Happiness is a sunbeam

which may pass through

a thousand bosoms without

losing a particle of its original ray;

nay, when it strikes on a kindred heart,

like the converged light on a mirror,

it reflects itself with redoubled brightness.

It is not perfected until it is shared.

- Jane Porter

Prologue

It was on the summer solstice in the year 2020 that the greatest unknown, next to the meaning of life, was answered. Are we alone? As it happens, we are not. On that perfectly normal, yet unforgettable summer day, huge gray ships appeared, materializing from nothing, in skies throughout the world. People panicked of course. There was looting and rioting. Everyone looked to their governments and militaries to do something. They didn't though. There were no attacks launched, no fighter jets scrambled. We learned later that these visitors from another world had already made their existence known to the United Nations and consequently those with their fingers poised over the big red buttons knew not to push them.

The aliens, Yaut'ja as they identified themselves, had covertly managed to eliminate all weapons of mass destruction the world over prior to their rather sudden appearance, even those nuclear warheads Russia had conveniently "misplaced" during the Cold War. We, humans that is, had nothing left with which to attack them, aside from small arms, and what good is a gun against something the size of a city floating a mile up? So once the initial collective freak out was over, we waited to find out which alien invasion movie of the past century would prove most accurate.

In the US, the president got up on his podium, his address broadcast on every medium, and explained the situation to the frightened populace. The Yaut'ja weren't here to destroy us, they were actually going to help us, they were our friends, on the condition that humans as a whole cooperated and met a few simple demands. It wasn't said in quite so many words, but the threat was clear: if we don't do what they want, we can kiss our species goodbye. So what were they going to give us? Technology, apparently. This had the scientists and trigger-happy jarheads of the world salivating. Alien tech, think of the possibilities! I'm sure those in charge of the big guns were hoping for even bigger ones, but the Yaut'ja were far from that stupid. Instead they provided us with medical knowhow that cured cancer, Alzheimer's and AIDS. They taught us techniques to fix some of the extreme damage we'd done to our environment. And they gave us the means to reach the stars, or at least put us on the right track to do so. It's not like they handed over one of their ships for reverse engineering. Like I said, they weren't stupid.

And in return? Nothing so complicated. They simply wanted people. Specifically, two kinds of people. They wanted all the world's violent criminals. Few had any real problem with this. Why pay taxes to support scum when you can foist them off on someone else? No one really cared what happened to them. It's not like the faceless masters in the sky would answer if you asked anyway. The other though… The other thing was women. Women. That was a bit harder of a pill to swallow. What could they possibly want just women for? The possibilities weren't pleasant to contemplate. They didn't ask for half the population to be handed over or anything. In fact they didn't even request that the government round up a selection. It was simply to be understood that Yaut'ja males would select females on an individual basis and would contact those females directly. Everyone else just had to stand aside.

There was no explanation as to what would happen to these chosen women. As time passed and we came to terms with the, well… terms, women would simply disappear. Not overnight or out of the blue. There seemed to be some rules to the game we weren't privy to. A Yaut'ja would make himself known to a woman and after a short period of interaction, sometimes hours, other times days, generally that woman would vanish. They never seemed to take anyone younger than 16 or older than 40. It also became clear that most, most, of these select women were not married and had no children. Of course this lead to a mad rush of shotgun weddings and teenage pregnancies. Parents seemed to think that a ring on their 15 year old's finger would protect her from the big bad beast. Remember how I said Yaut'ja weren't stupid? The government put a stop to that nonsense real quick.

Little was known about these strangers, and less was offered. It was a couple weeks after the ships appeared that we got our first glimpse. A ship, smaller than most, landed outside the UN in New York and the world watched with baited breath as the stuff of nightmares disembarked. Except, they weren't. Certainly they were frightening, but were also surprisingly, scarily human-like. Patterned reptilian skin and claws aside, they walked upright on two legs, had two arms and ten fingers, and something that resembled dreadlocked hair. They appeared to have two eyes as well, though no one knew for certain since they all wore masks and never took them off. Speculation ran wild on why that was. Could they not breathe our air? Not handle sunlight? Were the masks fused to their heads like some crazy Steampunk fantasy? Whatever they hid behind their masks, they had no problem showing off everything else. To a one they were ripped and looked like Amazonian warriors in their skimpy armored outfits, morbidly decorated with skulls. Thankfully none looked human. Perhaps that was only for our benefit though.

The meeting of ambassadors, both ours and theirs, was held behind closed doors, so we only got that quick look on TV as they walked from the ship to the building, and the endless repeats on the news thereafter. Seeing them near humans was a bit of a shock as it drove home how big they were. Not one was shorter than 7 feet and all were muscled and huge. Oddly enough, the tallest in the group seemed female. At least that was what the new so-called "experts" said. Their muscles were a bit slimmer, and they wore chest plates that maybe covered breasts. Honestly, who the hell knew? The fact that aliens were meeting with heads of state in the UN was enough to blow most peoples' minds.

It took a while, not as long as you'd think though, before the novelty of it all wore off and the presence of the Yaut'ja became yesterday's news. Humans really do have a short attention span. The prisons were emptied quickly and quietly. There was never a shortage of idiots that went after those that came in public though. It was like a gag-reel of the Darwin awards. Any morons that survived an attempt on a Yaut'ja's life, and you had to have a death-wish to take one on, were quickly spirited away never to be seen or heard from again. It certainly cleared out a lot of rednecks. They started teaching classes about how to act should you ever come into contact with one of the warriors, which was statistically unlikely. These classes were required for all people and oddly enough were segregated by sex. The Yaut'ja gave just enough info on themselves to confuse the hell out of everyone. There was hardly enough solid info to fill a commercial break.

However, there was one tenet though that was universal, that was repeated over and over like a mantra until you heard it in your sleep: Don't Fight Back.

Nope, don't own Predator, etc.