Читать книгу Seeking Peace - Tiera Harding - Страница 7

Liam knew the rest of the Amity’s crew must be close to panic. He walked quickly over to the intercom and hit the button to broadcast to the whole ship.

“Everyone please remain calm and make your way to the auditorium. I will join you there shortly.”

Ten minutes later, 411 of the auditorium’s seats were filled and Liam stood on stage. No one had skipped the meeting because of duty in the security room this time. There was nothing to see.

Liam could see the fear in the faces of his shipmates. Several of the younger children were crying. Esther wasn’t, but she clung tightly to her mother’s hand, her eyes huge and round. Clara’s face was pale, but she looked up at Liam steadily, silently giving him support and strength. He was grateful, because he certainly needed it. Clara gave him strength, and it was his job to give everyone else strength.

“I know you are all frightened,” he began, “I’m frightened too; I won’t try to deny it. But we can’t let that fear overwhelm us. We’ve been taken prisoner by an alien ship. We don’t know why or what they intend to do with us, but I believe if they had merely intended to kill us they would not have gone to the trouble of bringing us inside their ship.”

"Unless they want us dead but don’t want to damage our ship…" said a pessimistic voice inside his head, but Liam chose to ignore it.

“I have reason to suspect that the aliens that have taken us prisoner might be a race known as the Hok-Kar; the Lemarians informed me of this race, but I chose not to make the information public knowledge at that time. The Lemarians said that they are a violent race with little tolerance for other races. Other than that I know no more than you do. I know the situation might seem hopeless, but as the old saying goes, where there’s life, there’s hope. Be strong, shipmates. None of us thought this would be an easy journey when we signed up, but I believe in our ability to get through this trial. Do not give in to fear. When you give in to fear, that’s when you’ve lost.”

Liam looked out at the audience, making eye contact with several of his shipmates. His words seemed to have had some effect, the faces were still afraid, but the fear no longer seemed so wild and out of control. He spotted Amy Brannon near the front of the crowd, between her parents. She was pale and seemed younger than usual, but she met his eyes and gave him a smile that still contained some of the confidence she showed on her hoverboard, as if she was saying, “Bring it on!” Despite the dire situation, Liam found himself smiling. No one who had been chosen for the Amity mission and accepted could be called a coward, but he thought Amy Brannon might just be one of the bravest people he knew.

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For the next few days nothing seemed to happen. Liam assumed that the ship they had been taken into was traveling, but they saw nothing of their captors and the view outside the Amity remained pitch black. Not knowing what else to do, the passengers of the Amity went about their usual routines. The children went to school, the adults did their jobs, Amy and her friends even kept hoverboarding, but tension and worry underlined everything they did. It was inescapable, you could see it in the faces of the people walking down the hall, hear it in the hushed murmurs of conversation in the cafeteria. It felt like the entire ship was holding its breath, waiting, though they didn't know what it was they were waiting for. This went on for seven days.

On the eighth day something changed. The prisoners aboard the Amity felt a small impact, and then an absence, the lack of something they hadn’t really noticed was there, the feeling of the movement of the ship through space. Most quickly figured out that the alien ship had landed.

Next came the sound of doors sliding open and those near windows or the monitors in the control and security rooms saw the ship’s surroundings for the first time as light flooded in. They were in a large room, some kind of holding bay. They also got their first glance at their captors.

A squadron of aliens marched toward the Amity. They were seven feet tall and their skin was bright red. They all carried what were unmistakably weapons of some kind. When they reached the Amity, their leader took out some sort of small device and pushed a button. The doors to the airlock opened and the aliens marched inside.

Liam watched all this grimly from the security room. It was a better place for viewing what was going on then the control room because you could see both inside and outside of the ship. Every member of the security team stood in the room with him, armed and ready to fight to the death if he gave the order.

“Will we fight?” the security chief asked, watching the aliens on the screen.

Liam hesitated then shook his head, “We might be able to defeat the aliens that have entered the ship now, but I have no doubt that there are more waiting outside. On a ship this big they probably outnumber our crew by several hundred, and there may be even more now that we’ve landed. We don’t know what we’re up against. Fighting now would only get us killed.” The security chief nodded slightly, though Liam could tell he hated the idea of going down without a fight. Liam hated it too, but he wouldn’t risk losing members of his crew in a fight that they couldn’t win.

The squadron of aliens was rounding up the crew of the Amity and herding them off the ship.

As they entered the security room Liam stepped towards them, “Who are you? Where are you taking us?” The leader only gave a slight grunt, clearly not understanding a word Liam had said.

Liam tried a different tack, “Hok-Kar?” he asked, pointing at the leader.

The leader gave a curt nod, “Hok-Kar,” he growled in confirmation, gesturing roughly with a six-fingered hand for Liam and the security crew to start walking. The security chief clenched a hand on his gun but at a look from Liam he released it and obeyed the Hok-Kar. As they walked Liam wished fervently that he had gotten more information from the Lemarians about the Hok-Kar. If he had, maybe he would know their weaknesses, how to defeat them, or maybe they would have avoided this mess entirely. He felt like he had failed his crew.

As he and the others left the Amity for the first time in three months, Liam pushed those thoughts away. What-ifs, wishful thinking, and self-blame wouldn’t help anybody. They were in this situation now, and he had to figure out how to get everyone through it safely.

As the 412 passengers of the Amity were herded out of the holding bay and through the hallways of the Hok-Kar ship with the weapons of the Hok-Kar trained on them, Liam took his place at the front of the pack. Clara and Esther managed to make their way through the crowd to him. When Esther spotted her father she rushed to him and flung her arms around his waist, clinging to him like a vice. Liam picked his daughter up and carried her, his free hand finding Clara’s and holding on tight.

They were led off the Hok-Kar ship and found themselves outside, blinking in the sunlight of an alien planet. The sky overhead was an angry red and the grass below their feet was violet. Their captors herded them toward a huge building that stood not far from the ship. It had a distinctly unwelcoming, prison-like look to it. Inside it they entered a huge room, big enough to hold thousands of people. Until they entered, the room had been empty except for one person, who stood on a raised platform at the far wall. Liam gasped aloud, and heard his gasp echoed by many other voices. The woman standing on the platform was not Hok-Kar, she was Lemarian.