Alien Touch Read online

  The odds weren’t really on her side either way, but she couldn’t think of any other options.

  Throwing off her safety harness again, she got up … and damned near face planted.

  Because there was gravity that shouldn’t have been there.

  Thoroughly confused, she made her way to the observation windows more carefully and strained to pierce the darkness that still surrounded her.

  She couldn’t see any sign that they were sneaking up on her, but that didn’t mean a damned thing.

  The gravity seemed to be increasing, she decided as she headed back to the control console to turn on her equipment to check her theory.

  It was unfortunate that she hadn’t had her wits about her earlier to check the stats because she discovered the pressure was already equalized.

  And gravity had kicked in.

  She didn’t understand that at all.

  She’d decided she must be on the surface of the moon—because a base seemed far more likely than a ship the size of this thing—but the moon’s gravity was so light compared to Earth’s, or this, that it had to be artificial.

  She just didn’t see how they’d managed it.

  Shelving that puzzle for a better time, she checked the gauges on her suit.

  There was an extra life support unit, but she discarded the notion of carrying it as a backup. It would just slow her down and she should have what she needed—if she was going to make it at all.

  She’d just reached the hatch when the hanger outside the capsule abruptly erupted with blinding lights. Amber almost felt it as a physical impact. A jolt went through her and she moved quickly from the hatch to look out.

  What she saw so stunned her that she couldn’t even force brain function for many moments.

  It wasn’t Russians rushing toward her.

  It wasn’t Chinese.

  She didn’t know what the fuck they were, but they didn’t look like any citizen of any country on Earth.

  Physically, they were roughly humanoid. They moved upright on legs—long, creepy skinny legs. They had two long skinny arms to match and an oversized head.

  They almost looked more bug-like, though, than anything else insofar as their features went.

  She was almost tempted to put it down to hallucinations brought on by … something.

  But it was hard to discount when they came right up to the windows of the capsule to stare in at her.

  She screamed and leapt away from the window but quickly discovered she was completely surrounded.

  Something began to work at the hatch.

  Panicked, Amber still managed to produce the survival skill to find a wrench and wedge it into the locking mechanism so that they couldn’t open it.

  Even as she relaxed fractionally, though, she realized she only had a short reprieve.

  She had very limited resources—more than enough to get to Earth, certainly, but just as surely it wouldn’t hold her a lot longer than the trip would take.

  Time was on their side.

  She could use the jets to ‘remove’ them from the sides of the capsule, but that would really just be a waste of precious fuel. It wasn’t going to kill them all … unless it burnt up all of the oxygen, or breathable atmosphere, in the hanger.

  She might as well just blow herself up and be done with it.

  Except she wasn’t ready to die.

  She tried to convince herself that would be quick and easy compared to what she could be facing, but ‘herself’ just wasn’t buying it, didn’t believe there was no chance to survive.

  And then a glimmer of …. Oh my god!

  A commotion outside drew her and she discovered …. Giant, horrible beasts that had appeared seemingly out of nowhere and were ripping the other horrible aliens to pieces.

  They damned sure weren’t moon creatures.

  They were winged and the wings at least appeared to be covered in feathers, certainly something similar to feathers.

  And there was a ruff around the head and along the breast, also of feathers.

  But it bore no actual resemblance to birds for all that.

  She thought it most nearly resembled … well something humanoid. They were running around on two legs and grabbing the bug-like aliens with talon tipped claws attached to arms. Dinosaur? Because the brilliant plumage was just beautiful but they were terrifying to look at—maybe mostly because they looked to be well over six feet tall, closer to seven or eight.

  The body looked humanoid, anyway, because of the arms.

  They had the head and face of a bird of prey and it was the wicked beaks they mostly used to deadly effect, although the paws had claws long enough and sharp enough to cut arms and legs and heads off like a hot knife through butter.

  The tail was definitely bird-like.

  As horrified as she was she couldn’t look away.

  The three creatures appeared to be impervious to whatever weapon the bug-like aliens were trying to defend themselves with.

  Or they were so terrified they couldn’t aim worth a shit.

  Some tried to run when they realized their weapons were useless.

  They didn’t manage to make it back to the door they’d entered the bay through.

  In a matter of a handful of minutes, the creatures had wiped out all of the aliens.

  Amber was pretty horrified, but she couldn’t find any sympathy for the bastards.

  Especially when she realized she was now trapped in the hanger with the creatures that had just wiped out around a dozen aliens in a matter of minutes.

  They prowled the hanger, apparently in search of others. Finally satisfied, they turned to look straight at her.

  Amber damned near had a heart attack when they followed that by flying at her and grabbing holds on the capsule to stare in at her.

  “They’re beasts,” she gasped. “Just animals, Amber. They can’t get in.”

  Then one of them grasped the handle on the outside of the capsule and twisted it experimentally.

  And Amber screamed so loud inside her helmet she thought she might suffer permanent hearing loss.

  Chapter Three

  There was blood and guts spattered all over the exterior of their prize. Displeasure flickered through Alaric. “We will have to clean this before it begins to rust,” he said to no one in particular.

