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  The Alien’s Stowaway

  Terran Relocation Act

  Alyx X

  Text Copyright ©2020 by Alyx X

  The Series, characters, names, and related indicia are trademarks and © Alyx X.

  All Rights Reserved.

  Published by Market Street Books

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For Information regarding permission, write to:

  Alyx X at [email protected]

  Production Management by Market Street Books

  Printed in USA

  This Edition, July 2020

  Contents

  1. Evvie

  2. Jarix

  3. Evvie

  4. Jarix

  5. Evvie

  6. Jarix

  7. Evvie

  8. Jarix

  9. Evvie

  10. Evvie

  11. Jarix

  12. Jarix

  13. Evvie

  14. Evvie

  15. Jarix

  16. Jarix

  17. Evvie

  18. Jarix

  19. Evvie

  20. Jarix

  21. Evvie

  22. Jarix

  23. Evvie

  24. Jarix

  25. Evvie

  Thanks For Reading!

  Now Cumming From Alyx X

  About the Author

  1

  Evvie

  Salt in my hair. Salt in my nose. Salt under my fingernails. It didn't matter how frequently I bathed—which wasn't nearly often enough—I ate, breathed, and dreamed about salt.

  What else did I expect? I was a slave in a salt mine after all.

  They didn't call us slaves, of course. That would make the whole experience too disgusting. We were workers, paying off our debts.

  Never mind that we had zero choice in the matter.

  "Water break," my favorite guard yelled. Maybe not favorite, but he was one I hated the least, if only because he beat me the least.

  "Pretty sure you're late," I grumbled as I took the rationed cup of water.

  The TerraLink Program had the necessary amount of water it took to keep us alive down to a precise measurement. We got no more, and no less.

  "Shut up and drink." He handed me my second ration of the day and moved to the next person. The salt mines were a horrible place to repay our debts. Most people didn't last very long. As a result, the TerraLink Program sent the humans that were more of a nuisance to them than they were a paycheck. In a way, I'd brought this on myself. The water went down fast, even as flat and stale as it was. By the time they gave us our next allotment, I'd be desperate enough to gulp it down, too.

  At first, I'd tried rationing and pouring half in a bottle, hidden in my layers of clothing. But I'd quickly learned I needed every drop during my shift to survive the dehydrating effect of the salt. I'd been given several light garments to wear that covered most of my body, and they helped to cool me. Barely.

  Alice had warned me to always wear the layers in the mines, no matter how hot I was. To remove them would mean I’d dry out in the mines, and burn to a crisp in the heat of the sun. We spent hours upon hours deep in the Earth, chipping away at the walls of the salt rooms. The mines were laid out in grids, with open rooms for digging between large swaths of untouched salt to keep the structure sound.

  Our barracks were above ground, the only reason they weren't in the mines themselves was to allow us time to get away from the salt. Otherwise we wore out faster and died sooner.

  And that would've been a waste of resources.

  Alice had explained that to me as well. She told me that, when she first came to the mines, the barracks were underground. She went three years before she saw the sun again. I shuddered at that prospect. The sun may be overbearing and kill people daily, but at least it was light. At least there was air.

  Alice was always tough, though. Tougher than me. I never asked what she did to be assigned here. I knew what I did, and it was stupid enough that I didn’t want to tell anyone. It wouldn’t have been fair for me to ask about Alice’s past when I wasn’t willing to share mine.

  I sighed as I worked, thinking for the thousandth time about that little mistake. After I'd saved enough money to buy a better position in the TerraLink Program, I had almost immediately lucked out. I was chosen within weeks of purchasing my ticket. I was to be sent to Hydronia, a water planet.

  All I had to do was clean, and compared to this salt bullshit, it was the cushiest job imaginable. I’d had my own bedroom in a fancy house. I worked from dawn until a little while before dinner, then my evenings were free. I hadn't even had to cook. The house chef prepared everyone's meals, even the servants’.

  My thoughts were interrupted by our next break. As I ruefully stirred the watery porridge, I sighed and pretended it was one of the simple meals I'd eaten at the manor on Hydronia. Chicken and vegetables—or whatever they'd called their version of a chicken. It was gamier than the ones on Earth, but compared to this, it was a king's feast.

  The bell rang, signaling our five-minute warning. "Eat," Alice urged. I shook myself out of my melancholy and grinned at her. Then, I turned up my bowl and drank the sludge as fast as I could. It was the only way I could stomach it.

  "Like mother's milk," I quipped and wiped my mouth.

  Alice blanched. "Joke all you want, but make sure you always eat."

  "I know." The second bell rang, and we stood and joined the queue to put our bowls in for sanitation. We were given one small cup of water—our lunch ration—and filed silently back to the mines.

  There were twenty-five of us at this mine, in all. Add to that another seven guards and two TerraLink employees that cooked and cleaned. They were rotated out regularly and were generally people that had found some favor with the TerraLink Program upper crust. They traveled the Earth, doing simple jobs at different labor camps. Often couples and their children would be picked for those kinds of assignments after pleasing some TerraLink Program muckety-muck. Whatever. They were all in far better positions than I’d ever be again. For that reason alone I hated them.

