Alien Mine Ch. 11

Mei thought the man was a pig who reminded her of her husband. She worried about Bao but was not in a position to do anything yet. Mei was a valued researcher, and if she solved the current problem with beam stability, she would be able to name her own price. For some reason, though, the latest experiments continued to fail. She and Bao had been working on it tonight.

Mei drove alone, thinking about the work they had done. She was more and convinced the physics was correct. The math all looked good, and tonight they had gone over every equation carefully. Perhaps it was something in the experiment itself. She did not look forward to that conversation. Her colleague in charge of the experiments was challenging to say the least, and would tolerate no criticism of his work.

The area she was driving between the town and her lab was barren, and few people lived in this part of the province. The roads were dark here, but she would be home soon. Up ahead, she could see lights, but as she got closer, two people in uniforms were waving her off the road. The road was not in the best shape here in the country, with potholes and no street lights. Mei slowed the car and could see that it was two women standing beside the road with flashlights. They wore interior ministry uniforms, the kind of officials that arrested high-profile individuals for corruption. Mei tensed, but she pulled off the road, looking around for others, but there were just those two. They approached her car and motioned for her to roll down the window. One woman stood in front of the car while one came to the window.

"Our car has broken down. We need to borrow your car to meet with the rest of our group," the woman at the door said, opening the door and gesturing for Mei to move over into the rider's seat while the other officer got into the back. It was dark, and she could not see the women's faces, but a surprised Mei moved over as ordered.

They started off without another word, driving down a much smaller road that Mei knew ended in the desert. Mei looked at the woman driving suspiciously. Something was off about her accent and how she held herself, and she had not seen another vehicle on the road. Mei could see the facial features didn't look right, nor the way the woman carried herself. Mei had defended herself before and would again if she had to, but she could think of no reason why she would be in trouble with the authorities. Her work was important; she was essential to the development team.

Mei began to worry when the car turned off onto a side road and kept going. "This road ends up ahead," she said.

"We know," the one driving said, "don't worry, we will be there soon."

That did not make any sense to Mei; why were two women security agents standing on the road when she came by, and why were they taking her down this road that went nowhere.

They came to a particularly dark area, and the car turned off the road, driving over the hard Sand. Mei felt a surge of panic and prepared herself to fight or run. Almost as if in response, the woman behind her took a firm grip on her left arm. In a quiet voice, Mei said, "You're going to kill me, aren't you?"

"No, you will not be harmed," the woman driving said. "Someone wants to talk with you alone. We will bring you back to the road in a few minutes, don't worry, you will be fine." The car stopped, and Mei was pulled from the vehicle, resisting for a moment, but one of the female officers each took an arm, holding her tightly. It was a good thing because an object suddenly appeared in front of her, and they pulled her screaming into it.

Mei sat in a chair, quiet now, calmer but still tense. No one had hurt her, but she had been carried into something and pushed into a chair. This something had appeared out of nowhere, and she had been dragged kicking and screaming. Her struggles were useless, the two women holding her as if she was a child. So now she sat quietly looking around, trying to make sense of what was happening. In the light, she could see the two women were not Chinese, and they were speaking English. I am being kidnapped, she guessed, a western government probably. Mei was thinking furiously, wondering if she would have a chance to run. She was a scientist, though, not a soldier, and didn't really know what she would do.

The two women had brought her here with little effort despite Mei's struggles. No one had tried to hurt her, but they were still here in this room watching her. It looked to be a control room of some sort, but Mei had no idea what. Then more people came in speaking English, three more women and a man. They were not Chinese; that was obvious, for they were wearing a strange one-piece uniform, form-fitting but with no insignia. The man sat down in a chair across from her; he was large, good-looking, she supposed, for a foreigner.

"Hello Mei," said the man in English. "I know you speak English; my name is Rhys," and he introduced the other women as well. Mei just looked at him, no English words coming to her. "You can speak in Chinese if you like; we can understand it. I apologize for what has happened tonight, and we will not hurt you."

Mei waited, but the man was silent, watching her. Finally, she looked at him and said, "What are you going to do with me?"

