Taken by the Aliens Read online

  The Herstrakaa spoke to the Draquun, and Mina had a hard time even making out the language that he spoke. A reply was given, equally unintelligible. Mina stared at the floor, awaiting instruction, trying desperately to remember what would happen next if she had followed the correct etiquette—and what would follow is she had not.

  “Arise and conduct yourself without shame. You shall walk around the parliamentary ring to your place.”

  Mina stood up. A final humiliation awaited her, she realized, recalling the protocol that followed the spanking. She began at the far end of the parliamentary ring, where she had entered. She lifted her eyes and met the gaze of each Draquun—all males, as their customs prohibited females from holding parliamentary positions. They barely tolerated females of other species and only for diplomatic purposes. Each Draquun’s eyes bored into her, burning her from the inside out with humiliation. She felt fairly certain that some of them snickered as she bowed her head at each of them.

  The walk—she would have called it a parade—around the ring took no more than five minutes, but it felt like an eternity.

  When she at last took a seat in the box reserved for corporate agents, her entire body was tingling with the clash of burning humiliation and the cool arousal that would not be quieted. She felt mildly ill.

  A Draquun in purple robes rose and moved two seats to sit next to her. He was clothed in the traditional attire of a diplomat, and she recognized the patterning on his face: it was her liaison, Marmeth.

  He sat down in silence. Mina sat up straight and stiffened her spine.

  “Mina Groza of the BKG of Earth,” he said, in excellent English. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Marmeth of the Draquun, your liaison.”

  Mina turned to him, shocked by his breaches of etiquette. He had extended his hand to her.

  She looked at it warily, then reached for it.

  He smiled—another very un-Draquun gesture. “I am fully assimilated in standardized Human etiquette,” he said, “so there is no need for Draquun formalities with me. I apologize that I was unable to reach you upon your arrival and detain you before you made… such an error. I was told that you were briefed in Draquun customs prior to your arrival, but the error was nonetheless my own and I humbly request your forgiveness.”

  Mina faced the parliamentary ring. “Yeah, well… just try to have my back from here on out, and it’s all forgotten.”

  She didn’t bother to look at the Draquun to see how he was handling her informal English, because she was still pretty peeved.

  She turned her attention to the proceedings and tried to put the whole sordid mishap out of her mind. It wasn’t easy, because she could feel the eyes of the Draquun present looking at her from time to time, and because her bottom was red-hot and flared up in pain occasionally.

  She stole a glance at the Herstrakaa who had punished her but didn’t dare to look at him for long. He was large, even for a Herstrakaa, and the features of his face showed no signs of emotion. The scars on his vibrant skin served as testimony of a past as a warrior, and melded titanium images—art that, like tattoos, was implanted into the wearer’s body, but as a bonded metal rather than ink—indicated that he was a superior warrior with numerous kills and honors.

  Like most Herstrakaa, a conquered people, the warrior wore thick bracelets made of metal and the blue stone of the city walls. They were a symbol of his status as a servant, and oddly—or at least Mina thought so—they were worn with pride. They connected him to a Draquun in a relationship of service, but also brotherhood, and a lot of other complicated interconnections that defied Mina’s imagination. She hadn’t dwelt on them long, because they definitely didn’t concern her, but she remembered that they had seemed very strange.

  Well.

  It wasn’t going as great as it could have been, but hopefully the worst was over now. This would definitely amuse Paolo when it got back to him, and that burned Mina up with fury. At least Marmeth was here, and he seemed reliable, and she’d been told he was trustworthy.

  It just would have been nice if he’d shown up at the spaceport.

  CHAPTER 2

  Voso was unsettled throughout the first phase of parliamentary proceedings, and if there was an emotion he liked least, the feeling of being unsettled was it. Voso did not feel fear, and his many years as a warrior had also wrung from him nearly all emotions that were of no use, impatience and anger among those he had worked hardest to conquer. But “unsettled” could be an asset, and so he had never wrangled it to submission in his psyche.

