Stolen By An Alien Page 20

  A headlamp flicks on.

  The alien grins. “Come with me if you want to live.”

  Holy shit.

  He just did an Ahnold impression.

  The movie quote is like a burst in my brain – a flash of past life normalcy after what just happened – what is happening, what will happen to Crispin back there, where we just… left him.

  Another alien intonates, “We are here to save your ahhhss.”

  At first, for a second I can only shake my head – a scream from behind us snaps me out of it though and I shout, “Guys, they know a human! Let’s go for it.”

  “They’re Na’riths,” says Dohrein.

  “What does that mean?”

  “They are pirates.”

  “More?” I look around us. “Good pirates? Better pirates?”

  “Not like we have much choice,” Dohrein grates as he stares down the rescue team. “Our female is not to be shared.” Then he throws a guilty look my way. “Unless she wills it.”

  I don’t even have to verbalize the Hell No. Arokh’s growl rips from his chest, rattling the very air. As in actually. As in literally. As in legit DO NOT FUCK WITH THIS ALIEN.

  Conflict settled.

  “No worries. We have our own.” And the speaker for the team grins even wider. “Don’t worry, human. We’re ‘good’ pirates. Though our human prefers the title of ‘Resale Technicians.’”

  “Sure. Right. Noted.”

  Arokh is breathing more flames, and I see the defacto leader of the rescue group jerk his chin to urge us forward before it is lights-out again. I can hear them moving into formation, forming a barrier as they hustle us forward. I can hear the leader’s boots clomping on the floor as he keeps pace with Arokh, and he flicks on his lamp again as he starts speaking to me - which I especially appreciate when I consider that nobody else is using lights; only I can’t see in the dark. From the cursing and stumbling that happened when the lights first went out, not every alien chasing us has the ability either.

  “We have a human female as our own. We received your hobs’ distress ping signal and were hoping that in exchange for assisting your ahhhss off this ship, you’d help our female.”

  My mind is spinning wildly. “Uh, alright. Sounds fair. What’s wrong with her?” Anything, whatever, let’s move.

  “She says she is giving biirth.”

  Freak. Out. “Are you serious! She’s in labor? Like right now?!”

  “Birth?” Dohrein pants. “Like the Rakhii’s whelp litters? Not eggs?”

  “You will help her successfully giving biirth?”

  “You save us all in exchange for help?”

  “Yes.”

  “We need to rescue our other hob!” I get it out just as Dohrein and even Arokh shout out versions of the same demand.

  The leader makes an uncertain face. “He was left behind? With the mob of pirates?” His voice says there isn’t much point in trying to find what’s left of him, and I think of Crispin’s wings. My voice comes out tight and on the verge of tears when I add the frosting to my plea. “There might be another human-Gryfala on this ship too.”

  That gets him. “Where?”

  Arokh’s voice is rough when he grinds out, “Don’t know. Hiding, apparently. Pace away from my female.”

  The leader shoots him a quick look, which sends his headlight right into my eyes, momentarily blinding me, but he immediately widens the gap between us, staying close enough to converse yet far enough away to ensure that overprotective aliens don’t get too bent out of shape.

  A crackling sound comes from the shoulder of his suit and he speaks one word back before he relays to the group; “Brace.”

  Everyone stops and reaches for the wall, where – how handy – there are little spaces perfect for bracing a palm. Arokh transferred me so that I hung mostly from his neck as he clamped me with one arm, the other keeping us in place.

  And the whole ship rocked.

  The leader spoke into the shoulder of his suit some more, and guys wheeled off and headed back the way we’d just come.

  Dohrein was hunched over just ahead of us as we waited. I pushed against Arokh’s hold to silently communicate that I could get down now, but he only squeezed me tighter.

  That’s when we heard something odd, an echoed snarling coming up on us in the corridor but just out of view. “Time to move.” The leader began trotting again but he didn’t seem worried about this new development. And finally, we rounded a corner and came to our rescuer’s docked ship.

  “We made it!” I whooped, and I looked up to see Arokh’s very dirty, very anxious, haggard face go a little softer at my words.

