Page 6 of Protected By the Alien Space Guardian

When he turned his remarkable, handsome back to go to the bridge, I noticed a weeping hole by his shoulder blade where a silvery liquid ran down.

“Raasla, wait, I think… you’re bleeding?” My statement came out more like a question because… well, silvery blood?

“It will have to wait,” he retorted dryly, barely turning his head over his shoulder. He left me standing, gaping at the ugly little hole.

“Are you gonna help?” a woman whined, pulling another dead Cryon to add to the growing stack.

Had he killed all these aliens? Single-handedly? Who was this man? A shiver moved down my spine because I wasn’t sure if the thought was frightening me or if I was impressed.

We divided into teams and searched what we thought at the time was the entire ship for dead aliens. When we were confident that we found them all, I stared at the heap of dead. I had long given up counting, but there were more than a hundred bodies.

I didn’t feel any particular attachment to the aliens who had abducted us. I had feared them when they were alive, had hated them in fact, but seeing this pile of flesh made me wonder about the man who had done this. And emotionless at that.

Did he feel any remorse? Any guilt?

Would I have?

I drummed my fingers against my thigh, slowly mulling my emotions over. No, I decided. Had someone given me a blaster and explained to me how it worked, I would have shot them all down too.

I, though, had seen what the Cryons had done on Earth. Had witnessed the death of millions, our entire civilization. I watched my sister die while my mom was still smiling through the phone at me to convince me they were fine before her expression fell and the horror of what had happened registered on her face.

Did he?

Had he watched loved ones die? Was that why he was saving us? I wanted to believe we were a noble cause for him, but there was something about the man that made me doubt it. He was detached, even from us.

It doesn’t matter, I told myself. Who cared what he thought about us or we about him? He saved us, and he would take us to a place where we could regroup. Maybe I could even find out what happened to my mother.

Searching the alien ship for dead Cryons also gave us an insight into the layout and their technology. We discovered rooms where they slept, ate, and did whatever aliens did in their free time when they didn’t abduct humans. Now, the rooms were divided among us ex-prisoners. All three hundred forty-six of us.

We were all covered in gore and sweaty, hungry, and exhausted, but instead of going to the rooms we had assigned ourselves, as if by unspoken command, we gathered by the pile of dead aliens, waiting for the one who had rescued us.

Some stood, but most slid down the walls, leaned their heads against it, and closed their eyes. I compromised. I leaned against a wall, watching the two ends of the hallway, waiting for Raasla to return.

It didn’t take long.

“We should arrive on Astrionis in five space days,” he said without preamble. He marched over to where the dead aliens were stacked and leaned his wrist against a shiny panel on the wall. A door opened like a hatch, pulling up into the ceiling. On the other side was a large area, like a storeroom.

“Push them in there,” he ordered.

Moaning and whining, some of us got to their feet and did as told, while Raasla watched emotionlessly. When the bodies were all moved, the first cleaning drones appeared, looking like oval Roombas, to wipe the floor.

Raasla closed the hatch, a loud, sucking sound came from behind it and when Raasla opened the hatch again the storage area was empty.

“Where did they go?” a man asked.

The cleaning drones advanced at the now empty space.

Raasla grunted and motioned with his hand. Outside. The Cryons had been sucked into space, where they would float frozen through eternity. I shuddered at the idea of space being like a giant dump, filled with floating corpses and whatever other waste these advanced species decided to get rid of.

That notion brought on a whole new slew of thoughts. First off, there were obviously more than one alien species out there. At least two that I knew of so far because Raasla was definitely a different species than the Cryons. Three, maybe, because I had no idea if where he was taking us was the same species as him or another.

“Do any of you have any medical knowledge?” Raasla asked, looking among us. None of them would meet his eyes.

“I was a vet tech,” I said after a moment’s pause.

“You stitched someone up?” His unnerving black shark eyes bored into mine.

My throat turned dry, so I only nodded, not explaining that someone had been someone’s pet, not a person, but really, I wondered, what was the difference?

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