"We need some help understanding some new technology, and we think you are the one who can do it."

"Where am I," she asked?

"Let me show you," he said.

Mei gasped and cried out as the walls suddenly became transparent, and she saw the ground falling away. She watched in terror as whatever they were in seemed to continue to rise faster, the ground disappearing beneath her until she could see the earth curving away under her.

She paused for a moment, about to try and run out, but as she looked at the earth falling away, she sat back down, mind working furiously. There was no sense of movement; this must be a trick.

"Look around you," said the man, "what you see is real, the earth falling away, the moon off to the right. We are traveling at around a .05% light speed and will reach 20 % light speed shortly."

"I don't believe you," she said, thinking furiously, brain whirling trying to calculate if what he was saying was accurate. "Nothing can go that fast; the energy requirements are too large," she stated, her voice level.

"Let me show you something else, hold on to your chair for a demonstration."

Mei gasped as the feeling of weightlessness hit her for the first time in her life. Her stomach didn't like it, and she flailed, trying to regain her seat while floating up awkwardly from the chair. Finally, one of the women reached out to steady her, pushing down so that she settled back into the chair. Mei gripped the armrests as hard and tried not to throw up. Then, one of the women said something, and suddenly everything was back to normal.

"I am sorry," the man said, "I just wanted to give you a bit of a demonstration to show you I am telling the truth. Just think about what you just experienced, artificial gravity, and we have no idea how it works."

Mei could see they were accelerating, but there was no inertia to push her down in the chair. Of course, that was impossible, but Mei just nodded, unable to think of anything to say. She was overwhelmed by what was happening to her. Inertia was the problem with acceleration; the forces would be crushing their bodies if they were accelerating this fast.

"Where are you taking me?'' she asked fearfully?"

"Just out for a short trip, then back to earth. We are going to give you a demonstration of what we need help with."

Mei just sat there quietly watching as they appeared to pass the moon and then another planet she guessed was Mars. Her mind refused to come to grips with what she was seeing. Rhys had Amancia bring her some tea, but it sat untouched as she stared out of what appeared to be windows.

"Have you figured it out yet," asked the man with a smile, "you are very brilliant; tell me what you think."

Looking around, she said, "If this is real, then this is an alien craft; no one on earth can do this. Are you also aliens?" she asked fearfully.

"No, we are human, but you are right about the alien ship, and we need your help to figure it out."

Mei began to relax a little, which was somewhat reassuring. "Why kidnap me? I would have done anything to see this," she said cautiously, trying to determine motives.

"Let's have the demonstration first," he said, "then we can talk." The ship came to rest in the asteroid belt. A medium-sized asteroid, about a kilometer in diameter, lay about 10 kilometers away. "Ok, watch this," Rhys said, and suddenly part of the asteroid seemed to dissolve, big chunks just disappearing.

Rys turned to Mei, who was staring at the asteroid. "This is a weapon we are calling a disruptor beam, though we have no idea how it works. But it seems to just break molecular bonds, and things just disintegrate."

"You may find this next one even more interesting." A bright red beam seemed to connect the ship and the asteroid, but the rock was suddenly in two pieces, two half-kilometer pieces slowly drifting apart. "That was low power,'' he said.

Rhys could see her mind working to comprehend what she had just seen, impossible weapons and unknown physics. That ought to get her attention. "We need you to reverse engineer this, help us understand how this technology works. We need to be able to reproduce the weapons and the ship's drives, and you are the best in the world at developing high-energy weapons."

"That could take decades," she said as she thought through the implications, "or tens of decades." They must have found an alien ship somewhere, but where? she thought to herself in wonder.

"Perhaps, but we think we can supply you with the tools to cut that time considerably."

Mei was quiet for a minute, her mind working furiously. Then, finally, she blurted out, "Who are you, and what are you going to do with me?" She asked with a hesitation in her voice. Mei wasn't sure she wanted to know. "Do I have a choice? What American research center are you going to lock me up in?" she asked, hazarding a guess.

