Bound to the Alien Engineer (Alien Brides Book 2), page 8
With a gentle heave, he pulled her into his lap where she put her head back down against his chest just as Aidan arrived.
"Uh, guys?" Aidan said, squatting down between Alvola and the captain, almost in Trina's lap. "We've got a problem and need to go now. I've got updated coordinates but we're out of time."
"Out of time?" Trina demanded. "What do you mean out of time? Where are you going?"
Alvola shifted Min-dee around so he could move without waking her. She barely weighed anything at all and the hardest part was keeping from jostling her too much. Captain Cretus was waiting for him and Trina was doing her best to ask questions without disrupting the panel.
She bolted back and grabbed Min-dee's bag and ran after them out into the lobby. "What do you mean you have to go? Aidan, where the hell do you think you're going?"
"It is time for us to return home," the captain said, pulling Trina to his side. "Our time here was limited, anyway, and things have progressed such that it has ended sooner than we anticipated."
"Well, that's a bunch of cryptic bullshit," Trina said. "What the fuck is going on?"
"Everything is loaded?" the captain asked Aidan.
"Yeah, including all the last-minute stuff," he said, glancing at Alvola.
"Excellent," the captain said. "If you'll come with us, I'll show you what's going on."
Alvola raised an eyebrow but did not object to the direction the captain was going. His mate was still in his arms and he had no intention of putting her down anytime soon.
"Captain," Aidan said, obviously ready to protest.
"The lady asked a question, Aidan," Captain Cretus said, tucking Trina's hand into his elbow. "It's only fair to give her a full explanation."
"This is going to cause so many problems," Aidan said.
"We already have problems," the captain replied. "This can't possibly make it worse."
"Famous last words," Aidan said.
They'd walked out the doors with barely a pause, Chaegar ahead of them on the way to the shuttle. The lights were all on and Alvola could hear the engines running.
Just as they stepped onto the field around the shuttle, a figure stepped out from behind the closest cars and held out a hand.
"Stop right there," a feminine voice said.
Chaegar turned his head towards her slowly, adjusting his course to approach her. The Captain kept moving towards the shuttle, pulling Trina along with him.
"Step away from the vehicle," she said, her voice trembling slightly. She was holding out a thin object that wavered slightly with her breath.
Alvola watched Chaegar walk up to her, put his hand around the one holding the object, and catch her as she fell into his arms. He took whatever was in her hand, folded it to slip into a pocket, then slid down to lift the unresponsive woman over his shoulder.
The captain already had Trina up the gangplank and Alvola was close enough behind her to hear the exclamations of alarm and delight. She was faced away from the entrance and they were heading further into the shuttle when Alvola entered, followed closely by Chaegar.
"What happened?" Alvola asked, hitting the command to close the door with his elbow.
Chaegar shrugged. "Overcome by recognition, I guess. I understand it now, though."
"Is she alright?"
"I'm gonna take her to medical and get her checked out. Where are you putting yours?"
"The bunks should be mostly unoccupied. She's had a long day, I'm going to make sure she gets some rest before she has to deal with everything else," Alvola said.
"What do you think the Captain's going to do?" Chaegar asked, following him down the corridor to the sleeping quarters.
"Keep her distracted until we're off the ground, I hope," Alvola said. "Or keep her away from command, at least."
As spacious as the shuttle was, there still wasn't room to waste. The medical bay was directly next door to the crew sleeping quarters. Theoretically, it could handle a crew twice the size of what they took down to the surface, though it wouldn't be comfortable for a long trip.
The lights were dim when he walked in to the quarters and felt around for the commands for the lower bunk. It slid out, dropping the hammock like mattress that would absorb all the bumps of their takeoff. Alvola secured Min-dee quickly and pressed a kiss to her forehead. He'd make sure nothing hurt her. She was too precious.
