Payton's Surprise
Book 2
Blurb:
Aliens abducted Payton on her way home. She was
still having a hard time believing it, but it was true. She was nothing but
experimental fodder for a race she couldn’t communicate with. When she got a
chance to run, she did. Now she was being rescued but denied the right to go
home. If that wasn’t enough, the experiments they did on her were coming out.
She was angry, and every cut and bruise stroked that anger—someone needed to
pay.
Cassic and Malic were on a ship that rescued them
from floating around space in a cryo-pod forever. They were helping and looking for
a place to call home that would keep them away from their former government, the
ones that put a price on their heads. They never intended to meet Payton.
All three of them were running. The aliens that
abducted Payton wanted her back. The government that wanted Cassic dead was
coming after them. They didn’t expect to survive until they realized that there
was a pull between the three of them. If they want a chance at a future,
they’ll have to learn to act as one as they protect themselves and each other
from the threats coming their way. What a way to fall in love.
Look for strange birds with secrets—a goddess who
does more than she says and, of course, love the triad way.
18 and older.
Chapter One
Payton was going to die, and she knew it. That didn’t
stop her from trying to escape. Her and the bird on her shoulder. Not like a
pigeon, or a Robin, or anything earth-like. It was as large as an eagle with
sharp talons that never seemed to pierce her skin. His feathers – she had a
feeling it was a male – were an iridescent blue. They caught the light and made
her think he was so much more than she could see with her eyes. This was an
alien bird that decided it liked her and was going to hang out with her. Why?
She didn’t know.
What she did know was she woke up on this bucket of
bolts one day and hadn’t been able to gain her freedom ever since. If the marks
on the wall by her cage meant anything, she’d been here for over a year. A year
of aliens testing on her, abusing her physically, and speaking a language she was
just beginning to grasp. They could make sounds with their throats that she
didn’t have a chance in hell of making.
A siren went off. “Oh shit, they know I’m gone. We’re
gone.” She talked to the bird-like creature that was on her shoulder. She ran
down a corridor looking for a place to hide. She was in space.
At first, she didn’t believe it. She thought she’d
done too much coke, ecstasy, or smoked one too many joints, except she didn’t
do drugs. Her friends called her straitlaced, but she was okay with it. All
that was left was that someone slipped something into her drink. She went with
that for the first week, but a year later, she was willing to accept the facts.
She was on an alien vessel that kidnapped her from Earth. Instead of wanting to
force her into the best sex of her life, they were using her as a human guinea
pig. #howmarvelous.
Her hands went to her knees as she found herself bent
over. Her breath hitched, and the stitch in her side demanded she stopped
running. She used to be in perfect physical condition. ‘You’ll live to be a
hundred,’ one of her doctors teased. That wasn’t happening now, even if she
wasn’t on a ship in the middle of space.
There was a muted glare from the dull walls around her.
She was trapped, nowhere else to go. The thumping of her heart slowed while she
leaned, then slid against the wall until her rear hit the floor. The pain in
her head made her stop hitting it against the wall. If this were a movie now
would be her big scene, but this wasn’t a movie, and her life was about to be
over. She was going to die, and what was worse, she was going to die fat. The
desire to feel sorry for herself was riding her hard, but no, it didn’t matter
even if she brought this on herself.
“Fly bird, shoo, maybe you can get away while they
come after me. One of us should live.”
The bird had been in a cage next to hers. She always
thought it was weird because his cage was twice the size of hers. It didn’t
matter now; they were both stuck in this dead-end hallway with nowhere to go.
“Go bird, please.” She begged the bird, not wanting
the tears in her eyes to fall. Sometimes you needed to face the future like a
grownup.
She hated flies. Her hand swiped at her head. It was
just her luck that she would die surrounded by flies that would probably infest
her dead body. She was a ball of good thoughts! Her head shook as the sound got
louder. A shiver went through her; her hands started swatting at the insects,
trying to crawl on her when she saw it.
It was a small shadow on the wall, almost like a
secret door. Getting up, she ran to it. She knew it was too late, but the way
her heart pounded in her chest and as fast as her brain was working through the
problem told her that she didn’t care. She was going to hold on to hope until
it was snatched from her dead hands.
The door slid open. The mechanism to open it had been
hidden. She stumbled into the room. It looked like… well, hell, she didn’t know
what it looked like. Maybe the cockpit of a plane. She looked around for
something to drag in front of the door. There was nothing; everything was
bolted to the floor. It made sense. She ran to the console, pushing buttons.
They would all die together if she had her way. That way, her friends, hell her
planet, would be safe.
Shit! The pounding on the door said they were here.
She hit and kicked on the panel doing her best to destroy it when the door
finally opened. There was a pain in her throat, and darkness that flashed before
her eyes. She pounded on her chest, trying to make herself breathe. They stood
a good eight feet high, not that they needed the height to intimidate her. They
reminded her of crocodiles with a thick leathery skin and a long snout. These
managed to walk upright as well as crawl along the floor. They were also smart.
Never underestimate aliens, especially ones that flew the dark skies.
The deep alien growl that came out when the first one
came in had Payton running to the other side of the room. It ran across the
open space mouth open teeth gleaming; she screamed as pain tore through her
leg.
