In a Galaxy, far, far away, there was a peaceful planet called Devia. On this planet lived a young man called Carl and his family.

This planet was invaded and overwhelmed in a surprisingly quick time by an army of sinister humanoid warriors. Leaving a devastated landscape and the civilisation in ruins, our young man is herded by the soldiers, with thousands of others, into an enormous transport ship. Men and women were segregated for an unknown, but ominous purpose.

With all other members of the family missing, believed killed, Carl and his mother have little time left together. On the urgings of his mother, he assumes the appearance of a girl in a vain attempt to remain with her.

The invaders seem to believe it...

but then the nightmare begins!

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The Legal Stuff: The Rats of Hell © 2009, 2010 Tanya Allan
 
This work is the property of the author, and the author retains full copyright, in relation to printed material, whether on paper or electronically. Any adaptation of the whole or part of the material for broadcast by radio, TV, or for stage plays or film, is the right of the author unless negotiated through legal contract. Permission is granted for it to be copied and read by individuals, and for no other purpose. Any commercial use by anyone other than the author is strictly prohibited, and may only be posted to free sites with the express permission of the author.
 
This work is fictitious, and any similarities to any persons, alive or dead, are purely coincidental. Mention is made of persons in public life only for the purposes of realism, and for that reason alone. Certain licence is taken in respect of medical procedures, terms and conditions, and the author does not claim to be the fount of all knowledge.
 
The author accepts the right of the individual to hold his/her (or whatever) own political, religious and social views, and there is no intention to deliberately offend anyone. If you wish to take offence, that is your problem.
 
This is only a story, and it contains adult material, which includes sex and intimate descriptive details pertaining to genitalia. If this is likely to offend, then don’t read it.
 
Please enjoy.
Tanya
 
 

 
 
 
Chapter 3
 
 
Seth had been a spaceship engineer, attracted to the potentially exciting life as a spacer to see lots of different worlds. He’d been on the freighters since leaving school, but met a girl he’d been sweet on as a lad and settled down near his parent’s hometown on Xiona. Spaceships always needed repairing, so he found work at the spaceport, a job that didn’t require him to go into deep space anymore. He’d make the occasional trip into orbit to assist a stricken freighter, but that rarely took him away for more than a couple of days at a time.

“Life in space ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. In reality, it’s days and weeks of boredom, followed by moments of furious activity and then more boredom. Spaceports tend to be the same all over the Galaxy, full of drifters and whores, so it was a relief to settle down.”

They had three children, all nearly adult when the attack came.

“We had no warning, one minute the future was wonderful, the next, everything we’d struggled to build was destroyed.”

“How were you wounded?”

He lifted up his shirt to show me an enormous scar that ran across his chest from left shoulder to his belly button. I could see the marks of the very crude stitches that had put him back together.

“My God! Who sewed that, a blind epileptic?”

“I did.”

I reached out and gently touched the rough skin.

“You poor guy, what happened?”

“We were dug in, just outside of town. Their ships all came down on farmland, so we could see the lines of red devils all mustering to attack. When they came, it didn’t matter how many you shot, as more filled the gaps until they just overwhelmed our positions. As we fell back, I ran out of ammo, so found this axe. I went in and tried to take as many out before they got me. We still didn’t realise they weren’t killing anyone. This big bastard just took the axe from me and then threw me into a heap in some rubble. Just as I was getting up, the roof caved in and a wooden spar slithered across my ribs. I bled like a stuck pig, but they still took me.

“I was still bleeding when they assessed me, so I found myself in the fire pit.”

“They could have sewn you up.”

“They didn’t. I think I was weak with the lack of blood.”

“And your family?”

He looked at me, his dark eyes looking like small pits in snow.

“Just like yours, I’ve never seen them since.”

“How did you get out?”

“Of the pit? I was lucky, I guess. They’d filled it so full that it reached the top of the furnace. I was on the top of the pile and close to the hatch. I simply opened it and slithered out before the fires came.”

