Studying Abroad Ch. 02

Author's note: I highly recommend reading the preceding chapter to understand what is going on. This story is about traveling to a recently discovered planet. It is plot-focused and not focused around sex, but there is plenty of it. Throughout the story, there will be human/human, human/alien, and plenty of action. I hope you enjoy it, and any feedback is more than welcome.

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Chapter 2: Rough Landing

*** Seven Days Ago ***

"I swear to god, if Rachel sticks me with one of those blood testing things when we get back, I'm gonna round up everything that looks remotely like a syringe in that base and burn it," Michael said as he, Andrew, and Lindsey walked through the forest in single file.

Andrew replied with a laugh. "I don't get how a man can travel through space to a foreign planet to fight against unknown alien species without batting an eye, but when a doctor comes at him with a needle, he nearly shits himself."

Lindsey started giggling uncontrollably and Michael quickly responded to defend himself. "Hey man; trypanophobia, it's a real thing. Look it up. It could happen to anyone."

"Just because you have a fancy scientific word to describe it doesn't make you look any less like a pussy. Don't try to fool a couple of scientists with science," Andrew replied again and he and Lindsey laughed a little louder. Even Michael chuckled a little.

Over the past couple years, they had been working very closely together had had gotten to know each other very well. After all, traveling through the galaxy and exploring a new world together is a strong bonding experience.

The past couple of months had been very stressful for them however. They had lost friends and nearly lost their own lives as well. With the threat of the Binthear always restricting their research and ability to explore the surrounding areas freely, this was the first time they had gone outside in three weeks.

For them, it had not felt this good to be outside since they landed on Carmenta a little less than a year ago. They were in such a good mood to feel the sunlight on their skin, to smell the fresh plant smells flowing by on a light breeze, and hear the sounds of birds chirping in the distance. For a moment, Andrew and Lindsey even forgot they were in danger just by being outside.

Michael was constantly on alert however. It was his job to protect the two scientist and himself for that matter. He still didn't know the strength of the Binthear and didn't want to let them get close enough for him to find out. All he knew for sure was that he had the advantage at a distance with his rifle, but was almost certain to lose in hand-to-hand combat.

They walked on for some time until they came to a ridge with a large opening in the canopy.

"This is a good place to stop," Lindsey said. "Let's get the last of our samples and head back to base."

Michael stood back a little looking out into the forest for anything big or suspicious while Lindsey and Andrew scavenged around for plant species they haven't studied yet. Lindsey found an interesting looking moss at the base of a large tree and knelt down to scrape some of it into her test tubes.

After a few seconds, she heard Michael grunt and a soft thump. She turned around to see him on his knees with an arrow through his chest. The life was already draining from his face like a water being wrung out of a sponge. Just a moment ago, he was making jokes and laughing with Andrew. He was a man full of energy and passion for his work. Now he was the empty vessel that had once been her friend, Michael.

Suddenly, a Binthear walked up behind him. With a swift motion, he cut the back of Michael's neck with a dagger. Blood trailed behind the motion of the blade and splurt like a wave against the Binthear from his waist down. Michael's head tilted forward, revealing that his neck had been sliced nearly in half, and his limp corpse fell to the ground.

This was the first time Lindsey had been exposed to real violence. She was overwhelmed and stared at everything that was happening, feeling a little too shocked to move.

The Binthear was about a foot taller than most men that Lindsey had seen and built like a bodybuilder with very broad shoulders. He was covered in fur which was longer in the back than the front and practically non-existent around his torso. His ears were large and pointed like a wolf's, and his teeth were long and sharp like the claws on its hands and feet. The rest of his anatomy however, was almost identical to humans. Even his face looked similar to a human's.

Andrew was on the opposite side of the Binthear from Lindsey. He saw all this happening as well but had a much different reaction. "Michael!!" he shouted as he started sprinting at the Binthear.

The Binthear turned from Michael's corpse to face Andrew, who was now charging from about thirty yards away. But the Binthear didn't move. He simply turned to face the charging man without even bracing himself for an impact.