  “What do you suppose it is?” Serge asked, a thread of excitement in his voice as he examined the thing they had found.

  Excitement and pleasure chased away Alaric’s discontent over the soiling of their prize. “Grand! That is what it is! It is the biggest and best prize we have ever found!”

  “Clearly it is a hut, stupid,” Luki said confidently. “Something to live in.”

  “It has engines!” Serge snapped. “It would not have engines if it was a thing to live in on the ground! You are the stupid!”

  Luki’s lips tightened, but it took him a moment to think of an argument to support his theory. “It is a pod for living in the sky. This is a dead world.”

  Serge rolled his eyes.

  Luki swung at him, but he was too far away to reach, and he did not feel like going to the effort to chase him.

  Alaric had climbed up the thing to look inside. It was very dim, but he could see … something. “Ew. There is something horrible here.”

  “What?” Serge asked, still excited but also uneasy. “This will be a hard prize for us to take. It is huge. How will we get it in the ship?”

  Anger and disappointment warred inside Alaric as he digested that unwanted information, but he knew Serge was right. This was not going to fit in their hold.

  And it was clearly very heavy—which did not especially matter insofar as carrying it because it would be virtually weightless in space. It was getting it to their ship that could present a challenge.

  And there was the thing to consider, as well.

  Serge had found another window to peer inside. He uttered a st
artled cry when he spotted the thing. “What is that … creature?”

  “I have not seen the like of it before,” Alaric responded, pleased that Serge was as put off by the thing’s appearance as he had been.

  Luki had climbed up for a look inside. “Ugh! We should kill it! That thing is creepy.”

  Alaric gave him a look of disgust. “We do not kill things only because they are ugly,” he said tightly.

  “No. Otherwise we would kill you,” Serge said cheerfully.

  Luki narrowed his eyes at him. “You are so humorous.”

  Serge laughed.

  “I will stomp a new hole in your ass when I am rested from the battle,” Luki growled.

  Serge’s good humor vanished. “You may try. I will knock another hole in your head.”

  “There is something there that looks like a door,” Alaric pointed out, ignoring the brewing fight between his clan brothers.

  Luki and Serge exchanged a look to see which would respond to Alaric’s ‘suggestion’. Finally, Luki moved around the thing to examine the ‘door’ and saw that Alaric was right.

  Not that he was wrong very often, Luki thought with some irritation, grasping the strange looking handle he found and tugging at it experimentally.

  “It is stuck. Or it is locked,” he announced with a grunt of effort when he’d tried to work the device that appeared to be the way to open the strange round door of the thingy.

  Or it was not a door, he added mentally.

  Alaric studied the thing inside warily for a long moment. Finally, deciding it appeared to be as afraid of them as they were it—not that he was actually afraid, per se, but startled and wary, certainly—he shifted and pushed his upper body through to have a look at the door from the inside.

  He saw the problem immediately.

  Something had been wedged into the mechanism and that was preventing the opener from working. Moving inside, he grasped the thing that was wedged in the door and removed it.

  Luki was then able to disengage the latch and open the door.

  Alaric turned to study the strange creature inside their new prize.

  He realized it was actually a very small thing. It just appeared to be large because it was frantically waving its arms and legs.

  The head was disturbingly disproportionate to the body of the alien. He could see no nose or mouth and wondered how it was able to eat, but he could not doubt that it must see very well because it had one giant eye.

  Well, now that he studied it, the eye actually appeared to be blind.

  Poor thing.

  And there was no doubt it was frightened. He could smell the fear, could hear the panting breaths the creature took—even the frantic pounding of its heart.

  “It is terrified, poor thing,” he murmured in a low and, he hoped, non-threatening voice.

  “We mean no harm,” Serge said immediately.

  Luki sent him a sour look. “It cannot understand you.”

  Serge glared at him. “But it might understand the tone.”

  “It does not seem to be soothed,” Alaric said dryly, watching as it searched frantically for a small place to squeeze in to. Shrugging inwardly, he focused on the creature and shifted to mimic the form.

  It did not have the desired effect. In point of fact, it seemed to frighten the creature more. It began to make the same high pitched, ear splitting noise of before when he’d first breached the walls of the container it was in.

  Disconcerted, he shifted back to his own form.

  “It did not like that,” Serge observed unnecessarily.

  Luki made a swipe at him, but obviously Serge had expected it. He sidestepped smoothly to avoid the attempted strike.

  “You should try mind speak,” Luki offered.

  Doubt flickered through Alaric. “I did that already. It does not mind speak. And I have seen that it is very bad for some creatures that cannot. I do not want to damage it.”

  “Well, what are we going to do with it?” Serge asked reasonably.

  Alaric and Luki exchanged a long look.

  “We cannot leave it here,” Luki responded. “There will be nothing alive when we leave and I cannot think this would survive long. It was stolen, clearly. Very likely it will have no notion of how to get back to its people.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” Alaric said, because it was his thoughts—exactly—and he felt like braining Luki for mind melding with him when he had not given permission. “You were in my head!”

