Page 13 of Protected By the Alien Warmachine

Planting bombs.I growled to myself at the thought, but it made sense. Their mission succeeded if they destroyed the parts of the tomb which rose above the sand, and let the oncoming storm bury whatever remained. No reason to risk a fight they might lose, better to stay as far away from their foe as possible.

I stretched out the hyperwave field from my crystals, sweeping up a sandstorm in my wake.

No stealth this time, only rage and death. Turning the corner, I unleashed hell.

The sentry they’d set earned a bonus but would not live to collect it. He fired as soon as I came around a corner, a crimson beam of coherent light stabbing at my chest. The thick cloud of sand I’d wrapped myself in glittered in the beam, absorbing most of its energy before it struck.

Pain lanced through me, but nothing I couldn’t live with. The same couldn’t be said for the human as my claws severed his head from his body. I didn’t stop or even slow as I passed him, leaving his corpse to drop to the floor as I burst through the doorway he’d guarded.

The chamber beyond was a mess already, tumbled stones littering the once ornate floor. A flash of memory surfaced: this had been a reception station, a place for the families of the honored dead to commune with their ancestors. Time and weather had ruined it despite all the Makers’ precautions, and now the human mercenaries were intent on finishing the job.

My roar of rage rocked the humans, but they were professional enough to recover quickly. One stood too close to the doorway to react before I carved through his spine, but the rest started shooting and diving into cover.

I swept my bloody hand forward, and the sandstorm rushed past me, plucking a mercenary off from the floor and dashing him against the roof high above. Return fire scored my flesh and I found cover of my own.

More of them than I expected,I thought as the withering hail of laser-light burned into the black stone.Good. More to kill before I fall.

9

TALIA

Jules didn’t waste any time. As soon as Kal’va was gone, she jumped up to follow.

“What the hell are you doing?” I asked, trying to block her way to the rope ladder.

“Your boytoy killed some of those assholes, right? Their guns are still up there, and we need weapons.”

Okay, that was a reasonable point even if I didn’t like it. My objection died on my lips, replaced by a much less serious one. “He’s not my boytoy.”

Jules grinned her evilest grin, and I knew I’d regret that comment. “No, I guess not. Given your age difference, you’re the sugar baby here, right?”

“I could punch you right on the nose.” My face beet red, I shook, caught between outrage and laughter. When she gave me a cheery thumbs-up, I gave in to the laughter, slumping against the bier.

“Fuck you,” I said when I could breathe again. “You are theworstfriend.”

“Sure am,” she agreed, clapping me on the shoulder. “Now let’s go get armed, so we don’t have to leave everything up to Kal’va.”

That was a plan I could get behind. Kal’va might have accepted his own death, but I refused to. Once we’d taken the ship, we’d have options, and I wasn’t about to blindly follow his order to abandon him.Fuck that—he can shout at me if he likes, at least he’ll be alive to do the shouting.

Mates or not, he’d learn that I wasn’t his to command. I tried to convince myself of that, and that took up enough of my attention that I almost didn’t notice the first corpse. I swallowed a squeak of shock, hopped back, and managed not to step on the mercenary or his blood.

His throat neatly opened by a razor-sharp blade or claw, he lay on his back, looking almost peaceful. If it hadn’t been for the sprays of blood splattering the surrounding walls, I might have thought he was taking a nap in a really inconvenient location.

Jules whistled, staring past me at the dead man. “Your boytoy can cut through a hardsuit?”

“He’snotmy—oh, never mind.” With a shake of my head, I gave up the protest before I’d finished making it. “I have no idea what he can do, okay? I’ve never asked him how sharp his claws are. It’s not something that came up in conversation.”

“The two of you had other priorities,” my friend said, and I heard the grin spreading across her face. My only reply was a rude gesture over my shoulder as I crouched to check the body.

I tried not to look at the wound; touching him made me queasy. As a xenoarchaeologist, I was used to handling bodies, but usually they’d been dead for a few centuries. A fresh corpse was an unwelcome new experience, and one I wanted to get through as quickly as possible.

He held a laser rifle in his hands, a stun zapper slung at his side. Jules took the laser, I fumbled for the stunner, and Paulo took the mercenary’s vibro-knife.

“If I end up using this, we’re already screwed,” he complained, glaring at the offending weapon. Jules snorted.

“Do you know how to use a rifle? No? Then you get the knife and hope we find another stunner.”

It wasn’t long before we heard the distinctivecrackof laser fire. The sound sent a shiver down my spine, and my fingers gripped the stunner so hard my knuckles went white. Swallowing my fear, I set out towards the shots, hoping I wasn’t making a terrible mistake. Jules tried to slow me down, but it wasn’t her mate’s life on the line. I shrugged her off and rushed ahead, rounding a corner, and running into a mercenary crouching there.

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