and he was relieved to see she was safe without any injuries. She called out something in her lovely voice that he didn’t understand.
A woman cautiously wandered out from behind a tree and eyed him as she walked forward.
His Olivia greeted the others, and slowly many of the women walked out of the forest with gentle coaxing from his Olivia.
Olivia didn’t really want to be the spokesperson for the group of women, but she was the research leader, and she had a slight rapport with one of the aliens already. So, she figured she was the best bet for the job.
“Have you tried talking to one of the natives yet?” Scarlett asked as she eyed all the half-naked native men now surrounding them.
“Yeah, but I’ve only gotten to first names.” Olivia pointed over at Vlek, and he raised a thick black eyebrow in response. “He’s the one I’ve traded names with so far, but other than that I haven’t been able to communicate much with him.”
“Wait…” Sophie came up and examined Vlek over Olivia’s shoulder. “Isn’t he the same clan leader we had up on the hologram that night we were perusing the local men on the planet’s surface?”
“Maybe.” Olivia glanced over at him. His black skin tone markings seemed familiar, but it wasn’t like she’d ever know for sure. All their research was up on the research vessel.
“Could we have this discussion away from the dead bodies?” Brooklyn asked with a gag as she placed a hand next to the side of her face blocking her view of the dead bodies lying on the ground mere feet away from them.
Olivia looked down at Liam’s body. He shouldn’t have shot at the natives. Although the natives had fared better than she could have ever hoped. Some of them were injured, but at least none of them had been blasted into oblivion as she’d feared.
“Should we bury them?” Scarlett came over to stare down at the guards.
“With what? We have no shovels, and I’m not about to break my back digging with a stick.” Olivia grimaced at the men laying on the ground. All Liam had to do was not shoot at the aliens. She got the feeling they were peaceful enough unless threatened.
“So, we leave them here to get eaten by wild animals?”
“I don’t see any other choice.” Olivia would bury them if she had the ability. “I figure they can do some good in death by feeding the wildlife.” She grimaced. “Is that cruel of me to say?”
The women standing near her shrugged in response.
“As you said, there’s not much we can do about it now. He shouldn’t have shot the natives.”
“I still don’t understand why he did.” Brooklyn still held up a hand near her face so she couldn’t see the bodies on the ground.
“No one will understand why he did what he did. All we can do is keep on moving forward.” Scarlett said, trying to make everyone feel a little bit better. “Your alien is watching you.” Scarlett pointed a finger over her shoulder.
Olivia turned to see Vlek bent over one of his men who was sprawled out on the ground, but his golden eyes were fixed on her. She walked over and crouched over the alien man on the ground.
“He looks fine. His skin is a bit charred, but he isn’t in any sort of danger.” Olivia examined the man’s arm where tell-tale plasma burns were evident. “We probably have some cream for that. Aubrey?” Olivia glanced over her shoulder.
“Yes?” Aubrey stepped forward out of the crowd of lingering women.
“Do we have a cream for plasma burns in our emergency packs?”
“I believe so.” Aubrey grabbed one of the emergency packs, dug through it, and pulled out a can of anti-burn cream. “Here you are.”
Olivia stretched out her arm, but her fingers could barely reach the container. “You need to step closer, Aubrey. Don’t worry these guys don’t bite.”
Aubrey took a few steps closer, and then skittered away as soon as Olivia had the container. “Just because they haven’t killed us yet, doesn’t mean they won’t.”
Scarlett snorted, drawing a few glances from their native companions.
Olivia ignored them. She didn’t have time to worry about the women or the alien men around them. All she was worried about was making sure she proved to Vlek that she and the other women were useful, and nothing like Liam and his men.
She unscrewed the can, scooped some of the cream onto the tips of her fingers, and applied it to the man’s wound. He sucked in a harsh breath but didn’t let out anything other than a grunt. Olivia would’ve been screaming her head off. The cream was super effective, but it wasn’t the most pleasant experience in the universe, and she was amazed by his willpower.
“He should be good.” Olivia looked up at Vlek and sent him a smile hoping that would encourage him despite the fact that he couldn’t understand her.
She walked over to the next man who’d been shot and applied the cream to his wound. Thankfully, the guards hadn’t killed any of the aliens, or she would’ve had a bigger problem on her hands. Who knew what these men would do, if the guards had killed one of their people. They may have taken it out on the women.
A shiver spread through her. She had no idea how this new society worked, and she knew they had to be careful.
Slowly and with coaxing from Scarlett and Olivia, the women moved closer, bringing Chloe over with them.
Olivia could feel agitation and uncertainty radiating off the women around her. They hadn’t been trained what to do if their space station forced them to land on the only habitable planet in a system with only natives to call company. They were all guessing at what was best at this moment.
“We need to take these with us.” Olivia pointed to the plasma guns. “We can’t leave them lying around for natives to play around with them. It’d be like a child with a gun.”
“You’re right.” Scarlett agreed.
“So… who’s going to reach out and try to grab the guns?” Brooklyn asked. “Because they’re sure to know those weapons are more dangerous than anything they’ve seen before.”
“Yeah, they might not like us arming ourselves.” Another woman agreed.
Olivia huffed. She’d do it and hope her few minutes of bonding with Vlek would allow him to trust her. She squatted down next to Liam’s body and took his weapons off of him, tugging one of his plasma pistols out of his holster.
As she stood, Vlek strode over to her and shook his head as he pointed a clawed finger at the weapons in her arms.
“It’s okay. I’m not going to use them.” She grumbled in a whisper, “I just need to find a way to get rid of them, so you all don’t go shooting each other.”
Walking over to one of the emergency packs she placed the guns inside. Then she went around and collected the plasma guns from the other men and pl
aced them inside her pack.
Vlek followed her closely, double checking what she was up to when it came to the plasma weapons.
Once she was done collecting all the weapons, she turned to Vlek. “Now what?” She asked him.
Vlek began speaking with the other aliens, seeming to direct them. The aliens surrounded them and directed the women like a herd of cattle back into the rainforest. It was time for her to hope the aliens didn’t mean them any harm.
Vlek wasn’t really sure what he was doing. All he knew was that he was bringing the females back to his village. They didn’t appear to be able to take of themselves, and he couldn’t leave them roaming around his rainforest. Even the males with their bizarre weapons hadn’t been able to defeat the Feosua warriors, who’d used the surrounding forest to fight.
He was still puzzled how they didn’t know the Feosua language, and how they had created such baffling weapons. He’d never seen anything like it, and he’d traveled these rainforests extensively.
The flying blue balls had terrifyingly awesome power. If this were the only weapon the strange females knew how to use, then he would give them lessons with a spear or a bow. They would need to be able to defend themselves, but not with those bizarre weapons. He would have to ask Olivia to destroy those.
He wasn’t sure why he was letting her have them, but the next available moment he would be sure to have them destroyed. He didn’t need those weapons anywhere near his people.
Thankfully, his men weren’t harmed badly, and they already had a couple of trikes killed for the village, not to mention the mira he’d killed. The meat would be good until they got back to the village.
His eyes skimmed over the group of women they were escorting. These women with his Olivia didn’t look like they were used to hard work or walking long distances, and he worried the meat might spoil while they journeyed through the rainforest.
Zro’eq stepped forward. “Why are we taking the females back to the village? They will just eat through our food and provide nothing in return.” He scowled over at the females.
