Kidnapping Keela (3 page)

Keela really did not want to know the answer.

“Suitable for pairing,” explained the alien.

”I feel sick,” groaned Amber in horror.

“Wait a minute!” interjected Lory abruptly. “I will absolutely definitely not be paired with one of you hideous monsters. I’d rather die! Is that clear?”

As quick as a flash the alien grabbed Lory by the neck and glared at her from his red eyes. Keela held her breath. Next to her Amber was gasping for breath.

“If I wanted you, you’d have no chance of defending yourself. Don’t forget who you’re dealing with. I am Knirrgn Arghagn, officer to his Royal Highness Ulhgrang ign Ifzarghn.”

Knirrgn released Lory as quickly as he had grabbed her and she staggered backwards. Keela caught her safely in her arms from behind. A cutting remark was on the tip of her tongue but she did not want to be grabbed by the neck like Lory was, so she remained silent. They could not do anything about this anyway. Their situation seemed hopeless, and their chances of ever seeing earth again seemed totally unlikely.
 

The other alien, commanded by a wave from Knirrgn, went to the door and feltched a type of trolley on which there were several dishes with lids on, a few cups and a jug of purple liquid.

“Your food for today. In two hours the light will be lowered. Then it’s time to sleep. Work out for yourselves from the light whether it’s day or night because we’ll be travelling for a good cycle,” declared Knirrgn.

“What’s a cycle?” asked Charly.

“The cycle is the standard month according to the United Galactic Federation. It lasts thirty four days. It’ll take that long for us to reach our destination. Now eat!”

The two aliens left the cell and bolted the door again.

“Shit!” swore Lory. “I’m not going to spread my legs for any damn alien!”

“Me neither!” declared Keela, horrified.

Charly and Amber murmured in agreement.

“But I am hungry. It won’t help anyone if we starve,” said Charly in the end, lifting the lids off the dishes. There were various fruits, a sort of stew and a plate of meat that looked a little like beef.

They tried the various food items cautiously and poured out the liquid, which seemed to be a sort of lemonade that tasted pleasantly sour.

“Hmmm, not bad,” judged Keela.

The other women agreed.

“The lemonade’s delicious, too. It tastes a bit like lemon … no! Lime juice with a hint of … of … oh yes, a hint of mango!”

There seemed to be an unspoken agreement between the women not to discuss what lay before them. None of them wanted to think about the fact, right now, that they were to be sold at a slave market.

***

Y-Quadrant, Karrx7

Royal Palace of the Arr’Carthian

28
^th
day of the month of Kindur in the year 7067

Federation Time

Marruk was wild with anger. His roar was echoing through most of the palace. Anxious servants and soldiers were running frantically all over the place.
 

“Excuse me, Prince Marruk. I have the results from Ceyla,” reported Lamick, the Master of Security, his voice quivering.

Ceyla was the palace’s intelligent computer system. It kept watch over the whole palace and the external areas. Through sensors and cameras, hidden discreetly everywhere, Ceyla could register everything that happened inside the palace walls. Through DNA comparison the computer could tell immediately who was where and whether strangers were in the grounds whose DNA was not entered into the computer. Ceyla could even keep watch over peoples’ state of health and interpret emotions.
 

“Report!” ordered Marruk impatiently.

“Ceyla reports that Princess Solima left the palace three hours ago through the eastern exit in the company of her nanny. However, her nanny left the palace grounds alone half an hour later, through the east gate. I’ve sent men out and they’re looking for her right now.”

“And Solima? What about her?”

“Well, it’s very strange, Your Highness. It appears that, about ten minutes before the nanny left the grounds, she dissolved into thin air.”

“Dissolved into thin air?” roared Marruk, beside himself. “How can that be? Magic? Was it the Verkuzzi?”

“Well, everything indicates that she was beamed up. A space ship must have been above us,” reported Lamick meekly.

“A
space ship
? And
how
could it have happened that you didn’t notice a
whole
space ship above us,
huh
? – Who was on duty in the control room at that time?”

