Page 1 of Chased By the Alien Mercenary
Chapter 1
Lyra
I dreamed of the last trip I’d made for the popular travel column I worked for: the deep, harsh jungles of remote Colony Planet 12, and its mysterious, primate inhabitants. I’d caught so many of the blue-furred monkeys on my camera, and some had even been brazen enough to ransack my camp one night. It was a good trip, and I’d enjoyed every minute of the traveling, the sights, and the views I’d captured through my lens. Too bad my editor had not been nearly as endeared by the furry faces I’d captured as I had been.
My thoughts soured, spinning into a darker, gloomier spiral as I remembered the way he’d tossed my article and pictures in the trash. “That’s not what the readers want. Where’s the spice? The rumors of sentient beings and dangerous kidnappings of women from the towns? Are they being forced to mate or not? Answers! I wanted answers, Lyra!” He’d spoken so forcefully that spittle had dribbled from the corner of his mouth, his boring eyes gleaming with a rather fervent inner light. Suddenly, my aging, balding boss wasn’t so nondescript, revealing the side of him that had helped him rise to the top of a media empire—one of the few independent news outlets not deep in the UAR’s pockets.
In my dream, I rolled my shoulder and smiled, all bold and confident. I recalled the monkeys from that trip, all right, and their bigger, badder brothers, too. They had only watched me from the trees with golden eyes and eerie intelligence, but those I’d interviewed in town—those willing to talk—had confirmed the kidnappings. Dream me told her boss that in a conspiratorialwhisper, then warned him that posting that article would see her dead, so they couldn’t. Dream me walked out of that office with her chin high and her life intact, but that wasn’t how it had gone down.
Fearing for my job rather than my life, the real me had handed over the even juicier article with accompanying pictures, though I knew it was stupid. I had not been able to resist writing the truth, and that challenge from my boss had made me want to expose it. But the article had never seen the light of day. Bradford was dead by morning, after having read it, shot through the temple at his desk, a tumbler of whiskey still in one hand, a gun planted in the other. A staged suicide that had warned me to run, but there was nowhere to go, not in the UAR.
My body trembled as dreams were replaced with memories; I was on the verge of waking, and now I recalled every terror-filled moment as I’d tried to flee the shadow unit of the UAR, come to silence me forever. I wasn’t dead, though, was I? Not like my boss.
I woke with a gasp, clawing to the surface like I was fighting my way up through mud. It felt like I was drowning if I didn’t get to the surface, but there was no surface to reach. It was my eyes that didn’t want to open, and when they finally did, I wished I could go back to sleep, even if the dreams were bad. I’d seen many strange, bizarre, and unfamiliar sights in my life, but the alien hovering above me took the cake. I’d never seen one like it, couldn’t put a name to him or his species. One thing was certain, though: the sight of him was worse than any nightmare about the past.
I wasn’t dead. The UAR’s Shadow unit had done something else to me when they caught me in a shady dive, trying to barter for a trip out of their control. A planet like Afir—the Terafin homeworld—a stubborn bastion and the lone holdout against full Alpha Quadrant control by the UAR. I would’ve been safe there. Their males weren’t bad to look at and were known for treating their wives right. Unfortunately, I hadn’t made it. But I’d looked death in the eye with my head held high.
Now, I wasn’t so sure. This alien was a warthog-like specimen with tusks and rough pink-and-gray skin. Dark hair sprouted thick and coarse along his skull, and his eyes were beady and small. He was also covered in literal warts, thick, sometimes pus-drooling pustules that gave off a foul stench. If thiswasdeath, then I’d ended up in the domain of pestilence, for surely this guy was the embodiment of the plague. At the same time... he could just be an alien; the clues were there, and my keen eyes searched them out.