When Andrew was about ten feet away and lowered his shoulder, a dark blur slammed into him, knocking him off his feet and sending him into the air in a perpendicular direction from the course he was running. He landed on his back about fifteen feet from where he left the ground. After taking a moment for the wind to come back to him and his lunges to start working again, he looked up to see it was a second Binthear that had hit him. Worse than that, it was approaching him again now.

"Andrew!" Lindsey screamed from where she had been standing. She felt a little in shock and didn't know what to do. Andrew was hoping she would use his vain attack as a distraction and try to run, but that obviously wasn't the case.

Seeing the beast approaching him, he turned to his stomach and began to crawl. He didn't make it far at all before he felt a heavy foot land on his back. The pressure from the weight pushing down on him hurt, but not as bad as the claws that were connected to the foot and began to pierce through his skin and sink into his back. His head jolt back with pain and he let out a loud, deep, long grunt without opening his mouth.

Suddenly, the claws ripped through his back leaving four deep trails of blood and taking most of the back of his shirt. "AAHHHH!! You fucking cunt!" he yelled, while he pressed his forehead into the ground like it would suppress the agony.

His moans were silenced by a kick to his rib cage which knocked him over and onto his back. The Binthear picked him up by the chest of his shirt, held him up to his eye level, and knocked him back down to the ground with a head-butt.

Andrew lay motionless there until the Binthear picked him up by what remained of the back of his shirt and his belt line. From this grip, he threw him to the ridge that they were by. Andrew landed just at the edge of the ridge, but with his momentum continued to roll down the hill and out of sight.

This whole time, Lindsey had still not moved from the same spot. Now that Andrew was gone, and she was the only living human present, both of the Binthear looked at her. Realizing she was now the center of attention for these extremely violent things, she felt a wave of adrenaline and started running as fast as she could. It was as if it all suddenly became reality for her.

She hadn't gotten very far before being pinned to the ground by one of the Binthear. She felt a strong hand on the top side of her head pressing the opposite side of her face into the ground. She fought for a moment until realizing how futile that was. When she stopped fighting, he lifted her hips so her knees were planted on the ground while her face and breasts remained pressed against the forest floor.

The Binthear pulled her pants by the waistband till they slid down to her mid-thigh, exposing her rear. When she realized what he was doing, she pushed herself up from the ground and desperately tried to squirm away again. Breathing frantically, she tried to twist her hips so that her entrance wasn't exposed for anything to be forced into it.

Once again, she made no progress in her struggle. Every attempt she made felt like she was fighting a machine. No matter how hard she struggled, her hips couldn't move an inch out of place from the monstrous hands that gripped her. With his palms pressed against the outsides of her ass cheeks and surprisingly strong fingers grasped around her hips, there was no chance of her escaping.

She heard a deep growl and the grip around her hips slowly tighten with anger. As desperate as she was to get away and stop him from getting what he wanted, she was even more scared about ending up like Michael or Andrew. Her breathing slowed and her eyes watered heavily until she blinked and a tear was pushed by her eyelids into a tumble down her cheek.

One of the hands released from its grip and a second later, she felt the tip of his phallus press against her slit and slide in an inch. Lindsey winced from discomfort and fear from what was happening.

This was followed by his hand being placed back on her hip, and large thrust from the Binthear.

Shocked by how large it was, she let out a loud whimper. He slowly retracted before thrusting in again. After a few strokes, his hips would slam into her butt, sending ripples through her cheeks with every thrust.

Suddenly, two feet appeared in front of her. She didn't need to look up at whom they belonged to because they were covered in blood. Michael's blood.

Something was muttered in Binthear and the thrusting stopped. The Binthear pulled out his phallus, and Lindsey, exhausted and terrified, collapsed.

*** Present Day ***

Felix woke to find himself dressed in a t-shirt with thin sweatpants and on a small wall bunk with a soreness throughout his whole body. His bed protruded from the wall like a shelf and was as simple as it could be with a thin mattress, a blanket, and a pillow. It was only big enough for one person, and it didn't allow for much maneuverability.

