Alien Romance: Caged By The Alien: Scifi Alien Abduction Romance (Alien Romance, Alien Invasion Romance, BBW) (Celestial Mates Book 4) Read Free Page A

trip, even traveling at near light speed, as they would be. So for the 'easy' part of the journey as they left the solar system and began heading for the Kepler region, they would save on food and relative time by sleeping through it.
    "Ambassador! It's time!"
    Penny heard the shout from the bridge and hurried back just as the ship began moving again, leaving Earth's atmosphere and the pleasant limbo of zero g. As her feet touched the floor again just outside the bridge, she paused to watch through the view screen as the Earth began to recede in the distance.
    It dwindled slowly but visibly as they picked up speed. The Hermes was a silver star against the planet's blue green bulk, keeping its distance from Oshun while they both settled into their trajectories, just in case. The Hermes, its distance constant, only served to highlight how Earth behind it was growing smaller and more far away with every passing moment, taking with it everything Penny had ever known.
    "It's scary, isn't it?"
    Penny looked away as Cho came to stand beside her. The others were all watching the screens as well. All except Ian, who was still fixing their trajectory.
    "Our families, our homes," Cho went on, looking back at Earth with undisguised wonder, "Every place we've ever been, everything we've ever touched, every memory we've made. All of it is right there. And we're leaving it behind. By the time we get back, everything will be different."
    A small smile touched Penny's lips.
    "Thank god," she replied, smiling out at her slowly vanishing home, and missed Cho's confused look.
    Finally, Penny thought with undisguised relief, finally she was leaving all of it behind.
     
    Penny felt it as their speed crept towards the light barrier, straining her body uncomfortably. All the inertial dampeners and gyroscopes in the world didn't stop near light speeds from wreaking havoc on living bodies, causing nausea, insomnia, and in prolonged cases aggression, paranoia, and a host of other maladies related to being in high stress situations for extended periods of time. This was just another reason to spend as much of this trip as possible in cryosleep.
    Once the trajectory was set, the crew recorded last few logs, messages for family and ground control, and coordinated with Hermes, ensuring their trajectories matched and would keep them close while minimizing risk of collision.
    There was also a certain allowance made in case one of the ships encountered trouble, such as flying too close to a previously unknown gravitational body or running into a cloud of asteroids. The hope being, even if one of the ships was destroyed, the other would be far enough away to avoid whatever had damaged the first ship, and thus survive to continue the mission.
    They were more than each other's back up. They were each other’s redundancies, ensuring the mission could be completed even if 50% of personnel were lost.
    Finally, with lingering glances through the view screen at Earth, shrunk now to the size of a blue marble in the distance, the crew made their way towards the back of the ship and their cryo pods.
    Behind them, Rivera closed up, turning off the view screens and the lights, anything non-essential. Once the engines had them as close to light speed as their craft was built to withstand, those would shut down as well, momentum enough to maintain their speed in the frictionless vacuum of space.
    Only the cryo pods would remain active, keeping the crew suspended in a state so close to death, it was almost indistinguishable from it, their hearts beating perhaps once an hour, their breathing stilled to nearly nothing. The concept had terrified Penny at first. It still did a little. But Salome had explained it to her enough times, and she'd been put under in enough trials runs, that it was no longer a fear she couldn't control.
    She climbed in and lay down, glad NASA had put in the effort to at least make these pods as comfortable as possible. Gel foam padding cradled her,