MELISSE AIRES : Excerpt: Christmas Cookies in Space.

My upcoming Christmas novella takes place during Stranded on Grzbt. On the same slaver ship Mimi and the Valryssians are held, there is another group of female captives. These women are held in the ship's brig, in cells.

Hayley, a baker from Duluth, is one of the captives in the cells. How she got into space is a mystery, since she woke in a cell after an ordinary evening and night in her small apartment.

Excerpt:

The other cells held alien women. Most were asleep right now. They seemed friendly, the ones who had the type of mouths that smiled. Stuck like her, captives. Hayley wished she could talk to them. They carried on conversations among themselves, but she couldn’t join in.

They rarely saw their captors, bronze-skinned muscle men with white hair. Some had horns like a mountain goat. They did not speak to the women, just sent in small robots to clean the cages and leave a fresh baggy knit robe. The captors wore uniforms and carried tubes that Hayley figured were weapons.

“At least they don’t molest us,” Hayley grumbled during her third cleaning day.

She spoke too soon. A hulking beefcake with an expression too surly to be some romantic, alien hero stomped over to her cage, opened a small space on her glass wall, pointed a tube at her, and all went black.

“What the heck?” Hayley asked when she woke, groggy. She had a headache and an ear ache.

“The Shen captors went in while you were sleeping and put in language implants. The rest of us already had them. You must be from a primitive world without interstellar transportation.” A whispery voice spoke, Hayley’s neighbor to the right, a tiny, ash gray woman with pink leaves for hair and big floppy ears. Her neighbor smiled, a cute v -shaped smile.

Hayley blinked at her in surprise. “I understand you!”

“Indeed.”

Interstellar. “So we are on a spaceship?” She had thought that all along. What with aliens everywhere. “Probably captured by slavers?”

A woman across the way spoke up. “Some of us were sold. On my planet, they don’t like mixed bloods.” Her speaking voice was deep and soft. She had long-lashed eyes, a trunk-like nose and teal skin. “The fact that you have been upgraded with translation bioware probably means we are near our destination.”

A small woman with big floppy ears down the walkway burst into tears.

“Yes, we are all rather exotic mixed bloods,” said another, a blue woman with laser green eyes. She sang rather than spoke.

“Yes, mixed bloods.” This woman sounded human but had bat-like ears and velvety black bat wings that ended in thin fingers. Her robe had been cut into a type of halter top. “Except for you, I suppose. But you're exotic by being from a distant world.”

“My name is Hayley,” she said.

“I am Beevit,” the bat woman replied.

“Loolarima,” the blue woman sang.

“Tremela,” said her pink leaved neighbor.

The day was much better than the ones before, getting to know her fellow captives. One thing they all had in common— a deep fear for their futures.