No sooner had the thought passed through her mind, when a loud roar filled the compartment as the emergency deceleration thrusters kicked on.
Harper slammed down from the ceiling onto the deck with a sickening crack. Whether she was unconscious from the impact or the forces pushing all the blood out of her head was anyone’s guess, and not something Olivia would ponder for long as she too succumbed, her consciousness fading out to the sound of straining metal and the faint sensation of cool air the last thing she felt buffeting against her skin.
Then it all went black.
CHAPTER TWO
Compared to the sheer terror of plummeting to a near-certain death trapped in the burning remains of the destroyed space hauler, the whole alien abduction part of her ordeal thing seemed like a walk in the park.
Olivia didn’t recall the actual abduction, but then, from what the others told her after she regained her senses, none of them did. Apart from Olivia and Harper, they had been on different planets, in different solar systems for that matter, but each of the five abductee’s stories were the same. One minute they were going about their own business, the next they woke up aboard a spaceship.
Two of the others were from space-faring races, but the third, a tawny-furred woman with large almost black eyes and faint white spots on her fur running down from her neck to her legs, was not. Just like the human females in the group, these were the first aliens she’d ever seen, too. And, just as the humans had discovered, when she woke, she found she could understand them.
“What the hell? Oh, fuck me, did I get roofied?” were the first words out of Olivia’s mouth. But then, opening one’s crustedeyes to what looked an awful lot like a bunch of freaky aliens staring down at you could make one come to that conclusion.
“No roofies,” a voice said from just out of sight.
“What’s a roofie?” asked the blue woman with a pair of articulating robot arms built seamlessly into her torso just below her natural ones.
A human woman stepped forward and sized up the new arrival. She glanced over at the questioning alien. “It’s a drug. Let’s just say some unscrupulous males on our world have been known to dose the unsuspecting.”
“Barbaric!” the woman replied, shock clear on her very alien features.
Olivia pushed herself up to one elbow and shook the grogginess from her head. “Not disagreeing with you,” she said, rubbing a sore spot behind her right ear.
The human squatted beside her, resting her hand gently on Olivia’s. “Don’t mess with that just yet. It’ll take a few days to heal properly.”
“For what to heal properly?”
“They call it a translation rune. Some kind of marking they tattooed behind all of our ears that lets us understand one another.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“Afraid not.”
She gently felt the tender flesh where she had been inked. It wasn’t her first tattoo, not by a long shot, but those had all been voluntary, though a couple had been acquired in less than sober conditions. Regardless, this was the first time she’d woken up with no memory of the process. And, apparently, this was an entirely new kind of tattoo.
“So, you’re not speaking English?” she asked, incredulous, but also recognizing that she was, indeed, understanding the alien’s speech as well as the human’s.
“I am, actually,” the woman replied, turning toward the three very alien women sizing up the newcomer. “But they sure aren’t. I’m Harper, by the way.”
“Olivia.”
“Nice to meet ya. I mean, as nice as it can be under the circumstances, that is.”
Olivia rubbed her eyes. The aliens still looked like aliens.
“This isn’t a dream, is it?” she grumbled as cold, hard reality set in.
“Sadly, no.”
“And they really are aliens.”
“Hey, you’re an alien too,” the blue woman countered.
The tawny-furred woman shook her head. “Be nice, Morzinga. We’re all in this together.”
“I know. I just still can’t believe you lot haven’t even left your own planets.”
