J McKenna - Slave Planet

Kate sank back into her seat. Dammit! I knew I should’ve just gone ahead! For a moment, she thought she should go anyway and to hell with Hunter. Her training convinced her otherwise. To violate a direct order would be career suicide. She had invested too much of her life in the space agency to do that. Yet sending Ally down alone was frighteningly risky.

Shit!

“OK, suit up. Looks like we have our marching orders. You’re going alone.”

Kate thought the commander looked a little stricken when she heard the captain wouldn’t be coming along.

Standing by the pod ten minutes later, Ally realized she would not be able to wear the spacesuit. “I can’t jump out and fire weapons with a helmet obscuring my vision. Not to mention that I’d have to take my gloves off first.”

The captain didn’t like it until Ally pointed out that Greta and the doc also would be without suits for the return trip. Because of the tight quarters on the Letanya , there was only one spacesuit per person, plus one spare, and the away team’s suits were probably left behind at the other shuttle site.

Kate had a better idea. She ordered Ally to stow her suit aboard, plus the captain’s and the spare. Once the humanoids were overpowered, three of them could dress for the return trip. If the canopy had been cracked on landing, at least the three would be able to survive the trip back. Ally nodded. It made sense. “You’ll be OK up here without a suit?”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

In twenty minutes, Ally was ready, strapped into the pod and awaiting the captain’s signal. “ Letanya to Eagle Two, can you read me?”

“Loud and clear, sir.”

Kate checked to make sure Ally’s subcutaneous transponder was operating normally, then released the pod. “Good luck, commander.”

“Roger, captain.”

A short time later, Ally dropped through the atmosphere and extended the wings, then checked her heads-up display for the landing site. Three yellow dots blinked at the edge of the plain. Good, they were clear of the trees. She was going to catch the humanoids flatfooted.

“ Letanya , this is Eagle Two. Have sighted the party. Am going in.”

“Roger, Eagle Two. Good luck,” Kate said, letting her fingers cross again.

Ally guided the pod in, taking aim at the yellow dots, then sliding to the left just before she touched down. Ally wanted to be close enough to see the expressions on the faces of the natives—and close enough to stun them as soon as she cleared the pod.

“My god! Look!” Beth pointed at the pod racing in, bouncing to a landing ahead of them. Jorja cheered. Greta just opened her eyes and smiled weakly. Skinny shouted something to Lumpy. The man jumped from the cart and began to pick up stones. Both men rushed toward the pod.

“Shit! They don’t seem exactly intimidated,” Beth said.

“Come on! They stand no chance against a phaser!”

The landing was near perfect. The pod slid about a hundred yards past the startled group. As soon as it stopped, Ally hit the release button and began unbuckling herself. She heard footfalls and was shocked to see the humanoids rushing the ship. She grabbed two phasers. Dammit! They aren’t supposed to do that! They’re supposed to be terrified!

Ally jumped out and fought panic as she brought the phasers to bear on the huge running men. She fired both at once and was shocked to see them stagger for just a moment before rushing on again. Frantically, she dropped one phaser and twisted the control knob from “1” to “2” on the other, then raised it to fire at the leading man.

The blast caught him in the chest and he took one step and fell heavily into the sand. Ally swung the gun around just as something flicked into her field of vision. She felt a sudden pain in her forehead. She pulled the trigger just as she blacked out.

Ally awoke to gentle rocking motion. For a moment, she thought she was back aboard the pod, being buffeted by upper atmospheric winds. Did I rescue them? She opened her eyes fully to see quite a different scene. She was wedged in the back of the caged cart with the other three women. All were looking at her with concern mixed with disappointment.

They were also all naked. That shocked her until she realized she was naked too. Her hands were tied in front of her.

“Are you all right?” Beth leaned over to touch her head with similarly bound hands. Ally winced.

“What the hell happened?”

“These guys are pretty good at throwing rocks,” the doctor explained. “One of them hit you before you could drop him.”

Beth decided not to tell her how Lumpy and Skinny stripped the unconscious woman of her clothes, talking giddily to each other when they discovered she was the same as their other captives. The three astronauts watched silently as the giants fondled Ally’s breasts and pussy, paying particular attention to her lack of hair. For reasons they didn’t understand, they didn’t rape her while she was out. They simply loaded her into the cart with the others and rode on.

“The stun setting didn’t stop them,” Ally muttered. The enormity of what happened hit her and she began to cry. “I was the captain’s only hope,” she sobbed. “Dyson wanted to come with me, but Hunter overruled her. We could’ve taken them easy with two of us!”

Briefly, Ally explained the plans they had drawn up and NASA’s orders.

“We’re not dead yet,” Jorja said. “They didn’t touch the pod—it seemed to scare them, and not much scares these guys. If we can get away, three of you can fly out of here.” She didn’t say what she was thinking—that the pod might soon be swarmed with villagers, all curious about the alien bird.

“But now they have all our weapons! We’re helpless without them.” She sat up. “Shit! Why did they take our clothes? They can’t possibly be interested in us. I mean, would you want to have sex with an alien?”

“We’ve been talking about that,” Beth said gently. “Best we can figure it, they’ve mistaken us for the women of their own planet.”

“But we don’t look like them!”

“Actually, we do. Yes, they have that ridge on their foreheads and more body hair, but otherwise, they appear to be a sister race.”

“How could that be? Two races two-million light years apart?”

Jorja shrugged. “Score one for the creationists,” she said, her voice laced with sarcasm.

“Don’t be so dismissive,” Beth replied. “It may be true that there’s some controlling authority over the universe. How else can you explain it?”

“So you mean, in addition to being stranded, we may become the, uh, property of these men?” Ally was appalled.

“I don’t know their customs. That’s what we were coming down to find out,” Beth said.

“Only now, we’re going to get a more up close and personal view,” Jorja said.

Kate hit the radio switch again. “ Letanya to Eagle Two, Letanya to Eagle Two.” Static hissed in the speakers. Tears clouded her vision. She called up the transponder signals and saw all four grouped tightly together, well past the pod, moving slowly into the village.

Something had gone horribly wrong and she was helpless to do anything about it. Damn Hunter! Kate knew she should’ve violated orders. This would not have happened if I had gone with her.

She closed her eyes for a moment to think about her limited options. The Letanya had a space cannon in the event it was attacked by another ship, but it did not have a weapon that could cut through the atmosphere and reach the planet. A cannon shell would simply burn up and explode eighty thousand feet up. It wouldn’t matter even if they had such a weapon—if use of a phaser was a violation of the rules, how would NASA react to a request to blast the planet? And how would that save the crew anyway?