Prisoners of Death Read online

  This book is dedicated to all of the dreamers

  who stare up at the heavens every night and wonder…

  From: Jake Sarasin, recently retired Senior Correspondent for Name of newspaper or what not.

  Dear Editor of the National News Service:

  It is at the behest of my best mate, Dr. Page Calder, PhD, that I am contacting you at this time. He is convinced that my written accounts of our recent adventures in the wilds of outer space, titled Voyages of the Seeker, would make interesting reading for the public. I don't tend to agree, but I did promise Page that I would contact you before trashing my notes.

  To that end, please find included in this query copies of my notes on "little green men" from outer space. First and foremost, they are not "little green men". At least one of those alien creatures that no one believes in, but always make endless movies about, is a cute little feisty brunette who pilots a hopped up spaceship cheekily christened the Lightfire Seeker, a dour blond man mountain who guards her against all comers and a tall, brooding dude with the all the charm and finesse of a crocodile with an toothache.

  I am a journalist and war correspondent with a long and impressive, if I do say so myself, resume. Despite this fact, when I was picked up with the aliens as a prisoner on an alien spaceship full of giant talking slugs (I kid you not!), I never intended to chronicle my adventures with Captain Tegan Vtira, her brother Ardammt Vture and all the other characters in the Fortaran Galaxy (aka the Milky Way). Yet I find myself impressed into this service by my aforementioned best mate and find myself in possession of the completed manuscripts for four of the many outlandish, yet scrupulously accurate, tales of my, and Dr. Calder's, recent adventures in space.

  I, and Dr. Calder with me, will soon be returning to the wiles (This in not a mistake in spelling or usage. Trust me, I have met a lot of folks in outer space who are plenty wily) of outer space. Consequently, please direct all further communication to my colleague, Keely Caldwell. She doesn't believe in "little green men", her words, not mine - not anymore, at any rate - and is absolutely certain that I am as mad a March hare. She might not be far off the mark, at that. She's also convinced that my lengthy "disappearances" amount to nothing more than "chasing skirt", as she so colloquially terms my forays into the wild black yonder. Still, Keely has agreed to retrieve and collate all of my correspondence until I again make Earth fall in Tegan's hunk of junk ship, the Lightfire Seeker. It is kind of Keely to do such for me, considering I keep insisting that my trips are to a dizzying kaleidoscope of other worlds in myriad solar systems instead of a little cottage in the country with a gorgeous brunette as she so doggedly assumes me to be doing. Ah, well. Perhaps I will gift her with a signed copy of the first book when, and if, it is published.

  Thank you for you kind consideration of my humble scratchings and, as Tegan always says, may your orbit always be a true one.

  Nelda Arlene Dunlap Copyright ©2019

  All rights reserved. No parts of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any form, both know and unknown, without express permission of the author and publisher.

  Publisher's note:

  This book is fiction. Any similarities in regards to characters, places, people and incidents is purely coincidental or used fictitiously

  Chapter One

  “Caught”

  "You're gullible, Page. Do you realize that?"

  "Why, Jake, don't tell me you don't believe it has happened or could happen to you."

  Jake gave Page a look that was somewhere between a grin and a sneer. "Good, Lord, man," he groaned, rolling his eyes towards the star-studded velvet of the night. "How can you swallow it? Nobody is picked up by aliens, for Christ sake's."

  Page tugged a hand through the curls that wound around his head like black springs and frowned at his friend. Jake was a head taller than Page and as blond as a Nordic god. Sinewy muscles bulged in his arms and strained against the fabric of his jeans, a witness to the stories he had chased the last decade as a journalist cum war correspondent. But all Page saw was a man so obstinate he wouldn't believe in an alien or much else, for that matter, unless one walked up and bit him on the butt. Even then he'd probably ask for three forms of identification and a note from the alien's mother, if it had a mother, that is.

  "Of course people are picked upon by aliens, Jake. Articles are in the paper and on the internet practically every day attesting to the fact."

