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  SAVAGE PLANET CAVEMAN

  CHEYENNE HART

  Copyright © 2017 by Cheyenne Hart

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  CONTENTS

  Thank You!

  Foreword

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  More Savage Planet Action!

  Also by Cheyenne Hart

  THANK YOU!

  Thank you for buying or borrowing my book!

  If you want me to keep writing more of this series, don’t forget to leave a review. I appreciate the support of my fans, the people I write for.

  Feel free to email me at [email protected] if you’d like to join my review team, to give me feedback, or just to say hi!

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  Happy Reading <3

  PLEASE NOTE …

  This is the second in a stand-alone series of linked books. Each one is based off the same incident aboard The New Horizon exploration ship from Earth. It was necessary to include some details about the first book for the sake of coherence. This is largely in the first chapter in the form of a little narrative summary. However, I have avoided including too much information about earlier books, because I’d hate to spoil the fun for readers jumping in at a later point in the series. I know a lot of you like to go back and read the earlier book in a series. Of course—my loyal fans who have been following the series just might get to meet up with their favorite characters again in future books. Please keep all this in mind as you start this book

  Happy reading!

  - Cheyenne Hart <3

  1

  -LORAINE-

  She had joined the Space Corp for adventure and excitement—but this was insanity! Loraine was a proud member of The New Horizon, the very first ship capable of leaving the known space surrounding Earth, and the galaxy. Their mission was to explore, discover, and certainly not to get boarded by hostile alien kidnappers.

  Well, that was exactly what had happened. However exciting that story is, Loraine was now anxious about what could happen to her next.

  The large, green-skinned aliens had boarded The New Horizon and taken captives. Loraine and her friends were beaten and tied to racks in some bizarre laboratory. There had nearly been probes involved, but even that was a whole other story too!

  She was thankfully free of that fate, at least. Loraine had escaped with her friends Talia and Julius. Currently, Loraine and her macho friend Julius were in an escape pod together and about to leave the alien ship. As for Talia? Well, Loraine had to hope she got away too. She was meant to jump right inside the next escape pod; they only seated two. Someone had to take care of Julius, who was wounded, and Loraine wanted to do that personally.

  Things were only becoming more complicated though. With the door shut on the escape pod, some sort of automated system kicked in and the little craft rose into the air. It was just one of many of others containing escaped kidnapping victims who'd made their own getaways. The pods lifted up, one after the other, and exited the alien's ship via the space lock.

  "Are you sure you're alright?" Loraine asked her friend, the strong, dark, hunky security officer from The New Horizon. They’d been close since way back.

  Julius replied with a defensive voice. "Yes, I told you, I'll be fine.

  “You’re a terrible liar, Julius. I've known you since the first day of training, and you were always there to help me when I needed it. I saw the way those green bastards roughed you up. They did some serious damage that I'm not seeing, didn't they?"

  "You didn't exactly let them tie you to that rack without putting up a fight either. Would you expect me to just lay down and let them experiment on us? I guess I just gave them a little too much grief, and they wanted to teach me a lesson." The tall man's rich, dark skin had taken on a gray tone.

  Loraine cringed to think of what might have happened to them if the aliens had gotten their chance to start their bizarre experiments. "Do you think Talia and the rest of the crew are headed in the same direction as this tin can?"

  The pod was out in the star-spotted blackness of space now, clear of the alien ship. There were no windows to see through, but a small view screen opposite the two chairs showed the expanse of stars before them. Loraine kept jumping in her seat whenever the pod made a sound. She was half-expecting that they would be destroyed in a fiery explosion, taken out by some high-powered laser, or whatever it was the alien ship had for weapons.

  The New Horizon was not equipped for anything like that. They’d never expected to have a first encounter, let alone one within a month of leaving home.

  The screen before them came to life. It was a map of some kind, but all the readouts were in some alien language that made zero sense. "I don't suppose you know how to read frog-abductor-alien language?" Loraine asked.

  Julius just shook his head and tried to smile. "Sorry, but I was home from school sick on that day. I only ever learned how to speak frog-alien, not read it." He made a low, warbling sound, mocking the creatures who had abducted them. The effort put a noticeable strain on his voice. He laughed anyway, which made him break up into a fit of coughing.

  Loraine forced a smile and little laugh, for Julian’s sake. Seeing how badly he was hurt yet still willing to joke around to make her feel better, it was the least she could do.

  Julius continued to cough and splutter until it seemed he was nearly choking.