"It's not like that," said one of the women. "Why don't we start from the beginning- tell you how we got here and what we are trying to do."

"Again, do I have a choice?"

"No," said Rhys," not about hearing the story, but I am going to get a drink; you can have your choice of any alcoholic beverage if you would like one."

She paused for a second, then said, "fine, I want some of your American whiskey."

"My kind of woman," he said as he left to get the drinks.

He let Sandy and Amancia tell the story, Kiania and Thea filling in when they got to their part. Leslie stood quietly in the background taking everything in. She knew how the woman felt; it would be interesting to see how she handles the whole story.

Rhys stayed quiet, filling her glass again after she swallowed down the first one quickly. When they got to the part about how they selected her and how they had been altering the experimental data, she just looked at them," impossible," she said.

"Look around you; breaking into closed systems is a minor problem," said Rhys.

Finally, at the end of the story, she just sat there. "Well," said Rhys after a time, "what do you think?"

Mei didn't respond; she just sat there quietly, closed her eyes for a minute, and then said, "I do not have a choice, do I? You are not going to let me go, not after I have seen all this."

"No," said Rhys. "Obviously, we cannot let you go back home with this knowledge."

"You are going to put a symbiont in me if you have to hold me down and rape me," she said.

"Yes," said Rhys uncomfortably, "though it would not come to rape."

"It is, even if you have a way to make me willing rather than I want it or not, unless you intend to drug me, or are you lying about all this?"

"No, we are not lying. Remember though, what I told you about the changes to your body," said Sandy. "Your brain will operate at twice or three times the speed; you will have a built-in computer that has more capacity than all the supercomputers in your country." With that, she reached out and took the heavy crystal glass from Mei's hand; holding it up, she squeezed and crushed the glass, pieces falling to the floor. The heavy base stayed in her hand, and she continued to crush it, finally allowing what looked like grains of sand to trickle out of her fingers and into Mei's hand. Then, she just looked at Sandy. "You will be the first human to work on alien technology; give it a chance, give us a chance."

"Would you like to see the base?" Kiania asked, breaking the awkward silence. Rhys had been ready to take her to bed whether she wanted to or not, relying on his and Sandy's ability to influence her emotions.

Mei seemed to stop and think, "yes," she said, wanting to buy time, "show me this alien base."

As they returned to the base, Kiania kept Mei engaged while a separate discussion took place uplinked. "Much stronger than I expected," said Sandy watching Mie and Kiania interact.

"Yes," mused Rhys, "though I would rather have just got it over with, perhaps this is better."

"Take her back and show her the base, then give her a station with a hologram and let her interact with the base AI. Your CIA agent is not happy about this, by the way."

"I know, but she is doing better than I expected with it, and she has changed her feelings toward us."

"Some, and getting attacked by the Om tends to change one's priorities," Sandy admitted. "Her symbiont is maturing at a rapid rate, and she interacts emotionally with us during sex; it helps, makes her feel part of us."

Mei watched, amazed as the shuttle descended into the base. I guess they are telling the truth, or at least part of it, she thought. The scientist part of Mei was astonished, excited beyond her dreams by what she had seen. As Kiania and Thea escorted her into a workplace, her mind thought about the energy weapons they had shown her. Very very high energy lasers or some other kind of energy weapon, she was sure, and the 'disrupter', well, she had no idea what that was. And the propulsion drives the space ship used, what is it; a drive with no inertia or some sort of field that negates it? There was so much to learn here.

They led her out of the ship into Thea's engineering spaces. Mei was overwhelmed by everything, the spaceship, the alien base, the strange machines, and robots moving around. She stood there dumbfounded until someone touched her on the shoulder.

"Here," said Thea, sitting her down in a chair that seemed to adjust to her body. Let me show you the hologram and how to interface with the AI."

Mei gasped as the hologram came alive, and Thea began manipulating it. "Hello AI, this is Mei; please give her access to all engineering data and tools that she needs,"

"Welcome, Mei," said a voice, somewhat mechanical; "please put on the headset; it will make communicating easier with you," a strange voice said out loud.

