Caveman Alien’s Claim Read online

  Caveman Alien’s Claim

  Calista Skye

  Contents

  The story so far

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Epilogue

  The story so far

  The Abduction

  Sophia, Emilia, Aurora, Caroline, Alesya and Delyah are working on an advanced translation device at their university when a UFO rips the roof off the building and beams them on board.

  They try to hijack the spaceship, but are dumped on a jungle planet after Alesya is killed by the abducting aliens, called the Plood.

  The Alien Planet

  The girls are dumped on top of a mountain on planet Xren, light years away from Earth.

  It’s a jurassic planet where alien dinosaurs roam around, most of them deadly.

  Equally deadly cavemen live in tribes scattered around the jungle.

  The girls settle in a cave and decide to become the best tribe on the planet and create good lives for themselves, despite the difficult circumstances.

  They succed pretty well, not least because they meet friendly caveman.

  Six of the girls are married to cavemen, and the original cave is now just the center of a whole village.

  The Cavemen

  There are no native women on Xren. The caveman appear to have been dumped on the planet in an attempt to create dragonslayers by exposing them to a very hostile environment.

  The cavemen live in villages of thirty to a few hundred tribesmen, waiting for the day when one of them will encounter The Woman. She’s a mythical being sent by The Ancestors to bring all the women back to the tribes.

  New babies are born in the villages, made by Lifegivers, large hybrids of plant and animal that can conceive and gestate male fetuses until they can be taken out.

  Bune

  A huge, ancient spaceship that has been abandoned by its original alien owners. It still holds many secrets. The girls hope that they will be able to make it fly in space again, so that they can go home to Earth.

  The Dragons

  The alien that controlled Bune is now dead, but before she died she warned the girls about an impending invasion of alien dragons. The girls are now preparing for it as well as they can.

  The Girls

  Sophia

  Sophia was the leader of the student project to develop the translator device. She was also the first of the girls to encounter a caveman, called Jax’zan. They are married and have a baby together, little Jaxia Aurelia.

  Now she’s pregnant again.

  Emilia

  Emilia is married to Ar’ox, another caveman from a different tribe. She befriended an animal that the cavemen call a ‘gray ghost’, but which looks more like a mix of a mouse and a monkey. Emilia called her new friend Alice. Alice is now a rare guest at the cave. Emilia and Ar’ox have the daughter Ariana Carol.

  Heidi

  Heidi was caught by Dar’ax, a caveman who can tame dinosaurs. For a while he was riding on the T. rex-like dinosaur named Gerk, but he now prefers to ride on dactyls. Heidi and Dar’ax are married. She's the only one of the girls who wears glasses, and also the only one who can ride a dactyl alone.

  Heidi recently gave birth to her daughter Delia’xa.

  Aurora

  The temperamental Aurora is the only one of the girls who made a bow and arrow for hunting and self-defense. She’s married to Trak’zor, a caveman she shot when out hunting. She’s pregnant and close to her due date, and she's now replaced her bow with a much more powerful crossbow.

  Caroline

  Caroline is almost as unassuming as Delyah and likes taking care of the other girls. She hunts, cooks, and experiments with food and drink. With her husband Xark’on, she trapped and killed the small dragon Troga, sent by Bune to guard twelve other Earth girls who are now a part of the little tribe.

  Alesya

  Murdered by the Plood abductors.

  Delyah

  The shy but fiercely bright Delyah is the elected leader of the little tribe. She’s often busy at the old spaceship Bune, trying to figure it out and see if it can’t fly them home to Earth.

  She is married to Brax’tan and pregnant.

  The Dragon Girls

  The twelve ’dragon girls’ were kept captive for many months by the small dragon Troga. They were rescued by Caroline and Xark’on, and now live with the other girls in the village.

  Tamara

  Tamara is one of the dragon girls. She was badly traumatized by the time she was kept imprisoned by the dragon, and she hates hearing people talking about the dragon invasion that’s expected.

  This is her story.

  1

  - Tamara -

  “You know, this could actually work.”

  Sophia sits down beside me on the flat rock outside the cave, carrying baby Aurelia Jaxia in her arms and already showing a little with the next one. She casually squeezes my wrist in affectionate greeting the way we’ve become accustomed to here in this tribe of Earth girls and their cavemen husbands. It’s like we’ve become more physical, less guarded about our emotions and affections.

  “It totally could,” I agree, stroking her forearm and looking over at the group of cavemen on the other side of our big yard. “At this rate, we’ll have a regular army in no time.”

  After Chief Delyah took control over Bune, the alien spaceship, cavemen from many tribes have been searching us out to get the whole story and to offer their swords in the service against the dragons that are supposedly coming from space to kill us. None of them have been spotted yet, and it seems to me that the source of that dragon information is less than reliable. But the cavemen here on Xren are taking the possible threat very seriously, and they realize that our tribe is at the center of it all. The dragonslayer army is slowly forming.

