Alien Romance: Caged By The Alien: Scifi Alien Abduction Romance (Alien Romance, Alien Invasion Romance, BBW) (Celestial Mates Book 4) Read Online Free
crew, small talk as well as updates on telemetry as their computers mapped the space ahead of them for the first time, adjusting their trajectories by minute millimeters to compensate.
They'd received mail from ground control while they were out. Messages from family, updated orders and predictions, recordings of news spots about them. Penny asked Rivera to send the message she received from her parents to her personal data pad so that she could watch it in private, but she never opened it.
"Of course they start making actual progress on the language as soon as I leave the planet," Cho complained as she scrolled through the data she'd been sent, Salome peeking over her shoulder, obviously excited despite her feigned annoyance, "The linguists have been interpreting it wrong this whole time looking for single symbol letters. Didn't I say that in the very beginning during the whole pictograph/hieroglyph argument? It's the symbols placement on the grid that denotes meaning, not the symbol itself. Now they're thinking the symbols are actually meant to convey tone!"
"That's fascinating," Salome leaned further over Cho's shoulder, "It's like an entire language made out of Sudoku puzzles."
"Can we understand it yet?" Penny asked, leaning against a bulkhead nearby and sipping grape juice, casually observing everyone else. Rivera was watching the same video of her wife and daughter for the third time. Ian was recording an educational piece about gravitational forces with Redbird from the Hermes.
"Not quite yet," Cho replied, "But we're getting close. Now that we have a better idea of the concept of the language we can start figuring things out. It took us twenty years to translate the Rosetta stone. For a totally alien language, I'm frankly surprised we've figured out this much so fast."
There were a few chores to do once everyone was warmed up and had finished reading and responding to their mail. Small repairs to be made and medical checkups to ensure no one was having adverse reactions to the cryo sleep. But before long, Rivera was calling lights out again. They climbed back into their pods for the next leg of their journey.
Their next wakeup call was more sedate, a quick exchange of messages, repairs, telemetry. Back into the pods. The one after that was similar. By the fourth, everyone was getting tired. They were still in the big empty, the void between star systems. An unpleasant and unremarkable place to be.
Outside the window, only Hermes was visible, their guiding star. They ate as much as they could; restoring the calories burned by their chemically slowed metabolisms during the now literal years they'd been asleep.
Rivera watched the video of her daughter growing up and wept openly. No one would have dared mock her for it, not while they were watching the lines develop on their own loved one's faces. Penny still hadn't watched any of the messages sent by her parents, or sent any back.
She felt waterlogged, glutted by sleep, and at the same time exhausted, yearning for a proper, natural nap. Everyone had trained for this, they knew they could endure it.
But that didn't make it any more pleasant to do. She began to resent the waking periods, eager to get back to her pod just so that it would be over sooner. She woke and fell asleep counting down the time left. Just eight more cryo sleeps. Just seven. Just six more...
And then one day, they woke and found the Hermes was not beside them. Penny scanned the blank void beyond the view screen over and over, searching for the silver star of their companion ship.
"Oshun calling Hermes," Rivera's voice was deceptively calm as she called over the short range coms again and again, "Oshun to Hermes, we have lost visual. Please respond. Oshun calling Hermes..."
The Hermes didn't respond, even when Rivera switched to the emergency long range coms. It was like the other ship had vanished out of existence entirely.
"Something must have happened," Ian kept saying, scrolling
They'd received mail from ground control while they were out. Messages from family, updated orders and predictions, recordings of news spots about them. Penny asked Rivera to send the message she received from her parents to her personal data pad so that she could watch it in private, but she never opened it.
"Of course they start making actual progress on the language as soon as I leave the planet," Cho complained as she scrolled through the data she'd been sent, Salome peeking over her shoulder, obviously excited despite her feigned annoyance, "The linguists have been interpreting it wrong this whole time looking for single symbol letters. Didn't I say that in the very beginning during the whole pictograph/hieroglyph argument? It's the symbols placement on the grid that denotes meaning, not the symbol itself. Now they're thinking the symbols are actually meant to convey tone!"
"That's fascinating," Salome leaned further over Cho's shoulder, "It's like an entire language made out of Sudoku puzzles."
"Can we understand it yet?" Penny asked, leaning against a bulkhead nearby and sipping grape juice, casually observing everyone else. Rivera was watching the same video of her wife and daughter for the third time. Ian was recording an educational piece about gravitational forces with Redbird from the Hermes.
"Not quite yet," Cho replied, "But we're getting close. Now that we have a better idea of the concept of the language we can start figuring things out. It took us twenty years to translate the Rosetta stone. For a totally alien language, I'm frankly surprised we've figured out this much so fast."
There were a few chores to do once everyone was warmed up and had finished reading and responding to their mail. Small repairs to be made and medical checkups to ensure no one was having adverse reactions to the cryo sleep. But before long, Rivera was calling lights out again. They climbed back into their pods for the next leg of their journey.
Their next wakeup call was more sedate, a quick exchange of messages, repairs, telemetry. Back into the pods. The one after that was similar. By the fourth, everyone was getting tired. They were still in the big empty, the void between star systems. An unpleasant and unremarkable place to be.
Outside the window, only Hermes was visible, their guiding star. They ate as much as they could; restoring the calories burned by their chemically slowed metabolisms during the now literal years they'd been asleep.
Rivera watched the video of her daughter growing up and wept openly. No one would have dared mock her for it, not while they were watching the lines develop on their own loved one's faces. Penny still hadn't watched any of the messages sent by her parents, or sent any back.
She felt waterlogged, glutted by sleep, and at the same time exhausted, yearning for a proper, natural nap. Everyone had trained for this, they knew they could endure it.
But that didn't make it any more pleasant to do. She began to resent the waking periods, eager to get back to her pod just so that it would be over sooner. She woke and fell asleep counting down the time left. Just eight more cryo sleeps. Just seven. Just six more...
And then one day, they woke and found the Hermes was not beside them. Penny scanned the blank void beyond the view screen over and over, searching for the silver star of their companion ship.
"Oshun calling Hermes," Rivera's voice was deceptively calm as she called over the short range coms again and again, "Oshun to Hermes, we have lost visual. Please respond. Oshun calling Hermes..."
The Hermes didn't respond, even when Rivera switched to the emergency long range coms. It was like the other ship had vanished out of existence entirely.
"Something must have happened," Ian kept saying, scrolling
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