  He knew that the Human female was looking at him from time to time. His vision, like all of his kind, was passed to his race through the aviary branches of their evolutionary lineage, and he could not only see, but see clearly, those things at the edges of his own sight that the Draquun and Humans alike described as “peripheral vision.”

  Each time her eyes went to him, he felt a pang of remorse, and a pang of something else that he could not understand. Both sentiments were foreign to him, and they opposed each other violently. He did not like the feeling of unsettledness this created, and yet he could not dismiss the Human female from his conscious thoughts. This, too, was a foreign problem to Voso: as a warrior, he had trained himself to think only of the mission or task at hand, only of orders, only of an ultimate good. Distractions—particularly irrelevant distractions that caused un-useful feelings—were excised with haste.

  Mozok arrived late, perhaps escaping the notice of the dim-sighted Draquun with his stealthy movement. Perhaps not, but then, it didn’t really matter: Mozok could arrive at anything whenever he wanted, without repercussions. Even if he had crossed the parliamentary floor and defecated on it, no one would dare subject him to sanctions of any kind.

  When the tones of the intermission sounded, Voso waited, seated, momentarily, as was his habit: the true feelings of Draquun males were best ascertained at these moments. He watched, but his mind returned continually—and therefore, so did the focus of his vision—to the Human he had punished. His palm itched with the memory of the feel of her soft Human skin, and a familiar pang of regret and shame filled his chest. Voso did not believe in hurting the weak and frail, even if custom demanded it. He had tempered his spanking a great deal because the creature’s flesh—curiously monochrome, pale as the stone of the city buildings—seemed like it would shred if he punished her properly.

  He reassured himself she seemed fine. He knew a great deal more about Humans than he let on, and a great deal more than any species would expect from a Herstrakaa. He was much more intelligent—intelligent in the way that Humans and Draquun were intelligent—than most knew.

  Most. Mozok was the exception.

  Voso rose and approached his lord, who remained seated with a curious expression on his face. He waved a hand to dismiss Voso’s formalities, before Voso could bow his head. Mozok had not allowed Voso to complete these gestures in the entire time that Voso had been his servant, for Mozok had no patience for such things and thought them stupid. Their bond was irrevocable, Mozok liked to say, so he didn’t see the point of Voso—who towered above Mozok by almost two feet and was inarguably strong enough to break Mozok in two with minimal effort—engaging in what Mozok called, behind closed doors, silly tributes that meant nothing.

  But Voso was a Herstrakaa of honor, and so he always tried.

  Mozok indicated that Voso should sit beside him—something Voso needed no invitation to do, but the pair liked to keep up appearances in public. Voso looked straight ahead, one part of his mind ever-watchful, as he leaned toward Mozok to speak in a whisper to his lord.

  “The Human made a customary error,” he whispered. “And was punished.”

  Mozok’s face did not change. He folded his long fingers together and brought them to his lips, a gesture he had acquired after watching many, many hours of recordings of Human business interactions. Voso doubted that Mozok was aware of this habit, or the many others that he acquired instinctively from many different hominid species. It was, in part, what made Mozok so successful, especially with Humans.

  “What error did she make?”

  “She attempted to cross the parliamentary floor.”

  Mozok lifted his chin and then lowered it. “Strange,” he commented.

  Only then did he turn his attention toward the Human, and he stared openly at her. His gaze eventually attracted her attention, and she turned her head slowly to better see him. Her knowledge of customs seemed to have improved after her punishment, because she did not attempt to meet Mozok’s gaze directly.

  “She is seated with Marmeth,” Mozok observed, disdain evident in his tone.

  “Marmeth stated that he is her liaison,” Voso informed. His hearing was sharp enough to have overheard the exchanges between Marmeth and the Human, whose name was Mina Groza.

  Mozok did something unusual, turning to Voso to speak confidentially. “And how is it that her liaison failed so completely in his advice?”

