Slave

Stars in Chains - Book One

by Herbert Grosshans

Abducted, Earthman David Stark is sent to the mines on an alien planet. After escaping and a brief time of happiness in the arms of T'Phira, the Golden Goddess and in the City under the Ocean, he is captured again and sent to a planet of hot deserts populated by ferocious predators.


Excerpt

Chapter One
 

“David Stark…”

The voice sounded sweet, soft, and alluring.

“Come…” whispered the voice again. He tried in vain to see the caller through the dark, gray mist.

Then he saw the eyes.

“No!” he cried out. “Something is wrong. The eyes…they are wrong!”

“Come, David,” called the soft voice.

The eyes! He knew what was wrong with them. They were the eyes of a cat; large and blue, they glowed with a soft fluorescent light, but the face was human and beautiful. And familiar.

“David…”

The mist thickened, taking away the image. Floating in a void, frozen in time and space, his sluggish, heavy limbs wouldn’t obey commands to move them.

“David…”

Drifting in the black void, the voice seemed far away. A bright light appeared suddenly and he reached for it. His hands grasped at nothing at first, but then he felt substance, clung to it. He heard a loud sound, like an explosion. His eyes opened, stared into the darkness.

Realizing he was awake, he sat up and looked around the room. He was alone; from outside came the sound of traffic. The rumbling of a muffler faded away in the distance. The explosive sound that had awakened him must have been the sound of a car’s motor backfiring. There were still people who insisted on driving old, gas-guzzling clunkers. He closed his eyes for a moment; the afterimage of the strange eyes still burned in his mind.

There it was again. The same dream that kept haunting him every night for the last couple of weeks. He’d had nightmares before, ever since the Union War in South America in 2020. Ten years is a long time to forget, and he had forced those memories out of his mind, but his dreams kept coming back. 

He looked at the clock on the night table.

The screen showed 1:00 AM.

He tried to get back to sleep but sleep wouldn’t come. Restlessly he turned and turned until he finally got up. Something seemed to urge him outside. “I need to go for a drive,” he murmured; quickly dressing he went into the garage to his car.

The Luxar purred softly as the engine sprang to life. Slowly, he eased the car out of the garage and pulled into the street.

Traffic was light and he leaned back into the soft leather seat and turned down the window.

The cool air felt refreshing on his face.

He remembered the dream and shuddered.

I wonder if I’m finally cracking up. I thought I was over it.

The months spent in the South American jungle troubled him. He had been part of a Special Unit to free an American diplomat who had been kidnapped by Union Terrorists. He and his team had run into an ambush. The diplomat and his fellow soldiers were killed.

The terrorists left him for dead. He would have died had it not been for a band of Indios who found him and carried him away, deep into the jungle. He didn’t remember much about it. The loss of blood and the pain, the terrible pain in his stomach where the bullets had hit him, kept him unconscious most of the time.

They took him to some people. There was something strange about those people. He couldn’t remember what, but they were kind and saved his life.

The trauma of being near death suppressed the memory of the event. The little he remembered was hazy, unclear. But the reoccurring dreams kept reminding him of the things he wanted to forget.

 

Herbert Grosshans "Stars in Chains 1, Slave"

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Genres

Sci-Fi
Erotic
Series

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