Page 8 of Shattered Silence

Did I piss him off? For a moment, Layla thought he might have even cut the transmission, but then he spoke.

“I work for Darkstar. You may call me Enki… and I am not the captain.”

“Okay. Y-you’re…”

“Kordolian.” No mention of his rank, or station, or whatever. What the hell was Darkstar? What kind of name was that, anyway? It sounded like an organization headed by an evil supervillain… or something.

Kordolian. Now it was Layla’s turn to go quiet. Her stomach flipped and her mouth went dry as the realization struck her. She stared at the transmitter unit in shock.

Somehow, it made perfect sense.

Now she could put a face to the voice. She didn’t know exactly what he looked like, but she knew he would be tall, lean, and rather ethereal looking. She’d seen Kordolians on the newsfeeds back on Earth. They all shared certain similarities, with that unmistakable skin—a luminous shade of silver—pale hair, fire-colored eyes, and pointed ears.

Layla tried to remember everything she knew about Kordolians. Big changes had happened in the Kordolian Universe, but Layla didn’t know much about their current situation. She’d been too busy dealing with her own clusterfuck back on Earth to follow Inner Sector politics.

Still, one couldn’t avoid knowing something about them. The Networks had been saturated with news—and gossip—about the intimidating silver aliens. From all accounts, they were dangerous… and searching for new worlds to inhabit, new ways to ensure the survival of their race. There was even a rumor that they were biologically compatible with humans.

It seemed implausible that they would go out of their way to rescue her just because they were kind and charitable and all-round good guys.

Why are you helping me? That’s what Layla wanted to ask, but she didn’t want to push the envelope; didn’t want to drive him away. Her only lifeline was a mysterious grumpy Kordolian called Enki, and he was impossible to read.

And now he’d gone quiet again.

Layla looked away from the transmitter. She stared out the narrow port-hole, awed and terrified by the infinite Universe that made her feel so fucking small.

He was out there, somewhere.

Coming for her.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, but her lids quickly snapped open again as an intense blue light filled the cabin. Something was blocking the port-hole. The blue light moved across the interior in a narrow, focused beam.

It looked like it was… scanning.

“Uh, Enki?”

“What is it?”

“There’s this weird blue light shining through my port-hole. You know anything about that?”

If it was something to do with Enki’s rescue plans, then that was damn quick.

“What is behind the light? Can you see anything?” His sharp questions made her heart sink, and instinctively she knew the strange light had nothing to do with him.

Layla squinted as the beam rose, becoming momentarily blinded as it shone directly into her eyes. She blinked furiously, shielding her gaze with one hand as she tried to make out what was beyond the light.

“I-It looks like some sort of machine—a robot. There are wavy metal arms coming off it, like an octopus. Crap, one of them just brushed against the window just now. It has little claws.”

A narrow beam of blue light danced across her body. It slid over her breasts and her stomach before insolently lingering over her lower belly—where her reproductive organs were.

As if it were trying to determine her sex, or something.

Creepy. Like, alien horror-movie creepy. Layla shuddered as she thought of probes and crazy experiments and captivity and all those fanciful stories humans had concocted about aliens in the pre-contact era, before the real thing had shown up on Earth.

She rose to her feet and darted to the far corner of the pod, where she retrieved an oversized thermal cabin jacket. For a brief moment, its silver reflective material flashed blue beneath the light’s eerie glare. Terrified, she ran to the port-hole and pressed the jacket against it, obscuring the machine’s view.

“What are you doing?” Enki sounded tense—was he actually worried?

“I think it’s trying to scan me.” Her voice rose as panic set in. “I’ve covered the window so it can’t see me.” A jolt of realization struck her. “You know what that thing is, don’t you?”

---