“How did you stitch it up?” I asked, pointing to the scar.

He laughed again, but with little humour. “I used some thread from my pants. I didn't have a needle, so I made one out of a shard of steel.”

I winced at the mental picture.

“You could have died,” I said.

“I often wished I had!” he admitted.

We made an unspoken pact, not to mention family again. It just hurt too damn much. The strange tattoo on my arm itched, so I kept scratching it. Seth held my arm and looked at it.

“When did you get this?” he asked.

“I’m not sure, just after I was first taken.”

He showed me his arm. There was slight scarring of the skin where his mark had been.

“I took mine off,” he said, almost triumphantly.

“How?”

“The hard way.”

“What, fire?”

“No, the opposite, I froze it off with nitrogen. I guess it is the same as fire, though.”

“Ouch!”

“Well, there’s only three ways that I know of, and that seemed the easiest for me.”

“Three?”

“Yup. You can cut it out and sew up the skin.”

“Knowing your skill with a needle, forget it!”

“Okay, then we could rub it out,” he said, smiling nastily.

“With what?”

“A sander.”

“No way!”

“Then we freeze it.”

“How about laser?” I asked.

“Kid, the only laser we’ve got is a combat laser, so unless you want to lose your entire arm, it has to be another way. Look, it’s not as if it’s a big tattoo, and I have some balm from stores that are supposed to help burn victims.”

“Gee, thanks a bunch,” I said, folding my arms tightly.
 
 
A couple of days later, however, he persuaded me to try it, having rubbed the area with an anaesthetic jelly first. It stung a bit, and then he covered the area with this sticky balm. I couldn’t read the label as it was in a weird script, but after a few days, there wasn’t much of a scar.

We didn’t try to find the place the drugs came from immediately, as I was kept busy learning to find my way around places that Seth knew. Every time I tried to go somewhere by myself, he’d follow. I thought at first that he didn’t trust me not to get lost, so, on the tenth day, I challenged him.

“I can get back by myself, you know?”

He grinned sheepishly. “Yeah, I know. I just kinda like the company.”

It dawned on me then that he’d been alone for so long, he was terrified of being alone again. So, I never grumbled again and we went everywhere together.

The scale of the structure amazed me. It was vast - high, long and wide. Seth reckoned it was big enough to house five million people easily, as well as housing the automated industry and support systems.

“Have you ever been outside?” I asked.

“Why?”

“To see what’s there.”

“Nope.”

“I’d like to.”

“I ain’t stopping you,” he said, ending the discussion in his usual fashion.

After I’d been a rat for three weeks, the dull ache in my abdomen became worse. I lay on my crude bed groaning and moaning so much that I woke Seth up. He was at my side, his face showing concern.

“What’s up, kid?”

I was very frightened, as I’d never experienced pain like this. I was so afraid of having something seriously wrong with me and there was no way of getting medical help.

“Are you sure you weren’t a doctor?” I asked, hopefully.

He smiled sadly. “Nope, but I can sew a bit.”

“That’s not helpful,” I said.

“I pulled some teeth once,” he said, showing me some nasty gaps in his mouth.

I hugged my belly and groaned. He looked worried and brought me some water. He placed one hand on my forehead.

“You ain’t burning up, that’s a good sign.”

“Bollocks it is. It’s my belly not my head!”

“Do you want me to take a look?”

“Do you know what you’re looking for?”

“Nope, but if I don’t, we’ll never know.”
 
 
I lowered my pants to just above the pubic area and raised my shirt so he could see my belly. I was quite surprised at how much I’d changed over the last few weeks. I had a female shape now, with narrow waist and wider hips. My breasts were firm and round, and I think I was putting on a little weight. I’d almost got used to the mush.

He placed a hand gently on my belly.

“Where does it hurt?”

I moved his hand above where it ached.

He pushed down slightly.

