Zuran: A Paranormal Sci-Fi Alien Romance: Albaterra Mates Book 6

by Ashley L. Hunt

There was only one way I could know for sure, and that was contacting Teg, one of the First Kind Trackers.

  Just like there were different First Kind agents undertaking espionage-based missions and others being just brute-force warriors, there was one kind that specialized in acquiring information. We simply called them trackers and luckily, their existence wasn’t known to the rest of the world. Imagine how difficult it would be for someone to gather information if fear of interception was a constant must.

  Yeah, it would be a chaos. Most people thought that First Kinds were also trained to obtain their share of information through every possible channel. That inconsistency suited us well since the trackers doing that job for us, could work unfettered while we took care of the risks of field missions.

  Nevertheless, Teg was a close friend of mine and, as chance had it, one of the main members of the tracking team assembled to stalk high-priority targets. Teg was the one that told me that Lucius was going to appear on Sol months before the invitation actually arrived in my electronic mail. The man was a genius.

  Also, he was a night-owl.

  I checked the time in his time zone and made sure it was late in the night before calling him. Jasih was sleeping naked in the background, so I made sure I turned off the camera. Not that he couldn’t hack it, but I would have a three-second heads up if he tried anything, enough time to hang up on him. I had not been at a tracker’s level of expertise when it came down to hacking, but spies, like me, understood the basic concept of cyber warfare well enough to know how to avoid it.

  “Yep?”

  He always answered the phone like that.

  “Hello, Teg. It’s Lenora.”

  He sounded like he was chewing something. Teg was always eating something with sugar in it. It gave him the necessary rush to keep going throughout the night.

  “Yeah, I know. Aren’t you supposed to take some time off the radar now that your identity is compromised?”

  Of course, he knows about that.

  Trackers were usually really helpful, and some of them were even caring to the rest of the First Kind operatives, but they all had one thing in common: they always looked out for themselves first. It was not due to luck or lack of try from the other side that the trackers still weren’t known to the rest of the species. There hadn’t been a tracker that had shared information with an agent if there had been even the slightest indication that it could be traced back to him.

  So, now that I was compromised, it would be difficult to convince him to help me. Compromised agents were high-risk agents. High-risk agents were a no-no for the trackers.

  “Yeah. It’s a long story. I had a plan and all, but everything took a turn for the worst in the last minute. Nevertheless...I’m calling to ask you for a favor.”

  He sighed. I knew that a lecture was going to follow. “Lenora, I would really like to help you, you know it, but if you overdo it, it can turn back to haunt me. You know how we work. The rest of the trackers aren’t so fond of letting people knowing that they exist. Hell, I’m not fond of that myself. So, go back to sleep and...”

  “Teg!” I said loudly. I looked behind for a moment; Jasih hadn’t woken up. I considerably lowered my voice so that he didn’t. He seemed so exhausted since last night. I didn’t know why, but that thought made me smile.

  A moment later, I continued talking, carefully this time. “Teg...I’m going after someone. I don’t want to bullshit you or anything, but this is the truth. I just happened to stumble upon a bit of information yesterday that got me into thinking. I just want to check if it stands, that’s all.”

  “Don’t try to fool me, Lenora. I know what circulates around the web better that you do, and there’s nothing out there right now that won’t end up with you chasing some asshole and further compromising yourself. I can’t allow this to happen, not if it’s traced back to me. And it will be traced back to me, Lenora. Now, do you want something else?”

  I decided that Teg was a trustworthy enough person to share Esuh-classified information with. It was that, or I would have to call Martina to patch me through the legal route and connect me with one of the other trackers. That would take days, even weeks to accomplish. No, I had to do it now.

  “I found a name on Lucius the Second’s archives, one that doesn’t fit. That person asked the Brigade to procure an ancient relic for him, something that I didn’t even know it existed until today.”

  “So? What’s your problem? Maybe Lucius was thinking of expanding into new areas. I’m sure that if you look at his files, you’ll see other people asking for antiquities as well. In fact, let me--”

  “There was only one! Thousands of names and only one asking for that particular thing. Only his order. And coming from that man, I’m not sure I’m supposed to let it go that easily. Look, Teg, let’s be realistic here. I made one mistake, one time. Yeah, my identity is compromised, but have I ever let you down before?”

  He grunted and didn’t answer. Shit, I had to push harder. If I sugarcoated this deal, then maybe...

  “Okay, I’ll give you the files I uncovered from Lucius’ office. There’s no other authority out there that has them right now, so you’ll have the monopoly. Go sell them at my people, your people, everyone you want. I don’t really care. Just...I need to know his last known location. That’s all. Something to spin a tail from.”

  He didn’t answer immediately. He was considering it. Well, if he doubted his fist decision, then I was halfway there. He couldn’t turn down my offer, and he knew it. All the trackers were freelancers at some level and would sell any kind of information they found to the highest bidder. Of course, that didn’t mean they would sell it to anyone. Criminals and dangerous elements were off the list. They made sure they did a background check to everyone before conducting business with them. Even Teg was checking me right now.

  “You’re lucky I’m low on green these days, Lenora. Send me the data now and I’ll send you the information you want after I check them out.”