He noticed that he was in a dimly lit, narrow room that was similar to a small barracks. There was a bunk identical to his own directly above him, two bunks on the wall across from him, and another set of four bunks in the same fashion further down the narrow room.

After sitting up in his bed, he realized someone was still asleep in the bed across from him. Assuming he felt as awful as himself and not even knowing who he was, Felix didn't want to wake him, so he moved quietly. He stood up and quickly sat back down after experiencing an aggressive head rush. Once he felt confident that he could stand without falling down, he got up and walked to the exit of the room.

He found that this room opened up to a hall and that this hall was nearly completely made of metal. On one side of the hall, at the junction of ceiling and wall, a thin stream of light ran uninterrupted from one end of the hallway to the other until it turned to light another section of the hallway.

Still trying to gain full consciousness of his environment, he started to venture down the hallway. Before he could even make it to the corner where the hallway turned, he heard footsteps of someone walking towards him. A man with a tablet in his hands walked around the corner and stopped when he saw Felix.

"Oh, Felix, you're awake," he said without anything more than a glance away from the tablet he was working with in his hand. He had a short, brown beard and looked like he was in his mid-thirties. After taking a few seconds to finish what he was working on, he put his tablet away and walked over to where Felix was bewilderedly standing.

"I'm Dr. Brunswick, but you can call me Roger," he said, extending a hand for a handshake.

"Where am I, Roger?" he asked while shaking his hand and looking at him like he was waiting for him to acknowledge the fact that he was wandering around the halls like a lost five-year-old in a shopping mall and needed some explanation.

"You're on Carmenta," he said with a pause and looked at Felix like he expected him to know that already. "You and Liam," he gestured to the room where Felix just came from, "have been unconscious for a few hours. Don't worry about it if you can't remember right now; your memories should gradually come back to. We gave both of you some medication which should greatly expedite your physical recovery as well."

After Roger mentioned Liam's name, Felix's memories started to return to him. "Right, right," he said while nodding his head slowly and squinting in strenuous thought and realization. Suddenly his eyes shot open like he remembered something extremely important.

"What is it?" Dr. Brunswick asked, concerned now about Felix's sudden expression of shock.

Felix pulled his pants out by the waistband and looked down to make sure everything was still where it should be.

"Oh, thank God!" he said after a quick examination. His shoulders sank in relief and the expression of terror fell off of his face.

Roger stared at him perplexedly. "Everything okay?" he asked, smirking a little at this point.

Felix exhaled and nodded. "You know what, Roger, I think I'm gonna be alright. Now where's the bar in this place? I could really use a drink."

"This is a base to serve our pioneering on the first habitable planet known to man other than Earth. We don't have a bar," he said, with a dumb expression on his face.

"Right," he said, a little disappointed that Roger didn't pick up on his sarcasm. "But no beer or wine? I mean, I know guys that have made that much in prison cells."

"Actually," Roger started, "I think Andrew found some ingredients native to Carmenta and used them for beer."

"Perfect!" Felix smiled. "Where's Andrew?"

"Uhh, he's... dead," Roger replied with a disappointed head nod.

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that," he responded but wasn't very sincere considering he already knew a majority of the crew was killed. "Where's the beer then?"

"Well he made a few barrels."

"That's great!" Felix interrupted.

"But they're scattered outside in locations around the base."

Felix sighed in disappointment. "That doesn't help me very much, Roger," he said sarcastically. "Oh well. We'll just have to bust outta this besieged, metal mansion and get to those barrels before those Binthear motherfu-"

"What the fuck," Liam interrupted Felix, tripped, and fell into the hallway with a loud thud.

"Good morning, Sunshine," Felix lilted in welcoming the familiar face.

Roger quickly walked pass Felix, who was looking at the befuddled sergeant with a smile of amusement, to help Liam back to his feet.

"Who the fu-" Liam started when he saw Roger helping him only to cut himself off with the question, "Where am I?" He was obviously concerned and disoriented, likely a result from his last moments awake being in chaos and agony.

"Welcome to Carmenta, Liam," Felix answered. "You've been in hypersleep for thirty years. We were getting worried about you."