“Hurt?”

I shook my head. He moved his hand slightly to the left and pressed, looking at me. I shook my head again. This continued all around my navel area.

“Okay, now I had a crew-mate who had a nasty appendix. I saw the doc touch this guy’s belly and he screamed blue murder, so you ain’t got one of them. You got the shits?”

I shook my head. Our toilet facilities were basic. Down the corridor was a bucket, which we emptied into a sewer after each visit. I have to confess that being a girl was definitely a disadvantage!

“Sick?”

“No, but it wouldn’t take much.”

“Headache?”

“A bit.”

He looked at me, and then placed his thumbs on either side of, and slightly above my navel. He pressed slightly.

I tensed my muscles.

“Sore?”

“Not sore, just uncomfortable. That’s the spot.”

He grinned and looked more relaxed.

“Well, I’m blowed, I think I know what’s wrong with you, girl.” Standing up, he went over to his storage locker. He rummaged around and came back with some medical dressings.

“What’re they for?” I asked, suddenly worried.

“Well, if I’m right, then tomorrow you’re going to see whether the medic-machine did its job properly.”

I frowned at him. “Huh?”

“Carla, I think you’re about to become a real woman. They’ve implanted or developed ovaries inside you, which are ovulating and so you are about to have your first period. The pains must be from them coming to fruition, so to speak. Now I ain’t got any of them so-called feminine hygiene products, so these will have to do.”

I stared at him blankly for a moment. Then the enormity of what he said hit me. It had been one thing to be no longer a boy and to have the body of a girl, but to be a woman and have the potential to have babies! I suddenly wanted my mother.

He enveloped me with his strong arms, whispering to me as I sobbed my heart out.

“It’s okay, Carla, really, it’s okay.”

It wasn’t, so it took me a long time to calm down.

Seth was right, goddamn it!! For in the night, after I eventually managed to get to sleep, my visitor started. Despite placing a large dressing in what I thought was an appropriate position, I flooded and managed to make a real mess.

For the first time Seth was at a bit of a loss, so I disposed of the mucky dressings in one of the furnaces and went looking for fresh supplies. Wearing the helmet with the night vision visor in place, I managed to find the storeroom by myself, and spent a long time going up and down the aisles. Many of the artefacts were alien to me, but I knew a medi-kit when I saw one, and there was a whole box of five hundred tampons appropriately sitting next to a box of fifty fragmentation grenades. Either a moron or someone with a sense of humour stacked these shelves, I thought.

Such was my mood that I put both boxes in my pack as well as strapping the medi-kit to my belt. On my way back, I took a wrong turn. This wasn’t unusual, but as I felt stroppy, I kept going just to see where the hell I would end up. I think I wanted to come across some nasty alien, just so I could see if I could shoot straight.
 
 
I ended up in a ventilation shaft that ran across the top of a large room. Not so much a room, as a vast enclosed stadium sized area. On looking through a grille, I could see hundreds of men in white overalls working at benches. They wore masks over their mouths and noses, and all were wearing gloves. Only one person was walking about. He was a big man, but as I looked at him, it became apparent he wasn’t completely a man.

He was a good seven feet tall to start with, and his skin was a dull red colour. Despite the fact that he wore sunglasses in a relatively dim environment, his whole bearing and stature was wrong. He didn’t have horns and, as he was wearing boots, I couldn’t see if he had hooves. He wasn’t one of the pure-bloods, but I guessed he was a half or quarter breed.

I watched for a long time, transfixed by this almost-man creature. The white-suited men were all working with equipment I remembered from doing science at school. Each had a small directional lamp, so they could see what they were doing without causing undue glare elsewhere. Test tubes and beakers were everywhere, with large cooler cabinets lining one wall. I started to realise that I was watching some form of fertilisation process. I had no idea which part, but this had to have something to do with their attempts to produce a human hybrid capable of reproducing their kind.