  “Thank you so much, Teg. I really owe you a big one,” I said, although we both knew that the data I was going to send to him valued way more than what he was giving me in return. Still, I couldn’t shake off the feeling that something fishy was going on with this particular order.

  “Well, it seems you’re lucky. Your man was last sighted on Sol, on one of the habitable planets. You’re less than a day’s trip from there.”

  “Less than a day’s trip to where?”

  I startled when I suddenly heard Jasih’s voice coming from behind me.

  “Someone is in trouble...,” Teg said, singingly. He hung up before I was able to say something to him.

  I turned around and saw Jasih casting angry glares at me. Shit, Teg was right. I was in trouble.

  “Okay, so you’re telling me that something is wrong with that particular order?” Jasih said, sounding confused, more now than when he didn’t know what was going on.

  “Well, Bohin is a renowned terrorist. You know it as well. He’s on the top of the wanted list for five years now, and no one was able to capture him, partly because of the war. The Magna Bellum has pushed back countless operations and people like Bohin are walking around undisturbed searching for new ways to mess with us,” I said, defensively, but I couldn’t deny the fact that Jasih was right.

  “You just got out from one job, and you want to get into another one so fast? To say the least, it’s dangerous. You’ll end up dead, or worse, compromised and imprisoned for high treason and even homicide.”

  “It was self-defense, Jasih. It was either me or that girl. What should I’ve done? Let that girl die?”

  Jasih stopped talking for a moment and stared straight into my eyes. His glance was stoic yet one belonging to a frightened man. He was worried sick about me. And he had a good reason to be. But, this was different. He had to understand that.

  When he finally replied to me, he was considerably calmer and focused. “You only have one day, and then we’re off. I don’t care i
f you can’t find him during that time and make sure everything is okay with your conscience and other nonsense like that. One day and then we’re off, and you just file a report with your concerns and let the Empire take care of it.”

  I shot a grin at him. “I swear, you won’t regret that, not when we become decorated heroes of the army, both of us.”

  He shook his head, pinching his nose’s bridge. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Lenora. When we touch land, you’ll be under my commands. Remember that. You’ll do whatever I command you to do, no questions asked. Is that understood?”

  Was it bad that I kinda got turned on every time he used his army voice and manner? I guessed it wasn’t since he was my husband, the man I had pledged myself into.

  The next moment, Jasih took one long stride out of the room and headed to the bridge. Next stop: Earth.

  Jasih

  We could see Earth from the bridge’s cockpit. There was something about Sol’s planet and their charm. A striking blue ocean split by lumps of land, orbiting around a fairly common star, in a solar system far away from the Esuh home planet. Still, Lenora’s informer, well, had informed her that the one she was looking for, Bohin, was last seen here.

  In a way, I felt relieved that the man actually knew how to hide. There was no way we could find him among billions of lifeforms in a habitable planet like Earth, with its booming biodiversity. Now, if he had tried to hide on Luna, Earth’s natural moon, then things would be different.

  The last time an Esuh spaceship decided to make contact with humans, the inhabitants of planet Earth, they hadn’t even developed the gift of language and intelligence.

  No, I was certain now. Lenora wouldn’t be able to rush into danger headfirst so soon since she wouldn’t be able to find him. But, it kinda made me mad that I was not the reason for that.

  I turned my head slightly towards her way and watched her checking that damned list one more time. I could easily arrest her and drag her back to our home planet for illegal information leakage to a third-person outside the Esuh Empire, but if I did that, then I knew she would hate me for the rest of her life. But why did it feel like she had changed since she undertook that mission?

  It was like she wanted to put herself in trouble, and just capturing hits wasn’t enough for her to satiate that she needed anymore. She wanted to save the whole galaxy from an invisible threat that no one had even tracked yet.

  She was my wife and all, but I didn’t know if I agreed with her now.

  “Hey you,” she suddenly said without even turning her eyes away from the holographic display. She had noticed me sulking over what we were going to do when we landed on Earth. Lenora always knew what I was thinking even without me saying a thing.

  “Hey.”

  I tried to sound mundane in a passive-aggressive way. I wanted her to know that I was upset at her.

  “Thank you for doing this for me.”

  I turned my head and looked at her one more time. She hadn’t moved an inch, but I could see that her hands had stopped moving.

  “You know I would have done everything to help you, Lenora. But I don’t understand why you have to be the one to find Bohin and bring him to justice. If you had reported the incident to the Esuh officials, they would have sent a team to investigate in due time. Even if part of that team was you, it would have been safer, more organized that barging in on our own.”

  She twirled her head to look at me now. Her eyes were fiery traps filled with anger. “Because, if we don’t do something now, it may be too late when they send a team in due time. We’ve lost two dreadnoughts, Jasih. Two! Two thousand people died. And that happened a year ago, with the rebels working under our noses. Not from our enemies in the front lines, Jasih, but from a petty intergalactic smuggling operation and a common group of rebels. What does this say about us?”

  “No one could have seen that coming. And even under those circumstances, we still were able to keep losses to the bare minimum.”

