Page 33 of Relyn (Warriors of Etlon #6)

Nora

T hree days passed, and Nora was pretty sure they were much longer than Earth days, but by how much she had yet to figure. The women here were comfortable, if a little cramped. About half of them shared a room, which told Nora that Alana was still gathering women throughout the galaxy.

Their stories were much the same. Alana was using a human woman to lure them in and drug them. They would wake up onboard a ship without any idea of where they were or how long they had been out.

That they were all human or Etlonian women spoke to a purpose that made Nora dread the outcome. There were only a few reasons to collect women, and since Alana’s crew didn’t seem interested in raping and pillaging, Nora’s imagination went a little wild.

Nora’s tablet was quite popular and had made her a lot of friends fast. Although they had limited access to terminals, no one had a library of books and vids from Earth.

She passed around her tablet, gathering information and trying to establish a timeline of how and when they arrived, and how many guards were here, and what kind of weapons they possessed.

Most of them had no idea. Escape wasn’t much of an option, considering that leaving the bubble would make it extremely difficult to breathe, and there didn’t seem to be any other civilization on this rock.

In order to escape they’d need a ship, but while the humans were clueless in how to fly, the Etlonians were a bit more experienced in space flight.

Pila, the first Etlonian she had met, knew how to fly most ships. She had been with Bright when they’d first learned how to fly, so Nora was pretty confident that if they could break out, they could fly out.

Breaking out was another matter. Most of the women seemed dead set against it. They had no more than basic firearms knowledge and most seemed content to sit here and wait for whatever fate Alana had planned.

Nora was not most. Neither, apparently, was Denise.

She’d been an engineer back on Earth, and had been in space for nearly a year.

Her husband had died only a month after, and she’d been hopping from station to station, looking for work or a ride back to Earth.

That’s when she’d met The Bitch, as they all called the blonde human that had conned them into a room where she’d drugged them.

She’d given many names, which Nora thought sounded way too familiar to be coincidence.

After all, how many women could be named Humility and Meadow?

Whoever The Bitch was, she had a tie to Etlon Two.

Nora kept her suspicions to herself, but when she suggested they do a little recon, Denise jumped at the chance.

After all, if the aliens wanted them dead, they would have done that way before now.

Despite all attempts at being sneaky, Nora drew lots of attention as she stood by the door.

Several women gasped when she popped the plate off the door panel and began to mess with the wiring.

Much like the ship, these doors were pretty much wired all in the same way, and opening it took her less than a minute.

“Now, we’re just going to go take a look around. We’ll be back in a few minutes,” Denise said. She handed over a rigged tablet system that she’d created. “If you hear that thing beep twice, I want you to make the most God awful noise you can manage, like someone’s dying in here. Okay?”

Geena took the tablet and nodded. “Good luck,” she said.

Denise and Nora headed through the doorway, which seemed unguarded. They had decided to stick together, and play the dumb female if they encountered any resistance. It always seemed to work in the vids.

The pair headed left, knowing that straight ahead led out to the main gate.

The building had very few windows, and looking at the doorways, Nora suspected that it was actually designed for less atmosphere.

It would be an effective defense if all they had to do was lower the dome and lock the doors to disadvantage attackers outside the building.

The inside could be pressurized and the atmosphere could be maintained at a comfortable level.

It also meant that if the dome went down, all the women would need to head to their quarters in order to be protected.

Right now, they spent most of their time in the open quad.

The hallway on the left opened up into what looked like a guard station with lockers along one wall and food replicators on the other. There were three empty tables that could comfortably seat four.

“Designed for a maximum of twelve,” Denise muttered.

The hallway continued out the back of the room. They proceeded and at a point Nora guessed to be opposite the entrance, there was another room filled with computers and equipment. It too was empty.

“This is control,” Nora said aloud. “Do you know how to work any of these?”

Denise sat down at the com panel. “I’m afraid to touch anything. It could be security key coded, or I could lower the dome by accident and possibly alert the guards. And I don’t think they’d be happy to find us here.”

“Reconnaissance only, then. We can come back later,” Nora said.

They continued on, finding a long hallway of doors on the next corner.

There were no signs of movement, but Nora didn’t want to be caught snooping.

It would be much easier to get out a second time if their captors didn’t know about their first jaunt.

At the end of the hallway was a door that took them into the final leg of the square that completed the compound.

“What the fuck,” Denise said under her breath.

Nora couldn’t be more in agreement. The last building was a half built state of the art medical facility, complete with multiple medbays.