  “Hey, you’re okay,” she said, patting him on the back and watched him with dire concern. "You're going to be just fine," she added. "I promise you, Julius, you're going to be alright. We all are, everyone who was taken from The New Horizon, okay?"

  "Recovering his breath a bit, Julius took a gulp and replied, "I know we will, Loraine, I know. And don't worry about me. I'm not going anywhere." He reached out and touched her hand, his fingers cold like tendrils of his dying life force.

  She took the meaty hand in her slender fingers and held it there, squeezing hard as though trying to get a grip strong enough to stop him from leaving her. Loraine closed her eyes and tried to push the thought of Julian’s death from her mind. If he was really hurt that badly, he would need all of her moral support. If there was one thing she had always prided herself on, it was being a fiercely loyal friend, especially when things looked their bleakest.

  "What's this?" he asked with curiosity, rousing her from the nihilistic imaginings and making her open her eyes. "That's a planet outside of our system," he said. "It has to be ..."

  "It's damn sure not one of ours." A cold blanket of anxiety lowered over here. "Okay, I am going to admit it, I'm terrified. Will we even be alive by the time this thing gets to that planet? Do you have any idea how long it could take us to travel there?"

  "I know ..." was the only reply Julius gave at first. The light was almost visibly leaving his eyes, but that might ha
ve only been the flashing glow from the little screen that was displaying the course the escape pod had apparently picked out for them. "I wonder if this is a pre-set course, or maybe it just chose the nearest available planet that was suitable for life?"

  "For our life or those aliens?"

  "Well, we were able to breathe just fine of their ship, so I guess those things are one and the same. You just need to try and relax for a minute. I'm starting to worry about you," Julius said as he leaned back into his seat. He was getting comfortable, and starting to nod his head like he wanted to have a nap.

  "Hey, what are you doing? Don't go to sleep. No, no, no, that's the last thing you want to do." The air smelled different, everything felt different. Maybe Loraine was already starting to go insane. Was she going to be trapped alone with the decomposing corpse of one of her best friends, stuck in some stupid tin can, all alone for the rest of her life—and all without a single item of clothing? What her head starting to throb?

  "Things are going to work out, Loraine," Julius mumbled right before closing his eyes for the last time.

  "You'd better wake up," she told him. Then, Loraine yawned deeply and felt the need to stretch out. There was no fighting it, so she leaned back against the chair, which was honestly quite comfortable, and rested her head on her friend's broad shoulder. Maybe they'd released some kind of poison in the pods by remote, to kill off all the escapees. She stared at the image of that unassuming little planet on the display, trying to figure out what kind of place it was. But it didn't look all that different from Earth, with some areas blue, some brown, yellowish, white, or even green.

  "Maybe it won't be so bad ..."

  2

  -RAXAR-

  Gigantic leaves crunched under his wide feet as Raxar stalked through the ancient jungle. Above his head, a never ending sea of tree trunks jutted up toward the sky as though the dirt had been speared by the ancestors above. He held a heavy club made from the rock-hard wood of the Urall tree, one that his people favored for making tools, weapons, and the frames and fixtures of their homes. Slung over his shoulder was a lightweight spear, held there by a thin line that was used both for carrying the weapon and for retrieving it after it was thrown at prey or predator.

  Raxar was a Druazz, strong, stoic race who had lived in this part of the world for countless generations. There were other species' of people, they were aware of this, but others were feared as threats to the spirits of nature, and of his people's ancestors. His people did not possess the knowledge of advanced weaponry, like some of the strange tribes that were known to exist away from his jungle. They could fire small spears, which they called "arrows" and even launch invisible stones of impossible hardness. Some of the eldest of Raxar's tribe, the Hungdar, even told of a time when outsiders from far away had come and used sticks that fired lightning.

  Naturally, Raxar did not believe everything he was told. Many of the Hungdar tribe were thoughtless and easy to follow the traditional opinions. Some of them were also cruel and did not give a thought for the feelings of others. He stopped walking and sighed. His mind wandered to yet unclaimed young females he knew. His nether region twitched at the thought of their large breasts and alluring scents, but there was something strange in his mind when he thought of them. While his body was drawn toward them, they made his heart and head seem dark, alone, even when they were near and so appealing in every tangible way.

  One day, he would like to find a way to make this darkness fade, so that he was always happy and content, the way everyone else in the Hungdar tribe seemed to be. If that meant leaving them to find members of his people who could understand him better, that was a decision he might soon need to make.

