Page 1 of Warrior Rescued

ONE

HELL BY ANY OTHER NAME

Elena

This doesn’t bode well.

Elena squinted as she stared at the horizon. The largest volcano was definitely belching more ash than before. Kilimanjaro, so she’d dubbed it, wasn’t like the smaller peak to the west that was constantly spitting magma. When the big boy blew it was a terrifying spectacle even at this distance. She followed the plume as it was picked up by the churning green clouds overhead. It wouldn’t be long before it would be snowing cinders along the coast.

It’s already getting cold at night.She shivered.

It would be a month, maybe two, if she was remembering right, before it would be bone chilling, forcing her to stay in her cave. At least that’s what happened the last time ash blotted out the sky.

Has it really been nearly two years?The days weren’t the same length on this planet and neither were the years, but the hash marks in the cave didn’t lie.

Her eyes glossed over as she looked down at the spaceship wreckage strewn across the canyon. One minute she’d been enjoying nature at Big Bear Lake with her extended family and the next she’d awoken in this hell with a big-eyed, pale-skinned, bald alien in her face.

“I am sorry,” Sidi said once Elena had stopped screaming, his all-black eyes filled with remorse as he helped her out of the futuristic coffin.

Her gaze shifted from the alien to the harsh foreign landscape. Through the thick green smog hanging over the string of volcanoes, she caught a glimpse of a giant ringed planet that looked a lot like Saturn.

This isn’t Earth.

This had to be a nightmare, except everything was too crisp to be a dream. Horrified, her gaze landed on the mangled spaceship and hundreds of pods, like the one she just crawled out of, scattered on the canyon floor.

“They’re all filled with…” she stammered and started to hyperventilate.

Most of the surrounding pods were damaged with battered bodies gruesomely hanging out, all human like her. The trail of carnage extended all along the canyon. There were so many people, too many to count.

This can’t be happening.

She bent over and vomited, but only bile came out of her empty stomach as she retched and gagged. The spasms were made worse by the rotten egg smell that filled the air.

“Why?” she choked, holding onto her pod to keep from collapsing.

This wasn’t a lone alien abduction like she’d heard about but never believed. This was so much more than that.

“Your stasis chamber was damaged,” Sidi twittered in his high-pitched voice, answering a completely different question.

She blinked in confusion at him and realized he was saying that he hadn’t awoken her.

“Please, I need your help.” The pale alien pointed behind her.

“¡No me chingues! You must be kidding me. You need my help?!” She shook her head in disbelief.

But Sidi didn’t reply.

On weak legs, she turned and followed the long, outstretched finger. Her eyes widened seeing another ravaged section of the spaceship precariously teetering on the edge of a steep cliff. Beyond it, the chasm in the earth was so deep she couldn’t see the bottom. The ground vibrated as the hulking wreck slid farther toward oblivion. Incredulously, she followed as Sidi hobbled toward the mangled section.

“Are you seriously talking about going in there?” she asked, picking her way through the pods, desperately trying to not look at the dead.

“We need to salvage what we can,” Sidi coughed, choking on the thick air.

“Yeah, okay, so there’s a radio to call for help or something. Understood.”

Just maybe they had enough time to call for help. They had to if that was their only hope. She summoned her courage and picked up the pace.

“No. There’s no one in this quadrant to contact.” Sidi kept stumbling toward the sliding wreckage.

---