Caveman Alien’s Trick Read online

  Caveman Alien’s Trick

  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

  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 succeed 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 Daralyah.

  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 recently gave birth to a daughter, 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. She’s now pregnant and close to her delivery date.

  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, but she healed by taking part in killing the newly arrived dragon Berezar along with her caveman husband Car’rakz.

  Phoebe

  An astronomy major who always loved looking up at the night sky and fantasizing about the stars, Phoebe is surprised at how much she dislikes actually being on an alien planet. But she just can’t get comfortable or happy on Xren, despite the other girls trying their best to include her.

  This is her story.

  1

  - Phoebe -

  “Thought I’d find you here.” Caroline’s blonde hair shines in the light from my single oil lamp as she sticks her head in the door.

  “I’m pretty predictable,” I agree, sighing inwardly because I have some idea what she’s going to say next.

  She distractedly strokes a hank of her hair behind one ear and leans heavily on the doorframe. “So, there’s a party going on. Maybe take a break from that map and watch Aurora try to teach the cavemen salsa dancing? Without any music?”

  “Sounds like fun,” I say without conviction. “Any stars out yet?”

  “Oh, sure. Emilia is there and Heidi and Mia… oh, you mean actual stars? Let’s see.”

  She briefly leans out of the house, peering up at the sky, then comes back in. “One or two, maybe. It’s a little cloudy. But they’re bright.”

  I send Caroline a little smile to show her I appreciate her effort. “I’ll be out later. After the salsa thing, maybe. I was always more of a foxtrot girl.”

  She nods once, then straightens up, pushing on the small of her back. She’s very pregnant and expected to deliver just about any time. “All right. See you later. Maybe they’ve proceeded to the waltz by then. That’s more my style.” She ducks back out.

  I sigh deeply. Everyone’s so worried about me. Sure, I do appreciate the care. Especially from Caroline. All we dragon girls adore her for what she did when she freed us from the dragon Troga that was holding us captive. But sometimes I need my alone time.

  Most of the time, actually. I think that’s what worries them.

  The noises from the party are hard to ignore. There may not be music, but some of the girls are banging on hollow logs and making a good impression of a drum section. There’a a lot of laughter and talking, both deep caveman voices and bright girly ones. It’s the first party the tribe has had that wasn’t a wedding. Everyone’s having a good time celebrating nothing in particular. It’s a good sign for our little colony. We have enough surplus of resources to party.

&n
bsp; And most of us have the emotional surplus needed.

  The other girls have found their place here in the tribe on jurassic planet Xren. The lab coat girls are all married to cavemen, of course. They’re like the Mayflower pioneers, in total control of everything here in the alien jungle. And the other dragon girls are catching up quick. Mia has become an expert at building houses from bricks; Ashlynn is a master roofer and makes sure that the houses Mia builds don’t leak. Eleanor is one of the best hunters in the tribe, and Camila makes better pots than any of the others. And all the others are starting to flourish with their own expertise, doing something useful for the tribe. Getting food, treating furs, weaving baskets and fabrics, making clothes, making sandals, cooking, cleaning, clearing the forest, exploring the jungle around us, making tools. All things we need.

  And me?

  Hey, no astronomy major ever expects to be that useful with practical stuff. That science is like the definition of dreamery with no particular Earthly use. It’s all stargazing, theorizing about black holes and planets and galaxies and nebulae and dark matter and all kinds of stuff that just turns your mind inside out when you realize exactly how wonderful and unbelievably huge space is.

  But you’d think that anyone who spends her life looking up at the stars, watching every scifi show there is and then picks astronomy as her academic focus would be thrilled to death about actually going to space, seeing alien worlds and exploring planets in outer space, learning how to survive there and enjoying the adventure.

  And then it turns out that I hate it.

  I hate this jungle with all its dangers. I dislike the alien food and the putrid smells everywhere. I don’t like the weird sun with its strange color, just different enough from our own Sun to be a constant reminder that this isn’t Earth. I even don’t care much for the alien cavemen. Yes, they’re big and strong and skilful and kind and great and all that. But they’re so freaking alien. Their faces are the wrong proportions. They have stripes and fangs. Their eyes have a light in them, and their hair shines. And they’re gigantic! My skin creeps every time one of them gets close. As if I expect that any one of them may decide to take a bite out of me at any time. I mean, those fangs can’t be all for show.

  So I’m an astronomer who doesn’t like aliens. The irony is not lost on me.

  The only thing I like is the starry sky at night. It’s pretty much the same as on Earth, and on a clear night I can stand in the middle of the clearing, look up, and for a split second almost feel like I’m home. And probably, one of the stars up there is the Sun. Home. So far away.

  There’s a roar of laughter from outside. Someone must have fallen over.

  Of course, I do useful things as much as I can. Building this house with Mia and Ashlynn was fun, and I enjoy cooking and trying to make something that’s at least somewhat similar to a spaghetti Bolognese. Nobody complains, and I make sure I don’t do any less than the other girls. But I don’t feel like I matter. I’d like to contribute more. I’d like to advance the tribe, help it grow and get better.

  And at the same time, I don’t care. This isn’t my home. I don’t want this to be my home. I want my real home.

  The rest of the time I keep mostly to myself, sitting in this corner in the house we built and making a map of the sky. A star map that will probably never have any practical use. Just dots on an animal skin, keeping me away from the alien realities outside and taking me away to Earth for a few seconds at a time.

  “Hey, still in here?” Ashlynn comes inside and grabs a fur from a hook on the wall. “Don’t want to watch two huge cavemen trip over each other’s feet when they do a couple’s dance?”