When he stood up, Chaegar was leaving medical, shaking his head and laughing. At Alvola's upraised eyebrow, he pointed into the medical bay. He moved past and headed out to the command deck to start the pre-launch checklist.
Alvola looked into the medical bay and saw the reason for Chaegar's laughter. The person running the medical bay was the ships head nurse and she had a human male acting as her assistant while she checked over the woman Chaegar had brought aboard. For not understanding the language she was speaking, he was surprisingly good at taking direction.
With his own smirk, Alvola made his way to command, working his own way through the pre-flight checklist. The updated launch information and route off the planet was just finishing its upload to the console when Aidan joined them.
"You guys are nuts," he said, taking a seat in the captain's chair.
"Are the coordinates good?" Alvola asked, glancing behind him.
"Yeah, they're good. That's the latest from Jeff though some of that is best guess stuff. I don't have time to get better info without giving away how I got it so that's gonna have to do."
"Works for me," Alvola said and went back to finishing his list. Chaegar was almost done with his and Alvola made the announcement of their impending lift off in his own language.
"So, where do I get one of those translator things?" Aidan asked.
"Once we've left atmosphere, head down to medical. Mintonar packed a few of them and the vaccine's you'll need to board the ship."
"Sounds good. That where you secured the spook?"
"The what?" Chaegar asked and Alvola repeated.
"The spy," Aidan clarified. "The member of whatever secret government agency decided they wanted to get one of their people on board your ship."
Alvola and Chaegar exchanged glances.
"And why," Alvola asked. "Would anybody want to do that? And how do you know she was one?"
"Attractive female, identification but no badge, no visible weapon. You don't try and stop somebody from entering a vehicle with an ID and no backup. She's a spook, intended to be a spy, probably meant to sabotage or take over whatever the government thinks you're up to," Aidan said.
"And how do you know that?" Alvola asked.
"I could tell you but then I'd have to kill you," Aidan said with a laugh at their expressions. "Honestly, I'm surprised it took them this long to try and get their hooks into whatever is going on at the space station. Figure with the communications down, they decided to take this chance to get one of their own in. And, since you abducted her, they can push a rescue mission to get her back. You should probably have whoever you've got in medical check her for tracking devices. Bet she's got one."
"You can mention it when you go back," Alvola said.
Chaegar frowned. "They couldn't have known we would abduct her," he said. "You can't predict that kind of recognition, can you?"
"I don't think so," Alvola responded. "They couldn't even know about recognition; they don't have it."
"Then how did they know we would take her?"
"Aidan, how did they know we would take her?" Alvola asked, passing the question on while he waited for the last of his checks to process.
"Oh, probably because they assume you're humans doing something on the space station. Her report's going to come as a very big surprise."
He looked over his shoulder to see Aidan lounging in the captain's chair with a pad out, flipping through pages of text.
"Do I dare ask you how you know this?" Alvola asked, resigned. The kid was enjoying himself.
"Someone was bragging about getting an operative aboard the space station. Haven't pinned down an agency yet but people talk and, I swear, the alphabet agencies talk more than most."
"Do you know what they hope to gain?"
"Control, probably," Aidan said with a shrug. "The space station is a rather unique entity in our history. Designed by science fiction writers, built by a company and officially out of all claimed territory, the person who owns the company that built it is the only known citizen of Mars, though he currently resides and pays taxes in Texas, it is officially an independent entity. And that makes all the governments on Earth a little jumpy."
"That's," Alvola trailed off. "You can do that?"
"They did it and have maintained that independence for a very long time, as these things go. As such, they take their security very seriously, I'm occasionally impressed."
"Seeing as you made a mockery of our security, I am also impressed," Alvola said, and smiled when all the indicators on his panel flashed green. A look over at Chaegar showed the same and he opened comms to announce their departure.
He would have started a countdown but their window was closing faster than he would have liked so he initiated launch and hoped everybody was somewhere safe.