"What?!" Liam took a step back and looked like he was waking up from a nightmare only to realize his nightmare was true.

"No," Roger put his hands up like he was trying to calm him down. "He's just kidding around with you." Liam relaxed a little. "Well," he paused, "you are on Carmenta," Liam looked afraid again, "but you've only been asleep for a few hours," He quickly added.

"No more than five hours ago, you were all at the International Space Association base in Nevada. You were sent here to help us with the problems we've been having with the indigenous populations. I'm Dr. Roger Brunswick by the way."

"I'm starting to remember that actually," Liam said and looked at Felix. "It's Felix, right?"

"Hey, look at that," Felix responded with a smile of surprise at how quickly Liam was remembering things. "How's your dick by the way?"

Liam was initially perplexed by the question, but after remembering the rumored side effects of the teleportation was quickly worried again and checking below the belt to make sure everything was still attached.

Roger turned to Felix. "You really need to stop getting him worked up like that."

"Where's Henry?" Liam asked.

"Ya, where is that big bag of joy?" Felix asked like he was remembering an old friend from high school who he hadn't seen in years.

Dr. Brunswick hung his head with disappointment. "The trip you boys took had a more severe effect on Mr. Sperwell. I'm afraid he flat lined sometime during the journey." Felix and Liam were used to death and they knew the risk Henry was taking, so they didn't look shocked by the news, but they were obviously saddened by it.

"He had us incredibly worried at first," Dr. Brunswick continued, "but after we zapped him a few times with the defibrillator, he started breathing again. He was in a more critical condition so we put him in the medical center so we can closely monitor his recovery."

Now Liam and Felix were looking at him like they just watched him strangle a cat to death and give the carcass as a birthday present to a nine-year-old. "What?" Roger asked about their reactions with a puzzled look.

"What's wrong with you?" Liam rhetorically asked.

"Doc, I don't know what they taught you about storytelling in medical school," Felix started, "but in a scenario like this, I would recommend never starting with the phrase 'he flat lined.'" Felix paused and waited for the doctor, who still had a puzzled look, to say something.

"Oh!" Roger exclaimed in realization. Liam looked at him like he was a little crazy, and Felix just smiled like he was just happy to see that Roger still had some empathy left after being away from Earth for so long. "Right, I'm sorry about that. I'm usually not very good with that kind of stuff. Anyway, let me introduce you to the rest of the crew."

Roger turned and led them through the hallway until they came to what looked like a dining room big enough to be a small school cafeteria but with more of an interrogation room vibe to it. To the left, there were two large tables that could seat about ten people at each. To the right was a door that lead to the kitchen, and at other end of the room was the continuance of the hallway.

A group of three people sat at one of the tables and turned toward the newcomers as they entered the room and Roger began to make introductions. "Gentlemen, this is Dr. Mike Layman, Dr. Rachel Weaver, and Mr. Frank Lombardo. Everyone, this is Liam Miller and Felix Mathews."

"We've met," Rachel said without much enthusiasm. She looked like she was in her mid-twenties, but probably a little older considering she had a PhD. She wore a tank-top that was skin tight. It showed off her large, perky breasts and skinny waist. Her hazelnut-brown eyes hardly glanced away from the cup of coffee in front of her.

Her remark puzzled both of them and they stared at her while trying to pull up any memory of ever meeting her. "I don't think we've-" Liam started but was cut off by her.

"You don't remember me trying to calm you down while you screamed at me like you thought I was trying to mutilate you?"

Liam scratched the back of his head, a little embarrassed and unable to retort, while Felix let out a chuckle.

"What's so funny?" she continued, looking at Felix now. "He might scream like girl, but he doesn't shit his pants like a baby." Felix's smile immediately turned to an embarrassed, blank expression. He started to say something but was at a loss for words. They obviously gave Rachel a hard time during their arrival and she was not happy about it.

"They don't remember any of that Rachel. The trip obviously took a huge physical and mental toll on them. Their memory is coming back slowly, but I don't think they'll recover any memory from their arrival," Roger explained.

"Oh." Rachel looked a little disappointed. "It's nice to meet you then, I guess."