  Jake was grinning at him in his infuriating way again and Page didn't like it one little bit. "You mean fiction, pal. All of those stories are hogwash. So called reporters make them up to sell as many papers as they can to the fools who fall for that kind of garbage."

  "I don't agree, Jake. The same scenario has been recounted by dozens of different people all over the country from many walks of life. I just can't be a coincidence. There has to be something more to it all."

  "There isn't. It's all simply nonsense," Jake scoffed, rising from his lawn chair and heading towards the back door of his small wood frame home on the outskirts of town.

  "Then how do you explain the sightings?" Page called through the open kitchen window from where he stood at the edge of the brick patio, sipping a glass of ice tea.

  "Mass hysteria," Jake returned, pouring himself another glass of tea. "They're all crazy. Or maybe it's a conspiracy to drive us sane folks nuts."

  He paused to await Page's inevitable rejoinder. This was subject they argued about frequently and Page always ended the discussion by insisting Jake would learn his lesson when aliens picked him up. Then Jake would laugh heartily and they would move onto another topic to argue over. So when Page didn't holler back on cue, Jake found himself mildly disappointed.

  "Page,” he called as he carried his ice tea out the back door. "Hey, old buddy, it's your line. Speak... What the hell?"

  The glass in his hand slipped between suddenly numb fingers and plummeted to the patio where it shattered to bits, sending tiny shards of glass, ice cubes and amber brown liquid shooting off in all directions in a sparkling explosion.

  But the mess at his feet lay forgotten to soak through Jake's tennis shoes while he stared opened-mouthed across the patio, his blue eyes wide and amazed as the mammoth spacecraft hovered a hundred yards up like an ugly black cinder spit up by a coal furnace.

  "Run," Jake screamed at Page. But he didn't budge. Instead Page stood rooted to the patio brick like a weird tree, and stared, transfixed, at the huge dusty ebony edifice aloft not unlike a deer pinned in the headlights of an oncoming car. "Run," he screamed again, louder this time, and sprinting across the patio, dove at his dumfounded friend's legs just as a spray of light as red as the blood pumping in Jake's veins beamed down on them. Jake and Page hit the grass edge of the patio and rolled under an apple tree. A bare second later, the crimson light began to pulse as if alive with electricity and the two stunned men watched in shock and horror as Page's tea glass, which he'd dropped when Jake tackled him, hung suspended in the scarlet glow like a side of beef from a meat hook and suddenly shimmered in a shower of sparkles and started to fade like mist in the midmorning until the glass, tea, ice and all vanished into a void of nothingness. The ugly dark spaceship hovered for a moment longer, as if searching for something more, before the red spray extinguished instantly like a light switch being flicked off and the ship shot off into the blackness of night like a demon bull out of a shoot.

  Jake and Page sat side by side under the apple tree, the expressions on their faces reminiscent of a couple of little boys who'd just finished an all night marathon of old spook movies and were now afraid to go to bed. Page was the first to recover, sort of. He turned to Jake, who looked as white-faced as he himself still felt and said. "On second thought, Buddy, mayb
e you're right. Maybe there isn’t any such thing as aliens."

  Jake snorted and leaned back against the tree trunk. "Sod off, mate."

  ****

  They were running. The two of them. A man, tall and slimly muscular, his long uneven white blond hair whipping across terrified dark blue eyes in the chilly early morning breeze. Long slim legs carried him across the squelching mud and a wide mouth sucked cool air into burning lungs.

  Beside him the girl ran, keeping even pace with the man despite lacking over a foot in height on him. Well shaped legs propelled her forward as the two ate up the field, diving for the screen of the trees. As they shot between two oaks - eighty years old if they were a day – the girl threw a look of triumph at the man, her wide dark denim eyes shining with life in a pretty round face surmounted by a small nose and a full lipped mouth. A crown of hair the shade of polished copper tangled halfway down her back as the two picked their way through the trees to the center and small clearing carpeted in pine needles and canopied by the sprawling branches of a camp of ancient oaks.

