Chapter 3: Jean

“Vruhk’tar...”

I’m down on all fours in the sand. No, not sand. Ashes. One of the males is kneeling behind me, claiming me with hard, deep thrusts. Another is in front, using my mouth. When I moan, the sound comes out muffled, barely audible above the howling of the wind.

“Vruhk’taraaa...”

A third male is kneeling beside me, speaking in a language I do not understand. I cannot see him, but I can feel his hands moving over my body. Big, strong hands with not enough fingers, stroking my back, squeezing my breasts, reaching down between my legs to rub my clitoris while the other male pounds me from behind.

I come. Hard.

A moment later, the males join me, filling me with seed from both ends. The flavor is intense, salty yet sweet, foreign yet strangely familiar. There is so much of it. So very, very much.

“Gash’nar,” the voice beside me growls.

Six hands lift my body. Six alien hands. They lay me down on my back in the ashes and pry open my legs, spreading me wide. Sticky warmth leaks from my center, but the creatures are not done with me yet. As the third male mounts me, I catch a glimpse of his inhuman face framed by a dirty sky. Snakeskin, the color of orange jade, and deep azure eyes...

“Madam, wake up!”

Tiny hands are battering my face. A child’s voice is shouting at me. And behind that, farther off... screaming?

“Madam, please! We must hurry!”

My eyelids are made of lead, but somehow I manage to force them open. It vaguely occurs to me that this is the first time in weeks that I haven’t woken up in a state of panic--though based on what’s going on around me, I probably should be panicking.

I’m lying on my back on the grass, and Gerber is hovering right above me, his chubby face filling my hazy vision. He’s been slapping me, and my cheeks are sore where he struck me.

Why is everything red all of a sudden?

And who the hell is screaming?

“Jean!”

Mel pushes into view above me. She looks half-asleep herself. She shoves Gerber out of the way, grabs me by the shoulders, and begins to shake. I can hear Clarence the corgi yapping nearby. I sit up, and look around at the chaos.

The solar lights in the roof of the ship are flashing red, painting everything in the atrium the color of blood.

And that screaming I heard before? It isn’t actually screaming. It’s an alarm. A harsh, brain-rattling alarm that seems to be coming from everywhere at once.

I look across the river at the women who were skinny dipping. They appear to be coming out of a daze, just like me. Luckily, they were all in shallow water, and whatever made everybody pass out only lasted for a few seconds

What the hell is going on?

A voice comes over the loudspeakers--a Znthian voice, deep and guttural. The sound sends a shiver up my spine.

“What’s he saying?” I shout.

Gerber answers: “It seems we’ve come out of the hypercosm.”

The hypercosm. A parallel dimension that Znthian ships use to travel faster than light. That explains the strange grogginess I’m feeling now, and all the weird topsy-turvy sensations I experienced right before I passed out. I experienced those exact same sensations five weeks ago, when we entered the hypercosm. Only that time I was lying on my bed because Gerber warned me the jump could be disorienting.

But why have we come out now? We’re not supposed to reach Znth for another week.

“There has been an accident,” Gerber says. “Madam, we must return to your quarters. There is an escape pod there, and--”

“An escape pod? Are we crashing?”

“We are approaching a planet. Madam, please...”

Gerber grabs my arm with his pudgy little fingers and drags me up onto my feet. He’s surprisingly strong for a baby. When he starts pulling me toward the footpath, it takes nearly all my strength to resist.

“Wait!” I shout “Mel!”

She’s already on her feet too. Clarence the corgi is tugging on the hem of her robe in a desperate attempt to pull her in the other direction.”

“She has her own escape pod,” Gerber says. “Please, we must hurry!”

“Screw that!” I shout. “We’re not splitting up.” I grab hold of my friend and hold on for dear life. She holds on too.

“My room’s closer,” she says. “We can go together.”

Clarence lets go of her robe and whines. “There won’t be enough room!” he barks. “Each pod is only big enough for one person.”

Tears are building behind my eyes. I shout, “How will we find each other again?”

“Transponders,” Gerber says, tapping his head. “I’ll signal Clarence once we’re safe.”

