Alien Prince: (Bride of Qetesh) An Alien SciFi Romance

by Juniper Leigh

  Tel’s gaze darted furtively around the expanse of the room. We were five women in a room approximately thirteen or fourteen square feet. The six cages — with one left empty — were the only things in the room. There was a small console next to the door at the front, and an air vent on the back wall, and that was it. Everything was metal. Nothing gave us any indication about the Quarter Moon’s intentions.

  “We do what they want,” Tel said, “we keep a low profile. And we figure out where the escape pods are aboard this ship. Then we take any chance we can get to make a break for one. If one of us gets away, then that’s good news for all of us.”

  I nodded, and Tel began to snap her fingers to get the attention of the other women. One of them was crying and trembling in her cage, and the other two were quiet, calm, but plainly terrified.

  “Listen to me,” Tel said, “Hey!” she whisper-shouted at the crying girl, “Hey, I need you to focus for a second, ok?” The crying girl sniffled, but nodded her head. “All right. I need you to cooperate with them, ok? I need you to do what they want, until we can figure out where the escape pods are. If you find them, you run any chance you get. You get off this ship, you get to the nearest planet, and you send up your distress beacon. After that, you hide and you wait for someone to come find you. Got it?” The women nodded. “And then you have to help them find the rest of us. What are your names?”

  None of the women spoke; they all looked like petrified children, and I’m sure I was no different. Tel, on the other hand, was in total command. I swelled with pride in that desperate moment to see her shine under the weight of leadership.

  “I’ll start,” Tel went on, and pressed her fingers to her sternum. “My name is Teldara Kinesse. All right? I need you to remember each name. Teldara Kinesse. Say it.” She paused, then said again gently, “I need you to say it.”

  And we did, all of us together in a chorus of tremulous voices: “Teldara Kinesse.”

  “Good,” Tel said, and looked at me to go next.

  “I’m—” I cleared my throat. “I’m Lorelei Vauss.”

  “Lorelei Vauss,” they said, with Tel’s voice coming in strong.

  I looked at the familiar blonde Europax next to me, and she cast a series of dubious glances around the group of us. She was exquisite, with skin the color of peaches and cream, her blond hair hanging past her waist to trail its delicate tendrils on the cold metal floor. Her cheekbones were high and pointed, and her eyes glittered a limpid blue. “Tierney Mafaren,” she said, trying to make her voice sturdy, trying to make her posture sure.

  “Tierney Mafaren,” we all said. And I suddenly realized why she looked so familiar: her mother, Mireena Mafaren, was my mom and dad’s boss in the Echelon. Truth be told, I was grateful she was with us, even if I didn’t know why she was there; if someone as important as Mireena Mafaren’s daughter was missing, the entire galaxy would be looking for her.

  Next was the crying girl, red-haired and freckled. She was human and very young, not more than seventeen or eighteen years old. She was thin and reedlike, no more than five feet tall. A wisp of a girl. “Ciara Zehr,” she choked out between sobs.

  “Ciara Zehr,” we said.

  And last was the human woman who was older than I was. She had black hair and brown almond eyes, and lines around her lips from years of smiling. She reminded me a little of my mother, if my mother had been twenty years younger. “Sara Yve,” she said, her voice quiet but strong.

  “Sara Yve.”

  “Good,” Tel said at length. “Hold those names in your mind like a mantra. Know nothing but those names and your own survival. And when they come for you—”

  And like we’d summoned them, they came. The door to our makeshift prison whooshed open, and two Keldeeri Quarter Moon slavers came into the room. They went to tiny Ciara Zehr’s cage first, and I watched her scramble against the back bars. For my part, I leaned forward to watch, gripping the bars with a white-knuckled fist as they opened Ciara’s cage and dragged her literally kicking and screaming.

  Ciara shrieked, flailing, kicking her feet as one of the Keldeeri gripped her under her armpits and the other clung to her ankles.

  “Make it stop wiggling,” one of them said in irritated Keldeeri.

  “You want I should make an example of it?” the other asked. “Put a bullet in its skull?”

