Amnay Read online

  PNR Press Presents

  Amnay

  Menin Warriors

  Book 2

  By

  Rayann Marse

  Join the PNR Press Mailing List for Upcoming Releases

  Copyright 2018 Steamy eReads

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter One

  The long sleep was as close to death as Kozue had ever been. It was a dreamless slumber, devoid of any sense of time. Utterly disconnected from all else. A private universe that had been born eons ago but never expanded.

  Logically, she knew that she was only experiencing a simple, diagnosable amnesia. In order for the long sleep to work, without incurring permanent psychological damage, it was necessary to decelerate all processes of the brain as much as possible. It really was like a free trial of death, no strings attached.

  Kozue wasn't sure why, but she still felt like she had been somewhere during the sleep. Somewhere other than the tiny tube on the tiny ship, hurtling toward an uncertain fate. But since waking up, things had been so busy she hadn't had time to think about it.

  And now she found herself once again hurtling toward an uncertain fate. This time, she was fully awake. And rather than feeling cautiously excited, she was outright terrified.

  The brute carrying her underestimated her strength. His grip was loose, and she was able to slip out of it, falling to the floor. She stumbled, wind-milling her legs ever faster to keep from falling down. If she stayed on her feet, she had a chance. However small.

  Tears ran down her face as she sprinted down the hall.

  Another side effect of the long sleep was muscular weakness. It wasn't quite the same as the atrophy experienced by cosmonauts in earlier periods of history, but it was her downfall now. She hadn't gone fifteen feet before a long, powerful arm snaked around her midsection. The giant bent down to grab her, then stood straight, lifting her ninety-five pounds of weight with no effort.

  She screamed and kicked her legs, aiming for any soft spots on his body. There seemed to be none. Everything was dense muscle, rippling and tensing as he carried her along. She tried to hit his testicles, but they were covered by armor plating.

  His breath tickled her ear. "Shhhh," he whispered.

  And he squeezed her tighter. She stopped fighting. She went completely still and waited for it to be over.

  But she was on an alien ship, ruled by creatures who had threatened the existence of the human race. There was no escape, unless she could get back to the ship and find a way to break free of the alien’s cargo bay.

  It was far from over.

  And she was sure Aurora was right. If the goal of these aliens was to simply open up a dialogue with humanity, they would not have asked that only female delegates were sent. Kozue and the others would be used in ways that helpless, fertile women had always been used.

  She looked up at her captor. He stared forward with sharp, intelligent eyes. Eyes not too different from her own. They were a burnished copper color, catching the light brilliantly. His skin, a deep violet, seemed solid as steel even as muscles rolled and veins pulsed beneath it.

  All of a sudden, she realized that this was the same male who had stepped forward to return her wave of greeting back in the cargo bay. He had tried to open the first conversation between humans and... whatever these people called themselves. The realization made her feel strangely relieved. It gave her a shred of hope to cling to. He was apparently an intelligent and perceptive individual; surely he had more in mind than mere sexual release. Broader ambitions must be at work behind those intelligent eyes.

  Please, she thought, squeezing her eyes shut to pray, despite the fact she was an atheist. Please don't disappoint me.

  Once she gave in to being manhandled, the ride was pleasant enough. He moved fast, probably nine or ten miles an hour, but he breathed through his nose and gave no indication of putting in any special effort. He was obviously in good physical condition, even for a member of his race. For him, this speed of transit was probably the equivalent of her moving at a fast walk on a level path.

  The strange light fixtures — bands of phosphorescence beneath thin, black ice — flashed past. Eventually they took a turn and entered a smaller hallway. It seemed older, or perhaps newer. The design and fixtures were different. And then they entered a third hallway, which was different again. Kozue, her mind wandering to avoid thinking about what would happen next, painted a picture of the ship's history in her mind.

  It was, she decided, like one of those big old houses on Earth. The places that belonged to rich families and were added onto over the generations by slightly crazy people who were used to having everything they wanted. People who never learned to curtail their unfeasible and childlike ideas. The ship had perhaps started as a single pearl, but it had slowly cultivated labyrinthine masses around it. The end result was a place of strange turns and pointless hallways, a maze with no rhyme or reason. Or none that Kozue could see.

  Her captor, however, seemed to know just the way. He did not hesitate at any of the turns he took, or any of the doors he carried her through. They eventually came to an archive of sorts, a room that was really just a long hallway lined with shelves. On these shelves were books; the covers were made of gleaming metal of different shades. The shades were all kept together, organized, which led Kozue to believe they signified something about the type of information contained within. The pages of the books were not paper but some semi-transparent, plasticky material.

  Of course Kozue, being the renaissance woman — or nerd — that she was, wanted nothing more than to open each of those books and see what they contained. But she knew she would have to learn the alien language before she could hope to read them.

