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  A Planet’s Ransom

  Ransomeers #1

  C.M. Simpson

  Made hostages for a world whose international leaders didn’t know how to behave, we ended up on a new world, one we have to make our own, where every step of civilization has to be earned, all over again. It’s meant to be a world to hide the secret of our survival—but not all the aliens believe we have a right to survive. Torn between two rival factions of an alien race, we have to save our keepers, defeat our hunters, and get a message to the stars.

  And that’s just if we want to live.

  Making a home for our families, is another task altogether.

  NOTE: This novel was originally published under my pen name, Carlie Simonsen, but is now being published under my main author name, C.M. Simpson, and has now been given a series of its own, the Ransomeers.

  2nd Edition Changelog: changed spelling to US English, minor word tweaks, new cover. If you own the Carlie Simonsen edition, there are no story changes that will affect your enjoyment of the books to follow.

  License Notes

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase a copy for yourself, and Thank You for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Copyright Page

  A Planet’s Ransom

  Second Edition

  Copyright ©August 17, 2022 C.M. Simpson

  Cover Art & Design © Cover Art & Design © July 20, 2022, Jake at JCaleb Design

  All rights reserved.

  DEDICATION

  To everyone who believed in me until I finally had to believe in myself.

  Thank you.

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  1—Hostages for the World

  2—Worst Week, Ever

  3—We Might Still Kill You

  4—They Shoot the Hostages

  5—Exiled

  6—Survival Training

  7—My Pod is a Nanny in Disguise

  8—Grounded

  9—Training Resumes

  10—Unexpected Visitors

  11—A Change of Plans

  12—Plans for Retrieval

  13—Time. To. Go.

  14—The Caverns Below

  15—Two Down. Who’s Next?

  16—An Unfriendly Response

  17—Troublemakers

  18—Showdown with Su-Lynn

  19—Finding Taylor

  20—Heading Out

  21—I Hate Caves

  22—Sucks to be Me

  23—Back at Su-Lynn’s

  24—The Humans Go A-Hunting

  25—Three Traps

  26—Trouble at Taylor’s

  27—Wrecking the Heritage

  28—In Dire Distress

  29—Preparations for a New Start

  Terms and Characters

  Author’s Notes

  Other Work by C.M. Simpson

  About C.M. Simpson

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  With thanks to Gaia Fort, who responded to a question on a day when I was feeling flat. This tale wouldn’t have been completed in nearly as short a time without your little nudge. Also with thanks to Dean Wesley Smith and his Pulp Speed posts, because they gave me something to aim for—also for all his talk about doing something you love. And to Douglas Hill, who inspired me to begin writing in this genre in the first place. Memories of his Last Legionary series, stand alongside those of Andre Norton’s Beastmaster, Anne McCaffrey’s Dragondrums, Ship and City series; Decision at Doona, and Crystal Singer series; as well as John Christopher’s Tripod series starting with City of Gold and Lead. There are many others, but these, in particular, have stayed with me since I first read them in my teens. For these masters of this genre in my youth, I have only gratitude. And to the 1980s librarians at Mount Isa State High School, who had such a flair for choosing the best science fiction of the time for inclusion in their collection, I give my thanks.

  1—HOSTAGES FOR A WORLD

  It was a “First-World Problem”, you know, one of those problems that’s only ever a problem because the civilization’s too far advanced to really have to worry about the basics, such as food and water and a safe place to sleep—even if that’s never true. There’s always someone who has to worry about the basics.

  I was definitely having a problem of the first-world sort with the internet down—and I wasn’t the only one. A lot of people were experiencing the same thing, judging from the half-suppressed sighs and looks of muted frustration that travelled around the classroom. And not just the internet, I realized, when I tried a secretive text beneath my desk, but the telephone links as well.

  “If everyone would please put their mobiles on their desks,” Miss Rodgers said, “we’ll get on with the class.”

  “But, Miss, they’re not working!”

  “If you’re not using them in class, how do you know?”

  The protests overrode her observation, rippling around the classroom, until she raised her hands in exasperation.

  “All right,” she said. “Bargain—you all copy down the homework from the board, and let me check when you’re done, and I’ll see if I can find out if anyone knows anything about why the phones have stopped working.”

  We grumbled, but it was a fair call. It was also the only way we’d copy down the homework. Firstly, because it was homework, and then we’d have to do it, and secondly, because it meant we’d actually have to do some work, and we’d cruised this far without working so we didn’t see the point.

  She stood firm, and then kept her word, admonishing us to get an early start on the homework, while she checked out the problem. Turns out she had to leave the room, because the school’s internal phone system wasn’t working, either.

  Some of us got started on the homework. Others just took the opportunity to catch up on the latest gossip. When Miss Rodgers got back, she was as white as a sheet.

