Page 18 of Chased By the Alien Mercenary
The rains had, thankfully, stopped when I carefully stuck my head out of the dark hole in the ground. The grassy slope was soggy and squelched as I hauled myself to my feet. The hole was practically obscured behind taller grass and dark rock. The night gave it further cover, and now I wondered how Solear had even known this cave was there. I was starting to dislike this planet even more when, on my first step downhill, my boot sank deeply, and a glowing flower suddenly unfurled and snapped forward, sharply stinging my thigh. Ouch, that hurt. Where had it come from? Until it began glowing, it had been completely camouflaged in the grass. I should have remembered that themountain was covered with carnivorous plants, now one had made a meal out of me.
It took a moment to dig out the sharp, fang-like protrusions stuck in my skin. My eyes frantically tracked the glow of more and more flowers popping up all around me. They were going to make minced meat out of me if I had to walk through those. Solear’s thick armor must have repelled them before, and so far, he’d always carried me, especially at night. Now I wondered if he knew that would keep me out of harm’s way. Probably not, or even if he knew, he would have done it regardless. He seemed to like hauling me around like the caveman he was. And I liked it too, especially if it kept me from being eaten by the glowy flowers.
Now what? I dared not move from my spot, so I needed to reevaluate what to do next. The mansion still glowed down below, but it was darker than before, as night had progressed quite far. I wasn’t quite sure how much longer until dawn, but at the very least, it was well past midnight by now. Solear had to be down there, but it seemed calm—no commotion—so they had not discovered him. If he came back and discovered me missing from the cave, would he be able to find me? Yeah, probably. He’d see the messy tracks I’d made and follow them easily.
So, did I go to the landingstrip behind the mansion and try to get us a ride? That would be helpful, wouldn’t it? I wasn’t exactly qualified to fly anything, but that had never stopped me, anyway. I’d done plenty of aerial surveys with my camera. I’d flown in all kinds of circumstances, maybe some of that had rubbed off on me? A girl could hope.
Finding a flat rock nearby seemed to be the answer to my biggest issue: the flowers. I could toss it onto a patch of flowers, crush them, and take a step, carefully repeating the process downhill. Not ideal, certainly not fast, but better than sitting on my ass. Of course, I found myself pausing twice to take pictures of the strange nightflowers. They were just so ethereal and pretty—until they sank their sharp teeth into your flesh.
I might have gotten a little too distracted by a particularly dense patch of the flesh-eating plants. Ducking behind my rock, I was snapping pictures as I contemplated how to toss it for maximum effect. When I heard the voices coming toward me, I was too slow to react. Duck, hide, run? I wasn’t sure what was best, and then they saw me.
Another person might have tried to fight, but at the sight of a dozen Krektar led by that red guy with the golden marks on his arms, I knew it was futile. Running would only get me bitten by a dozen flowers before they caught up to me and hauled me back by force. So I waited, tucking the comm into the waistband of my pants behind my back, out of sight.
The guy said nothing to me as a pair of Krektar began escorting me downhill at his command. Nothing at all, like I was the dirt beneath his fancy boot heel. I took great pleasure in knowing that his gold-embroidered leather was getting mud-soaked, but it was a meager satisfaction. I should have stayed inside that cave, but the need to act had been so strong. I didn’t know where Solear was, but maybe this was a distraction that would help him complete his mission. Surely, a dozen guards away from the mansion—including their boss—would help him sneak in and out of there? Or… what if he was dead? Was that how they knew to look for me?
Those thoughts consumed me on the torturous downhill walk to the mansion. And the way I felt—the pain that made my chest squeeze tight until I couldn’t breathe—told me I had grown to care about my silent, snarly friend more than I had thought possible. The kind of caring that perhaps really did come from a mate bond. I didn’t want to believe he could be gone, as indomitable and strong as he’d been so far. A sleek predator who had eluded their capture and stolen from under their noses. He was scrappy, inventive, and while perhaps not subtle, he was definitely shrewd. And sweet. Oh, he was so freaking sweet it made me want to believe, very much, that this was love. He deserved that.