"The AI doesn't communicate well by voice but is getting better. The headset looks and acts like VR, it takes a little bit to get used to it, but it makes communications go faster until the symbiont is mature enough to directly interface. Or at least that is what they tell me."

Mei picked up the strange-looking helmet and put it on her head. "Show me the energy outputs from the ship's weapon and the matrix for beam stabilization," she said. As schematics, energy fields, power generation were layered into the hologram, Mei was immediately subsumed in her work.

Later, Leslie came down to watch, to see for herself what was happening. "Still at it," she asked, worrying about what they had done. Strangely the morality of it didn't bother her that much, but there would undoubtedly be international repercussions when the Chinese discovered she was missing. They wouldn't know for sure, but they would surely suspect foreign involvement. Still, she agreed with Rhys that they needed someone like her. She reluctantly acknowledged that a symbiont was the most effective way of ensuring loyalty.

Mei was immersed in work with the AI. It was still hard to believe but the wonders before her, physics she had never even dreamed about, and the math, she was lost trying to understand. It would take years, no matter what they said. Mei pondered what laws of physics they were breaking as a space-time curve was projected into the hologram. Somehow they were manipulating gravity, but not according to special relativity. Einstein had barely scratched the surface if any of this was correct, she thought with astonishment. Hours passed, and she barely moved. Someone brought something to eat and drink, but she barely touched it. This was too important to waste time eating.

Thea stayed with her, but after six hours, Mei had not moved from her chair. She could see the hologram as it changed continuously, the AI showing Mei one thing after another. It felt odd watching her, but she was utterly engrossed in the science. Thea was brilliant, but the physics behind the drive and weapons were beyond her. She hoped Mei was the solution; anyway, it was too late to let her back out.

"Still at it," Amancia replied to Rhys' unspoken question; "Mei doesn't show any sign of stopping soon."

"I have to get back," Leslie said; there will be more meetings and reviews about the problem in Nigeria, which isn't over yet. And I need to get back to searching for the Om base, wherever it is." Leslie was naked in Rhys' arms, and it amazed her how far she had come. She wasn't even embarrassed; she had practically attacked him, pulling off his clothes and dropping to her knees. Sandy had told her what a good girl she was, and Rhys had just laid back enjoying her mouth on him. His climax always triggered hers now and the other girls as well. What was there to be ashamed about when everyone else shared their orgasm.

Well, there was the small matter of the butt plug she wore, but it was a small price to pay for the pleasure. Sometimes Rhys was an arrogant prick, she thought, squeezing her bottom cheeks together, feeling the plug in her. It was his way of controlling her but damned if she was going to sit still for it.

She yelped when Rhys slapped her on the butt, "we need to get up, ladies, get ready, let's leave in thirty minutes."

What about Mei? Shall we bring her with us?" Sandy asked.

"No, Thea will stay here with her. I need Kiania here for the week, so Amancia will be with you, Leslie. The new security for the penthouse has been finished, and the AI is monitoring all the surveillance we have added to your route around Langley. I feel confident that we can spot any unusual activity now, and the jamming shouldn't work again."

"Thanks, but what is the long-term solution? I can't just hide in the penthouse forever. Things like groceries, a night out, seeing friends, you know, all those normal things people do; I want some kind of life back."

Rhys frowned. "I know, but not yet. We just don't know about the Om. We are too few to keep Amancia and Kiania tied up there, but I don't have a solution yet. When your symbiont finally matures, then we can discuss options, but not until then."

Leslie hated being dictated to, and she felt her anger rise but then thought about what had happened. "Ok, for a while at least, but I can't hide in Langley. I have to go to the White House for briefings, I meet with interagency groups elsewhere, and believe it or not, there are some mandatory social events, usually at Embassies where I meet my counterparts."

"Fine, keep Amancia apprised and take her as your date to anything you can get away with. We will be standing by here in case of trouble. Thea is working on more ideas, but you are vulnerable at those other places. Try to get the meetings held at your office; use the excuse of the attack on your townhome."