  Voso bristled. “Marmeth is a known sthiiskaa,” Voso spat in hushed tones, using a Herstrakaa word that had no exact translation to Draquun. “Traitorous snake of no discernible allegiance” was the translation he had been given, with amusement, by Marmeth himself. The aged Draquun had seemed to know that Voso had wanted the word in order to describe him, and because of his character, had not seemed bothered by the descriptor.

  “Indeed,” Mozok said, in a tone that Voso knew meant that Mozok was thinking, many moves ahead as he so often did. There was a lengthy pause while Mozok tilted his head ever-so-slightly in curiosity—one of his few telltale gestures that indicated a rare interest in the subject at hand. “And how do we call this Human?”

  “Mina Groza,” Voso answered.

  “And is she mated?”

 
Voso paused. The answer was, technically, unknown to him. But mated Human females—they called this phenomenon “marriage”—typically did not travel to far-flung galaxies, and usually wore metallic objects on their fourth left digit.

  “Unknown, but signs indicate that she is not,” he said, wondering the reason for Mozok’s question. He experienced a confusing flash of sexual attraction again, but he knew that Mozok’s tastes did not usually run to Humans… and therefore, neither could his own.

  Mozok grunted, a response that Voso could not interpret.

  “She is colorless and weak, like all female Humans. It is a curiosity, this Human insistence upon sending physically weak specimens to negotiate, with no protector.”

  Voso tipped his head in affirmation. He found this Human custom perplexing and distasteful. Herstrakaa were naturally protective, and Voso conformed to the caste of his species that defended the weak as a matter of honor. It had appalled him to punish the Human when her error was clearly a result of her lack of a guardian.

  Mozok was still looking at Mina Groza, thoughts glittering behind his eyes. “She is pleasant to look at, if frail and weak.” He turned to Voso. “What are your thoughts?”

  Voso did not care to reveal his “thoughts,” which were little more than base and unintelligible feelings of arousal and pity. “She is pleasant to look at,” he agreed cautiously. “The Humans value intelligence over physical prowess, not unlike the Draquun. She is likely a formidable adversary in negotiation.”

  Mozok grunted again, but this time Voso knew that it was a grunt of amusement. He was fond of remarking upon this value system of the Humans, and its inherent contradictions. If they valued intelligence so much, it was curious, Mozok would say, that they did not possess enough intelligence to know that physical dominance was a necessity. If Humans were so smart, they would pair their intelligent individuals with others at least somewhat capable of physical protection.

  They always had a bit of a laugh when Mozok said this, because even the largest and most physically capable Humans were not even a match for the average Draquun, unarmed. Weapons and technology, naturally, changed this calculation, but if they ever found themselves in a position of “real” combat, they would be demolished.

  Mozok lifted his fingers and rolled them in Voso’s direction. “I direct you to observe Marmeth, and the Human, this Mina Groza, as intently as possible. I do not trust the sthiiskaa.”

  Voso moved his head in subtle affirmation again, pleased to have a clear directive. And pleased in a way he could not interpret, that it involved the Human Mina Groza, whose reddened, soft skin remained as a feeling in the memory cells of his hand, fluttering to life and spreading throughout his body, inexplicably arousing.

  CHAPTER 3

  Mozok was mindful of the Human as she rose and walked calmly—this time obeying all protocols and customs with confidence—to face him in negotiations, conducted as per Draquun custom upon the parliamentary floor with the full panel of senators observing.

  Perhaps he had misjudged her, for if she had been rattled by her punishment, or the faux pas that led to it, she seemed to have recovered. He detected only confidence in her mannerisms, and her biological indicators—pupils, skin, muscle control indicated minimal distress.

  This piqued Mozok’s interest before she even began to speak. He had experimented, tentatively, with physical relationships with several Humans, but he had found the experiences wanting and unsatisfactory. That had been decades ago, and he had not felt even remote interest in Humans since. It was strange to entertain the sentiment now.