  Every ten feet or so along the archival hallway, a half-circle alcove stuck out to one side. They had seats, huge enough for a grizzly bear to use. Some of the seats were occupied. Male and female alike studied here, wearing all manner of clothing. It was almost like a library back on Earth; color, caste, or gender seemed to have no bearing in the search for knowledge.

  Kozue took all this in as she was carried like a child through scene after scene of alien life. She had lived through worse. In jungles, she had picked leeches from her body and been eaten alive by sand flies. She had been held at gunpoint, tied up, blindfolded. Once, she had even been kept in a cage for twelve hours, with nothing but an occasional trickle of water from an old man who took pity on her. In Africa, she had been puked on by someone who was thought to have Ebola; it turned out they only had malaria.

  She had always come out of these situations alive and without permanent damage. She saw no reason why this should be any different.

  So the prudent thing to do was to keep her eyes and ears open, to soak up information about this culture at every opportunity. It would all be beneficial in the future.

  After the library, they entered a cavernous room full of columns. The columns appeared to be made of stone. There were thousands of them, describing a grid of six foot by six foot squares across this huge space. And yet each column had been carved with seemingly unique designs.

  Some of them depicted members of the alien race, tall and broad and proud, usually in combat situations. They fought hundreds of battles against hundreds of enemies. None of those enemies looked human, or remotely like any animal life she was familiar with. They were alien, creatures of distant worlds. Kozue looked a
round desperately, trying to memorize all of these scenes. The ship was large and confusingly laid out; chances were good she'd never find her way back here again. Not on her own.

  One thing the columns seemed to confirm was that this ship did indeed belong to these creatures. It wasn't something they had inherited from a conquest. The columns were clearly old; some looked as old as the ruins of ancient Greece back on Earth. She had no idea how fast stone would age in a spaceship, in a perfectly stable environment. A lot slower than it aged on Earth, in the ravages of wind and rain and temperature changes.

  The columns, then, might be tens of thousands of years old.

  That was Kozue's best guess, anyway. She was no archaeologist, but she knew something concerning just about everything. She didn't think she was far off on her estimation.

  If she was right, these aliens had been a spacefaring society for significantly longer than humankind's entire recorded history. At the same time as her ancient predecessors were writing in cuneiform on clay tablets, the ancestors of this beast who carried her had crossed the stars, searching for new places to conquer and females to take. She was glad it had taken them this long to find Earth. It was almost enough time for humanity to catch up. In another fifty years, she felt confident the wonders of TIDE and new hybrid propulsion techniques would carry a girl like her to another star system. And give these creatures a run for their money.

  Of course, she could be completely wrong about all of this. The stone columns might have been transferred from the ground of the alien homeworld in the recent past. They may not have been built in place. But they seemed too seamlessly blended into the room. And the pieces of stone that connected to floor and ceiling seemed to have aged in exactly the same way as the columns, themselves.

  Kozue's mind took all this in, pondering it from every angle as she was carried through the forest of columns.

  Finally, they reached the end of the room. Here, a female knelt by a column in the last row. She wiped it down with a fine sponge. Although she exercised almost monk-like care and gentleness, the washing would accelerate the aging process of the stone by a tiny amount. But a tiny amount adds up to something considerable after decades or centuries.

  Too many variables. Too many things to consider. Kozue recognized that she was spiraling into a sort of quiet panic. Her body had shut down, given in to the flow of the situation. But her mind was more active then ever, moving at a million miles an hour. It was a familiar and unpleasant feeling. She just hope they would get wherever they were going before she totally lost it.

  Her captor carried her into another hall. For all she knew, it was the same hall as the one they'd started in. They may have gone in a circle. Maybe he was trying to confuse her.

  "Are we almost there?" she asked, trying to put everything she felt into her tone of voice. Because she knew the words themselves were falling on deaf ears.

  To her surprise, the male reached into a slot in his armor and pulled out one of those translating devices. He held it out toward her and gave her a little nod.

  "Are we almost there?" she asked again.

  An alien voice echoed her words in a foreign language. Her captor answered, and the words were translated back.

  "Almost there," he said. "I'm taking a path for you to see more. So you can learn about us."

  Kozue smiled. To a woman in her field, his words were the most beautiful of all.

  "Yes," she said. "I want to learn everything."

  "Okay," he said into the translator. "First, I have to take you to the room. I will put you down. Don't run. Promise."

  "I promise not to run," she said, enunciating clearly. Now was not the time for either of them to get confused.

  Without pause, he slung her off his shoulder. Grabbing a handful of the back of her shirt, he lowered her to the floor. Then he brushed something off her back and asked "Not hurt?"

  "No," she said, "I'm fine. Thank you."

  Her tone of confusion and faint terror did not seem to translate. The male beckoned to her with his huge hand and continued down the hall.

  A short ways down, they turned into a very narrow side passage. Ten feet of walking brought them to another door. Inside, Kozue found an empty room with a drain in the middle of it.

