Page 1 of Alien Knight Teddy Bear Troubles

Prologue

“Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! This is Artemis IV,” Captain Cassandra Davis shouted into her comms over blaring warning signals, her head plastered to the back of her flight helmet as her small ship spun faster and faster toward the large alien planet. In the seat next to her, her co-pilot slumped, unconscious. Bloody. Helmet cracked.

“Roger Artemis IV. This is Flight Command.” The deep, southern voice of her commanding officer, General MacGregor, filled her earpiece and a sense of fate washed over her.

At least they would know what happened. They wouldn’t just disappear out here. She’d trained hard to get here. Sacrificed so much. Given up on the idea of ever marrying or having children of her own, often working longer and harder than others, always trying to prove herself. Be the best. Most nights she crawled into an empty bed too tired for regrets.

In a cold sweat, tightening her grip, she forced her voice to remain steady as she informed Flight Command, “We are taking heavy fire. I repeat. We are taking heavy fire. We’re hit. We’re hit. Engine one destroyed,” she said grimly as the craft spun out of control, “Descending toward,” she paused, checking her monitors to confirm, “Southern region of Mora Five. Multiple system failures. Will miss target by--” She checked her built-in helmet monitor again. “Eighty clicks. I repeat, we are in emergency descent. Taking heavy fire. Eighty clicks from target.”

The deep male voice answered. “Roger, Artemis IV. Mora Five, confirmed. What is the status of the package?”

Cassandra grimaced as the spinning hit her gut like a punch. She had to talk sense into the general, her voice steady even though her heart pounded. “Flight Command, the package remains on board. Permission to initiate self-destruct?”

“Negative, Artemis IV. Permission denied. Receiving IMRS data. Protect the package.”

Was he insane? The odds of surviving the next few minutes were slim. And none. If Flight Command didn’t want whatever she was carrying in her cargo hold to fall into the wrong hands--whoever the hell those hands might belong to--it was time to burn this bird to cinder before it was too late.

She didn’t want to die, but she’d accepted the mission knowing the risks. Earth was screwed, stuck between multiple warring alien races who were all lying or at the very least keeping secrets from their new human ‘allies.’ The recent attack on the Caldorian base had been the last straw and the president had finally given their space forces permission toact.

Exactly what she was hiding in the back of her ship, she had no idea other than whatever was inside the black box was mission critical for Earth’s defense. In the wrong hands, it could destroy them all. This mission was an all or nothing proposition, and they’d trusted her to get the job done.

She didn’t need to know the details. The two armed suits in the back were in charge of the package. She and the lieutenant flying in the jump seat had been in charge of the flying.

And she’d fucked that up. Flown right into some kind of trap on her way back to Earth. The fact that she was still alive--and had managed to take out almost all of the attackers--was a miracle. A goddamn miracle. The enemy was still out there, and her ship was on its last leg. Even one more enemy ship was one too many.

Heart pounding, she swallowed the bile in the back of her throat and stiffened her spine. She’d been chosen for this mission. Had been honored to take it. She wouldn’t let the package be taken. Deliver or die trying. That was the deal. “General, we’re going down. Let me light her on fire, sir.”

The silence stretched and she wondered if she’d lost comms. She knew exactly what was happening on the other end of this comm. Army General MacGregor and Navy Admiral Peltier had their heads bent, voices tight and low, discussing the options with the relatively new Space Force General, John T. Falcione, and the new president as a room full of tense faces waited for orders. For options.

There were none.

The alarms made it hard to think. She shut them down as her craft spun faster, Mora Five’s gravity spiraling her ship out of control. “You have one, maybe two minutes, General. Give me the order.”

“Negative, Artemis IV. Receiving IMRS data.”

She swallowed hard. Deep breaths. In through the nose. Breathe. Just breathe.

Count to five. Ten. IMRS. They will need the IMRS. Monitor. Record. Tracking system. Don’t pass out.Fight it, Cass. Fight it hard.

“Data received. Protect the package. Seventy-two hours. That’s an order.”

“Roger, flight command. Protect the package. Seventy-two hours. Artemis IV out.”Shit.Now she had to try to land this flying inferno and then hide on a hostile alien world until help arrived. She wasn’t an astronaut. She was a fighter pilot, trained specifically for this mission on a hybrid ship that could outmaneuver anything else made by humans in space. She had never set foot on the moon, let alone another planet in a different star system. And Mora Five? Habitable, barely.

She’d studied Mora Five as part of the mission. It was the crown jewel of space slums. Smugglers, thieves and spies out here. No police. No oversight. The whole planet was thick with assassins and crime lords--at least based on the information their very alien contact had provided prior to the start of the mission. Which was why this backward planet had been chosen as the drop point. And why the two literalMen in Blackhad gone out to make the pick-up while she and Charlie, her co-pilot, had waited onboard.

Fighting the G-forces pinning her to her seat, she used the built-in flight command screens in her helmet to do what she could. This was a hybrid spaceship, after all. Not a true fighter jet or slow moving bomber. Maybe, just maybe, she could get herself and the remains of her small crew onto the ground alive.

Vomit rose in her throat. She choked it back down. Not. Happening.

She had a job to do, and she was going to see it through. Too much was at stake. Like the survival of every man, woman and child on planet Earth.

“All right, you bad ass piece of alien technology, show me what you can really do.”

Cass did what she’d been told never to do. She disengaged the flight stabilizers and took manual control of the spacecraft, pushing the machine to do what no human made craft was designed to do.

The spinning stopped. Her craft hovered. And there, in her weapons lock, the enemy craft was caught by surprise.

“Vilitos scum. Let’s light ‘em up, Charlie.”

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