Page 1 of Game on Askole

PART ONE

Prologue

My name is Sarah Jones. I’m a marine lieutenant and kickass fighter pilot. My mission is to save humanity from the Tai-Kok. How did all this start? It started with an alien blitzkrieg. The Tai-Kok shocked and awed our military with a spectacular display of force, hoping to destroy our will to fight. The news medias’ horrific stories about the Tai-Kok’s butchery made it clear. You fought or you died.

The Jones family’s psychic abilities gave the world an early warning system, allowing people time to get to the underground shelters before the Tai-Kok could turn them into sushi. For those of us who have met the Tai-Kok in person, the image of these tall, hairless, skeletal humanoids with mouths’ full of sharp metal teeth and three bloodred eyes are forever burned into our minds.

Those depraved ghouls literally live to eat. How they found our world or why they consider us lip-smacking good, no one knows. We did try to communicate with the murderous aliens, but their language consists of a series of cacophonous honks and quacks. Linguists have been working on translating it, but after the monsters slaughtered a school full of children, everyone was more concerned with finding a permanent way to stop them.

The one good thing that resulted from the Tai-Kok’s attacks was it unified humanity. For the first time in recorded history, every country on Earth joined forces to fight the alien invaders, and Central Command was born.

The Tai-Kok ate their way across Europe and the Middle East until they had the bad luck to capture Assad, a suicide bomber, and take him aboard their ship for snack time. Back then, the monsters didn’t search their food for weapons. Big mistake. Assad’s entire family had been massacred by the monsters, and he allowed himself to be caught. Assad blew himself up over the Pacific, and the badly damaged ship crash-landed outside Tucson, Arizona. We salvaged their technology and have been using it against them ever since.

Two months ago, while scanning the solar system for our enemies, my cousin Kaylee Jones made the mistake of psychically linking with Talree, a Coletti warlord. It turned into one hell of a “first contact.” The alien warlord immediately clamped on to her mind like a tick on a hunting dog. No matter what she did, Kaylee couldn’t break free.

That was when Talree made his big announcement. Kaylee was his mate. Big honor, Talree said. It didn’t matter if Kaylee was willing or not. She was his. Forever. Luckily, she fell in love with the big jerk, and the warlord cherishes her. Yuck. No alien smooches for me.

Kaylee’s warlord did agree to stop the Tai-Kok and Rodan from raiding our world. But the bad news was, warlords aren’t benevolent do-gooder types, and there was a price for them helping us. Our women.

After that, I wanted to know what the hell had happened to all their females. Big shocker—the Colettis’ tendency to take things that didn’t belong to them had consequences.

Six hundred years ago, the Coletti race had almost been wiped out in the Great Galactic War. The chemicals used in the war created a genetic anomaly, and only one female baby was born for every one thousand Coletti males. In other words, they were facing extinction

To save his people, Zarek, the Overlord of the Coletti clans, did what any fiercely protective warlord would do. He started raiding other planets and species for their prized psychic females. When the Overlord discovered the Jones family’s unique psychic powers and our blood’s ability to heal cellular damage, he promptly seized control of Earth.

The second Zarek signed the treaty promising to protect Earth from Tai-Kok and Rodan raids, Central Command arrested every Jones serving in the military. They injected us with tracking devices and gave us to the Coletti. We had stopped the monsters from slaughtering hundreds of thousands of people, and this was the thanks we got?

General Georgina Tasker said surrendering us to the Coletti was for the greater good. Billions of lives in exchange for a few psychics. It was a win-win situation for Central Command. With the Coletti warbirds circling overhead, Central Command didn’t need Jones Sirens to warn of an imminent attack or our ability to bring down the Tai-Kok ships.

Shortly thereafter, the warlords transferred thirty-five members of my immediate family to their new base outside Tucson. That was when the fun started. Each one of us was to be interrogated about our psychic abilities, medically scanned, and logged into the Coletti computer system like so much livestock.

Lucky me, I was one of the first to be delivered to the Coletti base. All those bastards were getting out of me was my name, rank, and serial number. I was a decorated Marine fighter pilot with eight hundred confirmed kills and they were batshit crazy if they thought I would hook up with an alien. Never gonna happen. Oorah!

Chapter One

The fact that I had eight hundred kills intrigued the Coletti. The chief interrogator was called Oydle. He had to be a hybrid or a ringer. I mean, c’mon, a fat Coletti? With that jelly belly, how did he fight? And what was up with his fancy red dress uniform? Did the Coletti consider interrogations a formal event? If so, the least they could do was put some sequins on my crappy orange jumpsuit and shackles.

Big surprise. The new Coletti garrison came complete with its own interrogation room. There were thingamajigs on the metal walls, which I assumed were cameras or monitors. The Coletti hoped to catch me using my powers. Which wasn’t going to happen, no matter how much I was provoked.

My fingers twitched. I needed some grooming scissors. Oydle’s bushy eyebrows looked like two woolly caterpillars had crawled up there and died. Tufts of hair stuck out in every direction, and don’t even get me started on his warty, bulbous nose. Yuck, yuck, and yuck. Then there was his hair. I shuddered. Oydle’s warrior braids reminded me of moldy dreadlocks. Yep. He could pass for an ugly troll out of one of those fantasy books Aunt Tess liked to read.

“Tell I what powers possess you.”

A hard-to-understand troll. I gave him the one-finger salute. “My name is Sarah Jones. I’m a Marine lieutenant. My serial number is 888549405.”

“Tell what possess.” His snarl revealed two broken, yellowed fangs.

My eyes crossed. His breath was a lethal weapon. “My name is Sarah Jones. I’m a Marine lieutenant. My serial number is 888549405.”

“How wham Tai-Kok?” Flies crawled across Oydle’s face. He brushed them away. Twenty more of the pests landed on him. He swiped at them, but the persistent buggers kept coming back.

“Here are I,”Aunt Tess announced in my head.“You owe me fifty bucks. I told ya I could infiltrate the Overlord’s base.”

“You did.”

Oydle asked again, “How wham Tai-Kok?”

Aunt Tess snickered.“I thought the Coletti spoke perfect English.”

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