  As I walked behind Alice back to our line, I thought about the few times I'd considered trying to use the mine tunnels to escape. It had been tried in the past, always with poor results. I wasn't stupid enough to try to escape that way, though it was tempting.

  Swinging my ax, I remembered to switch arms. Thank goodness for Alice. She'd taught me all the small tricks to help me survive this assignment—this slavery—for as long as possible. She'd been here for nearly twenty years. Yep, she was definitely tougher than me.

  I didn't let myself imagine if I'd be as sane as she was after twenty years in this hell. I’d only been here a few months and I could already feel my sanity eyeing the door. As it was, I used my humor to keep myself from losing it.

  When it was nearly dawn, the whistle signaling that it was time to go to camp filled the air. Even the whistle hurt, sharp and shrill. "You know..." I started. Alice glanced at me over her shoulder as I spoke. "We must be the toughest people on Earth."

  "How do you figure?" she asked.

  "Look at you. You've done this for years, and you're still here, still working."

  Alice chuckled. "I don't know why. This is all I'll ever do. If it wasn't for you, I think I would've given up. I knew you were coming for me."

  A sobering, yet heartwarming thought. “Ah, Alice. But what if I didn’t come? How did you know I was the one you were waiting for?”

  “I knew you’d come. I knew it was you.” She winked at me and I passed her a grin.

  “Well
thank you for waiting.”

  She was talking nonsense, of course, but it was nice to know she had found some measure of peace in our friendship. She needed me as much as I needed her. The endless terrifying possibility of death sometimes seemed more attractive than this, but when Alice shot me a knowing look, gave me some crazy piece of wisdom, or cracked a joke at a guard’s expense, I knew I’d make it another day.

  We filed to the lifts and took turns pulling the ropes until the first group got to the top, where they pulled the ropes for us. It was the best and worst part of the day. The ropes burned our hands, but it meant we'd get out of the mines for twelve hours or so.

  Our bunks were designed with some technology I didn't understand to stay cool during the hottest part of the day, but the mines didn't have such luxuries. Older people back in the city had said that hundreds of years ago the mines were always cool, no matter how hot the surface got during the day.

  Not now. Now they stayed warm, even in the middle of the night, while during the day they were unbearable. So we slept through the sunlight hours in our bunkhouses. They were also warm, uncomfortably so, but not like the mines.

  At the top, another guard gave us our ration of water. My hand slipped when he put the cup in it and I nearly dropped it. A small splash of water spilled out.

  He raised his hand to backhand me, but then thought better of it. "Drink the water first," he growled. I wanted to slap him before he could slap me, but my thirst drove me to do as he said and drink. Besides, slapping him might get me a punishment. They wouldn't deprive us of water, but they might make us skip meals or sit in the sun until our skin burned and blistered.

  Ducking my head, I waited for the blow that never came.

  "Get out of here," he hissed. "I've got water to give out."

  Looking up at him in surprise, I didn't waste time trying to figure out why he hadn't hit me for spilling the water, I just scurried away to catch up to Alice as fast as I could.

  "Close call," I whispered. "He's the one that likes to hit the most."

  "The supervisor walked by," she replied. "Only reason."

  I hadn't seen that. Thank goodness for small favors.

  Sighing at the fact that I considered not being hit a ‘small favor’, I held my arm out so another guard could scan my ident band and let me out of the mine. One of the only pieces of technology way out here in the desert were our armband identification. They kept track of our location, our personal information, and how much money we had. Or, in the case of everyone here, how much we owed.

  Alice and I picked up our steps as we walked out of the mine face and realized dawn was closer than we thought. If we were still out here when the sun came up, we faced another possible punishment. I wondered why the guards had called for the end of shift so late, but couldn’t think of a good reason. Tired from our shift, Alice and I didn’t talk much on the way back. The barracks grew larger as we scurried across the sand with our tools on our shoulders. We'd clean them before we went to sleep.

  Back at ‘camp’, we went straight to the brushes in the corner by the door, stripping and brushing ourselves, layer by layer, removing as much salt as possible. We didn't have enough water for daily—or even weekly—baths, but they did allow us these brushes to keep as salt-free as we could.

  Half the group worked in one corner on the tools while the other half cleaned up, then we switched. It was efficient, and soon we were able to lay down. As one of the younger members of camp, I had the top bunk, with Alice on the bottom, and a new girl I hadn't gotten to know between us.

  When I'd first arrived, I'd worried about falling off, but Alice had helped with that, too. One of the girls that couldn't hack it in the mines had left a belt. Alice had pilfered a few nails before I came, and she generously gave them to me to fashion a sort of safety belt. Supplies like nails were unheard of, and I was again indebted to Alice for her kindness. I looped the device around my waist and settled in for a warm, deep sleep.