  They were running. Away from the dull black orb of the escape pod that had slapped into the field before a tidal wave of mud and field rocks. Away from the sounds of strange animals calling to their kin. Away from the men that led the beasts on ropes of colors and spoke barely intelligible strings of sounds into communication devices, that squawked back other threads of strange sounds. Away from the open area of the field, devoid of noticeable planting in the early warm season of this planet. Away to the relative safety of the far off – or it had appeared so – copse of low branched trees.

  Breathing hard from running, the woman sank down on a rusty log overgrown with a pillow earthy moss. She looked up at the man. Exhaustion stood out in her dark blue eyes like a tangible thing.

  The man, tall and slim, crouched on his muddy booted heels at the edge of the clearing, near the foot of the log. He was furiously searching the area with anxious eyes the same dark blue as the girl's eyes.

  The girl leaned her torso down, hanging her head between her knees, and dragging in slow sweet breaths. The man heard the change in her breathing, sensed the shift in her body and turned to look at her inquiringly, worriedly.

  Staring tiredly at the tiny green leaves strewn across the clearing, the girl straightened, and catching the man’s eyes on her, smiled slightly, shaking her head.

  Visibly relaxing, the man continued to scan the area with those dark denim eyes..

  “They will find us,” the girl's voice was strong with just a hint of a strange accent.

  The man didn’t turn. “I know,” his voice was deep, the same accent stronger, mixed with worry and obvious clipped anger. “Where are we?”

  The girl made a face somewhere between a grimace and a smile. “Earth.”

  The man rolled his eyes to the treetops far above as if the girl had been ridiculous to state the obvious. The knew they had crash landed on Earth. The question was, where on Earth?

  “Culli?” the girl asked, her brows folding down in misery.

  Still crouched, the man shuddered violently at the shoulders, his hands balling tight on his knees. “There was no escape for Culli. You know that.”

  A hard blue stare at the man's crouched back. “But,” the girl protested.

  The man jumped to his feet. “Silence! I hear something coming this way.”

  Immediately the girl was on her feet. Shoulder to shoulder with the man.

  They were listening. And they could hear the sounds of rapidly advancing pursuit. They could hear the men talking to each other and to communicators. They could hear the quadruped creatures calling to their fellows and growling. They could hear the leaves on the trees rustle and snap as the men and their barely restrained creatures entered the copse of trees. They could hear them coming closer with every tree they passed.

  The girl shot a hasty glance over at her companion. "Ardammt.”

  Ardammt waved a hand, silencing her. He too had heard the others approach and was scanning the clearing, weighing his extremely limited options.

  The girl was still listening. The men and their beasts would break into the clearing soon. “Ardammt,” she reminded him more urgently, more impatiently.

  Ardammt frowned at her. He heard the howling creatures and their controllers. He didn’t need her to remind him. He jumped to his feet, turning towards the far side of the clearing and starting towards the regiment of ancient oaks beyond. “Come, Tegan.” he told Tegan, but as usual she was not beside him but already moving several yards ahead. “Tegan!” he called. As usual, his warning Tegan ignored.

  The beasts and their handler were being down on the two.

  “What are they?” Tegan wondered, dunking under low hanging branches.

  The man shook his head, shoving some of those same branches aside with a snap. “Animals. I don’t know what kind.”

  They found out soon enough. Through the oaks behind them broke five howling dogs, beagles in brown and black, tan and white patches. They snarled and barked, bearing sharp teeth as they broke the cover of the trees and lunged into a second, smaller clearing clearing, sharp noses and black eyes zeroing in on the man and girl. The sounds of men running and yelling could be heard right behind the dogs.

  The girl’s eyes widened in shock, “Go!”