  “And we have control of the pirate’s ship,” the leader commented as he stopped and turned expectantly, so that he was facing the docking entrance we’d just stepped through.

  The noise was growing louder and closer. I held up a finger. “Is uh, anyone else getting nervous about that?”

  Arokh grabbed my finger, folding my hand into his. But he was looking at Dohrein. Dohrein had his head cocked, surprise on his face.

  And that’s when the team came through, carrying Crispin on their version of a stretcher board. He was growling and snarling.

  “Crisp-“ I started, but that’s when I saw that on top of him was… there was a woman on top of him! He held her tightly, and she was gripping onto the board and also covering as much of him as she could, and it was hard to tell if she was protecting him or he was protecting her.

  “Do not touch her!”

  “I remember when I said that,” Arokh muttered, his eyes equal parts amused, relieved, worried.

  We followed them and when they set the stretcher on a platform in their medical room, she let go of the board and threw her arms around Crispin’s neck. He buried his hands in her hair, murmuring to her.

  We stared.

  Well, well. Way to go Crispin!

  Everyone looked at me. I realized my hands were in the air, so I dropped them. “Did I say that outloud? Sorry. But seriously! Yay, Crispin!” The boy apparently worked fast.

  And my teenage puppy-love alien relaxed and grinned at me. Big. Yeah. Way to go, Crispin. I smiled back.

  “Is she injured?” Dohrein approached his friend quietly.

  “Get back,” Crispin warned low. Menacing.

  Dohrein jerked as if he’d been physically socked in the heart.

  Aww. Poor guy. Guess… there’d be no sharing of this girl for them.

  “Human female?”

  I turned to the alien that called for me. The girl on the stretcher hadn’t responded at all. I worried about her level of emotional trauma, I mean, she’d been with the pirates longer than we had, apparently. Alien captivity and alien raids weren’t all they were cracked up to be. “Uh, yes?”

  “Will you come tend to our female?”

  I saw the concern on the leader’s face, and was really, really glad for this woman who had herself nice guys. Who very much cared about her, cared about her delivery. I mean, what if she’d instead ended up with a ship full of pirates like the ones we’d just escaped from…

  “Lead the way,” I said.

  Arokh was right behind me. And, after a moment, Dohrein turned away from Crispin, and jerkily moved to follow us.

  ◆◆◆

  “Then, they… they asked me… if I, if I… needed a pool to release my offspring in!”

  The last part was said on a scream.

  Another one.

  Helping a girl give birth was deafening work. And whenever she managed to grab my hand during a contraction, she damn near squeezed all my fingers broken. Really quick I decided to treat her guys like chess pieces and moved their stunned bodies strategically to her sides so that she grabbed ahold of them instead of me. And when shit got real, without being told that we sometimes did it on earth, the leader asked her if he could get up behind her and hold her. She’d said yes please.

  Awwwww, how cavity-inducing was that?

  “Oh, come on, Be
th. That’s not even a ridiculous question. I mean, they probably know aliens that spawn in water or something and you’ve heard of water birthing right? They do do that back home.”

  “Only… freeeaks!” she screamed again.

  “What are freaks like?” Dohrein asked.

  I tilted my head, and Arokh, ever at the ready, wiped my face so that my hands could stay sterilized and clasped together in front of me like I’d seen in television shows.

  Yes. Beth’s main source of health care was brought to her by a trained-by-television-binging ‘armchair doctor’ professional.

  “Freaks is an insult. Not a species. She means that any woman who gives birth to her baby underwater is not exactly mainstream.”

  Ha, punny.

  Her guys had an “ah” moment, a couple of them nodding a little, and another looking thoughtful.

  “How does everything look?” she panted.

  “Not much different than a goat,” I assured.

  It was a little different than a goat.

  Namely, goats didn’t scream nearly this much.

  I thought for a moment. And mentally amended: unless they were Nubian. Nubians could seriously get their scream on.

  “I can’t believe this is happening!” she wailed. “I’m going to deliver with the help of a goat midwife!”