“Lurruk, Your Highness. But it’s not his fault, if I may be humbly permitted to make this remark. It seems that the ship was using a camouflage unfamiliar to us. Every camouflage system known to us would have been deactivated at the point of beaming up, but apparently this ship has a system that can stay active during the beaming process.”

“Ceyla?”

“Yes, My Prince?”

“I want to see all images from the last twelve hours, both the inside and outside areas. Load them onto my computer in my chambers.”

“Data transferred, My Prince. Anything else?”

“No, Ceyla, that will be all,” said Marruk, turning back to Lamick.
 

“What are we getting through her transmitter? Are we receiving her signal?”

Marruk’s daughter had a transmitter in her arm, implanted at birth, as with all members of the nobility, as there had been a number of abductions in the past. However, it had been peaceful for a few centuries. Marruk so wished that his daughter had not been selected.
 

“No, Your Highness. We’re sure to locate her signal once we’ve left the orbit. Shall I see to it that the
Cordelia
is prepared for take-off?“

“Immediately! I want to set off within the hour.”

Chapter 2

Kanavirius System, Xevus3

On the streets of Betzlawk

8th day
 
of the month of Jakus in the year 7067

Federation Time

Keela felt as if she were in a science-fiction movie or in an awful dream. Some of the creatures were truly grotesque that she saw walking through the streets of Betzlawk, the main business town and capital of Xevus3, a desert planet. For example there were some that had shaggy blue fur and would have reminded Keela of the Cookie Monster on Sesame Street if it had not been for the disturbing fact that they had two heads and four arms. Other creatures had long necks that they could extend and detract
,
with bumps on their heads such as giraffes have. Some were lizard-like, others looked like over-sized insects. Many had humanoid bodies with greater or lesser deviations from the human race.

 
“What a freak show it is here!” murmured Amber behind her.

The women, chained to one another, were accompanied by six Ormkas - the name of the aliens that had abducted them - and they kept the curious onlookers at bay with nasty looks and blatantly threatening gestures.

“Yes, the sight of these specimens of horror gives the words ‘suitable for pairing’ a still more awful dimension,” said Amber, horrified.

“Don’t remind me,” Keela begged her, shuddering. “I really don’t want to think about it.”

Keela could still not believe what had happened to her. Up to now she had not even believed in aliens, and now she was walking on a foreign planet through a town filled with bizarre and, in some cases, frightening aliens - not forgetting the fact that she was to be sold at a slave market to some alien race suffering from a lack of females. She would be used as a whore and a birth machine, and who knew what sort of a monster she would hatch? The very thought of it made her feel sick, and goose bumps made her shiver. Yet again she cursed herself for not accepting her friend’s offer of joining her in Miami. Dealing with the hassle of conceited, pushy beach boys suddenly seemed a lot more attractive than it did a few weeks ago. At least her parents were spared concern about her because they had both been killed in a car accident two years before. Apart from that there were just a few friends, her boss and her colleagues, Matt and Brian. They might think that she had taken herself off somewhere. In any case no one would mourn the loss of her too much.
 

The streets of the desert town were dusty and the sun burnt down upon the women mercilessly. Keela was horribly thirsty and she was sweating as if she were in a sauna - only she was not expecting to take a pleasant, cold shower afterwards. Most of the houses that lined the street were simple clay huts, no more than two storeys high, but there was a modern high-rise complex directly next to the spaceport where they had docked. There were hotels there, and restaurants, bars and an entertainment district.

They had moved further and further away from the better side of town and this area was looking considerably run-down. Their guards directed them into a compound where there were several huts. The women were pushed into one of the huts and the door was bolted behind them. It was dimly lit inside, but light enough for them to realise that they were not alone. Four more women and a young girl, that Keela estimated to be about ten years old, were also in this small room. The women moved together a little to give the new arrivals space. One woman was clearly older than the others. She was already grey and had a few wrinkles, but her figure was slim and muscular, and she appeared to be anything but fragile. She indicated to Keela and the others to sit down.
 