They made their way through the equipment, most of which was still in protective wrapping, and it seemed to Nora that there were a slightly more than average number of smaller bays.

Either they were planning to serve a much shorter species of alien or…

“They’re expecting babies. Lots of them,” Nora said out loud.

“They’re gonna fucking breed us,” Denise said.

Nora and Denise looked at each other and silently agreed that it was time to go back and share that information with the rest of the women.

They quickly retraced their steps, encountering no one and slipped back inside the inner compound, just in time to hear the muffled sound of a ship’s engine landing outside the dome.

Nora took a lounging seat and forced herself into some breathing exercises to calm her beating heart.

The doors slid open and two of the black mud aliens carried in an unconscious human woman and parked her right inside on the ground.

None of the other women seemed concerned.

This was apparently a common occurrence.

A blonde woman appeared behind them. Her arms were crossed over her chest and she surveyed the room with such disdain that it was clear this was the one that they called The Bitch.

The two aliens retreated and the blonde turned to leave, but Nora wanted to know how much she actually knew about what was going on.

“So I hear you know Jane,” Nora called out. The woman snapped back around. Nora’s guess that she was related to the women on Etlon 2 was evidently correct.

“What do you know about Jane?” the woman asked.

Nora shrugged and got up to walk into her room. Let her stew a little. It didn’t take much time before the woman followed her right into her quarters.

She asked again, “Jane. How do you know Jane?”

Nora picked up her tablet and sat down on her bed. “I know her. And Meadow. And Humility.”

“What lies have they told you about me? Did they tell you I killed my husband? That they left me to rot in space? Did they tell you that they abandoned me?”

“Honestly, I have no idea who you are,” Nora said truthfully.

The woman sat down across from Nora. “That’s not surprising at all.

The way they treated me? Just because I didn’t want to fuck that alien brute?

And then, when he died in a tragic accident, they blamed me and shipped me off to space.

Left me to fend for myself after the captain was murdered and if Alana hadn’t taken me under her wing, I would have been raped or worse! ”

Nora watched her carefully as the woman turned on the tears at the drop of a hat.

She’d had students like this before, manipulative and borderline sociopathic.

At the very least she was narcissistic, and having met the others, Nora expected that the claims of her killing her husband were probably true, especially when she was luring women into some sort of sex trafficking ring.

But that was the last thing that she wanted this woman to think.

“I was shot and shipped to Etlon 2 without my permission. Then the Mahdfel had the nerve to declare that since I was sent with their technology, I was apparently their property now,” Nora said.

“Only until it’s convenient. Then they have no problem shipping you home,” the woman replied. “But I can’t go home. The shame of returning after associating with- with them!” The tears were coming on full force now.

“I didn’t though. I was kidnapped! My mother is probably frantic,” Nora said. If she had any doubt of the reality of the tears, it disappeared as quickly as the tears did. Never try to out drama a sociopath.

“You can’t go home,” The Bitch said. “You are going to be an exalted mother. Alana says all your names will be written in the anals of history. Forever.”

It took every ounce of her being not to go English teacher on her and explain the difference between being remembered forever and being an asshole.

“Annals or not, can I at least call my mom and tell her that I’m safe?”

“How about this, you write down her deets and a brief message, and I’ll see if I can deliver it.”

“How do we know that you delivered any of our messages?” Geena called from behind the woman. Since their little conversation had started, the woman had tightened their circle around them.

“I’m a woman of my word!” She had the gall to sound offended.

“The only thing you’ve done since we’ve met is lie to each and every one of us,” Pila shouted.

“If you wanted babies, why didn’t you just ask for volunteers? There are plenty of women back on Earth that would jump at the chance to get off of Earth to become surrogates,” Denise asked.

That information sent a gasp and a rustling of discontent through the room. The Bitch looked around, suddenly realizing that her guards had left and she was on her own surrounded by a bunch of women that were getting more pissed off by the second.

“Is that what we’re here for? Making babies? With what? Those black things?” someone shouted from the back.

The Bitch began to back up, all while tossing her head, flipping her long blonde hair in an offended fashion.

“It’ll be a better life for all of you!” The Bitch shouted. She gave up her attempt to be cool and collected and sprinted for the door.

When it closed behind her, Nora stood and surveyed the women again.

“How many of you ladies are in favor of a jailbreak now?” she asked.

Slowly, but steadily, the entire company raised their hands.

“Looks like it’s time to start planning.”