by Presley Hall
I slosh out of the deep end quickly, ready for him to splash me back. When the water line is at my ankles, I kick up a foot and soak his legs, then run away before he can fire back, splashing up the stream without a care as to who gets wet.
One of the men, the one who’s always frowning—Jaro, I think his name is—stands off to the side, staring at me with his arms crossed. I kick a small arc of water in his direction too, and he looks completely shocked when several droplets hit his bare skin.
It’s almost comical, and at least it’s an expression other than a frown.
Before I can splash anyone else, Droth’s arms snake around me, and I shriek when he scoops me off my feet. When he turns me around, his hair is dripping with water and he’s grinning his sweet, lopsided grin.
Without thinking or allowing myself to get mired in doubt, I kiss him on instinct. He kisses me back, chuckling against my lips, and we stand there like that, holding each other’s soaking wet bodies, our tongues dancing and the cold water heating between our skin.
Someone clears their throat, and we break away from each other.
Oh. Right. We’re not alone—far from it.
I’m partly abashed and partly giddy as I realize what I was just doing, making out with an alien warrior as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. The men behind Droth are staring at us. Some look amused, some curious, but Jaro still looks displeased.
Suspicious, even.
22
Charlotte
We cover more distance after leaving the stream behind, then spend another night under the stars. Some of the men disappear for a while and return carrying a small boar-like creature, which they cook over a fire. I have no idea what it is, but the meat tastes good, and I’m hungry enough to eat several servings.
My legs are stiff and sore from all the walking, but amazingly enough, my feet are doing okay. The forest floor is generally pretty soft, and my shoes are dirty and stained but holding up all right. If I stayed here longer, I don’t think it would take long for my body to adapt.
Not that it matters, because I’m not staying.
For some reason, I have to remind myself of that several times as we resume our journey in the morning. I spent the night curled up with Droth again, my legs tangled in his and his strong arms around me. Despite the ruggedness of our surroundings, I’ve slept better over the past few nights than I have in a long time.
And weirdly, the closer we get to our goal of finding the ship, the less excited I get. I still want to find the women I left behind and make sure everyone’s okay, but the drive I once felt to find a way off this planet is evaporating like water on a hot day.
The morning passes slowly, and as our little party tromps through the undergrowth, I lapse into silence, dozens of thoughts filtering through my mind. The path we’re traveling has gotten harder to traverse as the forest around us has grown thicker and more lush, and after another long day of travel, I’m starting to get a little drowsy.
But when I see a flash of grey metal through the trees up ahead, any exhaustion I feel is zapped out of me.
It’s there, just beyond the trees.
The ship.
We made it.
I start to walk ahead, picking up my pace, but Droth catches my wrist. He draws me back and puts a finger to his lips, a warning flashing in his bright blue eyes. When I look around, the other men have all crouched down. They move like jungle cats through the foliage. Droth and I do the same, though I’m not nearly as graceful as the men.
We crawl to the break in the trees and peek out from behind the leaves. The opening of the wrecked ship is facing us, allowing us to see inside the torn vessel. My heart leaps in my chest, and I scan the area, searching for Elizabeth or any of the other women.
I should go ahead of Droth and the others, I think. Just to make sure none of the women panic.
But my stomach tightens into a hard knot when I realize there’s no movement around the ship or inside of it.
No sign of a single person.
No noise.
No smell of food.
The wreckage is quiet and still, as if it’s been abandoned.
They’ve left. But why? Even broken in half, the ship still provides the best cover in the forest.
I look at Droth, and he turns toward me, his eyes soft and apologetic.
My jaw clenches, my head shaking automatically. No. They can’t be dead. Somebody must have taken them, or they’re asleep, but they’re not dead. The women, all of them, made it here to this alien planet, abducted by their own government.
They survived when others didn’t. They made it. They have to be alive.
The men stand and push through the trees, emerging onto the cleared crash site with their weapons lowered. Droth and I follow.
But before we can make it more than a few steps, there’s a flash from the top level of the ship, followed by a deafening bang, and a man’s spear explodes in his fist.
“Shit!” I yell.
We barely have time to dive back into the forest before more bangs follow, one after the other like a machine gun. Droth takes cover behind a fat boulder and pulls me into the cocoon of his body.
A new sound cuts through the chaos, and I lift my head, straining my ears as my heart thuds hopefully in my chest.
It’s a voice.
A woman’s voice.
Another voice shouts back, communicating with the first. I can’t tell quite who it is at this distance, and I can’t make out the words either of them are saying.
But it’s got to be them. Those are my people on the ship, I just know it. They’re shooting at us because they saw aliens coming out of the tree line toward them, but maybe they’ll stop if they realize I’m here too. I can’t let anyone get hurt—on either side.
Chunks of bark explodes from a tree near my head as a shot hits the trunk, and I duck with a yelp. Shit. If I don’t stop this now, things will get out of hand and someone will get seriously hurt.
Pulling out of Droth’s hold, I dart out from behind the boulder. My instinct is to cover my head, to make myself as small a target as possible, but I fight against that impulse, standing tall and waving my arms instead.