  “Ciara! Stop fighting!” I shouted, and after a moment she stilled herself, her eyes locked on me. Clearly, she didn’t speak a word of Kaldeeri.

  “Worth too much,” the first slaver said, as they hauled Ciara bodily out of the room. “This one is the youngest.”

  And as soon as they’d cleared out, two more came in. This time one of them was slightly orange in color, and the other — more grey — had had his mandibles ripped off so that it left two gaping scars on either side of his face. He glared at me as he and his compatriot approached, and opened my cage.

  “Are you going to come out?” he asked in low, smooth Keldeeri, “or do we have to drag you out?”

  “I will come out,” I replied. My accent was off from lack of use, but my Keldeeri pronunciation was spot-on. I saw a look of surprise cross the grey one’s face as he threw the door to the cage open wide, making a show of gesturing that I should exit. And I did, casting a glance back at Tel as I moved. She gave a stoic nod of her head, and I wished her silent luck as I was escorted out of the room.

  The orange Keldeeri had a pistol trained at my skull, so I elected to ignore his presence altogether and focus instead on the grey Keldeeri at my side. He was taller than most, several inches taller than myself, and even beneath the burgundy fabric of his uniform I could tell that he was made of muscle and sinew and the hardened carapace of his people. If I stepped out of line, he could easily rip me limb from limb.

  “My name is Lorelei Vauss,” I said, because I’d read somewhere that if you humanize yourself, your abductors won’t want to murder you.

  “You may call me Mixrathi,” the grey one said. The orange one did not speak, so Mixrathi spoke for him. “His name is Nug, and he doesn’t say much. Largely because the Quarter Moon relieved him of his tongue.” Mixrathi led me down a long corridor, and through a pair of double-plated glass doors requiring a keycard to get through. Through the doors was a room resembling a doctor’s office, with shelves and cabinets on one side, and a table in the center. “Please undress and climb up onto the table, and we’ll get to know each other a little better.”

  When I hesitated, Nug pressed his pistol into my spine, and I reached up to unzip my leather jacket. I let it fall to the floor, then kicked off my boots and plucked the socks from my feet. I shimmied out of my black jeans and tugged my tee shirt off over my head so that I was standing there in a set of purple panties and a matching bra.

  “Undergarments as well, please,” Mixrathi insisted, the request punctuated from a little pressure care of the nose of Nug’s pistol.

  I felt the heat of a blush rise into my cheeks as I reached behind my back to unclasp my bra. My full breasts bounced free as I cast the undergarment to the pile with the rest of my clothes, my nipples hardening in the cold air as I slid my panties down over the curve of my bottom.

  “Lovely,” Mixrathi remarked, his gaze drinking in the sight of me. “Now, climb up here, please,” he said, and I could do nothing but obey.

  “On your hands and knees, please,” Mixrathi said, and I tried not to look over at Nug, whose eyes were locked on me like I was raw meat and he was a rabid dog. I got onto my hands and knees on the ice-cold steel table, and closed my eyes.

  Tierney Mafaren.

  Ciara Zehr.

  Sara Yve.

  Teldara Kinesse.

  Their names were a mantra as I felt Mixrathi’s hands on my naked skin. He forced my knees apart, thus exposing the flower of my sex to the open air. Using his thick fingers, he spread a cool gel all over my nether lips.

  “Please relax, Ms. Vauss,” he said as I felt the in
sistent probing of something at my most sensitive opening. “This is a medical device.” He thrust the device into me, and it slipped easily in with the assistance of the artificial lubrication. He moved the device around until he got it into an optimal position. “Stay very still, please,” he said, and left me there, the probe impaling me as he moved to read the data it was collecting on the screen of his tablet.

  So this is the first part of my enslavement, I thought, deigning to peek over my shoulder back at whatever it was he’d shoved inside of me. The probe had descended from the ceiling, and I saw another one, smaller than the first, and did not care to learn where that was supposed to go. I swallowed hard, adjusting myself slightly as my wrists grew sore, and marveled at the fact that I was not more upset. I would have thought that I’d have reacted more like Ciara Zehr, a mess of tears and sniffles. Instead, I was there with my ass proudly in the air. Or if not proudly, at least confidently. Though perhaps I would change my tune if I were made to lie with someone as hideous as these Quarter Moon slavers.

