The Fate of Nations Book II The Harvest

SARAH E. ELLIS

THE FATE OF NATIONS

Book II-The Harvest

Published by Laura Gamble Watson, Norfolk, Virginia
Copyright © Laura Gamble Watson 2005

All rights reserved

Cataloging – In-Publication Data

Ellis, Sarah

The Fate of Nations

From The Walking Princess Journals

ISBN

Printed in the United States of America
This book is a work of Fiction. Any and all resemblances to persons, places or
actual events are purely coincidental. Some city names and locations were
altered by the creativity of the author's imagination.

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Dedication

For Brandon, my wonderful son – he knows why.

S.E.

Part I - Harvest Time

The Approach

Mikel and The Grays

Leslie

Rat boy

The Harvest

Darius The Pilot

Leslie Goes to the Beach

Part II-The Meat Plant

Adam from Crios

A Walk Through Hell

The Trip Home

David from Crios

Part III-Captives

Rufus

Ralph

D-Day

Claudia

The Denial

The Ritual

Part I

Harvest Time

“
Where is the boundary between the real and the
surreal?”

S.E. 2005

The Approach

Ammond raised his sensor towards the small silvery craft as it made it's rapid ascent into the night sky. From where he stood, high atop of a hill overlooking the red sea, he could see the twinkling sunlight as it glanced off of Mikel's silvery craft.

Ammond had been on Liftun for eons. He and two other of his kind had traveled here when the planet was still primal and new.

Liftun had changed a great deal during his stay there. The wondrous colors that painted the surface had dulled over the long years.

The air was less fragrant, the sea was no longer the deep, blood red, that had so bewitched him on his arrival. Liftun had begun to take on the drab hues of every other planet now and Ammond longed to experience the growth of another newly formed planet, and to gather the fresh new knowledge of a fledgling world.

He must stay here a while longer, however, and watch the planet's eventual demise. It's suns were already beginning to dim, and for Ammond it was a welcome sight. It meant that his task was almost completed. He could move on soon.

After the final triple sunrise, his time here would be over. The suns would collide soon after and incinerate this dying world. Ammond preferred it that way. A quick, fiery, death was always more preferable to him than the long, slow, agonizing death of most planets.

The other two of his kind had decided to leave during eons past, leaving Ammond to contemplate the planet's strange dying beauty alone. Ammond was never alone unless he chose to be, however, and that was not often. His many sensors kept him in contact with any time or any being that he chose to communicate with.

The being Mikel intrigued him. Ammond

watched him closely from a great distance, as was his way. He had seen him many times before on the planet's surface, collecting and examining specimens of the indigenous plants of Liftun.

Ammond sensed something very different about Mikel. What it was, Ammond couldn't say just yet, but something about Mikel was extraordinary. Ammond decided to discover who this little being was. He felt
compelled
to bond with Mikel.

Mikel did not sense that he was being followed.

He did not realize that he was being tracked through the deepest reaches of space. Ammond was sure of this knowledge. Ammond held his sensor higher, pointing almost straight up as Mikel's ship sped away from the planet's atmosphere.

Mikel sat at the controls of his small vessel, busily plotting his trajectory. He was scheduled to rendezvous with Serel in three days time. He quickly plotted the coordinates to the Abell Galaxy, where his patrol ship awaited his return.

Mikel stood up and turned away from the small control panel. His bag of specimens lay tucked safely in the compartment next to his chair. He pulled them out carefully, marveling at the brilliantly colored assortment of plant life he had collected.

He pulled out each clear plastic container and studied each specimen carefully. The specimens were doing well. They had neither wilted, nor did they show any signs of distress. He held the plants gingerly, turning them in every direction as his keen eyes looked for the tiniest sign of stress.

He held his breath as he peered at the small multicolored flower he held, to prevent his breath from contaminating it. Mikel had been taught to do this many ages before, when he was still a young one.

He painstakingly labeled each plant and placed them into the cryogenic freezers, located in the floor compartments of his ship, for safe keeping until he could deliver them to the lab on board the patrol ship.

They would join the thousands of other samples that he had gathered from Liftun's surface over the many years that he had been visiting it.

His cataloging tasks completed, Mikel resumed his seat behind of the small control panel that guided his ship on it's course to the Abell Galaxy.

He watched out of his wide viewing window as the stars and planets raced by. He suddenly thought of Sarah, and he chuckled. Sarah always got sick when she watched the stars speed past the ship in the wide expanse of space. Mikel missed her right now. He liked that little bean.

Darius watched the planet's approach. His hands involuntarily clenched and unclenched into fists. His nails clicked rhythmically as he sat in front of the large viewing window, gazing out.

The small blue orb's wobbling orbit was a

welcome sight to Darius and his crew. He studied it intently, screeching softly to his fellow Grays.

The almost imperceptible wobble in the planet's rotating orbit, visible on the control screen, was a tell tale sign. This planet was ripe for harvesting. Darius sat back in his large pilot chair, satisfied. It would be months before they entered orbit, but now he knew for a certainty that their trip would be most profitable.

