by Viki Storm
HER ALIEN WARRIOR
Exiled Warriors of Planet Virix
Book 1
Viki Storm
©Viki Storm 2020. All Rights Reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form by any means without the prior written consent of the author, except in the case of brief quotations for critical reviews and certain noncommercial uses permitted by law.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, locations and events portrayed in this work are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.
Also By Viki Storm
Zalaryn Raiders Trilogy
Zalaryn Conquerors Trilogy
Kenorian Warriors Trilogy
Alien Protector’s Christmas Captive (Kenorian Warriors Standalone)
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Chapter 1
Auvok
I step into the hangar and my fist involuntarily clenches. Fucking Glox, I knew I shouldn’t have trusted him. He’s always got his head stuffed up one of his ship’s engines, and the fumes have given him brain damage.
“Glox!” I shout.
“He’s under the Spectral Serpent,” Taxuu says.
“Big surprise,” I say. Taxuu’s got his comm-panel on his lap reading something. Probably statistics on infectious diseases in the Lorsi galaxy or instructions for how to re-sole your boots. He can’t be trusted to have any rhyme or reason to the things he devotes energy to reading about.
“What’s he done this time?” Taxuu asks.
“Nothing I shouldn’t have seen coming,” I mutter. I stride inside, passing my other sworn brothers with nothing more than a nod. When you’re this close to others, you don’t always need to stop and have idle chatter.
As promised, at the far end of the hangar, I find the Spectral Serpent jacked up on one end and two legs sticking out like a bug smashed underneath a boot.
“Glox,” I say, trying my best to speak slowly and not release the jack and let the Spectral Serpent fall onto my sworn brother.
“Auvok,” he says jovially. “You’re still alive, I hope?”
“Yeah, and that’s more than I can say for you.”
“Me? What did I do?” he asks. “I just finished with your ship.”
“I noticed.” I’d asked Glox to refurbish a few things on my ship, as it was in need of some routine maintenance.
“And?” he says expectantly. He’s still tinkering underneath his ship, either completely oblivious or afraid to meet my gaze. Probably the former.
“I am not happy,” I say. That is an understatement.
“I did what you asked,” he says, finally sliding out from under his ship. Sweat beads on his chest, and I can smell him from where I stand.
“Not quite,” I say. I pilot a vintage Vulpecula-2100 that is my pride and joy. I got it from a scrapyard and meticulously restored it using historically accurate parts while rebuilding and upgrading the engines to make it haul serious ass. It needed a little patch job and a tune-up. That was all. After Glox finished with it? It looks worse than when I found it ten orbits ago. He replaced exterior panels with mismatched materials, tinted the window glass despite the Vulpecula-2100 never having tint—and worst of all he scrapped the original hood ornament that I’d scoured three out of four quadrants to find.
“Your ship’s much better off,” he insists. “You should get rid of it and upgrade, to tell the truth of it.”
“Never,” I say. “They don’t make ships like the Vulp anymore.”
“Yeah, because they make them better now.”
“It looks like a piebald, mangy mutt,” I say, thinking of the odd assortment of exterior panels bolted to the outside.
“But it’s double-reinforced. The original laminate alloys are dangerous for reentry—and you don’t want to know what would happen if you got pulled into a meteor patch.”
“The windows,” I say but can’t finish.
“Let in UV radiation that not only degrades the equipment but damages DNA of the living creatures on board—you included.”
“The Vulpecula-2100 doesn’t have tinted windows,” I argue.
“Again, this is why they ‘don’t make them like they used to.’ The reason the Vulpecula-2100 never came with tinted windows is because during the limited six orbits it was in production, the Horkx were building foundries on their vassal planets.”
“Have you been reading encyclopedia articles with Taxuu?” I ask. “This is the sort of useless knowledge that he’s always reading about.”
“There’s no such thing as useless knowledge,” Glox says. “Only useless people. Anyway, the foundries needed refractories for the furnaces and molds, filtering the slag and coating the machinery. It drove the price of materials up too high, and the Vulpecula Corporation decided to forego the window tint, instead imbuing the window polymer with an anti-UV treatment that is inferior to ceramic-based tinting in every way.”
“Thank you for the lesson in industrial economics,” I say. “But it doesn’t change the fact that my ship isn’t supposed to have tinted windows.”
“The reason why is irrational, impractical and unsafe.”
I can’t deal with him right now. On a good day, talking to him is like talking to a robot.
“The hood ornament?” But I don’t need to ask. I already know what he’s going to say.
“Drag,” he says. “That’s not even elementary physics. It’s common sense. You’re telling me that either you’re so stupid you don’t understand common-sense physics or else you’re so stupid that you understand it but choose to ignore it for the sake of aesthetics.”