A dark room, with recessed lights in the ceiling, a gleaming silver pistol on the guy’s pudgy hip, and I was definitely lying in something coffin-like. I’d done so much interstellar travel in my life, however, that I instantly recognized it for what it was: a stasis pod. No, definitely not dead. It had certainly felt like I was dead when I’d laid eyes on the black-clad man, face obscured by a mask and a sharp, gleaming blade in hand. The UAR must have had other plans for me, and they couldn’t be anything good.
As I’d lain there, slowly rousing and analyzing my new situation, my warthog companion had begun to run out of patience. With a loud, awful snort, he growled something at me, and then a large hand reached into the pod and grabbed me by the arm. I yelped in pain—his strength far greater than mine—and I was propelledupright, head spinning, stomach heaving. Not good. Not good at all. I felt like I was about to hurl, but the asshole holding me seemed to expect that and moved to my side as I began to cough.
Shaking, I managed to force the bile down, but the spinning took a moment longer to subside. When it did, I learned several new things all at once—none of them good. I was dressed in little more than my underwear, rather than the standard stasis pod-appropriate outfit, as if they’d been in a rush to stuff me in. They’d simply stripped me to be able to attach the electrodes. The second thing I noticed was even worse: a medical table against the far wall, and a barely appropriate light source at the head of it.
The warthog on two legs wanted me to get on that metal tabletop, and I knew with absolute certainty that would be the worst possible idea. I shouted at him, trying to tell him he didn’t need to dissect me or examine me. I was in good health; I’d get him all the medical data he wanted. There was a tray with tools beside the table, and my eyes had lodged there, on the gleaming scalpel. Fuck no. Why was he doing this? What did he want?
Proving much stronger than I was, he tossed me bodily onto the metal surface with a grunt. My hip ached from the force of my landing, and so did my shoulder. It briefly stunned me, and that’s why I wasn’t fast enough to yank my arm out of the way of the strap. Straps—multiple of them—and by the excited look on the ugly bastard’s face, he loved this part of his job. I found myself trapped, and he took great pleasure in taking his time with the straps to hold down my feet.
He made snorts and growls as he yanked me into place and restrained me. Either his form of language or an expression ofhis glee. I was certain he was going to do somethingreallybad to me, but he came to the head of the table and, with one hand, pinned my head to the side. Facing away from him, I could not see what he did, but I heard the clatter of metal as he picked something up; the scalpel. Pain blazed through my scalp behind my ear next, and I screamed, thrashing against the table, heels drumming, my body going tense.
“I already have implants, you dense fuck!” I shouted as the scalpel cut. I felt the blood dribble down my neck, heard the bastard laugh, and then hum and nod. The numbing coolness of a closing agent came then, and I drew a relieved breath. It was over, at least, that part.
The handheld scanner he picked up next was unfamiliar in make or design but recognizable all the same. “Finally,” I told him. “Idiot. You should have used that one first.” He snarled at me, but the scanner moved to my ear, first left, then right. The device beeped loudly and stridently, and the bastard ignored it. Maybe it wasn’t the scanner, maybe it was his communication device. When the sound cut off, he began talking—not to me, but clearly to someone I could not see.
Where the fuck was I? What was going on? While he was distracted, I tested the restraints, but the metal cuffs and leather straps wouldn’t budge. Damn it, I’d been in a few tight situations throughout my career, but nothing like this. Well, if I didn’t count being hunted by the UAR’s supposedly non-existent Shadow Unit. Boy, I’d been having a crappy couple of months, and with the pain fading behind my ear, it didn’t seem like today was going to be much of an improvement.
Alien technology—different, recognizable but unfamiliar—surrounded me. Subtle differences in the room and the design of the furniture told me I wasn’t anywhere I’d ever been. I’d traveled to many places; I was familiar with much of the culture and wildlife in the Alpha Quadrant. Afir—and beyond it, a stretch of lawless space—were the only parts of the Alpha Quadrant not under UAR control. Was I somehow even farther from home?