  As one, they tore across the clearing to the far side and another set of trees, diving for the imagined safety of trunks of brown and branches bloomed in green, Tegan’s small stature letting her drive through hoops of branches that impeded the taller man. But by the time Tegan had broke the trees, Ardammt had caught up with her. So when they cleared the last of the trees and ran into the field beyond, they both saw at the same moment the masses of men banked around that break in the trees.

  Surprised and alarmed, Tegan slid to a halt, backpedaling into Ardammt before they both pivoted to head back into the trees. But before they could take more than a few steps the quadrupeds were in front of them, yapping and growling, their sharp toothed mouths shiny from a combination of slobber and the brilliant sunlight of early morning. The creatures strained heartily at their restraints.

  The man holding the biggest and fiercest of the creatures spoke, nodding past the two to the meadow. “Move that way, folks. I don’t want to have let Butch here loose on you.”

  Tegan stared at Butch. She didn’t believe what the gruff looking man had said, but she definitely didn’t want to find out if he meant it. Against her better will, she moved back towards the meadow.

  Ardammt followed faithfully, scowling murderously at men and dogs alike.

  The men stared back coldly. So did the dogs.

  Butch growled and bared more teeth.

  As the two moved further into the meadow, the dogs and the men were right behind them, herding them through the trees and into the field beyond. As they cleared the last overhanging shadows of the trees, that’s when they saw the ground transports, a dozen at least, behind the semi circle of men. Beyond the transports were more men, hurrying toward the two from all directions, some with weapons raised.

  Instinctively, Ardammt slid in front of Tegan. His dark eyes scanned the muddy moving field, the men closing in on them with their strange blue uniforms and stranger weapons. His eyes lit on the one man in a white tunic and blue trousers approaching from the center of the field, wearing a broad smile that as he got closer Ardammt realized didn’t quite reach his large light eyes.

  “Hello!” The approaching man was big, tall and husky, and his voice was just as big, deep and booming. “Good morning! I’m Dr. Worthington. Why are you running? We're all friends here."

  Ardammt contemplated Dr.Worthington like the man was certifiably insane. Tegan peeped from around Ardammt's arm, scowling coldly at the doctor. Neither said a word.

  Dr. Worthington had stopped a few short feet from the two. “We found your escape pod. What happened to your ship? Where did you come from?”

  Tegan stepped from behind the man, who angrily tried to sho
ve her back, but again she ignored him. Instead, Tegan studied the doctor, a patronizing expression on her face that said she clearly thought his questions were incredibly stupid.

  Dr. Worthington seemed to recognize the look. His smile faded fast. Now he was all business. He motioned for his men to move up and take the two. “Now come with us and don’t make a fuss".

  They both tensed. Ardammt scanned the field for a way past the man and Tegan glanced behind her to find the dogs hooked to their leads but straining at them, their teeth bared and their throats rumbling with promises of being ripped to shreds.

  Tegan glanced back at Ardammt, who was watching her from the corner of his eye while checking the advance of the men with weapons. Two of which anchored large barreled weapons to their shoulders and took aim at Tegan and Ardammt.

  Ardammt sucked in a hard breath, his fists clenching. They were caught. Behind them snarling creatures with beastly teeth that could rend them apart before they could move. Before them many men with weapons and deadly intent in their eyes. Yes, they were mightily caught. He glanced down at Tegan.

  Tegan returned his questioning look. Nodded and took position next to him, shoulder to arm with him, her dark denim eyes now showing no fear to the men or their weapons. Excellent, Ardammt thought. We will not die on this back spiral world cowering like children in the dark.

  Tegan and Ardammt looked the men with the long barreled weapons straight in the eyes as the men shot their guns, releasing sleeper darts into the two aliens from the escape pod. The moment they were shot Ardammt realized what had happened. He lunged for Tegan, plucking the dart from her neck and dropping it, as her eyes rolled back in her head and she started to tumble to the ground. He pulled her to his chest just as a second dart caught him in his side and his own vision dimmed and he sagged into the mud, Tegan sprawled over him.