Oath Forger (Book 2)

by Nia Mars

  If you liked the second installment of Ava’s story, would you please consider writing an online review? Authors live or die by their reviews, and reviews are especially important for a new series.

  If you purchased this book as soon as it came out, double thank you! You don’t have long to wait long to find out what happens with Ava next, I promise. All 5 OATH FORGER books are written, and I’ll be releasing them one week apart. I’m a binge reader, and I hate to wait months (or years) between books in a series, so I’m not going to do that to you.

  In the meanwhile, please come and friend me on Facebook. facebook.com/NiaMarsAuthor I’d love to hear how you liked my story.

  Also, don’t forget to stop by my blog and read about my other releases and enter my $100 gift certificate drawing. niamars.com/wishlist-giveaway

  To make sure that you’re first to know when a new release is uploaded, please sign up for my newsletter on my web site. niamars.com

  THANK YOU!!!!

  --Nia

  ABOUT ME:

  Books. Reading. Writing. Playing with the dog. That’s my life, in a nutshell. I love discovering new authors and new trends. Hello Reverse Harem novels!!!! Where have you been all my life? I love everything sci-fi, paranormal, and fantasy. I eat enough chocolate that at this point, I’m probably made of chocolate. OK, chocolate and coffee.

  WHAT’S NEW: I’ve just published OATH FORGER, a soon-to-be bestselling, post-apocalyptic, reverse harem, sci-fi romance serial. Ha! Say that three times fast.

  WHAT ELSE: If you’d rather try a standalone sci-fi romance from me, grab WARLORD (see preview in the back of this book.) And make sure you don’t sit near anything flammable while reading it. Because it’s HOT. Whatever level of heat you’re thinking right now? Double it. (Not recommended if you don’t have AC, or at least a ceiling fan.) You’ve been warned.

  MY WISH LIST: (In case my fairy grandmother is reading this.)

  For the OATH FORGER series to find readers who love these stories as much as I do.

  Finishing my Master’s Degree in (what else) Writing Creative Fiction. (When I’m not writing books, I’m doing homework.)

  WARRANTY: Your satisfaction is very important to me. If you have a complaint, please write it on a box of 50-piece Assorted Godiva Chocolate Truffles, and mail it to my office. I promise to personally see to all complaints.

  And...if you’re up for more reading, here is a little taste of WARLORD, my super steamy, standalone sci-fi romance. (Available now.) Enjoy!

  WARLORD

  By Nia Mars

  Another day, another planet conquered. Except this time, instead of sending intergalactic warlord Lukar Xon off to the next war, the Emperor gifts him with a governorship and a princess.

  Meela is the heir to a fallen kingdom. She is the conqueror's prize. But she will bow to no one. Certainly not to a barbarian! She might have to surrender her body to the beast, but she will not surrender her heart.

  Let the bedroom games begin!

  WARNING: This book contains a variety of explicit sexual situations. The hero is an intergalactic warlord, and he takes what he wants. If that kind of fantasy doesn’t appeal to you, you might not enjoy this story.

  Chapter One

  THE THREE THINGS INTERGALACTIC WARLORD Lukar Xon most liked about winning a war were:

  Winning.

  The break he and his men would get at the nearest waystation before the Emperor sent them into the next war.

  The camp women he would get to fuck at the waystation.

  They were the rough and tough type, and so was he. He liked camp women just fine.

  Half-asleep, he sat sprawled in his commander chair and let pleasant images of past encounters fill his mind, hoping they would lead to interesting dreams.

  “Incoming communications from the Emperor in one minute.”

  Lukar opened his eyes as he groaned at Selep, the fighter ship’s captain. “What does a man have to do to get some shut-eye around here?”

  He should have gone back to his quarters and gone to bed. Then again, Selep would wake him for the Emperor, no matter where Lukar was.