  Luki gaped at him and then looked away guiltily. “Was not.”

  Alaric narrowed his eyes at him. “You just happened to think the same thing as I? And at the exact same moment?”

  Luki looked uncomfortable. “You really thought that, too? I thought you meant similar.”

  “I hope you two will not begin to fight,” Serge said plaintively. “We really do not have time for it if we are still to execute the plan Alaric came up with. And it would probably just frighten the creature more.”

  “We are taking the thingy, aren’t we?” Luki asked. “We could just let it stay inside of its … whatever this is for now.”

  Alaric looked the thing over. He really hadn’t spared a lot of time to examine their prize yet. Because he’d wanted to wait until he could look it over carefully, to his heart’s desire, without distraction or interruption, when he could tinker with all of the gadgets and try to figure out how they worked and what they were for. Now that he did, though, he saw that it was definitely not just a nest of sorts for the creature, flying or otherwise. It contained all sorts of lighted panels on the walls and there was nothing else inside but what appeared to be seats. “I believe Serge was right. This is some sort of flying thing. It is a ship of some sort. Not a living hut.”

  Luki and Serge exchanged looks that very nearly resulted in a fight right then and there.

  “Naw,” Luki disputed, unwilling to give up his theory so easily, particularly in light of Serge’s expression of triumph, “I do not see it myself.”

  “Well,” Serge said before Alaric could blowup about being doubted, “it looks nothing like any flying craft I have seen before, granted—it is a very strange shape. But it has all sorts of the electronic gadgets one sees in these things. So undoubtedly Alaric is right. It is something of that nature, although I never would have guessed.”

  “Suck up,” Luki muttered.

  Alaric and Serge both pretended deafness.

  “So maybe it would not be a good idea to leave the creature inside because it might try to run off with our treasure.”

  Anger flickered to life in Alaric. “I will have no damned sympathy for that thing if it does try that!”

  “Best remove it. We can leave it here,” Luki agreed.

  “That would not be civilized at all,” Serge pointed out.

  “Well, I am a Beastman of Ator!” Luki snapped. “I am not civilized!”

  Alaric punched him hard enough to knock him out cold. “Stupid! We are civilized,” he growled. “And we are Furians, not Beastmen!”

  Serge could see Alaric’s point but he was more irritated. “Now we will have to carry Luki as well as that thing!”

  It was the closest Serge had ever come to challenging Alaric’s authority and it annoyed the shit out of him. He decided to ignore it. “He can fend for himself. Help me get the creature and then we will lock it in the hold and set the plan in motion. And when we are done we will tie our prize up and tow it to the main ship.”

  As small as the creature was, and light, it was amazingly determined and agile. It took both of them to subdue it enough to remove it from their prize. It settled once they had and carried it from the alien ship to their own, but the moment they shoved it into their cargo hold, slammed the door, and locked it, the creature began hammering against the door and walls.

  “Well,” Serge said with obvious relief, “it certainly does not have any of our abilities or it would simply leave. I think we can safely
consider it restrained.”

  Luki, clearly fuming, appeared and, without glancing at either Alaric or Serge, dropped into his customary seat.

  “Alright … so we take a run at them, firing, and then we turn around and run when they swarm out. Wait until they get to that ridge over there and then wipe them out. Then we go back to the Basinini ship and gather up the thingys we found and head back to their base in the other system.”

  “Why are we doing this again?” Luki muttered.

  Alaric gave him a look. “More fun this way?” he prodded.

  Luki and Serge exchanged a long look.

  “What?” Alaric demanded irritably. “Think how bored we have been! If we do not draw this out and savor then we will be done quickly and then bored again!”

  Serge shrugged. “I see your point. It seems more sporting, anyway, to at least let them believe they have a chance. I am wondering, though, if we should leave the creature in the hold? I mean, what if they shoot the ship out from under us? Then that poor thing is done for. If it was up here with us, it might have a chance.” He studied Alaric’s expression of annoyance and shrugged. “Just saying ….”

  Alaric shook his head. “I am just irritated that I had not thought about that. There is no point in rescuing it if we are only going to leave it to die. In any case, that is something worthy of doing once we have taken out the Basinini bastards. We will try to find its home or a new one for it if we cannot find the old one!”

  “We could always keep it,” Luki suggested. “It might be entertaining.”

  Alaric shook his head. “It is a strange looking thing. To tell the truth, it gives me the willies looking at that one huge, blind eye! I do not believe I could grow accustomed to it.”

  He pushed himself up from his seat. “You will have to give it your seat, Serge. Luki will only show his ass if I suggest he do it, but we must tie it down or knock it out and I believe it will be kinder to just tie it down.”

  Serge wasn’t happy about it, but since it had been his suggestion to start with he saw Alaric’s point.

  It took all three of them to hoist it out of the hold again.

  He had never seen the like of it! It was barely more than half his size and the damned thing moved like lightning and nearly knocked Luki out with its foot!