“Stop!” I scream. “Stop! It’s me!”
For a horrible moment, it occurs to me that maybe I was wrong. That the people shooting at us aren’t my friends.
Fuck. If I misjudged this, I’m toast.
“Hold your fire!”
The yell comes from inside the ship, and a burst of relief floods me, cooling my veins. It’s definitely a woman’s voice, and the fact that I can understand her words means she’s human.
I was right. It’s them.
The gunshots stop, and the sudden silence is a shock to my ears. Then another voice calls out from inside the ship.
“Is that Charlotte?”
“Yes! It’s me!” I cry, waving my arms desperately. I don’t know where they got the guns from—maybe they found them inside some compartment on the ship—but there’s no doubt that it’s my people in there.
“Charlotte, stop walking!” The first voice shouts again.
Stopping dead in my tracks, I scan the ground. My eyes go wide when my gaze lands on a round metal plate. I’ve never seen a land mine before in my life, but I’m pretty freaking certain I’m looking at one right now.
Holy shit. A lot’s happened around here since I got carried off by a bird.
Staying exactly where I am, I look up, my heart slamming against my ribs.
The women I’d just barely met before being snatched away by the giant bird start gathering at the lip of the ship, gazing down at me. I haven’t been gone for that long, and I didn’t know them all that well before, but I’m still shocked at how different they all look. The disoriented women we freed from the pods are not the same people looking at me now. These are survivors, and they’re standing tall up there, not cowering in fear but determined to defend themselves.
“Who are your friends?” One of
“They’re… they’ve been taking care of me!”
The women lean their heads together and talk amongst themselves for a moment. One of them points toward the trees and speaks rapidly. One of the other women nods, and a handful of them raise their guns to the trees in one sharp movement while the rest of them climb down the metal cable, Elizabeth leading the way.
Elizabeth. Thank God.
I’m so happy to see them, so relieved. They’re safe, and even if we can’t go back to Earth, at least I know they’re all okay.
Of course they are. They’re survivors. We all are.
Unlike me, Elizabeth wasn’t wearing a nightgown and bathrobe when the ship crashed. But just like mine, her clothes have seen better days. Her slacks have been rolled up to just below her knees, and her white button-down is gone, leaving just the camisole underneath. She’s also barefoot and picking her way to me carefully, watching the ground as she moves.
How many mines do they have, and where did they come from? Where did they get the blaster guns?
“Charlotte!”
Elizabeth calls out to me as she gets closer. I have a sudden impulse to run forward and meet her, but I don’t dare move. Instead, I just smile as I wait for her to reach me. She’s crying, and I realize with a start that my cheeks are wet too. I’ve never been so happy to see someone in my life.
She hops over a mine and then sprints to me. Our bodies collide, and we wrap each other in a tight hug.
“God, Charlotte. I can’t believe you’re alive! We thought you were dead for sure.” Her shoulders shake, and she’s sobbing into my hair. “I’m so sorry.”
She keeps saying the words over and over, her grip on me tight.
“It’s okay,” I murmur. “I’m okay. It’s not your fault, Elizabeth.”
She was the only person who kept holding on to me as the bird climbed higher and higher into the air. Elizabeth might have been carried off too if her grip hadn’t slipped. I hope she doesn’t think it’s her fault I got taken by the bird.
But of course she would think that. She’s a doctor. It’s in the job description to do everything she can to save people.
We hold each other for another moment until we both get our emotions under control. Other women have gathered around us, smiling and talking over one another. Elizabeth lets me go, and I open my mouth to say something, but before I can, the blonde girl I chased out of the ship steps forward.
“I’m glad you’re all right,” she says quietly. “I’m so sorry for running off.”
Sadie. Thank God she’s okay.
“I don’t blame you,” I tell her, and I mean it. “I can’t imagine waking up the way you did and finding out you’d basically been abducted.”
“Yeah.” She grimaces, looking down. She’s beautiful, just like all the women we saved, but there are shadows in her blue eyes. “It… it brought back some bad memories. But I’m doing better now. I won’t run again.”
Without thinking about it, I reach out and pull her into a hug. She stiffens for a second in surprise, but then her arms wrap around me and I feel her let out a breath.
“I really am sorry,” she whispers.
“Thank you. But there’s no need. I’m okay, so don’t beat yourself up, all right?”
She nods, and I give her another squeeze before letting go. Honestly, I’m just glad she’s still with us. I was so afraid that she would run off into the forest and get eaten by something. This is the longest conversation the two of us have ever had, but I hugged her as tightly as if she were family.
She is, in a way.
We all are now.
Sadie gives me a small smile and steps back as the other women crowd around me.
“Charlotte, this is Raina.” Elizabeth gestures to the woman standing beside her, one I haven’t met.
The dark-haired woman steps forward, her hazel eyes bright and assessing. She’s a bit shorter than I am,
“Hey.” She sticks out a hand, and I take it. “I’m Raina Dawes. I’ve been helping Elizabeth and the others keep the ship safe. It’s good to see you alive. We assumed the worst.”
