Snowed in with the Alien Beast Read online

  Snowed in with the Alien Beast

  By

  Kate Rudolph

  and

  Starr Huntress

  Snowed in with the Alien Beast © Kate Rudolph 2017.

  Cover design by Kate Rudolph.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this story may be used, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the copyright holder, except in the case of brief quotations embodied within critical reviews and articles.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  This book contains sexually explicit content which is suitable only for mature readers.

  Published by Starr Huntress & Kate Rudolph.

  www.starrhuntress.com

  www.katerudolph.net

  CHAPTER ONE

  Lights flashing.

  A crash.

  Sound blasting in one ear and then eerie silence.

  Weightlessness.

  Black.

  The weight in her limbs was the first thing Stella felt as the black faded into the dim light of consciousness. She tried to lift her arm, but the seat wouldn’t surrender it, caught as it was by the emergency restraints. She relaxed fully back as something trickled into her eyes and her nose caught the metallic scent of blood. Hers? She didn’t know. Everything hurt.

  It should have been louder. She couldn’t hear anything. And when she tried to call for help, her voice scratched, but all else was silence.

  Her shoulders sagged and suddenly Stella could move her arms. The restraints had given way and the dim light on her ship plunged back into darkness. But this time she clung to consciousness and moved, despite the pain. As she stood, her leg buckled and she clutched at the cramped muscles, fingers questing for any serious wounds. But as she moved, the muscle released, and Stella could walk with barely more than a limp. On her face, she found blood, and she winced as her fingers scraped over torn flesh on her scalp.

  Not good. But it could be worse. She had to keep moving. A nasty chemical smell invaded her nostrils and she didn’t want to be around, breathing it in, for long. Wind whistled through her ears and with it came a dull clanking noise as her hearing began to return. Stella wanted to sag in relief, but the path before her was strewn with debris and her feet were unsteady. When she kicked something soft and meaty she bit back a scream.

  Was she the only survivor?

  The thought danced havoc in her head and she wanted to curl into a ball and cry, wait to be rescued, and sleep until this was all over. She couldn’t be the only one, she couldn’t. Space ships didn’t crash land. Not after hundreds of years of human flight. That had been the first thing they’d told her when she joined the civilian fleet. The safest place in the universe is on a ship in peace time.

  Her flight from Earth’s Lunar base out to K147, a sparsely populated mining colony 9 light years away, should have dealt with nothing more than a little turbulence.

  Get it together, sister. She marshaled her thoughts. There’d been a moment of weightlessness as the grav simulator failed, but she was on two feet now and it felt normal. Normal like Earth, or maybe a little lighter. Stella bounced from foot to foot and tested the resistance of the air around her. They’d landed somewhere with gravity. And it had air, too, since she was breathing. With the lights gone, not even emergency sensors lighting her path, she knew that the ship’s power had completely failed.

  She should have been able to hear the whirring of engines or the thumping of the thrusters. Instead, only silence confronted her, with not even the moans and groans of pain from her ship mates.

  Though she wanted to run, Stella knelt down and felt for the person she’d accidentally kicked. Maybe he was only unconscious. She didn’t think she had the strength to carry anyone out, but if she could find survivors, she might have something like hope to cling to. But the flesh she found was cold as ice, and what felt like a limb terminated with a torn piece of cloth and a jagged, meaty end that should have been connected to the rest of the body.

  Bile rose in her throat and she turned her head at the last moment, vomiting to the side of the path to avoid desecrating the corpse and befouling her escape route.

  How she made it through the rest of the passenger hold, Stella wasn’t sure. She found the escape door and opened it, bursting out into the bright blue sun of some desolate alien planet. The light streamed in through the door and she knew that if she cast her eyes back, she’d see what had happened to her fellow passengers. So she looked straight ahead and jumped down to the hard ground. The ship had crashed down lopsided and she cleared a height that was almost as tall as she was. The sting radiated up past her knees, but after a moment she found her feet again and walked, taking her time to step carefully through the snow slick ground.

  Her breath frosted in the air and her nose threatened to turn blue. Bright white snow fell from the cloudy sky, the sun lighting up the crystals inside and casting a strange blue hue over the whole scene. Stella wore a sweater over her pants and light top and was glad that for once she’d been wearing shoes during the journey.

  She stumbled away from the ship, falling to her knees on soft snow once she no longer lurked in the shadow of the hulking monstrosity. It hadn’t seemed so huge, so dangerous, when it docked at the Lunar Base. But now it sat in the clearing, as big as a smashed skyscraper and threatening to fall to pieces. A crash dragged her eyes up, and she saw fire spouting from windows dozens of meters above her. Stella looked around. She’d been lucky that her door was so close to the ground. Though most of the ship was made of engines and storage for food and water, there could easily be surviving passengers trapped in places where it was too high or too dangerous to get out.

  Something snapped, and she scuttled back on her hands and feet as a piece of the ship little bigger than her fist fell right in front of her. A more sinister crack snapped through the air, and she crawled to her feet and ran before anything else could break off the ship and crush her to pieces.