Chapter 13
Mindy woke to a thump outside the door of the darkened room she was in. Looking around, she was more than a little confused about where she was. The last thing she remembered was enjoying the feel of Alvola's stomach when he laughed and drifting off to sleep with the sounds of his heartbeat in her ear.
This was not a hotel room. She poked the bed to confirm and it swayed gently, something she realized she'd been appreciating before she woke up. It was a bed built for a single person and she was obviously in it alone, something else which puzzled her just a bit.
The thump sounded outside the room again and she decided it was time to get up. Pushing at the blanket over her, she was surprised when her fingers met a fine mesh net. Feeling her way to either side, it came out of the wall and attached around the side of the bed by way of some kind of fastening that she couldn't quite work out in the dark.
Giving up on the net until she found a light switch, Mindy grasped the sides of the bed and pushed herself up. Most adult sized harnesses were too big for her so the ability to shimmy out of them quickly was one she'd worked on in her career before becoming a nurse. This one proved to be no different and she was able to slip out from under the mesh and over the side of the bed.
It swayed gently as she dropped quietly to the floor and she put up a hand to stop it. A gently glowing light told her where the door was and she approached it carefully, listening for noises outside. The next thump was accompanied by angry cursing in a voice she recognized.
Reaching for the door, trying to feel for the handle, she paused briefly when it slid open for her then stepped out into the hall.
Aidan had a woman, average height, slim build, long blonde hair that had been in artful curls before the fight started, pinned to the wall. His forearm between her shoulder blades and her right arm pulled up and held against her back. She kicked at him, her foot bouncing off his calf and kicking the wall which made the thump she'd been hearing in the room.
He swore and pulled her wrist higher.
"Monkey?" Mindy asked, her brow drawn down in concern.
"Oh, hey aunty, did we wake you up? Sorry about that," he said, leaning harder on the woman he was trying to pin without hurting.
She shook her head. "No. Well, probably, but that's not really important right now. Who's this? And why is she fighting you?"
"She's a glowie," Aidan said.
"I am not!" the woman screeched.
"She attacked the nurse who'd helped her and was trying to help me with something."
"I did not!" the woman protested. "They kidnapped me! And are holding me hostage!"
"Oh," Mindy said. "Is the nurse okay?"
"She's fine," a very unhappy voice said from the open door next to them. "Though she wouldn't have been if this bitch had kept going."
"Well, that's good, then," Mindy said, backing up slightly. "Why, um, why does she think she's being kidnapped?"
"I woke up on an operating table," the woman shouted. "After they drugged me or something when I tried to arrest them."
"What?" Mindy asked, confused. "Arrest who? And why? And, okay, where the fuck are we?"
"Those assholes from the space station kidnapped us," the woman said. "We're on their ship. They're taking us back to the space station to experiment on us!"
With a sigh, Mindy stepped forward and put her fingers hard against the artery in the woman's neck until she slumped forward and Aidan was able to step back a bit and pick her up.
"Whoa," the other man said. "Didn't know people could actually do the neck pinch thing."
"Oh, they can't. I limited the blood flow to her brain enough to knock her out but she should be okay. She'll wake up with a hell of a headache but she shouldn't be any worse off," Mindy said. "There an infirmary through there?"
"Yeah," he said and stepped back to let Aidan through.
He took her through and set her on a table. There was a figure sitting in a chair, leaning on the next one over, and Mindy did a double take to see her. Body paint, she thought, and a feminine version of the costumes the men had been wearing.
"Are there restraints of some kind around here?" Mindy asked. "If not, some rope or cable should be okay, don't you think? I don't want her jumping off when she wakes back up."
The woman in the costume stood up and walked shakily over to the table, the strange man jumping to support her with a hand under her arm and an arm around her waist.
She hit a button on the side of the table and arm and leg restraints came up and folded neatly around the appendages.
"Neat," Mindy said, looking down at them. "You guys are doing a lot of R and D out there on the space station. I've never seen anything like this."