One of the men moved his lamp and caused the light to shine straight at the half-breed. With a horrified shriek, the creature covered his eyes and swung a mighty fist at the man, causing him to fall to the ground, where he lay unmoving as another man corrected the lamp.

It couldn’t be that simple.

Could it?
 
 
They were sensitive to light, but then had Seth told me that. They may exist in an Ultra Violet environment, so the white light we used was harmful to them. It would explain their skin colour and the fact that they were always associated with the dark and night.

If this creature were so sensitive, then a pure blood would be even more so, perhaps to a fatal level. I put all thoughts of setting off my grenades away and scuttled back to find my way to our lair.

Seth took the news philosophically.

“I thought as much,” he said.

“It’s their weakness!” I said, excitedly.

“It may be, but we ain’t got no bright lights, have we?”

“There’s the sun.”

“Yup, but they’re shut away, nice and safe.”

“We can escape and tell everyone.”

“You’re forgetting one fact, little lady.”

“What?”

“The soldiers are all men, they don’t give a shit about the light.”

“Oh.”

I felt deflated. I thought I had the answer, but Seth had already figured it out. Even with the knowledge, there was very little we could do.

“Phosphorous!” he said, suddenly.

“What?”

“Phosphorous is a metallic element that when combined with water and oxygen gives off very bright light.”

“So?”

“Water is one substance both they and we use to live. We drink it, wash in it and cook with it. We use it in industry and in every home, so it stands to reason they do too.”

“So?”

“We gotta find as much as we can.”

“And then what?”

“Then we make a plan.”

“Um, I hate to say this, Seth, but they’re hardly going to leave the stuff lying about.”

“Military flares. They have the necessary chemicals to produce the same results. We just have to get as many white light flares.”

“Look, I’ve just been to the stores, I’m not going back now.”

Seth started to laugh.

“What?” I asked, indignantly, with my hands on my hips.

“You're now officially a woman, in every sense of the word,” he said through his laughter. Grudgingly, I smiled as I recalled what I had said and the manner in which I said it.

“You don’t have to. I’ll go.”

“I’ll come too, if you want,” I offered.

“No, I won’t be long.”
 
 
I was alone again, so I changed my dressing for a tampon. The writing on the package was in a weird language, but I’d seen Mandy with hers. This was tough, as I’d had no time to prepare mentally or practically for being a woman!

Seth was a very long time. I worked out how long it should take, even if he had to search a while for the right flares. Seth was far too long, so I started to worry.

Do I go after him, or not?

If he’s in trouble, will I help or just get caught too?

In the end, I went.
 
 
I reached the stores, where it took me a few seconds to realise he wasn’t here. There was no sign of him, and I didn’t know which way he’d gone. I was at the door just trying to work out what to do, when I heard a noise.

I’d become sensitive to noise. This whole place was a series of noises, so one became accustomed to them, aware only when a new or different sound entered the arena.

This was metal on metal, and it came from further down a corridor with which I was unfamiliar. Drawing my weapon, I carefully advanced, keeping tight against the side wall.

The passage was a long one and, as everywhere in this place, dark. My foot touched something. I stopped and felt the ground, carefully with my left hand, keeping my pistol pointing ahead. It was Seth’s pack.

I opened it, feeling the tubular shapes of flares. I fastened it again, slinging it on my back, advancing once more. A brief flickering of pale reddish light warned me of something ahead. I heard noises, rather like grunting.

Cautiously peering round the corner, I saw Seth prone and still on the floor. A red clad soldier was standing over him, staring straight ahead. In front of the soldier was a mixed breed, tall and wearing dark glasses. I wondered what they were doing, but then realised they were waiting for an elevator. Knowing I had very little time, I took a flare, pulled the cord and rolled it towards the group.

These flares were self-igniting from the inside, so no warning was given, just a very bright light burned for about forty seconds.

In the event, it was spectacular.
 