  She shivered as the cold of the planet sunk into her bones. Stella turned her attention away from the ship to try and figure out where she was and if there was any hope of help coming her way. Wind whistled through tall trees, and she spied broken limbs and branches in the wake of the ship’s crash zone. But it could have been worse. Either the pilot or the autonav had gotten them close to the ground before the systems failed. She wouldn’t have survived a crash from space, especially with little more than a few cuts and bruises.

  Off in the distance, Stella spied hills that rose beyond the trees. And though she knew that it could have been her eyes playing tricks on her, they seemed close enough that she could make it before nightfall. If this planet had a night. The sun hung high overhead and in the minutes that she’d been outside, it hadn’t seemed to move. She hoped the days were close to Earth length. With the air as cold as it already was, she wasn’t looking forward to the night’s temperature drop. She needed shelter before then.

  Sucking in experimental breaths, she decided the air seemed fine. Her lungs filled and she didn’t get dizzy. She had to hope things remained that way. All the survival kits were still inside the ship, and she hadn’t thought to grab one. An inventory of her pockets revealed two bags of candy and a protein bar. Not much, but it might see her through a few days if she could find water.

  If this planet had potable water.

  The trees all around looked a lot like the pine trees back home, but on the top, somet
hing like palm fronds exploded out, soaking up sun. Unlike palms, she didn’t see any coconuts. And unlike pines, no pine cones littered the ground. But trees meant CO2, she hoped. And CO2 meant oxygen.

  Stella set her sights on the hills. There had to be water there, or something to collect the snow to let it melt. At the very least, she could get a little higher and survey the damage. And see if there was any hope of survival.

  Another jolt from the crashed ship made her jump and scurry further. Anything was better than staying in this burning graveyard.

  BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. Beeeeeeeep.

  Silence.

  The beast sucked in a deep breath, his chest meeting the cold steel of the band across his chest. His arms had been strung up, held apart, and weakened, cold from lack of blood flow. His head ached and his feet were chained like his arms. Now it was only the band that held him in place, strapped as he was to the buckling wall behind him, his chains fallen away.

  Buckling?

  The beast grunted and jerked at his chains. With a great heave, he sagged forward and let out a roar as the wall behind him collapsed, making blinding bright light spill into his cell.

  He had no memory of how he came here. He did not know his name or his race. He knew only the pain and anger of captivity, only the driving need to escape and reap his vengeance. Though he didn’t know who deserved his hate and who was innocent.

  He didn’t care.

  With the wall went the chains, and he stepped out into the light, on top of a crumbled mess of black metal that burned under his feet. Those feet were tinged with purple, but that was wrong. He knew that he shouldn’t look like that, that he’d looked different long ago.

  But the thought dissolved as soon as he tried to latch onto it and pull it close to the island of his mind.

  The light fell on his arm and illuminated letters written in jagged script.

  A R E S T

  Had he done that to himself? Marked the letters to remember who he was? Or was it another thing that had been done to him? The beast didn’t know. But he tasted the letters, let them roll across his tongue. “Arest.” His voice was rusty, nails and glass shards gliding across his vocal chords. But the beast tried again. “Arest.” This time, he said it with more force and ignored the pain.

  Yes, Arest. He liked this word, it was his. It was him.

  Arest looked around, whether for an escape path or survivors, he wasn’t sure. Acrid smoke tickled his nose and he raised a hand to ward it off, almost carving his eye out with the huge claws coming out of his first and second knuckles.

  No, that was wrong, too, just as wrong as his skin. But as he scuffled over the hard metal of his prison, the thought drifted away and joined the others on a faraway shore.

  Arest made it to the ground and padded away from the building on naked feet. The only thing covering him was a torn pair of dark pants that were covered in filth from the ship and stained with blood. His? He didn’t know. The chill in the air sank into his bones and he couldn’t feel his toes. Instinct prodded him to move, to find warmth, but an insistent strain of the person he’d been before this madness urged caution. Urged preparedness.

  He needed food and clothes and shelter. A look out at the vista, the trees and the hills behind him, told him shelter in the forest would be no trouble. But this building—ship—could contain the food and clothing that he needed to survive the coming night.

  He found another entrance and forced his way in, pushing aside a fallen passenger who no longer breathed. His mind did not rebel at the sight of the victim. He knew this was not the first body he’d seen, and he knew that he had not caused this death.

  Not like all the others.

  The memory danced around him like a butterfly and fluttered away, the tantalizing hint strong enough to make him falter for a moment. He’d killed people? Because he was a beast? The dancers turned into fighters, stabbing at him until he cried out and retreated from the thought.

  Arest breathed deep. He found a light bag with clothes inside of it and a small pouch filled with what he vaguely recalled were energy bars. He’d been fed these before, he was certain, but not often. Only on long trips.

  Where had he gone?

  The fighters bounced light on their feet, ready to pounce if he pursued the memory. He let it lie. There would be time for recollection later.