  Right now, six cavemen from other tribes have come out of the jungle one by one and are talking to our men, being brought up to speed about the events from the past year. They’re all large and insanely muscular, like all the cavemen here. And they have stripes in different colors, showing the color of their tribes on their very bodies. There’s purple, light blue, indigo, light green, dark red, and one I can’t identify, but which looks grayish.

  “Definitely,” Sophia says and adjusts the sleeping Aurelia Jaxia on her lap. “Those dragons don’t know what they’re going up against.”

  Delyah comes over and leans back on the rock wall, chewing on the stalk of a kind of plant that I know from experience has a pretty sour taste. Well, pregnant women do have strange cravings. “To be fair, we don’t know what we’re going up against, either. None of us has ever seen a full-grown dragon.”

  It’s a topic we’ve been talking about a lot. That is to say, the other girls have talked about it. Whenever the talk turns to the dragons that are coming, I either walk somewhere else or try my best to tune them out.

  “Looks like the girls’ house is coming along
all right,” I say, pointing to the half-finished structure in an attempt to change the topic. “I think they’re really going to make it the best house in the village.”

  “The girls are doing good,” Delyah agrees with a warm smile that was rare from her before. Getting married and knocked up has been really good for her. “Making bricks and everything. They’ll be our designated builders. At the rate our tribe is growing, we’ll need more houses.”

  I feel a shot of pride in Phoebe, Mia, and Ashlynn, who are building a real house in this village. They’re ‘dragon girls’ like me. We’re twelve girls who were kept captive in a small part of the jungle by the young dragon Troga. We were there for months, slowly starving to death, before Caroline and Xark’on saved us and we could join the lab coat girls in this pretty bangin’ tribe of theirs. Well, bangin’ for this planet. Back on Earth, it would be shockingly primitive.

  “It’s so cool,” Sophia exclaims. “We’re starting to specialize. It’s like we’re retracing human history on Earth, except at breakneck speed. First the stone age, then the iron age, and now we’re becoming specialists. Soon, we’ll be making nuclear reactors and laptops.”

  I twist at the bangle on my wrist, my only remaining object from Earth. “But when we get to that point, can we skip the student loans part? And the overdue bills? Actually, we don’t need money at all, do we?”

  “It’ll be an ideal society,” Sophia solemnly states. “No money. All the coffee you can drink. Unlimited amounts of weird dinosaur stew. A raptor in every garage and a caveman in every pus— um… in every cave.”

  “Perfect,” Delyah sighs theatrically. “Then all we need is back to back Kardashians on rainy Sundays and we’re set for life.”

  “You’d need a television first,” I point out. “But that can’t be hard to arrange. I’ve seen them. They’re just glass screens with some wires coming out of them! You could whip one up in an afternoon, Delyah.”

  “Oh, sure. I just need the glass. And the wires. Maybe a Kardashian or two.”

  “I’d settle for a decent documentary,” Sophia says and looks at me from the corner of her eye. “About the wildlife here, maybe. You’re a zoology major, right, Tamara? You can make a whole bunch of those.”

  “Give me a camera, and I will,” I reply. “I’d love to see those documentaries, myself. I’d learn a lot from watching them.”

  The girls chuckle, and Delyah punches my shoulder playfully.

  The lab coat girls not only saved us dragon girls from starvation, they also received us like old friends. Some of the other dragon girls are a little apprehensive still, but I like the lab coat girls and their huge, striped caveman alien husbands. They’re tough, and they have a sense of community here.

  I glance over at the group of cavemen from other tribes. They’re glancing at us, too. We are the first women any of them have ever seen.

  One of them attracts my eyes especially. I can’t really make out which color his stripes are. One moment they look white, and the next they’re definitely a dull gray. He sits with his side to me so I can see him in profile. And it’s the most regal profile I’ve ever seen.

  Of course, the cavemen don’t look like human men. They have the wrong proportions, and they have those fangs going on. But this guy looks like a Roman emperor. There’s such pride in the way he holds his head up and hardly moves. He is the only one who hasn’t sent us a curious glance or two.

  He hasn’t looked at me even once. I kind of want him to. Because as far as I can see, that face of his is pretty close to beautiful, despite the alienness.

  “Do we know who these guys are?” I ask casually.

  “Not yet,” Delyah says. “Brax’tan and the guys are evaluating everyone who comes here. Seeing if they have special talents or if they’re here just to ogle us girls. Not all the tribes are worth dealing with, he says. I’ll take his word for it. Those ones look like they come from different tribes, though. Sent from their villages, probably. They must come from pretty far away.”

  “So, zoology,” Sophia persists. “The study of animals, right? Seems like it could be useful for us. I mean, we lab coat girls are just linguists. We wouldn’t know a zebra from a goldfish if it bit us on the ass with its beak. But you would.”