  Take the planet, subjugate the king, the Emperor had said. So Lukar had taken the planet. Tembria wasn’t much more than a ball of red rock with one large cerium mine and the city state built on top of the wealth. Lukar had killed the king in the final battle. That was as subjugated as a guy can get. If the Emperor had any complaints, Lukar didn’t want to hear them.

  “On screen in five seconds,” Captain Selep called out, and the dozen crew members on the spaceship’s command deck quieted.

  The captain was lean and mean, looked more like a pirate than a proper military man; his nose nearly flat, it’d been broken so many times. He’d had rough beginnings, but he hadn’t let that stop him. “Four. Three. Two. One.”

  Lukar swallowed a groan as the Emperor’s face filled the screen. No one should have to wake up to that.

  Emperor Walestran had been a warrior himself once. Now he had a pasty double chin and girth to prove he’d hit the good times a few decades back. He wore the dark green uniform of his elite forces, because he thought it made him look more badass. In reality, he looked like a blob of tofu wrapped in seaweed.

  Lukar sat up straight as his side of the video connected. “Your Highness.”

  “I have a job for you, warlord.”

  No ‘well done,’ no ‘how bad are the casualties.’

  “I am looking forward to it.” Lukar was a warrior. He didn’t require a pat on the back. His men, however... “The troops will need a month to rest and recover before the next deployment. They are owed leave. Any damage to our ships can be repaired at the same time. We are headed right now to the Sector Nine waystation.”

  “No need for that.” The man on the screen brushed Lukar’s words aside with an imperial flick of his wrist.

  It wasn’t as if Lukar had expected better. He could and would figure out how to get his men some rest, and his ships repaired, on the way to the next engagement. If their new target was on the other side of the galaxy, he could steal at least a day or two here and there.

  “Destination planet, Your Highness?”

  “Tembria.”

  “We just took Tembria.” It’d be nice if the Emperor could at least keep track.

  Irritation flashed through Lukar, followed by a sense of foreboding. He didn’t like the glint of childish excitement in the Emperor’s beady brown eyes. That look usually meant the man had a ‘great’ idea. Like changing military strategy at the last second because he had a dream. Or taking out the life support system of an entire planet because on his last visit he’d gotten a bad vibe and thought they were planning a rebellion against the Empire.

  The Emperor was convinced he had a sixth sense about these things. He’d lived longer than any of the Nulean Emperors before him, which he took as proof of his uncanny abilities. True, he had unmasked a number of assassins in the past couple of years, but Lukar contributed that to the fact that the man, through sheer dumb luck, had managed to assemble a competent team of people around himself.

  “You are staying on Tembria.” The Emperor’s regal smile said he thought he was being magnanimous. “You served me well, warlord. You deserve a break. You deserve a prize.”

  Lukar gritted his teeth and hoped it wouldn’t come through on the vid feed. “Thank you, Your Highness. I’m honored. For how long?”

  “You took Tembria for me. Now you’re going to hold Tembria for me, warlord. According to initial assessments, the mine has great potential, but it’s not producing as it should. I want you to look into the ‘Resistance,’ some revolutionary movement among the miners. Minister Kellar reminded me that you have a background in mining. You are in the right place, at the right time. I expect doubled output in a month.”

  If Minister Kellar, the old asshole, got hit by a spaceship, his death would have grieved Lukar none. “And then back to war, Your Highness?”

  Again, the Emperor’s hand flic
ked. “I’m putting you permanently in charge.” His magnanimous smile flashed again and grated. “Now, go do what needs to be done tonight.”

  “Which is?”

  “Eat their food, drink their wine, fuck their queen. Same as I would. You’ll be there in my place.”

  If Lukar had had something in his hand, he might have thrown it at the Emperor’s fading image on the screen.

  “Congratulations?” Selep risked, and the rest of the crew echoed the sentiment.

  Lukar slouched in his chair and kicked his feet out in front of him, exhaustion overriding his anger. He dropped his head onto the chair’s back and stared at the metal glint of the ceiling. Everything he was resisted the order. His jaw was so tight it hurt.

  “I’m a warlord, dammit, not a satrap.”

