Page 17 of Her Alien Savior
“How else do you think I was able to hack into the H.E.T. database? I used their own tech. Anyways, what’s important right now is that if we don’t stop this ship, there won’t be a H.E.T. to return to, and forget about ever seeing Earth again. This is bigger than whatever vendetta you had in mind. This ship plans on starting a war with Trillume, and if the necia and trill are at war then think what that means for every human on an alien planet right now.” She jabbed the wire into the desk and a screen popped up. Whose quarters did we break into that had an actual interface, not connected to their implant?
“What are you doing?” I spoke softly, as if the room wasn’t soundproofed already. All the rooms were isolated from one another for privacy between warriors. If they needed something they could simply connect with another person through the implant.
A wry smile spread across her face. “I’m going to take control of this ship.” Ashley cracked her knuckles, and stretched out her neck from side to side. “First we’ll contact whoever has some authority on this ship, and we’ll kidnap them. That’s where you two come in,” she said motioning to both Chester and myself.
“Me?”
“Yah, don’t you have training in combat?”
Chester lifted his brows at me, and I blushed with embarrassment. It wasn’t typical for people to recognize that I was tough considering my stature was small.
“Find a weapon and help Chester out when it’s time to strike. Eventually, the warrior will return to their room, and we’ll surprise them,” Ashley said while tapping at the screen that was literally just a hologram of light in front of her projected from a pen-like object.
Before I could respond the lights flickered, and I darted my attention to Ashley for an explanation, but she appeared just as off-guard as the rest of us. She wasn’t the one making the lights malfunction, but the alarm noises that were resonating through the room, were enough to let anyone know something was wrong.
“You triggered some kind of malware detection; they’re going to have the whole tribe looking for us,” Bryce said in a panic, pacing the room.
“No, they won’t,” Ashley gritted back tapping away at the screen vigorously. Minutes passed and sweat beaded at my brow with anxiousness before she sighed and collapsed in the chair with a huff. “I did it,” she whispered. I wouldn’t have believed it, but only a split second after she said it, the lights stopped flashing, and the alarm ceased.
My muscles were tensed up, and I only now noticed that I had somehow found a heavy block of metal I was fully prepared to clobber someone with, if they came through the door. I realized that was probably stupid, considering whoever’s bedroom this was, was high up the chain of command, and they would not be returning straight to their room in an emergency situation. They would be heading to some kind of central location with high security to assess the situation.
“We won’t have much time to figure out a plan now. Eventually, the owner of this room will return, and if they know someone is sabotaging them, they aren’t going to just enter the room without caution for us to have the surprise like we wanted,” I warned. I opened a drawer, and found the clothes inside were smaller than what I would expect to see on someone like the warrior in the med bay would be. It was reasonable to assume this room belonged to one of the female warriors aboard the ship. They were still taller than most humans, but the clothes were slimmer than the muscles I saw on the males I saw. That wasn’t good. The little I knew about necia warriors from taking multiple different assessments at H.E.T. was that they were considered stronger than their male counterparts. “This is a female warrior’s room,” I announced.
“Fuck.” Ashley knew what I was saying. She scratched at her scalp and moaned in irritation at having to think of a way out of this one. We still needed to take over the ship, and our best bet was to capture this warrior. I guess, this was something for a different kind of expert to try to solve.
Chester did something most warriors would not, admit that they needed help. “A female necia warrior wouldn’t think twice about skewering a human. I could catch her off guard and try to subdue her, and she’d stab me on instinct alone. At least with the male warriors they don’t have spikes all the way down their spine. There is a large mass of their epul focused more top heavy towards their shoulders, than down their back. They even have bones that come out of their neck, and head, but a female... they have spikes that cover their entire body.
“Smaller spikes, but more deadly, since they have no area that can’t be defended. It’s lethal to any species that doesn’t have a second skin, since their spikes wouldn’t be long enough to penetrate farther than the second skin of a male necia. But, on their back... and their fingers, they have specific epul that come out like sharp curved skewers. We can’t do a surprise attack from behind.”
“Then we have to face her head on, and from a distance,” I began, but regretted it as soon as I did. I wasn’t a warrior like them, what did I know about how to subdue someone raised to fight with spikes under their skin? Sure, I’d trained in weapons handling, and not that long ago I was willing to wrestle down one of the bigger warriors and use their strength against them, but for some reason, now I was scared. Being okay with risking my life to be free was one thing, but I wasn’t completely insane to charge belly first onto a sword without a plan for defending myself. Sure, I would choose death over servitude for life, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t against biding my time either. I had to think.
Surveying the room, there wasn’t really anywhere for us to hide. If we stayed here, then the closest thing we had to a surprise attack would be pressing ourselves against the same wall as the sliding door, which really only worked for hiding two of us with how wide the available space was. There was the bed, but it was facing the entrance, and so either side was still visible, there was no hiding behind it. Seats and large items were bolted down or built into the room’s structure.
“How are we supposed to do that?” Bryce complained and shook his head at me like I was dumb, and honestly, I didn’t blame him.
“We don’t hide,” I added. “We wait, and we act like we’re supposed to be here.”
“What?” Bryce blinked at me, and Chester folded his arms across his broad chest.
“That could work,” Ashley mused, but didn’t turn her attention from the screen she was hacking into.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Bryce was unconvinced.
“Explain it to him,” she prompted me to continue, while ignoring us all to continue whatever it was she was doing with the alien technology.
Taking a breath, I steadied my nerves. “We are just humans to the warriors. Weak, and in need of protecting. Given her rank to have the wire disruptor, or whatever it is, then she is likely to follow whatever moral code the necia have in regards to humans. She’s also very strong if she’s highly ranked and will have the ego that goes with that. There isn’t any need to fight her. We’ll say we were placed here on our way to being escorted to the stasis pods when the alarm sounded. Then we can do to her what I did to the other warrior, shove her in the stasis pod before she can react.”
“I doubt that will work a second time, you said the warrior was distracted with wanting to rut with you or something,” Ashley interjected. “The first part of the plan works, but we don’t want her trapped in a stasis chamber, we need access to her implant.”
“Maybe Chester can seduce her?” Bryce joked, while giving Chester a shove with his shoulder.
Ashley didn’t think it was funny, she actually agreed with him. “Maybe you’re not so useless after all, Bryce. Maybe Chester will give the warrior some lady rock or something, but we need a plan B. What else do you got, Riley?” It seemed like she could think of these plans herself but was too busy doing whatever she was doing on the tablet to focus elsewhere. She was relying on me, and that terrified the living breath from my body.
I paced the room, trying to think of something that could help. Putting all our bets on Chester or Bryce to seduce the warrior was a long shot, and my current plan basically had us sitting here to be put back in the stasis pods when whoever stayed in this room returned. I mean, at least no one was dying in this plan, but no one was making improvements towards preventing a war that would mean we’d never see Earth again, either. Or protecting all the other humans offworld, on whatever exchange planet they were on.
The only thing that came to mind was that spray Shen-La used to paralyze the warrior named Direl.
I didn’t see any other way around it.