  “Children,” she said, “I need you to follow me—in two lines, quietly and quickly.”

  She didn’t give us time for comment, but strode quickly to the door and stood in front of it.

  “Two lines,” she said, and wouldn’t budge until we’d obeyed. Our protests were merely met with the same two words. Somewhere along the line, her sense of urgency finally got through, and we stopped arguing.

  Other classes were also filing out of their classrooms, their teachers looking just as stressed out as ours. I started to wonder what had gone wrong.

  “Miss, is everything okay?” I called, but she kept walking.

  “Quickly now,” she ordered, and we followed, out through the school gate, and onto one of the buses waiting out front. It had ‘Australian Air Force’ down the side.

  “Get in!” she snapped, when one of the others asked what was going on.

  I think, if he’d pushed the protest further, we might all have jacked up until we were told what was going on, but all the adults were far too serious—and then there were the soldiers. Four for each bus. They told us to buckle in and they’d explain as soon as we were underway. Given they were armed, they had our complete attention. Miss Rodgers seemed more than happy to hand us over to them. Me, not so much.

  “So,” I said, when we were on the bus and no-one else spoke up. “What gives?”

  But there was a crackle from the front of the bus, and the soldier who seemed to be in charge raised a hand.

  “What is it?” he asked, but he wasn’t talking to me.


  “It’s time,” came the answer, clear enough over the radio for all of us to hear.

  “Time for what?” I demanded, not at all happy with being ignored. We’d been promised an explanation, for pity’s sake!

  My explanation came in the blinding glare that flared around the bus, and then vanished just as quick. We were still blinking things back into focus when a loudspeaker sounded out around us.

  “You will surrender your weapons.”

  The soldiers exchanged glances, but they obeyed. We watched as they unslung their rifles and dropped them into a bag, which they handed to the guy in charge. He took it, and did the same with his gun. The driver also handed over a rifle—and that was when we realized the bus had stopped.

  “Hey!” someone said, and we all turned, and that’s when the scene outside the bus caught our attention. We weren’t on the highway, any more. As a matter of fact, we weren’t even on the planet—not if those things standing on walkways looking down at us were anything to go by.

  The bus door slid open and the soldier dumped the duffle bag out the door, and then stepped back inside. When the door slid closed, again, he turned to us.

  “I promised you an explanation,” he said. “I had hoped to give you some warning, but our…hosts have seen fit to act first. We are, in essence, our planet’s hostages. As long as our world leaders do as they’ve been asked, and the majority of the population complies, we’ll be okay.”

  Now, that was something we hadn’t anticipated.

  “I’m sorry we couldn’t warn you,” he said, “but your school was chosen and I…We all thought they’d give us more time to negotiate.”

  For once we were quiet, us looking at him, and him looking at us, and then one of the other girls started to cry.

  “What about our parents?” I asked, raising my voice to be heard over her tears.

  “They will be given the choice of joining you, along with your siblings.”

  “But…”

  “I’m sorry; it was the best that we could do.”

  “Why?” I managed, and he looked at me. It was not a friendly look.

  “We’re being invited to join their Federation.”

  “We’re being annexed?” I asked, remembering the Ukrainian thing.

  He grimaced.

  “Apparently it’s a development opportunity.”

  “We’re hostages,” I reminded him, “for a bunch of people who don’t know how to behave.”

  “I’m sure we’ll be fine,” he said, and, fortunately, he was right…at least to start with.

  2—WORST WEEK, EVER

  You see, to start with, we were kept aboard the buses until one of those aliens… I have to call them yvernatch when they can hear me—or see my texts—but you and I know they’re just aliens—rude ones, who took us from our home. Anyway, they kept us on the buses, until one of them came and took our names, put them on something resembling a computer tablet, and handed it to the soldier at the front of the bus.

  It, although I later found out that ‘it’ was a ‘she’—anyway, it also took a blood sample from each and every one of us, and data from that went on the tablet, too—transmitted straight from the finger-pricker via wireless.

  “For DNA coding,” she said, like any of us believed that.

  I was getting pretty set to misbehave, when they finally let us off the bus.

  “Stay in your groups,” the alien told us. “We wouldn’t want to shoot one of you by accident.”

  It wasn’t what she said—I mean, yeah, sure, right? Like they’d really shoot one of us. But it was the way she said it. Like it was a fact of life, not a threat to keep us in line, but just another fact of life, like suddenly being ripped off your world and stuck on a spaceship.

  If we were even on board a spaceship. For all I knew, some smart aleck had filled the bus with happy gas, and we were blissed out of our skulls and safely back on Earth.