  Warlords gained territory, satraps governed it. Lock Lukar up on a planet for a year, and he would go mad. Probably sooner than a year. He couldn’t handle permanently.

  “What the hell am I supposed to do with all these people?”

  “You heard the man.” Selep’s tone held more glee than was healthy for him. “Eat their food, drink their booze, fuck their women. Same as the Emperor would.”

  That was the Emperor’s standard procedure. Take a territory, kill the ruler, make the queen his concubine, or, if there was no queen, take one of the princesses—or all of them. Father some children. That usually settled the local population. The conquered didn’t mind being part of the Empire so much, if their noble bloodlines were represented among the Emperor’s heirs.

  The Emperor was an absentee landlord, for the most part. He’d enjoy the spoils of his conquest for a month or so, then leave again. The people of the planet could almost pretend that things were like before. Except for the satrap left behind to govern them, and the bloodletting of the Emperor’s enormous taxes.

  Lukar tried to picture it. Stranded on-planet. Indefinitely grounded. Politics. And the rest...

  “I can’t fuck a fucking queen.”

  He might be one of the Emperor’s warlords, but deep down, he was nothing but a dirty gutter kid, a mine rat.

  “Trust me, friend. She’s got a pussy, you can fuck her. Has it been so long that you need me to draw you a diagram? There’s a hole. It’s right between the legs. If you—”

  “You’re a regular help and comfort to me. Dickhead.”

  “I’m your captain.” Selep flashed a self-satisfied grin. “I get paid to solve your problems.”

  Lukar cursed at him. Then he fell silent for a few seconds before adding, “We’ll land with two other fighters outside the city gates.” The two extra fighters in addition to his ship would provide a force of roughly sixty men. “The rest of the fleet will stay in orbit. I’ll assess the situation on the ground before I make any further decisions.”

  “A dozen fighters would be better.”

  “We’ve annihilated their army. I don’t think we need any further demonstration of power. Gaining the local population’s goodwill will be more useful in the long term.”

  Not that Lukar knew fuck shit about long-term governance.

  He tuned out Selep as the captain issued the necessary commands to the fleet, then notified the surface of the imminent landing. Instead of watching his men initiating the landing sequence, Lukar closed his eyes again. If he went to his bed, the walk would wake him up. But right now, right here, sleep was just a blink away. A catnap in his commander’s chair would be enough.

  By the time he woke, his ship was sitting on the planet’s surface right outside the city gates, the city-state of Tembria up on the display screen.

  Selep saw him awake, and said, “Nice of the inhabitants to name both the planet and its single city the same. Easier to remember.”

  “Very practical of them.” Lukar grunted, clearing the sleep from his throat. “Let’s hope they’ll take to a new ruler with the same pragmatism.”

  “You know, we could have landed at either of the two spaceship ports within the city limits. Refueling and restocking would be much easier there.”

  Lukar shrugged. “Why give some fool who fancies himself a freedom fighter a chance to do something stupid? A lone-wolf attack would still have to be responded to, and retribution would start the power transfer on the wrong foot.”

  He assessed the sight before him. The entire city was built from the red rock of the planet in some ancient style, but exaggerated beyond all comprehension. A thousand-square-mile fortress, as elaborate as the royal architects had been able to conceive.

  “I think King Laz had serious delusions of grandeur.”

  “Maybe the place will grow on you,” Selep said.

  “Like space mold?”

  Selep snorted as he went through the system shutdown. Their friendship went back to their misguided youth when they’d been working in various mines instead of conquering entire mining planets. They understood each other.

  “You don’t believe in space mold.”

  “Because it’s a myth. No med test ever found it.”

  “It’s invisible.”

  Lukar shook his head. Space mold was an old superstition. Sometimes grizzled old fighters who went from one battle to the next, never touching down on any planet, but staying in space decade after decade, developed a mysterious illness that couldn’t be diagnosed. Many went raving mad. Some blamed it on ‘space mold.’ Right. Whatever.