The alien abusing me a moment ago seemed done with his call, and the scanner was abruptly pushed hard against the back of my ear. It pinched the top of my ear shell, but I did not cry out at the sharp pain. A splitting headache burst behind my eyes next, and I cringed, instinctively trying to get away from the device he held to my head. “Don’t move, female!” the male voice snarled, going, in the span of half a breath, from growling to something I understood. So hewasmessing with my translator implants. If that bastard overwrote any of my data, I was going to be so pissed.
“Don’t put your paws on me then, you ass,” I snarled back. I was usually much more tactful in a new situation; I knew every trick in the book about survival—at least, I liked to think so until I’d been caught. Another thing I was no longer sure of. At least this warty bastard barked out a laugh at my loud sass and finally took his handheld scanner away from my ear. His tusks quivered at me from his large mouth, showing rows of teeth with a distinct and rather disgusting green hue.
“You’re lucky I’ve got orders, human,” he said, and turned away, his large boots clunking along the stone floor. I watched him go, tracking his every move. He was big, this alien who had apparently uploaded his language to my translators. Hittingalmost seven feet, he lumbered around the room in giant boots. His awful smell was starting to fade as I got used to it, but he was still the most disgusting alien I’d ever run into. That was saying something, as I’d photographed slime-beings in the outer fringes and eyeless humanoids with holes straight through their skulls. It had been particularly disconcerting to starethroughsomeone’s head at a wall or the scenery while they were talking with you.
On the other side of the room, beyond the opened stasis pod, he opened the doors of a cabinet. To my immense relief, he pulled out clothes and tossed them into my lap with a disappointed sigh. “Too bad I have my orders,” he muttered again as he came back to release my restraints. That’s how I found myself, ten minutes later, dressed in a boring gray jumpsuit with a neat collar and some kind of marking on the shoulders. He’d also snapped something around my neck, but I hadn’t dared to protest when he put those mitts on my throat. One squeeze, and he’d snap my neck.
“Listen to the females,” the ugly bastard was saying as he yanked me from the room, leering around me at the way the suit cupped my ass. What females? I was just wondering that when I caught sight of the change in scenery at the end of the hallway. The one we were in was dark and utilitarian, gray, unadorned. The one beyond, though? Whole different ball game. I almost had the urge to pick up my camera and snap a shot, the light fell so prettily through a window ahead onto the gold-veined marble floors.
When we reached that beautiful hallway, I saw a woman standing at one end, dressed the same way I was now. Her blue skin was such a beautiful shade of turquoise that I momentarilydidn’t notice how sad and forlorn she looked. But I had an eye for detail. This place was opulent, but that woman? She was a servant—perhaps a slave—as she wore the same band around her throat that now adorned mine. The disgusting alien shoved me in her direction. “You’re to work with the cleaners until the master returns.”
That was all, and then he turned on his booted heel and thumped back into the darkened hallway we’d come from. Confused about the situation, I turned to the blue-skinned woman, quickly noting her differences, the things that made her alien. Unfortunately, nothing about her rang any bells; I had no clue what species she was or where she came from. Like the warthog-alien, she was unfamiliar.
Her hair was a lighter blue and incredibly long, tied back in a braid, that braid then wrapped around her waist like a belt. Her eyes were pretty sapphires, and her lips were nearly black. Dainty, pointed ears rose through the blue strands, and her teeth had sharp little baby fangs at the corners. She was pretty, interesting, considering how closely she resembled a human, but definitely not local to the Alpha Quadrant. The UAR had sold me somewhere very far from home.
It was no wonder I was still feeling a little queasy and wonky, my mind hazy and confused. I must have been in stasis for quite some time. “Where am I?” I asked the woman, who did not appear unkind, unlike that smelly, wart-covered guy. She gave me a long, quiet look with her pretty blue eyes, then turned and gestured with her elegant hand for me to follow her.
“You have been sold and bought. You are the property of Jalima now,” she said. “And you’ll do as I do, obey, and pray you live to see another day.”
