“Safe? Ha! Not only did those aliens hack into my eReader here in Aethralis, but they somehow took me to their ship orbiting Earth while I was sleeping! Then they had the nerve to offer me a place in their so-called exchange program to find an alien mate. As if I needed their help to find a man.” Morgan snorted and glared off into the distance. “What’s bothering me is, how’d they do that? We’ve been told all our lives that the shield protecting Aethralis would prevent anyone from finding us, much less take someone from here without anyone knowing.” She snorted again. “In desperation, I agreed to go with them, otherwise they’d have wiped my mind of the whole thing. Lucky for me, they let me come back toget my affairs in orderbefore I left with them.”
“Hmm, I’m glad they let you come back. I’d hate for you to disappear without me knowing where you went. I’d have been sick with worry.” Seren let go of her arm, and they resumed walking back to their section of the private sector of the city. “But if the High Guardian doesn’t think the exchange is a problem, why do you?”
How could she put into words the powerful feeling inside her, knowing her psychic abilities fell short compared to the gifted population of Aethralis? She’d had no precognition potential before. Why now?
Morgan hung her head and watched her feet move on the icy ground. The non-slip soles of her white boots gave her excellent traction on the slippery surface.
With a heartfelt sigh, she glanced at her friend and secretly envied Seren’s delicate beauty. While they shared the same caramel skin tone, Seren’s white-blond hair was thick and straight, while hers was a messy conglomerate of spiral curls that were hard to control. Damn stuff had a mind of its own, no matter how much product she put in it.
“It’s hard to explain.” Morgan admitted. “But I can’t let it go. I’ve got to join that exchange and find out if I’m right or not. Not that anyone but you care if I’m here or not.” With the ease of practice, she thrust the pain of losing her parents back to the deep pit where it belonged. Stopping, she took Seren’s gloved hands in hers. “But I need you to promise me something.”
Seren’s clear blue eyes narrowed. “You’re going to leave no matter what I say, aren’t you? Even though the High Guardian warned you what would happen if you did.”
Morgan squirmed under her friend’s direct stare, but met her glare with one of her own.
After a moment of staring at each other, Seren closed her eyes with a dramatic sigh. “Alright, you win. You know I’ll do whatever you ask. What is it?”
“Give it at least a day before you let them know I’m gone.” Morgan grimaced. “By then, I’ll be in deep space. Hopefully far away enough that my grandfather can’t make good on any of his threats.”
Seren chuckled. “I doubt that even if you made it to the other side of the galaxy, it’d stop him. You know how persistent he is.”
Sighing, Morgan nodded. “Yeah, if nothing else, that’s something I inherited from the stubborn ass.”
Aboard the Zerin spaceshipStarChanceen route to the Alien Exchange, two weeks later
Morgan poked her head out of her cabin, looking left and right to make sure all was clear. Satisfied no one was around, she slid out and waited until the doors whispered closed behind her. Holding her breath, she concentrated on listening for sounds that might alert her someone was coming.
She grimaced at her whimsy. The golden walls and floors of theStarChanceappeared solid, but had a soft, underlying feel to it. Firm enough to hold its shape, yet gentle enough to absorb the sound of her footsteps. Well, now was as good a time as any. Gripping her multicorder smuggled from Aethralis, she checked out the schematics she’d downloaded from the ship’s computer. Widening the section she was interested in, she memorized the way there. All right, just a couple of decks below this one. Not that this was the first time she’d seen the layout. For the last couple of days, she’d diligently studied the workings of the ship in preparation for this chance to sneak around. The schematics written in Zerin were the only thing that took her extra time to learn. While most Earth languages had some common syntax, the Zerin language didn’t.
At first, she relied on the translation injection the Zerin host gave her to understand what they said. But after a few days, she used the multicorder to eliminate the pesky potion from her system. It had gotten to where she was hearing double in her head whenever any of the aliens spoke to her. With her natural xenoglossy ability to hear and understand languages, she’d rather go natural than have the annoying foreign substance in her system.
Now that she could read and speak like a native, she studied everything she could about the ship during her off hours, since the Zerins put her and a hundred other women through vigorous training during the day.
While most of the areas in the vessel had known uses, there was a subsection deep in the bowels of the ship that didn’t have any designation on the diagrams she’d downloaded.
Looked like that might be a great place to start tonight. Her urge to continue checking things out had only grown stronger since she came aboard. On the surface, it looked like the Zerin race was legit about their offer to take women to an exchange program to find alien mates. But still, something was off. Something she was bound and determined to uncover.
Yeah, take that, Grandfather. Won’t it shock the crap out of you when I prove I’m right?
Heart racing, she bypassed the common elevator and headed straight for a service shaft only used by the Zerin for emergencies.
Changing the mode on her handheld, she pointed it at the entrance panel that needed a Zerin handprint to open it. Clicking the multicorder at the port, she gave the latch a satisfied smirk when it slid open. Yeah, that’s right. Here goes.
Activating the flashlight on the multicorder, she aimed it into the black hole. Instead of rungs like those built on Earth, this one had a solid-looking floor disk large enough for one to use as an elevator. All she had to do was step on it, and it would light up and take her anywhere she wanted to go with just a verbal command.
“Sh’a‘gaa.” Morgan said the Zerin word for “down” in a confident tone. She then gave the command to take her to the unused section.
The disk beneath her feet seamlessly dropped. Leaning back on the railing provided, she jotted down what she’d experienced in her multicorder, and recorded a vid to document everything. That way, if she ever had to re-look at something, she’d have it handy.
The descent slowed before lurching to the right. A few more moments, and the device stopped. The panel doors opened to a sea of blackness. With a grunt, she pointed the light on her multicorder and swung it left and right. So far, empty corridor. Dusty, with a heavy smell of disuse, but empty.
She opened the visual mode on her handheld to study the schematics again. Down to the left, the narrow hallway ended. But if she went right, there should be several supposedly empty bays. Listed as available storage units.
Except, now that she switched the flashlight off, an ominous low light down the hallway caught her attention.Aha!And why was there a light over there? This had to be the reason for her unease since boarding. Yes, the suffocating urge to head that way almost overrode her common sense. Shaking her head to clear it, she returned the multicorder to the harness on her belt and headed toward the light. Keeping her back to the wall to remain as flat as possible, she concentrated on keeping her footsteps silent. The floor here was just plain, old-fashioned metal of some sort. Not the spongy, quiet stuff on the above decks.
As she neared the lighted open bay, she stopped to listen. At first, the only sound was a low, audible whine. Pulling out the multicorder again, she activated it to record. She watched the screen, and it wavered before it displayed a conversation taking place on a psychic level.
“Attention. Directive. You are to receive human females from the Zerin operative. Place each in stasis aboard your assigned ship.”