  Selep finished the shutdown then glanced at the screen again. The enormous titanium city gates stood open before them. “At least the citizens of Tembria know when they are beaten.”

  “There is that.” Lukar rubbed a hand over his face to brush away the cobwebs of sleep. “Could be worse. We could be facing a closed gate and ground troops.”

  He was relieved that Tembria chose the easy way at long last. And yet... “We should be at a waystation by now.”

  “You do know that the Emperor didn’t mean this appointment as a punishment?” Selep raised an eyebrow. “It’s supposed to be a reward. You could try to enjoy it. Most people would prefer being pampered in a palace to being shot at in space.”

  Lukar snorted. “What’s wrong with those assholes? Must be damn cowards, the lot of them.”

  Selep shook his head. “You did too good of a job. The Emperor had to reward you. You took out the enemy fleet without destroying the city, which makes the Emperor happy. The cerium mining can go on unimpeded.”

  “So, next time, destroy the city too?”

  “No city, nothing to govern,” Selep said in a sage tone, tapping his index finger to his temple.

  Lukar rolled his eyes at the captain, then turned his attention to the display screen again. Some mining planets had nothing but machines, but others, like Tembria, had frequent and large sun flares, which regularly knocked the machines off line. In places like this, miners were a necessity.

  Because a large number of miners were present, others had to come to manage and supply the miners. They formed a middle class. Then that middle class needed more goods and services. They hired security to keep them safe, bureaucrats to keep track of the planet’s affairs, and an entire class of personal servants.

  Eventually, a handful of the richest men of Tembria had decided they were now nobility and elected a king from among them, some three hundred years back.

  Lukar kept his eyes on the screen. “Looks like a reception committee.”

  A dozen or so men and women milled around the ceremonial city gate, their long blue robes flitting in the breeze. Beyond them stretched a jumble of streets, crowded with houses that held the planet’s five million inhabitants.

  He caught as Selep’s gaze switched to the screen, too, and immediately snagged on a tall blonde who looked to be the youngest among the delegation, only a few years older than Selep, as opposed to the rest who looked to be grandmothers and grandfathers.

  “Are you going to talk to them?” Selep asked.

  “I hate grandstanding and ceremony. If I wanted that, I would have become a politician. We’re go
ing straight to the palace. Get the unpleasantries over with.”

  Lukar shoved to his feet and headed to the transport pod, his crew behind him. “We’ll go low over the city. I want to get a better sense for what we have here.”

  He ended up flying the pod, which made him miss his fighter pilot years. These days, he spent most of his time coming up with strategy and issuing commands, managing the sizable fleet under his command: one-thousand airships, nearly fifty thousand of the best soldiers the Emperor had. The Emperor had other warlords. The man never met a planet he didn’t want to invade. Still, he was better than the space pirates who would strip-mine a planet and either kill or sell the inhabitants.

  The city pass below Lukar, all that red rock coaxed into pretentious shapes that tried to look soaring to make up for the fact that they were stuck to dirt instead of flying in space. And yet for all the architectural bravado, everything looked heavy. Tembria was just as strange from close up as from far away. The apparent obsession with rock made little sense; there were more modern materials available.

  The miners’ sector was even worse. Here the homes were little more than corrugated steel.

  Selep noticed too. “Looks like the king didn’t want to spend much on the poor bastards who dug up his cerium.”

  “He did have a good fleet.”

  Selep flashed a cocky-as-shit grin. “Shame it’s now just a debris field.” Then he added, “Which needs cleaning up.”

  “Not today.”

  Lukar rolled his shoulders to try to ease the aches of his body. His ship had taken a number of heavy hits; the crew had gotten banged up. They were battered, bruised, and tired. The last battle had been drawn out, non-stop fighting for over a week. None of them had had enough sleep. He wanted nothing more than his small, familiar sleeping quarters on the ship.

  Yet tonight, he would have to sleep in a strange bed, and fuck the dead king’s queen. He cursed the Emperor under his breath.