  “There! That’s exactly it. We couldn’t see it coming because we were too busy fighting a futile war to defend one tenth of our territory from people that we oppressed in the first place. Nusae have every right to claim that land and Bohin will do everything to justify his cause under the war banner. What if it was your ship that got destroyed in that attack? Where would that leave me?”

  She almost jumped on her feet and headed out of the bridge. I put the system on the autopilot and followed her behind. Lately, Lenora seemed to forget that I was a Prime Officer and, primarily, of superior rank to her. Talking like that to me about the war effort brought up a taste of injustice in my mouth.

  Hell, I had been fighting throughout most of my career in the army to keep people of the Empire safe, and I wouldn’t let her take that away from me, not when she was the one that almost got herself killed to save one woman.

  I got up and followed her. I found her in the observatory room, gazing the spherical planet rotate around its axis. To be honest, under other circumstances, we would be making love in our bedroom, with only the light of Luna and Sol falling on our naked bodies. Now, though, things had gotten serious.

  When I got in, I crossed my hands before my chest and collected my thoughts. I couldn’t win a fight with Lenora if I was careless. Something had changed inside her, and I had to find out what it was.

  “This war’s purpose isn’t only to protect our borders,” I started saying. She jerked her head back and snorted. Honestly, I was at my limit. She was one step away from me arresting her. “The Esuh Empire was only able to prosper because people knew that they can’t mess with us and not have their asses kicked afterward. The Nusae knew that and still moved against us to take back their land and for every crazy reason they came up with. But, you know better that I do, that people like Bohin don’t give a shit about borders. They want it all, especially to see everything we’ve strived to build, crumble and fall to the ground. I admire your zealously, but honestly, if you get yourself killed, then where would that leave me?”

  Lenora was standing still, not saying a thing. However, I couldn’t stop talking. The words rushed out of my mouth like a stream of water. “I want to have a family with you, Lenora. I want to live my life next to you on equal terms and under a common goal. I can’t stop you from being what you want to be, but there’s no way in hell I’d let you die to prove a point about heroism and who’s doing more to win this war.”

  Something about my words seemed to stir up a wave of regret to penetrate her thick skin. When she turned to stare me in the eyes, it was not the angry, disappointed, First Kind agent I saw, but my wife, the woman I chose to spend the rest of my life with.

  She opened her mouth to say something to me, but in a twist of fate, the ship’s scanner set off. I turned my head, starting towards the bridge, when I heard her voice uttering behind me: “What in the hell is that?”

  I moved by her side and saw for myself. I had seen many things during my time in the army. I had puked, cried, and even frozen still in shock from all the sights those eyes had confronted. However, never, not even once, I hadn’t been shaken to my same core to the point of gawping like a teenage boy.

  As my eyes met Lenora’s, I knew that we had to investigate this phenomenon at once. But, a hollow fear inside me told me otherwise. My instincts, the honed instincts of a seasoned fighter, told me to turn on the engines and run as fast away from that thing as possible.

  Shit, what in the world is that light?

  Lenora

  I knew it! Fuck, why can’t I be wrong for once in my life? There was something wrong with that artifact Bohin asked the Brigade to procure for him, and that pillar of light emitting from the planet proved it. Jasih now seemed to think so too.

  I had stranded myself on my seat and waited for Jasih to initiate landing sequence. Up to now, I didn’t think I would have a chance finding that man on Earth, not without his genetic imprint to use with the scanner, but I was sure that something was going on.

  The e
nergy reading coming off from that pillar of light was unbelievable. It’s like...it’s like he’s siphoning the whole planet’s energy into one spot and then sending it off to space. I...I don’t know what’s going on here. If this was a weapon, then we had to stop him from using it.

  “Get ready, Lenora. Things are going to get a bit bumpy. ETA to the landing spot: five minutes. I hope we can make it.” That last part came out of his mouth involuntarily. How did I know? Jasih never relied on luck and chances. Even if his mission has 1% success probability, he would find the best possible course of action and follow it even if it killed him.

  For him to say that he hoped we could make it felt like we had already failed.

  My head jerked back to the head cushion when Jasih picked up speed to enter the atmosphere. The gravitational pull would be enough to stir us towards the land, but our target was still way off, and we were kinda in a hurry. During the turbulence part of the atmosphere entry, Jasih’s words somehow swirled into my head.

  He wanted to have a family with me. All of the sudden, this felt like the worst idea possible. And it was not because we were heading towards an unknown source of light at full speed, not knowing what we would meet there, but rather because I didn’t feel ready to abandon my life to raising a child.

  Yeah, surely, having a child was always in the plans, but way later in the future, when I would be older, and I would have achieved whatever I wanted to achieve with my career. Now...it felt like I was only in the beginning.

  Still, for him to bring this up, it meant he had been thinking about it for some time now. For the last six months, for example.

  Shit. He has changed; I’ve changed; we both have changed. How can we be a loving couple anymore when I don’t really know what he wants from me?

  “Lenora, we’re going to crash,” Jasih said, in a simple, just-thought-of-telling-you manner.

  “What? Why?”

  He nodded ahead. I followed his eyes and saw the command console. Everything was dead black and unresponsive. This means...we’re gonna crash.