  Whatever it was, I took a good look around me, took note of the aliens on the walkways above the buses, saw the long, black gun-shapes they were holding in their hands, and decided now was not the time to push my luck. I looked around, and saw my classmates come to the same conclusion—even poor Callie.

  I felt sorry for her. She was having the worst week ever, and it was only Tuesday afternoon. ’Cos when else do you tell your kids you’re leaving them with their dad, because you can’t be bothered being tied down, anymore? Why, on a Monday night, just after they’ve been told their assignments are due a week early and that those assignments are going to count for half their School Leaver’s Assessment. Yeah, good one, mum.

  Follow this with your dad telling you his girlfriend is going to move in as soon as you’re mum’s moved out—especially when you never even knew he had a girlfriend—and your world’s pretty much shot to sh…pieces, right there. Poor Callie. I guess getting kidnapped by aliens would be about the only way things could get worse.

  For a minute, I toyed with the idea of blaming Callie for what had happened, and then decided against it. She had enough to deal with, without me helping her feel worse. I glanced back at where her besties had their arms around her shoulders, and saw a couple of the guys hanging close by.

  It took me a minute to recognize them, but everything was pretty obvious when I did. Robert Schnapps and Willie Tyrell. Okay, William Tyrell. I didn’t know him that well. Most of the guys called him Bill, but Willie was just fine with me. Besides, it annoyed ten kinds of sh…shtuffing out of him, and stopped me feeling bored. I swear, one day he was going to break his rule about not hitting girls, and then I was going to be in trouble.

  So, the aliens moved us out of the buses, with the soldier boys keeping us in two straight lines, like the boarding-school girls in that kids’ show my little sister thought was so great, and we walked out of the hangar where all the buses had been transmatted, and into the ship’s holding centre.

  Of course, back then, I didn’t know what transmatting was, or that spaceships even had holding centers. I was only just finding out that interplanetary annexation was a thing. Back then, I was well and truly off-balance—lucky for the yvernatch. So, we trooped into the holding centre, where they took the tablet from the soldier, and then made him stand in line with the rest of us.

  He looked like he might argue, or like his world had just been broken into tiny, bitty pieces, but he didn’t say a word. He just stepped back into line. I mighta thought he was one of those lapdog types, except that I caught a look on his face that told me otherwise.

  It didn’t last long. In fact, it came and went so fast I thought I’d imagined it, but, now, I know I didn’t. Nah, Mitch might be a year and a bit older than me, but we’ve come to an understanding. And, when it comes time we can misbehave, those scaly sonsa…lizards aren’t gonna know what’s hit ’em.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

  We went into the holding centre, where they got our names and our DNA, and then the fun began.

  3—WE MIGHT STILL KILL YOU

  I’m not going to go into the first few days on that ship. Let’s just say they had never seen a human before, and they set about getting to know us real well. I don’t think there was a medical test I didn’t do, or scan, or x-ray or whatever. And it wasn’t fun.

  And the food made us sick, and the air made us sick, and the way the ship moved through space made us sick, as well. It took us a week to adjust, and the whole time, they were testing this, poking that, and asking us all about our world. I hated them by the end of it, hated them all, and I hated my life, and where it was at, and what it had become. I really wanted to hurt something, and there was nothing I could touch, except myself, or my classmates, or the poor old soldier boys who’d gotten stuck up here with us.

  In the end, I found myself a corner, and settled for trying to learn everything I could, while I tried to work out some way to make some mischief that wouldn’t get me killed. Before I could get that far, though, they put us right
back in school.

  And I don’t mean any school. I mean a school that went from the time we got up, to the time we went to bed. Even mealtimes seemed like classes—once they worked out what we could eat, that is…and wasn’t that a joy?

  So, they kept us busy, and they made sure we knew just how much we didn’t know. Nothing like being told we might as well go back to kindergarten to really make us mad, but it was being mad that got us through.

  Sure, we still cried, although some of us cried more than others—and we still tried to pretend it was all a bad dream, but we played along, and we were so very, very angry. We started to work, but we still had time to worry about those we’d been taken from.

  “Where are our parents?” Su-Lynn asked the alien she.

  It was after we’d finished our morning run, just before we filed in to breakfast. We all froze, shuffling into a group around them, so we could hear the answer.

  “We are still in negotiations,” the alien said.

  “But when will we see them?”

  “They still think we might kill you.”

  That shut us up for a little bit, but one of us had to ask it.

  “So, will you?” My voice sounded like gravel, and I had to force myself to meet the creature’s eyes, but I managed it, and my classmates hung on every word.

  The creature looked at me, and then it looked out over the rest of my class. Finally, it looked at the four soldiers who had come with us, and been made to stay.

  “It is still a possibility.”

  At first I didn’t know what to say. I felt numb. I felt my face go all tingly, like the blood had drained right out of it. My voice seized up.