Keela, Charly and Amber sat down whilst Lory remained standing, her arms folded. Keela could feel the girl looking at her and turned towards her. The girl’s eyes were of an unusually intense turquoise colour. She had put her black hair into six thick plaits and she was wearing a turquoise-coloured tunic over cream-coloured, soft, leather leggings. The other women had simply cut dresses made of colourful material. They were visually different from the girl: the back of their heads went into a point and they had strangely round ears that stuck clearly out of their black hair.
 

“I’m Ayakala,” the older woman introduced herself. These are my daughters, Jukuzala and Niminita. And that’s Bebenile. And the little one is Solima.”

“I’m Charly, that’s Keela and Amber, and this is Lory.”

Jukuzala passed the women a bottle of water and they gratefully quenched their thirst. Only after they had finished drinking did the old woman speak again.

“We’re from Uluah2. Solima is from Karrx7. Where are you from?”

“We’ve been abducted from planet earth,” answered Charly.

“Earth? I don’t know that one!” said the old woman, shaking her head. “But that doesn’t mean anything - I don’t know many planets.”

“How is this place guarded? How many men come when they bring food? Are they armed?” asked Lory.

Ayakala looked blankly at Lory.

“Why do you want to know?” she asked.

“It must be possible to escape,” said Lory, irritated. “I can easily knock out two men, even without weapons - if I could get hold of something to use as a weapon, then more than just two.”

Ayakala shook her head. Both her daughters did the same.
 

“Even if you managed to get out of this hut, you’d then need to get through the gate, and that’s guarded. You don’t stand a chance,” declared the old woman.

“When we were brought here there were only two men stationed there,” interjected Charly.

“There may be only two guards but in the hut next to the gate there are at least another six,” said Ayakala. “Anyway, where would you go? Outside Betzlawk there’s nothing but desert for miles and miles. If you were able, by some miracle, to get to one of the other towns, you wouldn’t be made welcome there. But it’s suicide, anyway, to go out into the desert. It’s even hotter there than it is here and there’s no water for miles and miles. You’ll be hunted down. They’ll find you sooner or later in the town and there’s no way into or out of the spaceport without being checked, and what’s more you can’t book a journey without credits. So it’s better to hope that you’ll have a good master who’ll treat you well. Believe me.”

“I’d rather die than let myself be owned by some damn alien,” hissed Lory.
 

“She’s right. We’re never going to get home again anyway. It’s hopeless. Who knows how far from earth we are? And where are we to find someone who would take us back?” said Amber.
 

“I can think about that when I get out of here,” Lory insisted. “Anything is better than being bought by a damn alien and then bearing its little monsters.”

***

Hours passed by and no one came. The conversation amongst the women had long since subsided and Lory was driving all of them mad by constantly walking back and forth like a tiger in a cage.

“Can’t you just sit down at last?” said Keela, irritated. “You’re making me completely dizzy walking round in circles.”

“I don’t understand you,” Lory blurted out angrily. How can you sit here, totally calm, and wait till someone sells you to the highest bidding slimey or hairy alien? There is no way that I’m going to give up without a fight.”

“Perhaps it’ll be easier to escape once we’ve been bought,” interrupted Keela. “If we appear to be weak and helpless maybe the one that buys us will be less watchful and when the right moment …”

“If, if, if!” Lory interrupted Keela. “If you wait for someone to serve you the return ticket to earth on a golden platter you’ll never do it.”

Keela sighed. She knew that Lory was right, but what Ayakala had said also sounded reasonable. The fact was that they had no chance of escaping from this damn planet, let alone returning to earth. It was driving her completely mad. She would have preferred it if they had landed on a jungle planet. She would have had confidence in her ability to push her way through a jungle, but unfortunately she would have to pass on a trip through the desert.
 

“Someone’s coming,” said Amber urgently.

The women fell silent and they could indeed hear footsteps approaching the hut. The door was unlocked and two men appeared with a woman carrying a tray of food. The men were largely humanoid, except that their hair was green and they had small, wart-like pock marks on their foreheads and temples. They were large and powerfully built but they were carrying no weapons. Despite this Keela felt that it would be impossible to get passed them.