  That was it, then. She was alien food. He would bleed her into the floor drain and hang her up to dry. Or put her in a smokehouse. Kozue Esumi, turned into jerky here at the edge of the solar system.

  "Not ready yet," he said. "It will be, soon."

  She turned back toward the door. He was blocking her way. If he hadn't been, she was sure she would have run again. Even though she knew it was pointless. Some instincts can't be suppressed.

  "Don't hurt me," she told him, staring at the floor and squeezing her hands together. "Please, don't. We can be friends. New friends. We can teach each other things."

  At that point, Kozue learned that these creatures did actually have a sense of humor. They just used it sparingly.

  Her captor threw his head back and laughed. It was a deep and rasping sound, like cloth being ripped underwater. Then he touched her chin, bringing it up so that her eyes met his.

  "I won't hurt you," he said. "Not on purpose. But you are small. I will be careful."

  She fought the impulse to look down. She did not want to see what waited there.

  The male stared into her eyes for a long time. She wanted nothing more than to look away, but she didn't, remembering what Sybil said. No weakness. She didn't even blink, and her eyes started to water. Her left eye overflowed, a crocodile tear rolling down her cheek.

  The male's expression changed to one of concern and curiosity. Keeping his hand on her chin, he reached his thumb over and wiped the tear away.

  "Sad?" he asked.

  "No," she said. And she wasn't. She was afraid, but not sad. "Do you cry?"

  "When sad," he replied.

  She looked at the brute. And she remembered the look of the other males in the hall, grinning in mean amusement as they came forward to pick their human meat. She could not picture them ever being sad. Let alone crying.

  But then, maybe it was best to think of them as an exaggeration of human men. Tough and flippant and rude when surrounded by their guy friends. But that didn't preclude the existence of a more tender and vulnerable side, hidden somewhere behind the societal pressures.

  The male released Kozue and stepped around her. He went to an open closet or storage compartment and pulled out a chair. It was far too large for Kozue and didn't look very comfortable, but she didn't complain when he pushed her gently into it.

  "Wait here," he said and disappeared.

  Kozue waited. She did not run. To run would be to stumble into someone who was likely far blunter and less patient than the captor she had been blessed with. She thought of the other women, and her heart fluttered. It was her sincere hope that they were safe, but she was still glad not to be in their shoes.

  Especially Aurora's. That girl was far too eager. And she was in for a rude awakening. Kozue felt sure of that.

  "God," she said, staring at the floor that stood a full ten inches below her hanging feet, "I don't know if you exist. You probably don't, unless you actually enjoy all the bad things that happen in a universe roamed by intelligent creatures with free will. In which case, you won't help me because you want to see me suffer. You want to see your creation take full advantage of the gift you gave. But if you are real... Well, I don't know where I'm going with this."

  She lifted her hands and stared at them. They were tiny hands, with slender fingers. Fingers like popsicle sticks, she sometimes thought. Sometimes, she felt she was made of glass. Of some essentially unstable material, ready to shatter into so many tiny pieces. No evidence of her existence would remain. At times, she looked at her hands and had trouble believing she was real at all.

  ***

  Her sense of the unreal only grew stronger when her captor — whom she had started thinking of as her suitor, to trick her brain into
not being afraid of him — came back into the room carrying her cot in one hand.

  Without saying anything, he put the cot down in the middle of the room. His other arm carried the bundle of her blanket and pillow. He proceeded to make her bed, smoothing the comforter until a quarter could have bounced on it. Then he turned to her with a toothy smile.

  Kozue said nothing. Her mind couldn't agree with itself on the proper response.

  Her suitor took his translator out and reached her in three huge steps. He stuck the translator up to her mouth and raised his dark eyebrows at her.

  Dark eyebrows on dark purple skin. The lights around the ship must emit a fair amount of UV to maintain such a tan. Unless the mechanism of their pigmentation was different. Perhaps it was tied more closely to nutrition or hormones. The latter would make sense; all the females Kozue had seen so far had been significantly paler.

  "What?" she asked now, staring up at her suitor.

  He gave her the faintest of smirks as he lifted the translator to his lips.

  "You're welcome," he said.

  Then he turned and walked back to the cot. He grabbed the edge of it and gave it a shake. The bed's feet rattled against the floor. He stepped back and studied the cot like it was the most interesting thing he'd ever seen. Maybe it was, being an object devised and constructed by an alien race.

  Kozue was stunned. First she learned they had humor. Now she learned that their humor was just as nuanced as that of humans. On Earth, he would have been deemed a smartass.

  "Thank you?" Kozue said.

  "Not my idea," he said over his shoulder, but the translator still picked is up. "Slych's idea. Your own bed in your new home. But we won't stay in this room forever. Just for now."

  "Who's Slych?" Kozue asked.

  "Another of us. He was in the corridor, too."

  Kozue stood up fast. "He was? He took one of the other women."

  "The other small one with bright hair."