  I guess I can’t postpone it much longer. “I’ll be right out, Ash.”

  “Uh-huh.” She puts the fur around her shoulders like a shawl and leaves again. If you didn’t know her, you’d think she was in a huff. Well, that’s Ashlynn. Ice cold on the outside, warm and soft and sweet as a chocolate fondant on the inside.

  Chocolate fondant with a little sprig of mint leaves on top and a drizzle of powdered sugar...

  I sigh again. So, now I’m hungry and craving a dessert I’ll probably never taste again.

  I hang the star map on the wall and slink out of the house.

  As always, the first thing I do is gaze up. Before, it was to see if there were any stars visible. Now I do it to check for flying dinosaurs or the dragon aliens that everyone says are coming.

  There are no dragons or shadows of not-dactyls. The sky is pretty clear, and I see the Big Dipper and the Small Dipper with Polaris, which is so far from our north that this planet must be tilted about sixty degrees compared to Earth.

  There’s no star that denotes the north of Xren like Polaris does on Earth, but after months of obeservations I’ve determined north is right in the middle of a triangle of smaller stars that I creatively call Two, Three and Threepointfive, based on the their apparent brightness.

  “Heyyyyy, here’s the star girl,” Tamara says and lays her arm across my shoulder. If she weren’t pregnant I’d almost think she was slightly drunk, but she’s just excited and happy, making her act as if she’d had a good few drinks. Well, she’s only been married for a few weeks, so she has every reason to be.

  “Here I am,” I confirm. “And there’s everyone else.”

  “Everyone,” Tamara agrees. “Except Delyah and Eleanor.”

  Delyah is our chief and is spending pretty much all her time at Bune, the old alien spaceship, trying to get parts of it to work so it can maybe take us home to Earth. She’s usually accompanied by another girl, because that place creeps her out. This time Eleanor wanted to come.

  I’m not hopeful about her project. The distances in space are immense, just too enormous to fit in a human mind. And we have no idea how we got here in the first place. The Plood flying saucer took us here in a matter of hours, and it has to work on some kind of tech that’s much too advanced for us to grasp. In practical terms, it is simply not possible for us to get home. But I’m not saying anything about that.

  Tamara sits me down by the fire and presses a mug into my hand. “Here, Phoebe. This concoction isn’t too vile, they say. Take the opportunity to get a little drunk. Or a lot. Maybe a lot? I’ll enjoy it vicariously through you.”

  I sniff the mug. Yeah, that’s booze of the caveman variety. Seems each tribe has its own way of making wine or spirits, but they have little refinement. I shrug and gulp down the whole thing, then cough and splutter uncontrollably as tears fill my eyes.

  “That is – cough – just superb,” I wheeze, wiping my eyes. “Delicious. You can really taste the chlorine.”

  “Right?” Ashlynn agrees and clinks her mug with mine. “Best cocktail you’re likely to find on Xren. Cheers.” She takes a sip, and her face scrunches up. “Which tells you everything you need about this freaking planet.”

  Everyone is here, sitting around the large fire. The married girls are sitting close to their husbands, and in some cases on their laps. And the babies are here, too.

  The cavemen from other tribes that came here to be part of the anti-dragon army are sitting in groups a little further away, but still within earshot. They laugh with their deep voices at their alien jokes, sending quick little glances over at us girls. Most of them have never talked to a woman in their lives, so I get their need to ogle a little.

  “Dancing lessons over for now?” I inquire.

  “No, no,” Aurora assures me, having clearly tasted the booze herself and probably decided that she liked it. “It’s jusht that the drummers needed a break? Also, we all needed a break from their drumming. We’ll be back at it very soon. But salsha is too advanced for these guysh. I’ll try merengue next.”

  Tamara refills my mug with the alien booze. “I didn’t know you knew how to dance, Aurora.”

  “It’s been a while,” she confesses. “But it’sh coming back to me. It’s all in the… the…” she points to her hip.

  “In the hips?” I suggest.
/>   “Yesh. It’s all in the hipsh. And the... ass.”

  “It’s all in the ass,” Mia muses. “Could be the motto of our tribe.”

  “I’m not even sure what that means,” Heidi says. “Sounds pretty naughty to me. Naughty and incomprehensible. It’s a perfect motto for us, all right. Seeing anything up there, Phoebe? A descending parachute, maybe? Marked Folgers, with a mysterious crate hanging from it?”

  I’m staring at the sky again. “Nothing that important. Sorry, old habit.” I take a sip of my refilled mug then glance over at the nearest group of unfamiliar cavemen. They’re just a little too close for comfort. Do they have to carry those damn swords every second of the day?

  “The stars don’t look that different from Earth,” Emilia says, cradling her little daughter in her arms. “I mean, I recognize the Big Dipper, at least.”

  “Yeah,” I agree. “We can’t be that far away from home. I mean, it’s light years, and even one light year is pretty damn far. But it can’t be that many light years if the constellations are as similar here as on Earth.”

  “I think Delyah estimated seven light years,” Sophia says. “Seem reasonable, Phoebe?”

  “I think so. Then the sun here would be one of the closest stars to the Sun. I don’t remember the classification of the closest stars. Like, Alpha Centauri and so on. They’re probably mostly main sequence stars. Unfortunately, my specialty field is gamma ray bursts, not stable stars. Thing is, none of the stars I can see look much like what the Sun would if it were as close as that. But it could be we’re on the wrong hemisphere and that it’s only visible on the other side of the planet.”