Mud clung to my too-large boots with each sucking, plodding step. The carnivorous plants did their best to attack my thinly protected legs, snapping with sharp teeth and barbs at my pants and skin. The Krektar dragging me along didn’t seem to notice their presence and therefore didn’t bother avoiding the largest clumps either. Goldie, with his brightly shimmering marks on his lush red skin, did notice, but he seemed to delight in my pain. That made sense; he was the poster boy for sadists.
By the time we reached the courtyard outside the mansion, I had dozens of little cuts along my legs, but at least the boots and socks had protected my feet. I was also covered by a fine sheen of clammy sweat along my spine, fear-inspired. Fear for Solear. Fear for myself. Where was he? Was he dead? That possibility felt more and more like a reality.
Inside the courtyard, everything was calm, but a silent crowd had gathered at the front door, awaiting our arrival. I saw Keya and the other blue-skinned alien women among them, grim-faced. Almost, it looked to me as if they were there to watchan execution. Mine. I should never have left that stupid cave; I should have waited like a good girl for Solear to come back. Only… what if he wasn’t coming back? This calmness among the watching servants and guards made me think Solear had never been here. Unless they had him trapped somewhere, and I was about to witnesshisexecution.
Then Goldie stepped around me and spread his arms, a grin splitting his handsome face—charming and almost kind, if you could look kind while presiding over death. He launched into some kind of speech all about the good things their master did for them, how he repaid their loyalty, and their disloyalty. That’s when he turned on me, and that kind expression turned gleeful, the unholy kind. Grimly, I met his golden eyes, avoiding looking at the crowd behind him, who definitely looked like they were attending a funeral. No, not all of them—Keya and the others, certainly—but some of those Krektar looked excited. Yup, I was about to die.
Goldie reached out a hand and curled warm fingers around my shoulder, a gentle squeeze that slowly turned tighter and tighter. “You still need to learn this lesson about loyalty, human. But you will.” So I wasn’t dying, but I was in a world of hurt. When he nodded, a Krektar shuffled closer, the cold mountain air whipping away the alien’s nasty smell. He snorted through his flat, disk-like nose as he offered his boss a long, coiled strip of leather with a smooth wooden handle. A whip.
I flinched away instinctively, but Goldie still had a tight hold on my shoulder, and two Krektar still flanked me. They yanked on my arms at their boss’s command, forcing me to turn and kneel. I could feel Goldie move closer, though I could not see him now. It felt like the crowd was collectively holding its breath, awaitingwhat would happen next. Well, so was I. It was too tense a moment to really pay attention to what I was feeling, just fear.
“You really thought you could hide in that dank little cave with your stolen comm, and we wouldn’t find you?” Goldie said coolly, like I was an idiot. I had not even considered that the communications device wasn’t safe, and clearly neither had Solear. At least now I knew I had made the right call leaving that place. I should have done so sooner, and they might not have found me. Then again, the comm wasstilltucked in the waistband of my pants. They could have simply kept tracking me.
I didn’t answer the bastard; there was no point. He thought he owned me, that he was teaching a slave a valuable lesson in loyalty and obedience. Well, screw that. But it was harder to stay that kind of indignant angry when I was certain they were about to yank my coat from my body. That would make the next step—and the pain they had in store for me—all too real. A loud crashing noise interrupted the silence that had followed Goldie’s words, and the Krekter never got to the actual ripping or tearing.
With my back turned to the mansion, I could not see what had happened, but people were screaming. I heard dozens of footsteps as people scattered left and right, and Goldie was loudly screaming at his guards to raise their guns and shoot. In the chaos, the guards had released me, and I took my chance, surging to my feet and running. It was dark, the cobblestones were slippery, and people were running around like headless chickens. I ducked under an arm, nearly collided with a Krektar who was just raising his gun at something behind me, and then the roar vibrated through the air.
Dropping to the ground, I covered my head with my arms, certain an earthquake had just struck—or perhaps a bomb had gone off. My temples ached, heat brushed across my skull, and then a sensation followed that I couldn’t describe. It felt as though my head had broken open like a freaking egg or something. Then I heard him: “I’m coming, Lyra. I’ve got you.”