  Sleep came quickly, as it always did. One of the few benefits of physical exhaustion. The wake-up bell came too soon—another constant. I scrambled out of the belt and down the ladder to the bucket of food. Alice was already there and held out our bowls. The last ones to get to the bucket missed out on the sausages, which was not something I ever wanted to do.

  I was quick, getting there second, and scooped one too-hard sausage into each bowl. One for me and one for Alice. The porridge was the same as what we'd eaten the day before for lunch in the mines, but we were allowed this meat once a day. Another careful calculation by the TerraLink Program doctors to keep us alive.

  As I turned to take Alice's bowl to her, someone slammed into me. I barely avoided dropping both bowls on the floor, a dreadful offense in our world.

  "Damn it, Clarissa. You always get extra food when the guards hand it out, is that not enough for you?" I whisper-yelled. If the guard outside the door heard me, he'd be in here, probably with his whip out.

  "Whoops." The beautiful pain in my neck flipped her long blonde hair behind her shoulder. "So sorry." Her voice gave no indication she felt bad about bumping into me, nor did her face. She was gorgeous, and she damn well knew it.

  She also used it. She slept with the guards any and every chance she got. As a result, she ended up with extra water, extra food, and the occasional treat brought from guards that became too attached.

  Showing her that she'd gotten to me was the last thing I wanted, but I couldn't stop myself from baring my teeth as I passed by her. She giggled and the other women moved out of the way so she could fill her bowl.

  "If you take more than one sausage, I'll kick your ass," I whispered as I retreated. She froze and looked me in the eyes, but she didn't argue. I watched her dish her bowl out and was pleased to see she only took one. She was a bitch, but she knew I'd risk a whipping to make sure as many people as possible got their own sausage. We were in a shitty situation, a shitty life. But that didn't mean any of us had to make it harder on the others.

  After handing Alice her bowl, I grabbed my spoon from my bag that hung on the side of the bunk. It didn't have much in it. A hairbrush I'd given up two days' rations for to a woman that hadn't lasted a week here. My spoon. A piece of pretty glass I’d found in the sand on the way from the mines last year.

  That same sand gritted under my worn boots as I stopped in front of the back door to the barracks. I gazed out into the darkening sky. There was no guard back here. No need for one. Out this door was nothing more than sand, more sand, and certain death. I still liked to look, though. Still liked to pretend.

  I stood and ate my breakfast in the twilight, the sun now completely beyond the horizon, but the full dark of night not quite settled. If I had a way to both get water and carry it with me, I thought I could almost make it. Surviving during the day was a matter of tunneling under the sand, or seeking shelter from the blistering heat. I was so used to hard work; I would've been able to travel a great distance each night before being forced to hide.

  Others had tried escaping, even going so far as stealing water the entire camp needed to get there. They'd all failed. Every time. They disappeared, then a few days later we received news of their deaths. Sometimes their bodies were brought back to the camp for burial. Sometimes they told us the desert got them. Whatever that meant.

  With a sigh, I returned to the barracks and used the brushes to clean out my bowl. With brushes and no water, of course. On the way to the corner we used for cleaning, I grabbed Alice's bowl too. I liked to do things for her when I could, to make her time here at least a little easier.

  Clarissa brushed past me. "I see you staring out across the desert," she hissed as she handed her bowl to one of her lackeys to clean for her. "You think you're good enough to make it? Go ahead and try."

  I shrugged and returned the bowls to Alice. She gave me a bolstering smile. "Ignore her," she said. "Or they'll notice."

  "I know." I adjusted my layers and turned toward the door. "Come on, the bell will�
��" The sound of the bell telling us to return to work interrupted me.

  Alice grunted. "Yep."

  I followed her out the door and looked across the desert again as we walked toward the mines. It was almost beautiful in the dark like this. As I trudged, my mind again wandered to the lie I kept telling myself. I could've escaped the camp, easily. Getting away wasn't the hard part. We were minimally guarded. The hard part was staying away.

  And staying alive.

  2

  Jarix

  Pretending I didn't feel the whip slice into my arm took more fortitude than I had. I hissed and glared at the guard, thinking of all the things I could've done to him.

  If I just got these damn gloves off, the possibilities could be endless. I took my book and a tray of food to the corner and glared at the guard. Of course, he followed me. "What is it, Sludge? Got something to say?" He sneered, curling his lip as he addressed me.

  I shook my head. He was trying to bait me, and if he got a rise out of me, it gave him an excuse to kill me. Which was not something I was quite desperate enough to want just yet. If any prisoner made motions of rebellion, they were to be instantly put to death. It was their favorite part of their jobs.

  The guards' interpretation of that law was laughable. Even glaring at him might've been enough to do it if he'd been in a bad enough mood. I opened my book and crammed food into my mouth and hoped he'd move on. Shouting across the room drew his attention, thankfully. I wanted to spit out the food in disgust, and if he'd seen that, it probably would have been enough to take him over the edge.