Page 5 of Alien Abduction for Experts
He growled; his laughter gone in an instant. "Klat her. She put us into an impossible situation. If we don't do what she asked, she's going to try and kill us again. If we do, then we might condemn two beings to slavery or whatever else Katila has planned for them. I doubt she's going to let them go if they tell her they don't want to be with her."
"Could we report her to the university?" Trish asked. "Surely what she's doing is illegal."
Xil sighed. "We can try, but I bet she's prepared for that eventuality. She might tell them we're lying, and I bet she has evidence to back her up."
"Still, we should try," our human insisted. "What's the worst that could happen?"
We foundout an IG hour later. I was working on the engines, fixing some of the damage. Havel was by my side, holding one of the parts I was about to solder to a broken pipe, when Xil roared through the comms system.
"Guys, come to the bridge now!" he yelled.
Havel dropped the metal part and ran. I followed him as fast as I could, my mind spinning with possibilities of what had happened. Was Trish alright? Had she been injured somehow? Xil had sounded both furious and scared.
I almost bumped into Havel when we entered the bridge. I realised why he'd stopped to stare. Xil was on the floor, cradling Trish in his arms. She was pale, shivering as if she was cold. Tears were running down her face. That sight alone would have made me want to murder whoever had caused her to cry, but what was much worse was the blood seeping from her right ear.
"Fix her," Xil said in a choked voice.
Havel straightened his shoulders, and I knew he was trying to push away his emotions, focus on being a medic. He kneeled by their side and pulled the med scanner from his belt.
"What happened?" he asked gently.
"Katila," Xil spat. "She appeared on the screen, told us she knew we'd complained, and next thing I know Trish is screaming in pain, clutching her head.Then she started bleeding and mumbling nonsense. I've not been able to get her to tell me where she's hurting."
Havel put a hand on Trish's shoulder and gently made her look at him. "Deep breaths, sweetie. It's going to be fine. Where does it hurt? Just the ear or somewhere else? Your head?"
She looked at him with wide eyes, then made some strange guttural sounds. Had Katila messed up our mate's brain?
Havel
Igot up and pointed the scanner at Matar, who was hovering right behind me. Klat. His slug's microchip had been fried, although the slug itself was still alive. Already suspecting the outcome, I scanned Havel's and my own chips. Same result. For some reason, our brain slugs had survived while Trish's had died in the process.
I explained the situation to the others. Trish looked at me in confusion, pointing at her ears. I wished she'd be able to read Kardarian, or that I could write her Peritan language. But it was no use. I only knew one English word: fuck. She'd used that a lot.
"It must have been Katila," Xil growled. "She gave us the slugs at the start of the course. She must have installed some kind of failsafe that would give her control over them. What are we going to do now? Do we have any other slugs on board?"
I shook my head. "No. We can see if we can get any from the station, but it might take some time to install her language on them. It's not like a lot of humans ever leave their planet. It's a rare language that not every shop will have in stock."
I opened the station's shopping inventory on my comms device and scrolled through the translation options on offer. Klat. They did have brain slugs, but only the most basic versions. Their other devices might offer English, but I doubted they'd been tested on humans. It might be unsafe to implant one in Trish. At least we could get them and understand her. It wouldn't be ideal, but better than nothing.
"I'm going to kill that klatting bitch," Matar snarled. "By A'Tar, she will be dead, I swear it."
Trish said something, not that I understood a word of it. She ended with, "Klat". Despite the seriousness of the situation, I couldn't help but grin. It said a lot about us that we'd learned each other’s swear words but nothing else. We'd relied on the translator slugs too much.
"As soon as we've got this all sorted, we're going to take English lessons," I announced. Xil frowned at me, probably annoyed that I was giving orders as if I was the captain, but then he nodded.
"Agreed. And we'll teach her some Kardarian. If we ever go home to Kardar, she needs to be able to communicate with our relatives who don't have translation implants."
I took an antiseptic wipe from my medical kit and gently cleaned Trish's ear. "It's all fine," I told her, hoping she'd recognise the soothing tone I was using even though she couldn't understand the words. "Your brain is intact, it's just the slug that's died. I'll pull it out now, I don't want it to get infected. You'll have to hold still for me. Xil, can you hold her head in place? I don't want to hurt her."
He gently placed his hands on either side of her head. She looked at me in confusion, but she trusted us enough not to struggle. Good girl. I pulled out some old-fashioned tweezers, wishing I had something more sophisticated to impress her. It was the best tool for the job, but I wanted something bigger, shinier. Oh well, size wasn't everything.
Trish said something, the guttural sounds harsh and unfamiliar. She clearly wasn't happy about me going near her ear with tweezers, but a look at Xil reassured me that he had her firmly secured. I stroked her hair, both for her and my own reassurance, then got to work. The slug had embedded herself deep within her ear channel, but now that it was dead it wasn't able to struggle against my grip on it. I pulled it out as gently as I could, but Trish still winced in pain.
"Be careful," Matar hissed from behind me. "If you hurt her, I'm going to klatting break your bones."
"Easy, he's doing his best." Xil's voice was deceptively calm.
The slug exited her ear with a plopping sound, and I let it drop to the floor. Just because we all used them didn't mean that I found them anything but disgusting. Whoever had come up with the idea of embedding slugs near our brain was one crazy person. The IGU provided them as part of their eco-friendly policies, preferring to use organic over artificial matter. I doubted they'd asked the slugs if they wanted to be used for this purpose instead of happily slugging away in their natural habitat.
