Free The Bonding by Tom Horneman

touched the control console and a very
large beam of purple light projected from the bottom aft section of his ship
and covered Intrepid. He touched the console again and an invisible, electronic
shield surrounded both the alien spacecraft and Intrepid, like a huge bubble. A
second later they disappeared into the stars in a flash of light.
    They traveled at an unbelievable thirty
thousand times the speed of light. The electronic shield surrounding the ships
actually put them into another dimension, similar to a ghost, allowing them to
pass directly through solid objects as they sped through space. He selected the
coordinates for the planet that he was originally enroute to when his sensors
picked up Intrepid drifting aimlessly. His technology was amazing and thousands
of years more advanced than Earth’s. To be able to see a small ship floating in
the vast universe, while traveling at such an unbelievable speed was
incredible.
    With the ship’s autopilot in control, he
returned to the medical lab to check on Commander Shelby. He watched the
monitor for a moment and shut off the blue beam focused on the back of her
head. The orange beam again covered her entire body and the thin green beam
began another scan from head to toe. He carefully watched each monitor, noting
that the hot indication at the back of her head had disappeared and all of her
body functions looked okay. He smiled and nodded. “Dalk riip,” (Very Good.) He
touched the console and the beams extinguished, the snake-like probe needle
pulled out of her arm and retracted up into the scanner, and the wrist straps
loosened from her arms.
    He slid his muscular arms under her and
again gently turned her onto her back. Her hair was across her face and he
moved it away with his finger. He stared at her, cocked his head to the side
and smiled, then lightly brushed the back of his
fingers against her cheeks. “Dalk zinh. Ruh setp id uveat ul ko ,
hwuh ez iz johzw vesa ja?” (Very soft. What kind of alien are you who is so much like me?) “Rul pi ko sija nlig?” (Where do you
come from?)
    He gently touched and caressed her small
hands. Laying one on top of his, he was amazed at how small and fragile they
were. He removed her boots and looked at her feet, again noticing her toe nails
as opposed to his claws. It was time to examine all of her body, so he unzipped
and removed her suit. She had on a bra and panties, which he also removed,
leaving her totally naked. Again he simply stood back and stared for a few
seconds, then reached down, touched and gently squeezed her breasts.
    “Hwa najuvaz id jk rilvp wuda hwaza.”
(The females of my planet have these.)
    He lifted each arm and closely examined
them. Going lower, to her legs, he lifted each one, bending it and setting it
down. He touched each toe of her foot, specifically looking at her toenails. He
spread her legs to look between them and nodded.
    “E uj zalhuet kaz ul hwa najuva id kol
zbazay.” (I am certain you are the female of your species.)
    He quickly dressed her and stepped back.
“Bvay nilred ja nil zaaetr ko tusap vehhva rot, foh E
wup hi stir ruh ko ral.” (Please forgive me for seeing you naked little one,
but I had to know what you were.)
    On his planet, women were treated with
the greatest respect, for they were the ones who gave childbirth and did most
of the teaching. It would have been very disrespectful for him to undress a
woman without her knowledge and consent.
    At that moment, she moved her arm from
her side to her stomach. He smiled. “Uw! Ra juk wuda zudap ko unhal uv.”   (Ah! We may have saved
you after all.)
    Her arm moved again from her stomach to
her forehead, then gently down across her cheek to her chest. Her eyes began to
peek open, then squinted closed from the light. She moved both hands to her
eyes, rubbed them and tried to focus on the person standing beside the bed.
“Ron? Oliver?” she asked weakly.
    He listened carefully, trying to detect what language she was