"Uh, yeah," Aidan said. "Is she really going to be okay?"
Mindy reached up and patted his cheek. "Yeah, monkey, she'll be fine. Shouldn't be out much longer, either. Now," she said, turning to the nurse. "Sounds like she hit you pretty hard. Want me to take a look at it?"
The nurse looked up at Aidan who nodded his head and shrugged. She nodded, too, and went to sit back down in her chair.
"Where does it hurt?" she asked, not sure why the woman wasn't speaking to her. When she pointed at a section of her head just above her temple, Mindy bent closer to look. Prodding gently at a slightly darker spot, she could feel the damaged tissue and saw her wince.
"Yeah, she got you pretty good. Missed the important part, though, I think," Mindy said, glancing curiously at something in the woman's hair. She leaned forward and brushed the hair away to reveal two short, bone-like nubs. When Mindy pushed them, they didn't move but the other woman slammed back and grabbed Mindy's hand.
The angry, uncertain look on her face shook Mindy.
"Those are real," she said slowly. "And they're attached. Bone deep or are they fibrous and grow out kinda like hair does? Nope, never mind, not my business right this minute."
Mindy backed up, reaching for her pockets before she remembered what she was wearing.
"So, Aidan, we probably need to talk," she said.
"Yep," he said. "I suspect we do. Is she going to be okay?"
"Far as I can tell, she's going to have a real nice goose egg but I don't think she damaged anything vital but what the fuck do I know about alien anatomy."
Everybody stilled and looked at her.
"What gave it away?" Aidan asked.
"The pigmentation goes under her hair. Lighter, like it doesn't get a lot of sun or whatever the heck the happy lights they use here are supposed to mimic cause they're certainly not fluorescent or LED, but it's there. And the horns are attached."
"Yep," Aidan said. "The horns are attached."
"So I've actually been abducted by aliens," she said.
"Abducted is kind of a strong word," Aidan said.
"Is it accurate?" Mindy asked.
"Would you have come with me if we'd asked?"
Mindy turned to see Alvola in the doorway to the infirmary.
"Guess I know why you never took the paint off," she said with a weak smile. "How do you speak English, then?"
"I have a translator that's programmed to help me learn your language," he said.
"Molly," Mindy said and gave a sharp laugh. "You have Molly and she's-"
"Mom's fine," Aidan said quickly. "Really, she is. Part of the deal for me helping them is I get to come out and see her for myself which is why I'm on the shuttle."
"And they're taking you home eventually, too, right?" Mindy said.
"That's the plan," he said, coming to put his arm around her.
She stiffened and forced herself to relax. "So the crazy woman wasn't all that crazy," she said. "She just got a few of her facts wrong."
"Happens to the best of us," Aidan said. "But there was no call for her to be headbutting someone who was checking to make sure she hadn't been concussed or had any other issues."
"Better to get the lay of the land first," Mindy agreed.
"If she'd taken the time to ask a few questions, she would have seen nobody meant her any harm," the strange man said.
Mindy turned. "Is that what happened to you? They were helping you and you kept your cool?"
He looked embarrassed and ran his hand behind his neck. "Ah, no," he said. "I'm, uh, I'm a pilot and I was really interested in the shuttle because it looked like it was built to be some kind of flyer rather than, like, a bus or something? I was looking around to see how they'd done it and wandered where I wasn't supposed to."
"You got caught trespassing and they took you prisoner," Mindy asked, an eyebrow raised. "You have a name?"
"Captain Michael LaGrange and technically, yes. I am definitely a prisoner," he said with a nod.
"And not AWOL from a, what, 3-day pass to go to the convention?" Mindy said. "You're the astronaut they were advertising, right?"
"Actually, the convention was part of the assignment. I was there to answer technical questions about space flight versus flight on Earth and the direction I think the technology is heading." He looked around and shook his head. "I think everything I said this weekend was wrong and I am very glad to be here to correct that."