  But as the negotiations began, Mozok focused upon his true goal—and the priority above all things—the business at hand. The city of Old Celox was a pristine and an aesthetic jewel. No city like it existed anywhere in the charted universe, and Mozok, an artistic, creative soul at heart, possessed an artist’s affinity for it, but also a sentimental, protective love for it.

  That the Draquun parliament would rush such an important negotiation was offensive to him, though he understood that the Humans, based in a Temporal Region several gravitational factors removed from Astrogoda-9, perceived the negotiations from their own temporal perspective and wished to move them along faster. Their time was moving at nearly twice the pace, a point he intended to call attention to in negotiations. Humans were particularly obsessed with time, and the idea of losing it. If they vacationed in Old Celox, a week would pass here, while two weeks passed in their solar system.

  This also admitted a danger that Mozok alone seemed to foresee. A “slowed” time zone provided potential benefits to those, like the Humans, who possessed sufficient resources to engage in inter-system travel. The aging and the diseased—anyone living on what the Humans called “borrowed time”—might flock to the city as a means of facilitating a kind of life extension, a way of surviving to a later date on Earth while enjoying a lengthy vacation.

  And once Humans got an idea like that, they developed it, and it consumed them, and the idea and the Humans infected the place like a cancer. They had barely managed to save their own planet from total annihilation—not from war, but rather from reckless consumption and accrual of wealth above all other values.

  Mozok himself was astronomically wealthy—the wealthiest Draquun on any planet. But unlike the Humans, the Draquun placed greater value on other things, like honor and service and loyalty and custom. Capital could only purchase material goods in Draquun societies: care, support, medical treatment, help, security… These things could not be purchased with money, but instead only with honorable conduct. The Humans invariably failed to understand this crucial cultural difference, even when they tried their hardest to accommodate it in order to strike deals such as the one before them now.

  The Human apologized profusely for her inability to master the Draquun language, through the untrustworthy Marmeth. This buoyed Mozok’s mood somewhat. He himself was adept enough at Human English to understand it fully and make few errors while speaking, but he was the sort of Draquun who cautiously guarded all information, particularly his own talents. One could never know when one’s perceived ignorance could be a tremendous asset. And today was just such a day.

  As Mina made her case for the BKG arrangement, which involved the lease of coastal land from a single Draquun male, a known recluse and anti-Herstrakaa who had little interest in the symbolic importance of Old Celox or the fate of the city itself. He lived underwater like many Draquun, and so the fate of the shores and land likely did not concern him.

  Mozok listened intently to both the Human and Marmeth. Mina Groza had done her research well, which was surprising given her outrageous breach of protocol at the beginning of the session. She understood Astrogoda-9’s Neutral Space Agreement, but most importantly understood the ins and outs of its most important clause: that Earth corporations and even individuals could establish developments on Astrogoda-9, so long as the local and worldwide governments approved via their own legal and customary frameworks, the land was not purchased outright but leased (though there was no time limit on the lease), and that no Astrogodan treaties were called into conflict by the agreement.

  Her understanding of custom and tradition was her weakest area, he realized, though it was not as weak as it may have seemed. Mozok could not be sure, but he felt confident that Marmeth’s translations were a little off. This could not be blamed on Marmeth’s abilities. He had been raised with a Human caregiver and had lived for a great deal of time on Earth during the Great War.

  No. If Marmeth’s translations were poor, and they seemed to be, it could not be blamed on his ability to translate correctly.

  Interesting, thought Mozok.

  It was the sort of thing Mozok excelled at: identifying how to get his own way, even if it was not the method he preferred.

  He would have much rather been able to make the rational case to the sitting parliament that the deal would wreak havoc on the city of Old Celox. Mina, however, seemed to have preempted this move, and was rapidly disemboweling most of the arguments Mozok had planned to make. The current parliament was not a rational one, so he was already despairing of his first plan.