 
The soldier did nothing. He just stood there, staring blankly ahead, as if on parade. The mix-breed screamed and clawed at its eyes, falling and writhing in apparent agony on the floor, before lying deathly still.

I approached and was at a bit of a loss. Any moment the elevator would arrive, and I had no way of knowing who or what would be on it.

The soldier had a long prod on his belt. I unhitched it and jabbed it into his side. Blue sparks flew everywhere as the white light died. The soldier crumpled forward onto his knees and then onto his front. He made no attempt to stop himself, and I heard a nasty crunching noise as his nose came into contact with the hard floor. The floor won!

I rolled Seth onto his back. He was alive, just. I tried to wake him, but he was out of it.

I looked at the prod I held. With very simple controls, it had a single knob set to one extreme, so I turned it to the other extreme, hoping it was the mild stimulation setting.

“Forgive me, Seth!” I said, jabbing it into his buttock.

There was a mild Bzzzt, and he jerked slightly. I repeated the performance and this time his eyes opened.

“Seth, can you get up?” I asked.

Dumbly he nodded, and so I helped him to his feet. He looked at the two prone figures, bending over the mix-breed.

“I rolled a flare at him,” I explained.

Seth stood up. “He’s dead,” he said.

“Flares work, then.”

“He’s not,” he said, on checking the soldier.

“So?”

“Grab a leg and pull.”

“What?”

“You heard!”

“Why?”

“Don’t argue, do it!”

Holstering my pistol, I grabbed a leg. Together we pulled the soldier down the corridor. I heard the sound of the elevator opening. No sound of pursuit followed, so I guessed they’d called it and no one was in it.

“How did you know where I was?”

“I didn’t. I just got lucky.”

“You shouldn’t have come, you could have been taken.”

“Oh, that’s nice, how about, thanks for saving my life, Carla?”

He grinned at me as we attempted to get the red-armoured soldier through a narrow gap.

“Thanks, Carla, but you shouldn’t have come for me.”

“Shove it, Seth, you’re all I’ve got.”

I was sweating hard, as the man was heavy. It took everything I had to help Seth get him down the tunnels.

“What are we dragging this bastard for?” I asked, at one particularly tricky corner.

“You wanted to see what happens if food without drug has any affect, didn’t you?”

“Maybe, but that doesn’t mean I wanted one of these of my very own.”

I stopped, wiping the sweat from my brow.

“Seth?”

“Come on, girl, keep going.”

“Seth, why don’t we take his armour off, and then come back for it later?”

He grinned at me sheepishly, then bent and undid the straps. Even without the armour, the soldier was a big and heavy man, he was also naked. I looked away, blushing, as he was a big man in every sense of the word. Seth left the soldier’s helmet on, in case we dropped him on his head, again.

Seth chuckled as we bent the poor man almost in half to get him over an obstacle. His head hit the floor with a nasty bang. He was lucky he was wearing a helmet. I noticed a thin trickle of blood seeping from his nose after his previous encounter with the floor.
 
 
By the time we got back to the lair, I was drenched in sweat. Seth tied the man’s arms behind his back and wrapped a blindfold around his eyes, after resetting the cartilage in his nose. Then, with a quick grin at me, he disappeared to collect the discarded armour.

I stripped off down to my panties and had a wash with a little of our precious water. I turned to see Seth looking at me. He could move so silently it gave me the creeps.

“What?” I asked.

“Shit, girl, you’re really all woman, now.”

Suddenly self-conscious, so I covered up. “Sorry, I didn’t think.”

“It’s okay. My fault, as I hadn’t realised how much you’ve changed. You ain’t skinny any more.”

“You’re still too old and hairy for me,” I joked, slipping into slightly less dirty clothes.

The soldier groaned.

“What are we going to do with him?” I asked, looking at the unfortunate man.

“Make sure he’s okay, then put him somewhere safe, feed him some clean food and see what happens.”

