"Kaleb," Raven called, and a teenage boy appeared. He, too, had straight black hair, but his was only shoulder length.
"You dropped this," Kaleb said, handing JJ's wallet back to him.
"Nice," he said, "I didn't even feel it."
"That's kind of the point," the boy said. His nose ring was a bit off-putting, but there was no doubt that he was a skilled pickpocket.
"Fennic?" Nixie called, and another boy appeared. He had long red hair and several earrings.
"Would these be useful?" he asked, holding out several items.
"So two pickpockets then," Tony scoffed.
"It's a survival skill," Fennic said defensively..
"Hey, no judgement here. That's definitely a useful skill. What do you have there?"
"I'm nor sure," the redhead boy said, "I think this is an ammo clip. And this one might be a power pack of some kind?"
"Goth Pack for the win." JJ said encouragingly.
"Goth pack?" Nixie spat, "what kind of bullshit is that?"
"Hey, it's just a nickname," JJ said, "no offense intended."
"Calm down, Nixie," Raven said, putting a hand on her friend's shoulder, "it's fine."
Nixie calmed down immediately, as if Raven's touch took all of the anger out of her.
"So what do you know about this place?"
Well," Raven said, "first of all, they don't seem to need keys or anything. When they come close to the gate, it just shuts down. Maybe they have a watch station or something."
"Interesting. Go on."
"They make servants out of some people. They take them away, and later they come back with these... collars around their necks. They hand out food and water, but never seem to question the Mooks or what they are told to do."
"Mooks?"
"Yeah. The aliens. Whatever you want to call them."
"Has anyone rushed the gate when it's opened?"
"Yeah, a couple of people did. They just got beat down by the Mooks."
"Do you think that you could sneak out while the gate's open if we made a distraction?"
"We could, but I don't know about you older folks."
"Did she really just call us old?" Tony asked.
"I just call it likr I see it," Nixie shrugged,
Their conversation was cut short by the sound of one of the large wedge ships landing nearby. A blue light came on at the top or every fencepost, and a tonal alarm began warbling. All of the 'Mooks' began moving towards one of the gates, weapons at the ready.
"What's going on?" Karen asked, fear evident in her voice.
"If I were guessing," Alex said, "they're either going to come in shooting, or they're getting ready to move us somewhere, probably onto that ship that just landed."
"Are we going to die?"
"Probably not. If they wanted us dead, they would have shot us out on the road, not bring us to a cattle yard like this."
The Mook guards entered the pen and began herding people towards the gate. There was now a fenced lane leading from the gate towards the ship, electrified like the rest of the fencing.
"Are you alright to walk?" Shannon asked Nixie.
"I'm fine," she snapped.
"Nix, be nice," Raven told her, "After all, she gave you the shirt off her back."
"I'm sorry," Nixie said to Shannon, looking abashed, "and thank you."
"Okay, let's go, people," Alex told them all, "too late for recon now."
The cattle run was no more than four feet wide, so it forced them to go single file. At first Alex thought that the reason the line was moving so slowly was because of people's reluctance to go where they were told to. But that didn't end up being the case.
At the end of the run was a checkpoint where every person had to stop. A gun-like device was placed against their neck for a second, and then they were allowed to proceed. The soldier Copeland, who had volunteered to help them, was just in front of Alex.
They grabbed Copeland by the shoulders to stop him, then one of the Mooks pressed that gadget to his neck. When they took it away there was a series of symbols tattooed on his neck. So this really was like cattle herding, including branding them all.
When it was Alex's turn, he found that it was also an injection of something into his neck. It stung for a second, but nothing too painful. He couldn't help but to reach up and feel his neck, which felt normal. And then he was shoved on towards the ramp leading up into the wedge-shaped ship.
It had to be a cargo hold, Alex rationalized, because the opening was about twenty feet wide and ten high. The ramp looked to be the door that had swung down to act as a loading ramp. The opening seemed to Alex to be a giant maw just waiting to swallow them down, never to be heard from again. Once they were on the ship, their chances of escaping would be reduced to almost nothing.
As Alex stepped on to the ramp, he could just barely feel a vibration that was odd to him. Inside the light was reddish more than the yellow that he was used to. He wondered idly if that was the color of these aliens' sun.
As each person exited the fenced corral, a Mook gave them an injection in the neck. The injection apparatus simultaneously tattooed a string of alien characters on their neck, presumably some form on identification, or maybe a serial number. it stung when it was administered, but was not quite painful.
There was no fencing inside of the cargo hold, but then there didn't need to be. The walls were solid metal with only two closed hatches leading out, and both of those were guarded by two Mooks each. Footsteps and exclamations from the people being led into the chamber echoed loudly off of the walls, with nothing to absorb the sound.
There was no direction from the guards once they were loaded, so Alex headed towards a corner, motioning his friends to follow him. None of the Mooks seemed to notice that there was such a large group of Humans huddled together. Or maybe they just didn't care.
"Is everyone alright?" He checked everybody's neck, and they all had the tattoo and a red dot where the needle had gone in. He could discern no pattern to the symbols.
"What now, Sergeant?" Meyers asked nervously.
"I don't know, Corporal. Apparently they're getting ready to take us somewhere."
"Maybe they're going to eat us," Nixie said, "Humans are a delicacy, after all."
"NIx!" Raven scolded her, "that's not nice. And how would you know if we're a delicacy?"