  After a moment, Mixrathi returned to my side and removed the probe, coming around to stand in front of me as he pried my mouth open with his fingers to get a good look at my teeth. “You’ll be pleased to know that you are fully fertile.” Satisfied, he allowed my mouth to close and patted me condescendingly on the bottom as he moved to tug the probe free of my invaded pussy. “And such a pretty thing — I’m sure you’ll fetch a hefty price.”

  “Oh, good,” I said in monotone Keldeeri. Then he spread my ass cheeks apart and peered down at me before pulling away to fetch something from one of the cabinets.

  “Lay on your back, Ms. Vauss,” he said, and I did, clamping my legs tightly together. But when he returned, he had me bend my knees and let my legs wing out to the side. Then he proceeded to apply hot wax to my bikini line before pressing a strip of cloth to it and tearing it — and my body hair — away.

  I let out a little yelp, but he had no time for my discomfort. He simply moved on to the next patch of hair, and the next, and the next, until I was bare as the day I was born. “You would think,” I said through clenched teeth, “that with all this technology, they would find a less painful way of doing this.”

  “Well, there is the laser,” he said, “but I prefer to do it this way. So much more intimate, don’t you think?” And it was in that moment that I decided he would be the first one I killed, if given the chance.

  He waxed me from chin to toes, scrubbed me clean until I glistened, and styled my hair so that my black curls twisted into a neat knot at the nape of my neck. Then he presented me with my clothing. No, “clothing” is entirely too generous a word for the things he gave me to wear. He gave me a piece of jewelry that he slid into my sex, covering me only from pubis mound to perineum, and was held in place by two thin leather straps that went over my legs. Then he draped what looked like a series of gold chains around my neck, but when he fastened them behind my back, I saw that they were meant to thinly conceal my nipples. The finishing touches included gold earrings and bands around my wrists. When I was finished, he opened the door to the exam room, shoving Nug out in front of us. Nug, for his part, had a rather obvious erection in the red pants of his uniform, and I could hardly stifle a groan.

  He led me out of the room and I glanced around, my arms crossed tight over my breasts, until we fell into a line with the other women. I looked back and made desperate eye contact with Tel, who looked even more uncomfortable and abashed than I felt in our ridiculous getup.

  For every girl there were two Keldeeri guards, and all of us looked demure with our eyes cast to the ground. Except for me. I was looking all around for signage or placards that would give me some indication as to where we were on the ship, and where any escape vessels might be located.

  They held us in wait in front of one of the lifts, and I peered through the porthole window in the door at the far end of the corridor, squinting so that I could better see through. But I didn’t need to, because another contingent of guards with another collection of girls burst through and I gazed past them into the bustle of activity beyond. I saw the Keldeeri word for “exit”, and snapped my fingers to get Teldara’s attention. She looked up at me and quirked a silent brow; I cocked my head to the side, trying to get her to look in the direction I indicated. She did, and nodded to indicate that she understood my meaning.

  Or, rather, I thought she had. In a burst of energetic movement, Tel leapt into action, throwing herself bodily into the nearest Quarter Moon guard, and wresting his rifle from a grasp that was startled into opening. I heard Ciara shriek as Tel rolled to the side and righted herself, shooting the other guard with her at point blank range. The Keldeeri dropped where he stood.

  But this was only the first shot fired. The guard from whom she’d stolen the rifle was on her in an instant, and he overpowered her utterly, even as other guards — Nug included — opened fire in her general direction. I recoiled, holding my hands lamely by my head, but didn’t think to drop to the floor until Mixrathi gripped me by the shoulders and threw me down. I thought he was protecting me, and perhaps at first he was, but I felt the hot flow of his blood over me and knew that he was a shield of dead weight who had taken a bullet for me, even if inadvertently. I yelped as I tried to wrench myself free of the dead Keldeeri, and saw that the other girls were similarly laid low, their arms over their heads, as though their meat and bones could protect them from flying bullets. I crawled on my stomach toward the door, sparing a glance back at the confusion:

  I couldn’t see Tel underneath a pile of enraged Quarter Moon Guards but I could see Sara Yve. When she noted my inconspicuous exit, she drew the Guards' attention so that anyone who was not dealing directly with Tel dealt with her.

