Chapter 2

Hal was inconsolable for weeks following the episode. He had cried into his pillow, his heartache for Karen was overwhelming and his loneliness knew no bounds. The only thing that would let him get some sleep would be to jack off thinking of Karen’s beauty.

The problem was disassociating the image of the Espheni and his huge cock from Karen’s image in his mind.

Tom, his father, was worried about him locked inside his room all the time. He could hear the emotional turmoil he was in when he put his ear to the door, he wasnt so much worried about the crying as he needed to grieve for poor Karen but the ‘FAP! FAP! FAP!’ sound of him jerking off all the time along with his moans of sexual pleasure mixed with cries of anguish was not a good sign. He was starting to wonder about his son’s mental health.

A month after his loss, Hal seemed to be starting to heal, he started doing scouting runs again. But it seemed that there was another reason for him to want to go out; he wanted revenge against the murdering Espheni and the best way to get clues on how to track him down was to go out with the scouts.

Then they ran into a bunch of outlaws North of their base, a real nasty group of degenerates - one of the group wanted out though. The lowlifes she was with were threatening to do bad things to her and she wanted to leave before that happened.

Her name was Maggie, as soon as Hal saw her he just knew that he had to rescue her. He was smitten with her and when she heard about his heartbreaking story she fell for him too, she never knew that a man could love a woman as deeply as he had loved Karen. Maggie had been mistrustful of all male company since she was 14 when her father had gotten drunk and tried to molest her. She had no choice but to join up with Pope’s gang in order to increase her chances of survival and was looking to join up with nicer group as soon as possible. Isabella and Lee Tedeschi had followed their friend Maggie to the 2nd Massachusetts, almost anywhere was better than with John Pope and his gang.

Tom was delighted too, finally Hal could begin a new life with someone special, like he had after Hal’s mother had died. Rebecca Mason had given Tom 3 sons - Hal, Ben and Matt, she had been Tom’s soulmate until she died in an Espheni bombing raid, there was little left of the 4 blocks that were destroyed in the raid - Rebecca’s body was incinerated.

Defending humanity and looking after his boys became his whole reason for living after he became a widow. In time he also found another woman to love - the exotic looking Dr Anne Glass, the healer of their group. Anne had told him two nights ago that she was pregnant, he was so excited that he spread the news, and everyone was delighted - even Hal was looking forward to seeing his new sibling.

It seemed that for 3 days the morale of the whole camp lifted by the news that in 9 months a baby would be here for them all to fuss over. That was before Rebecca, Hal’s wife, turned up to camp. She had been missing & presumed dead for a year and now, completely out of the blue, she shows up and causes a major complication in Tom’s life.

Rebecca had been held in an Espheni prison camp for a year. She had been rounded up by skitters before the bombing run that had destroyed the part of town she had been located in. Rebecca had been sent to a Re-Education Camp in order to be indoctrinated into Espheni ways - she had managed to hold onto her humanity though, resisting all their conditioning.

At the first opportunity for escape, Rebecca had run from a forced labour camp and had spent the last 2 months tracking down her family by getting snippets of news about the 2nd Massachusetts Militia from other groups she had encountered. As she recounted what had happened to her over the last year, Tom realised that he still loved her and the old attraction between them seemed as strong as ever.

Anne was left devastated and heartbroken, she could see that the husband and wife still loved each other. Now she was carrying the child of someone else’s husband and there was a reasonable chance of Tom not being able to be with her anymore.

On the other hand, Hal, Ben and Matt were over the moon at having their mother back again, all three hugged their mother and wept tears of joy. They thought that they’d lost her forever and now here she was without a scratch on her and she looked years younger than when they last saw her, how was this possible?

“As you know my cancer had relapsed, well the Espheni had extremely advanced medical chambers and bio-morphers, one of the human collaborators that knew how to operate them was able to secretly cure my cancer and also made me 15 years younger.”

Tom had butterflies in his stomach looking at the auburn haired beauty that was his wife.

“Well how about you introduce me to everyone,” suggested Rebecca to Tom. “Starting with woman standing next to you...”

“I think this is a conversation that we need to have privately,” said Tom as Rebecca and Anne followed him into his quarters. Her suspicions were confirmed when Tom and Anne explained the current situation to Rebecca who broke down in tears when she realised that the man she had fought tooth and nail to get back to was now starting a family with another woman.

Tom didn’t know what to do, it was a mess that would take some time to be resolved, he had a brief fantasy about having a polygamous threesome with the two women but quickly dismissed it as a juvenile daydream. In the meantime though, there was another situation to deal with - Rebecca knew the location of the labour camp she had been held at and there were hundreds of other humans held there in appalling conditions, they needed to be rescued.

Tom and Daniel put a team together to scout the camp for ways to take it over and rescue the prisoners - Anthony, Dingaan, Hal, Maggie, Anne and Lourdes. Tom was reluctant to take Anne in her current condition but he may need her assistance in case there are any prisoners that need medical assistance. Rebecca had insisted on also going with them as she knew the route and the layout of the camp.

It took them 3 days to get to the Camp but they were disappointed when they got there there were no signs of anyone, no humans, skitters or Esphenis.

“Looks like they’ve not long abandoned the camp,” mused Daniel as they fanned out and started searching the deserted camp.

They were suddenly startled as twelve huge metal pillars dropped down from nowhere embedding themselves into the ground and surrounding the group. They were 5 metres high and had a dull black coating dropped down with antennas on top. A large airship floated silently hundreds of feet above them from where they must have been dropped.

There was a hum and a crackling of static when arcing electricity formed a link between the pillars.

The group aimed and started firing their assault rifles at the black prismatic structures, the bands of plasma turned green as they stopped the bullets, the flattened pieces of lead falling to the ground 5 feet from the Alien devices.

“Hold your fire!” shouted Tom. The group slowly stopped firing their weapons, their rounds hadn’t made it outside of the perimeter of the Espheni forcefield. “We’re wasting our ammo.”

Moments later they noticed a rumbling coming from underground which got louder and louder, they all looked around for the source of the sound. Suddenly hundreds of skitters burst out of the ground and surrounded the group. They all knew that there was no way that they could get out of this one, even if they could get past the barrier there was no way they’d be able to take down all the Skitters.

The Skitters weren’t attacking though - they held their position, obviously waiting for something. And that something came in the form of a small Airship flying in from North of the camp. It landed 50 feet away from the mass of Skitters that surrounded them and out came an Espheni overlord.

“God damn mother fucker!!” Hal fixed his gun on L’vant. Again L’vant froze Hal with telepathic powers, just like he did in their previous encounter.

“I kind of figured something like this might happen so I had an insurance policy, there are 3 sniper rifles trained on your head if you don’t let us go then you ain’t gonna see tomorrow,” stated Tom. Turning to Rebecca, “Your story doesn’t really check out - there’s no way that you got out without a scratch and neither would they let you use their tech to get cured.”

2 months Earlier

Karen awoke to find herself on an extremely comfortable bed in what looked like a futuristic and stylish bedroom, through the window she could see Earth surrounded by the blackness of space.

She pulled the Satin bed sheets and realised that there was something different about her body, she rushed over to a mirror on the wall. Her breasts were a size bigger - C cup instead of her original B cups but they were firm and high topped with 1.5cm long pink nipples. Her waist narrower and hips were slightly wider and her legs had muscular but still feminine thighs and calves.