*~*~*~*
“Collision warning,” Sassy’s voice echoed over the ship,
backed up by the siren going off.
“Avoid the collision,” Captain Rale said as he ran to
the lift that would take him
to the bridge. One day of peace was all he wanted.
Was that too much to ask?
He banged into the wall of the lift when the ship came
to a full and sudden stop. He’d take that over a collision. The door slid open
to show a ship dead in space. It was much too close for comfort.
“Sassy, where did the ship come from?”
“It came from hyper-drive and stopped dead in front of
us. There wasn’t enough time to avoid it. Either we did a cold stop, or we ran
into it.”
“Rale?” Julze his second in command, and one of his
mates questioned as he came onto the bridge.
“We’re dead in space. Sassy had to make a cold stop.”
Rale gave him the news like it was no big deal.
Julze nodded. “Sassy, can you identify the ship?”
“It appears to be a Fulyer ship. They haven’t been
spotted in this sector of the galaxy for over two hundred standard solar
cycles.” The ship disappeared as a picture of the Fulyer took its place.
“Make contact,” Rale told her as he went over
everything he learned about that race. To say they didn’t get along with the
rest of the galaxy was putting it mildly. They believed that the other races of
the galaxy were insignificant to them. They were either to be eaten as an
exotic food or to be used as slaves for experimentation.
“They are ignoring all requests for contact.”
“Scan them.”
“I have been. They are dead. I can only detect two
life signs on the ship. I do not know if they have advanced cloaking. Their
technology was considered advanced at one point, and they were reluctant to
share it.”
The Fulyer shared-nothing, not even how they planned
to cook and eat the other citizens of the galaxy.
“We’re going to have to board them,” Nevaeh left the
lift with Kalyr at her side.
He went to the science station; she went to hug
Rale. He was one-third of their triad. Julze being the other third.
Julze walked over and wrapped them both in his arms.
“We also need an engineer. I can’t do this by myself.”
“We’ve already gone from three, sorry Sassy four crew
members to seven. Now you want to add two more.”
“Don’t forget the chef,” Nevaeh told him.
“We need the chef,” Julze agreed.
“Both of you are thinking with your stomachs.”
“And?” Nevaeh said.
There was a time there was only Rale and Julze on the
ship, and their computer didn’t have a personality. Julze was dying, and they
needed the one thing that would give them both a chance to live – their third.
That was Neveah with her came a computer with a personality, aka Sassy, and
several cryo pods that she swears she had nothing to do with. He ignored her
and continued to tease his mates that his life was this strange combination of
living, loving, and frustration due to them. It was a life he would never willingly
give up.
Rale gave a long dramatic sigh, one he learned from
Nevaeh. “Julze, speak to our possible new engineer. Nevaeh, talk with Cassic,
make sure medbay is ready for casualties. Sassy send a message to the others.
Tell them to prepare and meet me at the breach hull in ten. We have a ship to
secure.
Malic rushed out of the lift that Julze and Nevaeh
were entering.
“Something wrong?”
“I’m going over the scan that Sassy has been making of
the alien ship. It’s trying to slip under our defenses and penetrate Sassy’s
memory. I can’t find anyone directing it, which is unusual. Not that it matters,
they aren’t welcome.”
“Stay here; keep Sassy safe. Sassy, I’ll need you when
we breach the hull.”
“I’ll be there, Captain.”
Rale made his way to the breach hull, the eleven
passengers he picked up several weeks ago on his mind. He had set out to save
his mate by finding their third and ended up with more Hasian’s on his ship
than he had dealt with in the past several years. He walked into the breach
hull to find the seven Hasian males who weren’t assigned a duty waiting for
him. He hated to take untried warriors with him, but they were all he had.
Julze and Nevaeh had been training them; being taught by them increased their
chances of survival.
“We are going to infiltrate a Fulyer ship. The last
one seen in this part of space was over two hundred solar cycles ago. I don’t
know what we will find. Do not hesitate to protect yourself and each other. The
Fulyer have proven it is survival of the fittest, and they mean to be the
fittest.” He took the lead, stopping
before he forced a breach with the other ship. “Don’t hide behind your weapons.
They are only as good as you are.” He gave a nod of encouragement. The jewels
around his eye glowed for a minute as they reached out to touch the others.
“Shields on.” Rale forced the breach before rolling
onto the ship, looking to protect his crew. There was nothing but silence. “Sassy,
where are those heartbeats?”
“Down two levels, captain. It looks like whoever they
belong to are in the backup bridge.”
“The ship has two bridges?”
“That is what the schematic I am looking at suggests.”
That was interesting, maybe ingenious if a full manual
override could be done from the second bridge.
“Stay alert. Their technology may be more advanced
than ours; it could be keeping us from seeing life forms on the ship.” He led
them down the corridor and then through the access hatches, not wanting to be
caught in a lift.
“Captain?”
He saw it. The corridor was littered with parts. There
was blood, bones, and gore. Unless he missed his guess, he was looking at the
remains of the Fulyer. What could do that? He walked closer until he was able
to see into the room with the door missing. It was a second bridge, but that’s
not what caught his eyes. In the corner, there was a human with…
“Retreat.”
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