  I didn’t stand upright until I’d made my way through the second group of girls, girls whose names I would never learn, and got to the door. But when I got there, I did stand, I pushed through the door, and I ran.

  I ran full force and breathless, and counted myself fortunate that no one was there to round the corners. The soft heels of my feet dug into the metal grating as I went, and I pumped my arms to get as much speed out of my soft body as I could, and I ran. I ran and ran, following the Keldeeri “exit” signs, through harshly lit corridors full of glass doors that led into rooms where girls were losing their dignity.

  I ran until my lungs burned and my limbs ached, until I wasn’t entirely sure where I was, until I needed to stop to get my bearings. I tried to catch my breath by another set of lifts, dark and abandoned in a little traveled part of the ship. I pressed my hand against the wall to steady myself and tried to think of where it was most logical to go.

  Maybe into one of the lifts themselves. Maybe they’d have some sort of directory I could use to find the escape vessels. I pressed a button to call for the lift, and waited, my chest heaving with every breath I took. I thought perhaps I could hear shots ringing out in the distance. I’d left them, all those girls. I’d left them to their fates, and I wasn’t sure that I would ever see Teldara Kinesse alive again.

  The lift doors swished open and I stepped inside, profoundly grateful to have found it empty. As the doors closed, I examined my options. There was, in fact, a directory, though it took my mind an addled moment to translate from Keldeeri to English. Living Quarters, no thank you; Cafeteria, nope; Bridge, not unless I was planning to commandeer the ship; Hangar Bay. That was promising. If it didn’t have escape pods, perhaps I could steal a fighter jet or something.

  What? Steal a fighter jet? Come on, Lorelei. I heaved a sigh, and hit the button for the Hangar Bay anyway. It was my best chance for some sort of automated escape vessel, something that was meant for the layperson to use to get off of a damaged ship. But if it came to stealing fighters, I was shit out of luck. I couldn’t even pretend to know how to fly the things, and I’d frankly rather take my chances as a Keldeeri sex slave than freeze to death in the outer reaches of space.

  The doors opened, and
I peeked around the corner. More metal hallways with bright LED lighting that could not have been terribly flattering to anyone. Not that I think the lighting would much improve the complexion of a Keldeeri, but that is neither here nor there. I crept on tip-toe into the hall, trailing my fingertips along the wall, and peeked around the corner: more emptiness. Then, more running.

  There were no rooms on this floor, so I imagined that when I reached the door at the end of the hall it would open into a wide space. I opened them slowly, just a crack, and slipped inside to find that I was right. I was on a scaffold platform high above the giant hangar bay. There was a bustle of activity below me, with dozens upon dozens of Keldeeri Quarter Moon going about their business. All a single one of them had to do was look up, and they would spot me. I was exposed, in more ways than one, and I needed to find some cover.

  My heart was a spike hammering into the hard earth of my chest as I ran on my toes across the scaffolding. I darted down the spiral stairs, praying to any gods that would hear me that none of the Quarter Moon would look up, that they wouldn’t see me, fleshy and white and full of fear.

  Somehow, I managed to scramble unseen down the stairs, and take cover behind dozens of large crates they were loading onto one of the larger ships in the Hangar Bay. I swallowed hard and tried to force myself to breathe evenly, but I could barely hear myself think, my heart was pounding so hard. I was running on pure adrenaline, my survival instinct keeping me sharp. But in that moment, I was at a loss for what to do.

  I leaned against the crate as I peered around its corner to see into the open part of the hangar bay. And there, like a beacon in the night, was a set of escape pods. Like rows of quail eggs on the right side of the room, there was my way home.

  The only problem, of course, was that there were thirty or forty Keldeeri slavers between me and the pods that would take me away from this place. I needed a miracle, and I needed it fast.