There was a lot of work to do before they reached the blue planet. The crew walked through the ship busily preparing the purging stations. The feeding troughs had been lined up neatly in the cavernous holding bays and the gelatinous sustenance had been prepared for the captives. The restraining bands were stacked into the smaller craft, paired neatly together and within easy reach of the Guardians who would soon be employing them.

The meticulous examination of each gathering ship and each of the smaller ships had been conducted successfully on their long flight and the final preparations were being carried out by his crew, and by the crews of the forty thousand additional craft that accompanied his.

Darius orchestrated the entire operation

effortlessly. His age and experience were evident in every decision he made. He commanded with the sheer confidence that only age and experience can establish.

Darius screeched softly as he gazed at the approaching planet, avidly watching the unmistakeable wobble in it's orbit, eagerly anticipating the coming harvest.

Mikel and The Grays

Silence...it was the silence that woke her up, the soundless vacuum of space...Silence... interrupted by the sound of drip...
PING
water. The silence was both deafening and
keen
as it pressed in on her, relentlessly, from all sides.

Silence wrapped her in it's cottony, thunderously quiet, cocoon. It smothered her firmly and completely under it's thick, woolen, weight.

Silence pulled steadily at her eardrums, painfully elongating them, as she strained to hear even the slightest sound, other than that relentless drip...
PING

sound.

Sarah opened her eyes. Her eyelids felt puffy and swollen and sore. Her hands lay motionless by her sides. A a spongy, slimy, surface greeted the sluggish, awakening, nerves in her palms.

She blinked her leaden eyelids slowly. Blurriness, soft and fuzzy and disorienting, clouded her vision. Her stomach felt queasy. Nausea crept stealthily up her throat, threatening to erupt through her clenched teeth.

Her head thudded dully and her eyes burned with a gritty needling pain, as if they were covered by a fine coating of sand. Her eyesight slowly came into focus, revealing a huge, fleshy, orb that descended from the top of the chamber she lay in.

The orb hung only inches from her face. It dominated her vision, a large, bulbous orb, covered by a translucent, milky colored film. Warmth emanated from it, along with a soft orange glow. It looked both menacing and comforting.

Sarah's head throbbed and the smell of wet decay drifted into her nose. She tried to lift her head. It felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. She, slowly, experimentally, tried to turn it. She felt it move slightly.

She tried again and felt small knife blades of pain shooting into her temples and radiating through her eyes, but her head had turned slightly, enough for her to see past the glowing orb that had eclipsed her vision.

Sarah saw that she was lying in a small rectangle shaped compartment. It was coated with a dirty beige, colored, porous substance that was both slimy and spongy, on three of the four sides. On the left side of her was a thick, smooth, panel with strange symbols that consisted of lines and dots in different arrangements.

Where am I,?
was her first terrified thought
.
Her breath quickened and her heart raced alarmingly. She closed her eyes and tried to think, but coherent thought refused to coalesce in her panicky mind..
How did I get
here?
her mind yammered.
Where is here? Why can't I
move? What happened?
Sarah struggled to recall what had happened, and discovered that her mind was a shadowy void, as dim as her surroundings.

She lay there wide eyed and terrified, staring at the fleshy orb that hung only inches from her nose, listening to the steady drip...
PING
sound.

A wet, sucking noise came from the filmy, panel, side of the chamber. Her breath caught in her throat.

The panel opened, parting neatly as if it had been cut cleanly.

The opening revealed an unearthly gray creature that had thrust it's head through. Sarah screamed in horror. The Gray screeched at her in a raspy, guttural series of shrieks and grunts.

Sarah's mind unhinged. She screamed at the Gray horror. Her eyes bulged from their sockets.

It snarled at her. Its' thin bluish-gray lips pulled back hideously when Sarah looked into its black alien eyes. Sarah felt her breath freeze in her lungs. Her heart froze in quick terror. The Gray screeched a loud, shrill shrieking note and produced a leathery looking rod with a barbed end. Sticking it through the hole, it's head had occupied, it touched her bare arm with it.

Fiery pain shot through her arm and raced

towards her heart. She could feel the rapid, jagged, path that it took through her veins. Liquid fire bolted into her heart in waves of blue anguish and she vomited.

The force of the stinging blow sent her body arching upwards. It threw her head to the side as she dropped back down, loosing the vomit on the floor of the chamber she lay in.

She lay panting, her breath came in ragged gasps.

She saw her arm swelling rapidly from the weapon's sting, and lost consciousness. When she regained her senses, the Gray being was still there, hovering beside of her motionless body, staring at her. It was a cold horror to behold.

It's head wasn't shaped right. Sarah's mind registered the fact even in her mortal terror. It had crazy unnatural angles on it, making it almost square in appearance.

It had a mouthful of long fang shaped teeth that it gnashed as it studied her. It had long, curled claws that were banded with yellow and green colors. The Gray clenched and unclenched its' long fingers rhythmically, making its' claws click sickly in the silence of the space.

Sarah fainted. The sensory overload promptly shut her mind down. Her brain's own self preservation mode had kicked in and she was now on autopilot. Her tense body relaxed as her mind sought friendlier turf.