I hesitate, still clutching Mel’s arms. I don’t want to leave her, but what choice do we have? If we stay put, we’ll both end up dying in a fiery crash. At least that’s what it sounds like. If we want to survive, the pods are our only hope.

“Go,” Mel says firmly. “We’ll find each other.”

“We’ll find each other,” I echo.

I try my best to believe it.

We give each other one more hard squeeze, then we both turn and start running in opposite directions, our little robotic companions leading the way.

I’ve only been running for about a minute when the whole garden shakes like an earthquake. I lose my balance and tumble to the ground. I can hear trees crashing all throughout the garden. I can hear screaming too, and this time it's real.

“What was that?” I shout.

“I believe we just entered the planet’s atmosphere,” Gerber says.

“What planet?”

“There is no time for discussion.” He yanks me back onto my feet. “We must hurry.”

God, I hope Mel is alright. I’m already starting to regret splitting up. But when I glance back in the direction I’ve just come from, I see that a massive tree trunk has fallen across the path. There’s no turning back now. I have to keep pressing ahead.

“Okay,” I say. “Let’s go.”

The garden used to be a paradise. Now it looks more like hell--broken branches, terrified women, and everything bathed in red light.

It occurs to me that the whole ship is red now--red inside and out.

A minute later, Gerber and I reach the edge of the garden. The women’s suites are arranged on terraces along the inside of the hull, kind of like a fancy hotel.

Mine is on level six.

The elevators look to be out of commission, so we’ll have to take the stairs. Luckily, it's still early, so there aren’t many other women trying to get back to their rooms. If this had happened at noon, it would be a disaster.

Well, it is a disaster, but it could have been even worse.

I hit the stairs and start climbing them as fast as I can. As I reach level three, I see a group of huge Znthian guards running past clad in shiny black armor. They’re carrying guns.

This is more than just some accident.

“Gerber, what’s going on?”

“No time!” the cherub shouts. His little wings are flapping so hard they’re losing feathers.

At level four, we’re above the canopy of the garden, and I can see all the way down the vast length of the atrium to the front of the ship. There are fires and clouds of black smoke down there, presumably from that explosion I witnessed earlier. It looks as if the doors to the control station have been blown open.

And there are streaks of white light zapping back and forth through the smoke. Energy bolts. Someone’s shooting.

“What--”

“No time!”

Gerber pulls me so hard I almost expect my feet to come flying off the ground. I take the last set of stairs two at a time, then I rush down the terrace toward my room. My lungs are on fire.

Gerber flies ahead to open the door. I dart through it. The alarm is even louder inside. Excruciating. I press my hands over my ears, but it doesn’t help. It feels like it's ringing in the center of my brain.

“Over here!” Gerber calls, pointing toward the bed.

Then he says something else in Znthian. The mattress suddenly folds back, revealing a large opening beneath. A metal sphere emerges, about as wide as the span of my arms. There’s a hatch on the front with a small glass porthole. It opens.

“In!” Gerber cries “In!”

I get in.

He wasn’t lying when he said there was only room for one person. There’s a cushioned seat inside, some buttons on the walls, and not much else. As soon as I sit down, a padded harness closes around me, kind of like a safety bar on a rollercoaster. I let out a gasp of surprise, but the sound is lost beneath the blaring of the alarms.

I hope Mel made it back to her room safely. I hope she’s okay.

Gerber flies inside the pod with me. He presses a button to close the hatch. Then he starts tapping other buttons nearby.

Questions are racing through my mind. What was all that shooting about? The explosion? Why is the ship crashing?

And more importantly: Where?

I really want to ask Gerber, but I don’t want to distract him. I don’t know if it’s even possible to distract a robot, but I feel like this isn’t an appropriate time to find out, so I keep my mouth shut and look out through the porthole.

Beyond the thick pan of glass, I see the Emperor’s portrait hanging on the wall, and below it, the glass case containing the jade phallus. The one I use every night to quell my medicine-induced urges.

The thought hits me like a punch in the stomach: What am I going to do if the urges return?

“Wait!” I shout. “Gerber, open the door! I--” But it’s too late.

The escape pod is already dropping.

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