  Yep. I was playing catcher. And I’d only done this with goats before. She was a little hung up on that. “Hey, I could tap out and a freaking alien could be doing this instead.”

  “You are insulting us?” one of her guys looked troubled as he petted her hand. Not angry. Hurt.

  “No! No – sorry. ‘Freaking’ can also be a… it can emphasize… Just trust me. It has a lot of uses and meanings.”

  He didn’t look convinced.

  “It’s even used in place of the word ‘sex’.”

  Now he looked like he really didn’t believe me. Beth gave a weak laugh. “It’s true. Wow, I never thought how flexible that word actually is. We do use it for everything.”

  Her guys relaxed then, and I felt relieved. I didn’t want them to think I’d been insulting them. They were clearly devoted to her. And they were so worried about her – how amazing was that?

  Beth screamed again. And the guys at my shoulders and behind me gasped.

  “What? What’s wrong?” she panted weakly.

  “Nothing,” I glared around me and everyone fell silent. “I think this is the first time they’ve seen a baby crown before.”

  “Oh!” She sounded like she’d laugh, but the sound turned wrong as she sort of grunt-screamed again. A few more good pushes like that, and I caught my first – and I kind of hoped ever (as in, this was the only one I’d ever catch) human kid. There were something like four or five pairs of hands flying under mine in case I missed – and it wasn’t like there was much room to fuck up with them all crowded around me. “Back off, I got it, I got it!”

  “It?” Beth’s voice was really weak. I ignored her though. Her baby wasn’t crying. I worked quickly, pinching off cord, using towels to wipe the goo away from its face and concentrated on its nose and mouth. I moved to the table. “Snot sucker!” I called. It was slapped into my hand before I could even finish asking.

  The device I’d described for them, told them was absolutely necessary to have (in goat birthing definitely and although I didn’t know much about human birthing, I did know hospitals used them too) got them using some sort of pre-fabbing machine to make me a mini turkey baster, not quite as soft as what earthlings used to pull mucus out of a baby, but it would have to do.

  Everyone had scrubbed up, and donned medical gowns. I fought hysterical laughter when I envisioned what the gowns would have looked like if she’d fallen in with six armed aliens or four legged aliens instead. Those of us who had been involved in the fight had taken the world’s fastest showers too, so I no longer had alien blood in my hair and Arokh’s burns looked to be nearly gone once the charring was washed away. Crispin and his girl were in another med bay. I think he’d have wanted to see a human being born, but he was in pretty rough shape and really only held consciousness long enough to ascertain that these guys weren’t going to hurt his girl. She had wandered over once, tentatively, but she’d stayed on the periphery and had raced back when Crispin woke up shouting, terrified she’d been taken.

  That boy had fallen hard. And fast. I hoped things worked out.

  I toweled off the baby and when everything looked as good as I could make it, I took her over and placed her on her momma’s chest.

  Beth cried happy, relieved tears and the guys converged to coo and fawn over them as I prepared to help with the second part.

  “What are you doing?” one of them asked me, looking alarmed. “Is there another?”

  “Um, I hope not.” Hell. I hadn’t thought of that. “Beth? You’d have told me if you were preggers with twins, right?”

  “Thank fuck I’m not,” she fell back the whole quarter of an inch she had between her and her crowd of guys. One was still behind her, cradling her cradling the baby. Okay, that was damn cute.

  “Then why…”

  I looked at the guy who was so genuinely puzzled. “Afterbirth, man. All the stuff that held the baby for nine months has to come out now.”

  Now the worry was back in their faces. “It isn’t over?” this from the guy she was now gripping onto, and his voice squeaked a little.

  “Nope. And yep. It hurts her too.”

  One placed his big hand on the baby’s back to gently keep her in place as her mom began to push again.

  “My kind goes through this too after whelping each pup in the litter. Unless they share a life-sack,” Arokh rumbled quietly at my ear.

  “Mmm,” I replied. Because what the hell do you say to that?