His voice wasn’t like the husky, rough growl he had used for my name or to say yes. It was smooth, dark, and still raw with emotion and power. Yet I knew without a doubt that it was him. He’d finally gotten through; finally, he’d managed to reach me. Instead of running from the chaos, I turned and faced the mansion, at last seeing what was happening.
Solear stood on a second-floor balcony overlooking the courtyard, a gun in hand that he fired relentlessly into the crowd. With the mansion lit behind him and darkness cloaking everything else, he looked like some kind of demonic apparition—his skull-like features pale and catching the light, the rest of his large frame cloaked in shadow.
Goldie had rallied some guards, and they raised laser rifles to fire at him, but Solear was already jumping off the edge like it was nothing. I screamed, certain he was about to break his freaking ankles, but he landed with a thud, then charged at the males. “Don’t worry,”he said inside my head, his voice filled with amusement. “I’ll teach them a lesson.”And he did, barreling through Krektar and tearing at them with his claws. Goldie turned and ran, and Solear gave chase, long legs eating up the distance.
I cheered out loud when Solear pounced on the bastard’s back from behind, and I couldsensehow that amused my feral alien.He’d heard me, and now he’d managed to connect with me telepathically at last… I heard him too, loud and clear. Our eyes connected, even with almost the entire courtyard between us, and heat sizzled down my spine. He was okay! Whatever he’d been doing, he’d gone undetected, and now he was here to save the day. “Yes,” he agreed inside my head.
The Krektar came out of nowhere, suddenly rising from the darkness, tusks quivering. He snatched my arm and pressed a knife to my throat. “Scream,” he said, “and I’ll cut you.” I didn’t need to scream, though. As he started hauling me around a corner, using me as his personal shield, I already knew Solear was coming. Like I could sense him, though I could not see him. An avalanche barreling down on this bastard, crashing through the crowd in the courtyard like it was nothing. A bull stampeding, that was my Solear, and he was coming for me.
I couldn’t describe what it felt like to know that I had such a fierce protector so solidly on my side. I wasn’t even scared of the bastard hauling me with him, he was a dead man walking. This wasn’t the same place as the Alpha Quadrant, where, in some ways, I’d always been protected by the UAR forces that had colonized any planet I’d visited. Here, the rules of the jungle applied: kill or be killed. Survive at any cost. Out there, I’d never needed anyone to watch my back, but I knew it was different here. Luckily, I had the biggest bad to watch mine.
The hot amusement that washed over me made me realize Solear might actually be able to read my thoughts. Did he find the “big bad” descriptor funny? Did he like that? The Krektar was oblivious to this inner dialogue, hauling me roughly with him, though I wasn’t protesting. In the distance, the gate and the rolling hill with its predatory flowers loomed. I hoped thatSolear would get here before we got there. I didn’t feel like a repeat of that hike, my legs still throbbed from the numerous cuts.
It still sounded like there was fighting going on behind us, but it had turned confusing. Gunfire, lasers that whined as they struck, things that shattered, screams. But we’d turned a corner, so I couldn’t see. Was that all for Solear’s progress across the courtyard? I did not think so. The sound of humming engines and the lights that flashed from up high—spotlights on hovering vehicles—seemed to indicate something else.
Then Solear barreled around the building, sprinting flat out, a blur of black, while his ghoulish face caught the light in flashes. I saw the glow of his red eyes, felt the rage of battle that carried him forward. “You’re dead,” I said, causing the Krektar holding my arm to jerk his head down toward me, still unsuspecting of the danger heading straight for him.
Now I could see that it was the very bastard who had yanked me out of my stasis pod on my first day on this godforsaken planet. His tusks had a green hue, his breath utterly foul as he exhaled in my face. The knife glinted, but he wasn’t holding it to my neck anymore. “What?” he demanded, his footsteps still carrying us forward, his grip punishingly tight around my arm.
Above our heads, a skimmer wheeled through the sky and abruptly darted away, launching rapidly upward with a tight spin. Whoever was flying that was in an awful hurry, and they weren’t headed toward the landing strip but in the opposite direction. Fleeing the scene. The loud sound of its powerful engines only roared above us for a brief second, that’s how fastit shot away. When it petered out, Solear was suddenly there, launching out of the shadow and yanking the Krektar off me.