I smile. “I did too. You’ve organized something impressive here. Is this your doing?”
Raina grins. It’s there and gone in a second, but I can see fierce pride lingering in her expression. “Only partially. Everyone pitched in, and it was Gemma who found the mines. They came in handy two nights ago when some big green guys tried to board the ship.”
My eyes widen, and Elizabeth shakes her head, her expression somewhere between fear and awe. “You wouldn’t believe what they looked like. Not just green skin, but noses that were more like trunks and these crazy-long tusks. They tried to attack, but luckily, we’d already set up a decent defense perimeter by then.”
I blink. It’s hard to believe this is a real conversation—partly because my friend is describing an actual green alien, and partly because she sounds more like a military general than the doctor I met during liftoff.
“We also found more documents in the captain’s quarters,” Elizabeth adds. “From what I’ve gathered, the government has been trading women for years. Remember how I heard one of the crew members mention ‘the Orkun’? Well, they’re the ones who’ve been taking human females as tributes in exchange for a promise to leave Earth alone. The Foreigner II’s mission was not, in fact, a first contact mission, but a secondary one. The cryo-sleepers were slated to be offered up in an experimental trade deal with secondary contact aliens.”
I can’t say anything for a long moment as I absorb her words.
After we crashed, I looked through the folder we found in the captain’s cabin several times, so I knew that the plan was to trade women for alien technology. But to find out this has been going on for years nearly knocks the breath out of me.
How many other human women are out there, somewhere in the uncharted reaches of the universe, shipped away from their home world so that our government can stockpile alien weaponry?
“That’s…” I shake my head, at a loss for how to adequately describe it. “That’s so wrong.”
Elizabeth nods, her expression grim. “I know. It’s fucked up enough that the government would trade citizens in exchange for ‘non-engagement,’ which was a polite way of saying ‘please don’t invade us.’ But to try to start up a trade negotiation when there’s no threat is something else entirely. One is survival, the other is pure greed.”
“What about other countries?” I ask. “It’s just the US doing this?”
She shrugs, grimacing. “I honestly don’t know. The computers were pretty fried, and none of us know enough about tech to try to dig data out of the servers. So what we found in the captain’s log is all we know.”
My stomach twists.
God, I can’t believe this.
I’ve been so obsessed with getting back home that I barely stopped to think about what I’d be going back to. Do I really want to live in a world where powerful people use their own kind as merchandise to be leveraged?
And if the women and I somehow did manage to return to Earth, I wouldn’t put it past the people in power to kill all of us rather than risk their awful secret getting out.
“Hey!” Raina’s sharp voice breaks me out of my dark thoughts, and I glance up at her. She’s looking past me, her eyes narrowed. “Don’t come any closer!”
I glance over my shoulder to see Droth walking toward us, his hands held out in what truly must be the universal gesture of harmlessness.
My heart jumps into my throat. I’m not scared of Droth or any of his men anymore. I’ve had time to adjust to their appearances, and I’ve seen proof that they mean me no harm.
But that doesn’t mean much to the survivors gathered around me. None of them have seen the things I’ve seen or know these men like I do. The women are in survival mode, and several of them have guns.
I don’t want any of them to panic and start firing, so I make a sign for Droth to stop, and bless him—he stops.
Turning back around to the group, I clear my throat. “That’s Droth. He’s the leader of a group of men who’ve built a small settlement a few days’ hike from here. He saved me from the bird, and he and his people have been taking care of me. I promise, they won’t hurt you.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that one before.” Raina fingers the blaster at her hip, her expression hard.
Thankfully, Elizabeth puts her hand on the other woman’s shoulder and takes a step closer.
“Are you sure about this, Charlotte?” she asks, her gaze darting between me and Droth.
“Positive.” I nod firmly. “They’re the reason I was able to reach you all. Droth and his men came with me to make sure I’d be safe and to help me find the crash site. They’re friends.”
“Fine. Their leader can approach.” Raina narrows her eyes. “The rest stay where they are.”
It’s unsettling to know how many of these women would be willing to shoot Droth in a heartbeat, but I get it. If I were standing on the other side of this, I’d be as nervous as they are about a group of alien men getting too close. They aren’t armed with anything more than spears, but they’re all heavily muscled, tall and broad-shouldered.
And definitely not human.
It took me a while to stop being shocked by that, and I still sometimes get knocked back on my heels by their otherworldly beauty. Droth may not look like any man I ever knew on Earth, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s gorgeous.
“All right.” I nod again. “That’s fair.”
Turning partway around, I wave Droth over. He doesn’t hesitate to approach, though I can see a bit of wariness in his blue eyes.
When he reaches us, he moves slowly, coming to stand at my side. I introduce him awkwardly, using a combination of gestures and words. I keep my voice light, trying to set the other women at ease and pretend this is all totally normal.
I’m not sure how well it works. Most of the women take a few steps back from him, and even Raina is leaning away. But Elizabeth steps right up to the big warrior.
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