  This expanse of trees and life forms was the basis of his tribe's lifeblood, their hunting ground, the place to draw sustenance for them all. Without it, they would surely perish. This was why they took special measures to ensure that they did not anger the spirits of their ancestors, or those of the land and sky. Breathing deeply, he was sure of something not right in the natural world surrounding him. There was a scent on the slight breeze that did not belong there. It seized his brain and made the world seem small, fragile. But it was also intoxicating for that moment before it vanished from his nostrils.

  As the wind changed directions, picking up and then fluttering this way and that, Raxar heard a familiar sound. It was the low roaring of a veerax, one of the giant lizards that dwelt on the far side of the jungle. They had been coming dangerously close to his people's village lately, making life unsafe for anyone who ventured out alone. This made him happy because killing one of these things might be enough to help him find a mate who could understand him. He carefully began to move toward the sound of the veerax, getting ready to track it down and try to corner it.

  3

  -LORAINE-

  Something jolted Loraine from her rest. All she felt was an abrupt shaking, which stopped almost immediately after it had begun. There was still sleep in her eyes, and her body felt sore. It was some time before she could fully understand what was happening. And then she remembered everything.

  "They've caught up to us!" she shouted the minute she opened her eyes, remembering getting away in the escape pod. "Julius, wake up, they're going to get us again."

  He didn't move, despite the significant impact from whatever had collided with them. The only light inside the otherwise pitch black escape pod came from the view screen. Her eyes drawn to it, Loraine leaned forward in her seat and saw the flashing light of that planet she'd fallen asleep watching. It looked a lot like the computer inside the pod was trying to let its occupants know that they'd arrived at their destination. Come to think of it, Loraine was sure there would be some kind of warning signals going off if the pod had come under attack. Although, it did belong to the aliens who might try to take it out. Surely they'd have ways of disabling warnings inside the pod.

  "I have to stop thinking so much, it's killing my head," Loraine muttered to herself. There was a dull ache in her head, and she was desperate for something to drink. She shook Julius's arm and tried to get him to wake up by whispering his name. Then, she said it louder, and louder still, growing worried that he was not going to wake up every again. But the poor man was still breathing, and nothing was oozing blood anywhere on him. Still, he might have suffered internal injuries, which could be so much worse than the kind that looked bad on the outside.

  Loraine leaned over and pushed on the door. It slowly opened with a little humming sound, letting in bright daylight and a smell that was fresh, like being in the public garden near the apartment she'd grown up in. "Oh, damn," she exclaimed when she looked out at the unbelievable number of trees before her. There were shrubs too, and flowers of all sorts. It was like a jungle from back home, but nothing on Earth could compare to how antediluvian this place was. It reminded her of movies she'd seen about dinosaurs, where everything was larger than life and almost always more deadly.

  Loraine thought about getting out and looking around, but there was a slick brown-green surface surrounding the pod. Leaning closer to it, she realized they'd landed in some kind of swamp or pond. There was land all around, but it would require moving through that primordial looking ooze to get there.

  Shrinking back inside the pod, it was tempting to just shut the door and hide there forever.

  Julius began to move around and groan. He opened his eyes and stared blankly at the screen. "What happened?" he asked, leaning forward and looking out the pod door into the alien jungle. "Did we go back in time or something?"

  "You're still funny at least." Loraine nudged him in the elbow without thinking, which made Julius cringe with pain.

  He said, "Okay, I am going to admit now ... I'm hurt real bad. How long was I asleep?"

  "I have no idea. I guess it depends how long this thing took to get us to, wherever the hell we are." She pointed at the flashing planet on the pod's screen. "This place."

  Julius sat back against the chair as though he was
going to fade away.

  "You look like shit," Loraine said finally. "You're not going to be able to travel, are you?"

  "I can, I just need to rest, I'll be good to go in a—" His eyes sank shut before he could even finish the sentence. Even though he was such an intimidating figure, feared and respected by many of his peers, Loraine knew there was an emotionally vulnerable guy under all those muscles. She kissed him on the cheek, wondering if it might be the last time she saw him.

  "You get your rest, buddy. I'm going to find our crewmates. If their escape pods crashed in this remote jungle too, they shouldn't be too hard to track down." The words sounded like lies even to her.

  It did occur to Loraine that she was still naked. Their alien kidnappers had cut off her jumpsuit, ready to start experimenting on her in the most unpleasant of ways. That's when Loraine had been freed by a crewmate and they'd escaped the alien ship. It wasn't that she minded being naked. Heck, she loved it under most circumstances. But that jungle did not look like the kind of place to venture into wearing nothing but her birthday suit. She didn't even have time to put shoes on before being boarded by the aliens.