  “Probably,” I deadpan. “I probably would. Yeah, studying the animal life here on a pretty much undiscovered planet just buzzing with life is a wet dream for any zoologist. You’d approach it systematically, group the critters into various classes and genera and finally species and so on. You’d have to establish all new classifications, different from the ones on Earth. Except, that’s pretty thorough. I’m not sure we need it at this point. I mean, all we need to know about a creature here is, one: Will it kill me? And two: Can I eat it?”

  “Yes,” Delyah says thoughtfully. “That’s true. And still, we’re not in desperate straits anymore. The dinos are mostly leaving us alone, and we don’t have to worry about being attacked by the tribes. We have spare food and resources. We actually don’t need absolutely everyone to work all day long at getting food or water or making simple pots or spears or crossbows. We can afford to look a little to the future. If it turns out we won’t be able to leave this planet, knowing more about the animals around us could be a great help.”

  I get a little fired up. This is something that’s pretty close to my heart. At least it’s not about dragons. “It’s a lot of work. It would have to start with the ethology of the most important animals.”

  Sophia and Delyah look at each other, and Sophia nods knowledgeably. “I was going to say that. The etology. So important. Super vital to do etology when you study animals and all that stuff. Yeah. What is etology, Tamara? I mean, of course I know. But I think maybe Delyah doesn’t.”

  Delyah smiles. “Ethology. The study of how animals behave in nature. Right, Tamara?”

  “Yep. It’s the most fun part. You hide somewhere and observe, say, a family of beavers for years and years. And then finally you know how beavers live their lives. Or you find out one new thing that nobody knew before. I did that for a winter up in Canada.”

  “Did you find out anything?”

  “Yeah! I found out it gets really fucking cold in Canada in the winter.”

  Delyah laughs. “Sounds like you made a real breakthrough.”

  “See? That’s what I thought! Then they told me everyone knows that. So I had to write that thesis on those damn beavers, instead. Of course, they hardly move during the winter. I pretty much had to say ‘so it turns out beavers hardly move during the winter’ using eleven thousand words.”

  “Ooh!” Sophia says, impressed. “Well done. That’s what college life is all about. Padding out one sentence to a whole paper. So how about you study some of the animals around here, instead? As a hobby that could turn out useful? I mean, we can’t offer you something as exciting as beavers, of course. But we have dinosaurs. That’s almost as cool. They sometimes move, too.”

  I nod. “Sure. I’ll go into the woods a little more. See if I can find something worth studying.”

  Delyah follows my gaze. “Like you’re studying that cavedude over there?”

  “Hey,” I protest,” there’s not that much to look at in this tribe. I’m tired of seeing the same old faces.”

  “Yeah,” Sophia agrees. “And that face there is nice to rest your eyes on. What color are those stripes?”

  “A kind of gray,” Delyah says, then squints. “Actually, I think it’s silver.”

  “Silver stripes,” Sophia sighs dreamily. “Now that’s a dragonslayer from out of the fairy tales. And we need a lot of them.”

  “Probably,” Delyah says. “If what not-Alesya said was true and the dragons are in fact coming here.”

  “You’d think,” Sophia says, “that if the dragons are coming here, they’re coming to kill the last of their enemies, the aliens that made Bune. But there’s nobody left. Not-Alesya was the last one. What if we just hide when they get here?”

  My heart sinks.
I hate talking about those damn dragons.

  “I think it would be difficult for everyone to hide,” Delyah says. “Every caveman on the planet hiding? Maybe the dragons will recognize a dragonslayer when they see one. And every caveman here is one. I don’t know. Bringing the cavemen to this planet was not-Alesya’s plan.”

  Sophia strokes her little daughter’s head. “The baby dragons were pretty terrible. But the guys handled two of them out in the open and killed them without any serious injury. And of course, Troga turned out to be mortal enough…”

  They continue talking about dragons, and I want to clamp my hands over my ears. I hate it whenever anyone does that, and I have a strong urge to just get up and walk away.

  I like animals. I really do. Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to be a farmer, then a veterinarian. And then I settled on studying zoology, which allowed me to get close to animals at least sometimes.

  But dragons… just thinking about them makes me shudder. Troga was really just a newly hatched one, pretty small and probably nothing like a full-grown one. But she was terrible.

  She could put you in a trance just looking at her beauty, making you freeze up and lose yourself in her otherworldly nature. Deep in her trench that separated us from freedom, she would make the sounds of a small animal or a baby trapped, tempting you to come and rescue. Her cackle dripped with evil, her skin shimmered in all the colors of the rainbow, and her proportions were so perfect, you were tempted almost into letting her do whatever she wanted. You would feel that a creature that beautiful would have a right to do anything to you.