We found a small space between two banks of machinery, where Seth tied him firmly to a steel stanchion, and we took it in turns to watch him. I insisted that Seth at least put a pair of shorts on him.

He was well muscled, as was Seth. I found that my muscle tone was firm in a less masculine manner, so believed the food must have something to do with it. The soldier was much younger than Seth, so I guessed he was in his mid-twenties.

I became aware he had come round by chance. I glanced at him to see his eyes were open and he was staring unblinking at me.

“Seth!”

Together we sat the man up. He made no aggressive moves. He tested the ties once and, failing to free himself, he simply sat there, staring straight ahead.

Seth did the meal run, so I spoon fed him the first bowl of non-drugged food. He ate it all and drank a litre of water. Then, with no warning, he released his bowel and bladder with no sign of emotion whatsoever.

“Bloody hell!” I said, as I went to fetch the mop and bucket.
 
 
This went on for a week, only now we sat him on a bucket for his meals. We took it in turns to get food, three times a day. Sure enough, straight afterwards, each time he voided himself, and he seemed to have more inside him than we fed him. I was fascinated that the constitution of his food seemed to hardly change from going in to coming out at the other end. It just smelled a bit more rank!

Seth would get him to stand and walked him up and down for five hundred paces, the man sat down afterwards without changing expression.

On the eighth day, I noticed a change in his expression. He was frowning. Lines appeared across his brow. It made no difference to his routine, so we maintained the process. On the twelfth night, I awoke suddenly to hear screaming. I looked across to Seth, to find that he wasn’t there. I immediately got up and ran to where the soldier was. Seth was already there.

The man was thrashing about, screaming and babbling in a strange language.

“What happened?” I asked.

“He’s coming out of it. I think he’s remembering things.”

“What language is that?”

“I don’t know.”

Seth covered the man’s mouth with tape to quieten the screams. After an hour, our captive subsided and slept.

“We have to watch him all the time now,” Seth told me.

“Okay. I’ll take the first watch. I’ll see you at breakfast, can I have white toast?” I joked.

Seth laughed. “Oh, I’d kill for some toast,” he said, his eyes taking on a far-off expression.

He wandered off grumbling about food; so I settled down to watch the man.

I nodded off, to awaken at a sound. I looked up to see the man was awake and looking at me.

“Leutnant, wo ist ich?”

“What?”

He frowned again, glancing at the stars on my collar. It dawned on me that he thought I was one of his officers.

“Do you speak Anglic?” I asked.

He frowned again, but nodded.

“Ja, but you wear the uniform of the Marines.”

“I’m not a Marine, this was my size.”

“You steal it?” he asked.

This was not going well.

“Look, my name is Carla. I’m from the planet Devia, beyond the eighth portal. You are from Gorran V, yes?”

He nodded, shaking his head, as if to clear his mind.

“Why am I tied up?”

“You’ve been drugged by the enemy who destroyed your world. They drugged you and turned you into one of their soldiers. You were tied up so we could rid you of the toxins. For our protection.”

“I remember nothing. Our world was invaded?”

“Yes. The enemy is an alien race who use male human captives as their soldiers. They, they use the women to breed.”

“We were beaten?” he asked, as if it was unthinkable.

“The Marines were the first to destroy an alien. They look like Satan.”

He shook his head, as his eyes took on a far away look.

“I remember a battle, but nothing else. What year is this?”

“2532 standard.”

“Two years? I’ve been here for two years?”

“Maybe not. You may have been used against other worlds.”

“Where are we?”

“On a planet called Hylios. The first to be taken.”

“How many have fallen?”

“Planets?”

He nodded.

“Devia was the thirteenth.”

He looked down at his near nakedness.

“Do you need to keep me tied up?”

“It has its advantages,” I said with a small smile. He didn’t smile back. “I’ll speak to Seth, then we’ll release you.”

I went to find Seth. He was just returning from the food run.