  “Don’t push on my stomach,” Beth begged, and she sounded tired. Man, did I ever feel for her.

  “Don’t push on her stomach!” one of her guys relayed, like I wasn’t between Beth’s legs and this close to her mouth hearing every one of her words for the last, oh, six hours.

  “I got it,” I assured. “I wasn’t going to.” Was I supposed to? I was trying to minimize worry, but I decided to voice my ignorance anyway. “Do we do that?”

  “Ha, guess you don’t with goats, eh?”

  A cloth was carefully passed over her head, and the tears wiped again from her face. Wow, her guys were great. If putting people under pressure showed you their mettle, these were gems. Nothing but caring and concerned and tender. Oh, and they were badass rescuers too.

  “No. You stroke her back if she is having trouble, but you let her do it when her body is ready…” …unless there is a problem, I finished mentally. Then I mentally smacked myself. I didn’t even want to entertain the thought of problems. Shit like that didn’t even need to enter into the ethos right now.

  “In class, some of the women had…” she breathed deep, “Done this before. Some said the nurses would push on their stomach to expel the placenta and they said it hurt worse than giving birth! I was so freaked.”

  “There’s that word again,” one murmured, and that made her smile. Me too.

  “Look how big that baby is! You popped it out fine - I think you’ve got this, Mom.”

  “Don’t you mean… maaaaahhhm?” she teased, making the sound of a goat call.

  “Hey now. Don’t knock it. I could have been totally clueless down here instead of being relieved that I didn’t have to worry about horns.”

  “My kind only has hornbuds at birth so that the mother is not injured,” mused Arokh, sounding worried. Worried for goats? He was cute too.

  “No, I was kidding.”

  “Ha!” gasped Beth.

  I grinned, and Arokh mopped the sweat from my forehead and tightened my ponytail for me. “I was just teasing her – goats don’t have horns either when they are born. The buds erupt about three days later.”

  Beth gave one last heave and out came the afterbirth. And if I never smelled or saw or touc
hed one again, I’d be just fine.

  “You’re a mess,” she teased me, her voice weak.

  I looked down at myself, blood and fluid and more on me – even a tiny partial baby handprint in goo. Aww? “Yeah, but you should see the other girl.”

  Beth grinned.

  A tendril of sticky hair was carefully picked out of her face and gently brushed behind her ear before lips came down on the side of her head. Gah! Wow, I hoped she liked these guys back because her heartthrobs were crazy about her. He murmured something to her, and the guy behind her rubbed her back.

  “What do you do next?” Dohrein asked me.

  I made a popping noise with my lips. Tasted what I was afraid was some Beth-gunk. Man, I needed another shower. “Clean up and let Mom sleep. Oh! Need to get the baby to nurse first.”

  Beth covered her face. “So help me. If you call them udders-“

  “I would never!”

  She dropped her hands and gave me a skeptical look.

  “Teats. We farmgirls also call them teats.”

  She started to laugh then grabbed her stomach. “Oh shit! That hurts. Don’t make me laugh, don’t make me laugh!”

  “Sorry. And hey – I just remembered; a baby nursing helps release chemicals that can help with afterbirth delivery.”

  She stared at me.

  I shrugged. “Whoops!”

  Her jaw jutted a little.

  I held up my hands. “I’ve been off the farm a few years, I forgot the order a little. If that kid had come out with four hooves I promise the first thing I’d have done was set her under you and help her latch on.”

  “I said – no making me – laugh!” She grabbed her stomach and reached for her crotch.

  I winced. “Sorry.” I motioned at her chest. “Want help? I’ve never done it with a woman before but I’m pretty sure we can figure it out.”

  “Why does that sound so dirty?”

  I smiled, but I could feel it was a tired one, and I knew she was even more exhausted than I was. Evidently, she’d been at it for a long time before they picked us up.

  We got the baby fed, the area cleaned up, and when I picked up the bucket that held the placenta goop and wondered aloud what I should do with it, Arokh shared that his people buried theirs. It was a rite that the father performed in thanks to the Creator for each little pup.