Page 40 of Stripped By the Alien

Even now, I want to reach out and touch that smooth skin. And for some reason, I hope there’s just the wreckage. Despite the obvious advantages, having another like her would be… troublesome.

I turn around and leave the chamber. There’s work to do.

Yet for the first time in many cycles, I find myself wishing there wasn't.

12

- Nora -

The membrane closes behind Krix’vorr.

And the room immediately feels empty. He filled it so completely that now it’s as if something vital is missing, like a wall or a ceiling.

“He has an intense way about him,” I state, letting out a breath. “How do you rate him, Lucius?”

The drone starts his rotors again and buzzes up from the floor. “A brute, a physically imposing male from a primitive culture that lives on death and torture and plunder and extinction of other species. A predator backed by a swarm, clearly in a leadership position supported by fear and the total obedience and subservience of the crew. An absolute menace, a psychopath and likely mass murderer.”

“Uh-huh,” I reply drily. “But how do you really feel?”

“Sorry,” the drone says. “But I’m not feeling too much sympathy for that locust right now.”

“You okay?” I glance over at him. “He squeezed you good.”

Lucius spins up his rotors as if testing them. “I’m fully functional. No damage was sustained. I was built to stringent military standards.” He does a lazy circuit of the room. “Captain, are you going to do some recon while you’re not in a cage?”

“Cage?” I ask. “You think he’ll put me in one?”

“You only barely avoided being brutally tortured,” he points out. “And I’m still not clear about why it was stopped. So yes, I think you can expect to have your freedom reduced even more. You are entirely at the mercy of that locust and his whims. The situation is unlikely to improve.”

I walk over to the opening where he left, touching the strange organic material. I have an urge to run after him, to stay close. Somehow these totally alien surroundings are less alien and less chilling when he’s near. “I don’t think I can do much intel work right now. It won’t let me out.”

“Let’s at least explore this room.” The drone zooms up to the uneven ceiling with its strange light.

It’s a big room for a spaceship, far larger than even the Admiral’s quarters in any Space Force vessel. It’s probably even bigger than the mess hall on Scout Station Six in orbit around Earth. To my spacer eyes, it looks like a waste of room, but the ship is immense. I only got the shortest glimpse of it when I was thrown into space, but it was like a massive mountain behind me, red and black and gray.

The trophies line the walls and show how much Krix’vorr values killing and plundering.

So it’s not that I think Lucius is wrong, it’s that I think maybe I can find a way to deal with the locust. He hasn’t killed me yet, and that weird lightning thing is obviously alarming to both him and the torture lobster.

“Lucius,” I say and point up at the wall. “Can you get a hold of that?”

It’s a banner of some kind, showing what I assume is alien writing, but which could also be drawings or hieroglyphs or something like that.

He buzzes over. “You want me to cut it down?”

“Cut it or lift it or whatever, just help me get it.”

He reaches out with his little manipulator arm. I go up on tiptoes to grab the lower part of the banner and pull with all my weight. There’s a screech as the alien fabric rips apart, leaving me with about half of it. Even then it’s the size of two bedsheets sewn together, but the fabric is as coarse as burlap. It’s crudely embroidered with threads as thick as spaghetti strands, but at least it’s not transparent, and it’s much more supple than the silly cardboard the locust gave me to wear.

I discard the cardboard and the clingfilm, then wind the banner around me like a wrap. “I wish I knew how to tie a sarong,” I mutter as I struggle with the stiff fabric.

“I can help,” Lucius says, hovering beside me. “First take the other end…”

It takes me a few minutes and a good amount of swearing, but by the end I’m wearing the banner. I can even move around pretty well in it, and the coarse fibers seem to soften when rolled and crunched up.

“Not exactly Dior, but close enough for military work,” I mutter when I’m done. It makes me feel better to wear something that could pass as actual clothing. “You’d think it wouldn’t be necessary to strip me all the way bare.”

“It was a medical emergency,” Lucius points out. “The locust had to see what he was working with.”