  He slung the bag over his shoulder and took a step further into the ship, but the ground underneath gave way and his leg sank down to the knee in a crack in the floor. Arest gasped as pain shot up and sprang back, pulling his leg with him. A wide gash was torn in his pants from knee to ankle and dark red blood spread across the already stained fabric. He stumbled back, heading blindly for the door and jumping down to the snow below.

  An arena flashed in his mind, chains and whips and cheering crowds. But it all dissolved before he could focus.

  Before he could get to his feet, a shot rang out and a small arrow embedded itself in his chest. On instinct, Arest grabbed it and tore it out, flinging it to the ground as the person on the other side of the stunner sent the electric current. It tickled his fingers and fizzled on the ground at his feet.

  His eyes snapped up and he caught sight of a man in a torn black uniform, hat askew and stun shooter in his hand. Hate surged through Arest and he saw red, the dancers and fighters and violent storms in his thoughts whirling and zooming until there was only the fight, only violence.

  He sprang at the man, higher and farther than a normal person should have been able to jump, which was briefly puzzling. But he didn’t care. Not now. He rolled out of the jump and came up behind the man in a blink, hands clamping on his head, claws digging in as he jerked his neck to the side and heard the crack, felt the man go limp.

  In the scuffle, he hadn’t even jostled his bag. Arest let the man fall to the ground and gave one last look at the ship. Fire sprouted from somewhere towards the top, smoke billowing out of a crack in the wall. His ears tickled as he strained to hear any other threats. But all he heard was the creaking groans of the ship settling into the ground.

  He wasted no more time and ran for the hills behind him. It wasn’t safe, not if there were more men with weapons.

  CHAPTER TWO

  AT FIRST STELLA THOUGHT it was a cave. She came to the opening at the foot of the hills and the cracked dark walls and animal droppings reminded her of the system she and her brother had explored on another world so many years ago. But this wasn’t Earth and she wasn’t a kid anymore.

  Snow whirled outside, a storm brewing fast and strong. She was thankful for the shelter, but feared that she might be stuck here far longer than she intended. And that she might be too far away from the crash for help to find her.

  It only took her a few hours to reach the hills, so she knew they couldn’t be that many kilometers away. She’d found a stream on her way and had drunk deep of the frigid water when the pocket chemical sensor she’d found clinging to one of her candy bars confirmed that the liquid was safe for human consumption. The water here tasted sweet. She’d wished that she had a canteen or something to take it with her.

  As she walked into the cave, Stella immediately rethought her assessment. Yes, the entrance and outside wall were carved from the hills, but not so deep that she couldn’t see a completely flat floor and straight walls that seemed to lead along a defined path somewhere further into the hill. This wasn’t a cave, it was a tunnel, and a man—well, alien—made one at that. It smelled a little musty, but she was still relatively close to the water and the walls of the cave provided some shelter from the cold.

  Stella shivered. She needed to find an ignitor or something else that she could use to start a fire. She doubted her chances of finding a warming brick or even a blanket were very good, not if she didn’t go deeper into the tunnels. Stella wasn’t quite ready for that, not yet. Exhaustion beat down at her and she burrowed into a small indent near the floor, a good way in from the entrance to the cave. It didn’t look like anything had made a home
in there, which was good for her. She didn’t want to fight this planet’s equivalent of bears or wolves for the right to sleep here.

  Especially since she doubted she could win.

  But once she stopped moving, the cold seeped into her bones and her teeth clattered as the rest of her shivered. Clenching her jaw did nothing but make her head hurt. Her stomach growled and she could feel those candy bars sitting heavily in her pocket. But she wouldn’t eat them yet. She’d had a meal on the ship not long before the crash, though she’d probably vomited most of that up. She didn’t know how long she’d be stuck here and she didn’t want to waste those calories on a night time meal when sleep would do away with most of the hunger pangs.

  No, they had to keep until morning. Once it was daylight again she could climb further up the hill and see the extent of the damage to the ship and find out if there was civilization around here. She hoped these tunnels were a relatively recent addition and that she hadn’t stumbled onto ruins of a long dead civilization. Wherever she was didn’t seem like a dead planet, but she hadn’t seen anything but wildlife and trees, so if there was intelligent life, it wasn’t coming out to play.

  Then again, if some huge ship had crashed in the middle of Los Angeles, or even out in the hills, she probably would have run in the other direction until she knew it was safe to offer help.

  The sun was starting to set outside and the dying light slowly filtered out until there was nothing but darkness and the sound of her breathing in her little hideaway. Stella wished she had a torch or something that would give her a bit of light. She’d started to worry about stray animals and the threat they might pose if they reached her. Her thoughts had already grown slow and her limbs heavy, and even if she had second thoughts about the tunnel, there was no way she was leaving it now.

  Her eyes drooped closed and she drifted off on hard dirt, shivering from the cold and huddled in on herself to somehow sate her growling stomach. But the terror and horror of the day crushed down on her and dragged her into a dark and dreamless sleep.