“He’s come round. He’s a Gorran V Space Marine.”

Seth laughed, looking at my uniform.

“I take that back, there is a Marine to get upset.”

“He thinks I stole it. He wants to be untied and to have some clothes.”

“Fine, he can have some old uniform, but I’m not untying him yet.”

“Why not?”

“Drugs are funny things, they have a habit of lingering in the system a while.”

I then noticed that Seth had shaved and cut his hair. He had also acquired a clean uniform with colonel’s rank bars on the collar.

“Seth, what’s got into you?”

“Nothing, I just felt like a change.”

“You’re jealous. You think there’s competition!”

“I do not. I just need to exert a little discipline.”

I started to giggle and he had the grace to smile sheepishly.

“Come on, then, let’s introduce you. Do you have a last name?” I asked.

“Ambrose, Seth Ambrose.”
 
 
I returned to the lair and found a set of Marine overalls from the locker. Together we went and checked on the Gorran.

The man took one look at Seth’s uniform and sat to attention. I stifled a giggle and passed him the uniform.

“This is Colonel Ambrose. He’s the ranking officer here,” I said, releasing some of the cords.

The man struggled into his coveralls, and zipped them up. Standing he was head and shoulders taller than me. He stood to attention and stared at a spot just above Seth’s head.

“Master Sergeant Otto Stein, 6574382, Gorran V Space Marines, sir.”

“At ease, Sergeant. Has the Lieutenant told you of our predicament?”

Otto glanced at me and then away again.

“She was starting to, sir.”

“Okay, the lieutenant comes from the Devian Defence Corps, but her uniform was destroyed in battle. I issued her with the current uniform because it was available. You have to agree, being naked has its disadvantages.”

“Sir, yes sir.”

“Secondly, as all our respective units are no more, it is irrelevant what uniform we wear, only that our purpose is the same.”

“And that is, sir?”

“To defeat the enemy, sergeant.”

“Sir, yes sir.”

“Now, you appreciate that the enemy drugged you and for some time you have been operating directly under their control.”

“So the Lieutenant told me, sir.”

“That was the reason you have been kept bound. You have been in our custody for nearly two weeks, and only now are beginning to come out from the drugged condition. Are you feeling any strange effects?”

“Yes sir, most of me is still numb, sir.”

“They managed to completely cut off all feeling in their subjects, both physical pain and emotion. Listen, this is what they did.”
 
 
Seth told the man everything while I watched his expression. His emotions were beginning to kick in, for before very long, tears were streaming down his face. When Seth told him about what happened to the women, Otto glanced and me and looked ready to kill. I felt most peculiar under his gaze. I had to look away.

“The lieutenant was left for dead and would have been burned alive in one of their furnaces if I hadn’t found her, so we’re all damaged goods here, Sergeant.”

Otto looked at me again, with a very odd expression. I blushed and looked away again. I wasn’t used to this.

“Sir, then please keep me bound until all traces of the drug has left my system. It’s safer for you both, sir.”

Seth looked surprised, but nodded.

“Thank you, Sergeant, I agree. One of us will be with you at all times, just to make sure you are all right. I warn you we are both armed and will use lethal force if threatened.”

I looked at Seth, horrified. No way could I shoot the sergeant.

Seth winked at me and I relaxed.

“I expect nothing else. May I ask why I was selected to be freed, sir?”

“You and an alien captured me. Carla, the, ah, the Lieutenant, killed the alien and managed to render you unconscious. It was her theory that the drug was in the food, so we needed a subject on which to test her theory. We brought you back here and it seems to have proved her right.”

The sergeant looked at me with a completely different expression.

“I am forever in your debt, fraulein,” he said, his voice was quiet and made me shiver.

Seth passed over the bowl of food to the sergeant.

“I don’t think she needs to feed you any more. Eat this. It tastes like crap but it is good for you.”
 
 

*          *          *
 
End of Part 2
 
 
To Be Continued...