He’s right, but he’s not. He says aesthetics like it’s a dirty word—because to him it is. I can’t make him understand that it’s the frivolous things like aesthetics that make beings like us superior to worms.
“The looks of a ship matter,” I say. “Not to its mechanical performance—I know that much. But craftsmanship, attention to detail, standards. Those are all things you should appreciate.”
“Nope,” he says simply. “You’re wrong. Your ship’s better off. Trust me.”
“Auvok!” It’s Taxuu. Probably trying to lure me away from Glox before I strangle him.
“Hold on,” I shout.
“There’s a client here to see you,” he says.
Well shit. The one thing that could tear me away right now.
“This isn’t over,” I tell Glox. “You’re going to help me fix my ship.”
“If by ‘fix’ you mean devolve into an unsafe, impractical death trap, then the answer is still no. I mean, it’s just a ship, what’s the big deal?”
I open my mouth to respond, but I can’t, not right now. I glance towards the hangar’s entrance. My brothers and I congregate in a large refurbished hangar. All our ships, they’re parked along the back, but in the front we have a large common area with long tables, benches, a large comm-area with vid-screens and syncing portals. We also have a small kitchen, but none of us knows how to cook, except Plai, but he can only cook bast meat, which gets tiresome after a while. We really should hire someone, but there’s not many people on our planet—and the ones that are, aren’t what you’d consider to be reputable. Present company included.
The figure waiting for me stands by one of the tables, his leg hiked up and resting on the bench. Human, probably. The curiosity is getting the best of me. I don’t have any appointments until next cycle.
I gesture at the table and the client sits. He’s wearing a floor-length cloak with a hood that obscures all but the tips of his hair, which pokes fr
ee like dried weeds on a fallow field. At least I think it’s a he.
“Are you one of the Virixian warriors?” he asks. It’s definitely a he, and he speaks Virixian competently, if slow and stilted.
“Yes,” I reply. “There are several of us here.” I’m guarded every time someone walks into the hangar.
“I have a job for you,” he says. He pushes his hood back and I confirm he’s human. Our clients are usually human. They’re the most exploited and helpless of the seven major races in the universe and most in need of a Virixian warrior to redress some wrong. “My name is—”
“No names,” I say. “No documentation. No trail.” We aren’t too picky and don’t ask too many questions about the legality of the things our clients ask of us.
“Alright then,” he says.
“Explain,” I say in Lius, the common tongue used in the Testa Galaxy. “If I have to listen to your plodding Virixian, I’m going to lose what’s left of my sanity—and there’s not much left.”
“Okay,” he says. “I am looking for a warrior to help me find something.”
“Continue,” I say. My sworn brothers and I, we’re named warriors of Virix—at least we were.
Now we’re nothing.
Just a bunch of males hanging around an old ship hangar. We’d be no different from any other guild, except we have a special set of skills, legendary even, renowned throughout the Universe.
If that sounds arrogant, good, because it should. The named warriors of Virix are the deadliest, cleverest, and most feared in the Universe.
We have clients from all the major races paying us to do things. All sorts of things. Things that no one else can do.
“Find what?” I ask.
“A jewel,” he says.
“You want me to find a piece of jewelry?” I ask. We try to abide by the motto that there’s no job too small, but some tasks are beneath my dignity. Even though I don’t have much of that anymore—not since it was stripped away, my shame burned into my flesh with a hot iron.
“No,” he says. “A jewel. It’s a precious historical artifact. It’s been known by many names, but the most common is the Jewel of Supreme Power. I’m here on behalf of a friend. He’s an important figure in the historical community and would like to remain anonymous. This jewel, it’s been stolen. It was on loan to us from the Qyath for display in our museum.”
“What museum?” I ask.
“I’d rather not say,” he says. “We were entrusted with a rare Qyath artifact, and due to a security blunder, it’s been stolen. We need it found quickly—but more importantly, quietly. It could start a bit of an intergalactic incident.”
He’s not wrong about that. The Qyath are a prideful race—plus, they have strange powers. They devote most of their time to studying mystical arts. If this jewel is as important as he says, they’ll retaliate.
“I can do quick,” I say. “I’m not so good at quiet, though.”
“Would this be sufficient to alter your methodology?” he says and hefts a small satchel onto the table. I don’t need to look inside to know what it is. Palladium coin.
“Most likely,” I say. Coin is always preferable to using Federation credits. Those can be tracked, traced—and deleted with a few keystrokes of a Federation banking official. “Tell me more about this jewel.”
He gives me more details about the jewel and its last known whereabouts and a list of antiquities dealers that might have some information.
“I’ll need access to the vid surveillance,” I say. “And the personnel files of everyone at the museum. Stuff like this is almost always an inside job.”
“That might be tricky,” he says. “I’d rather you not know our… affiliations. My boss stands to lose quite a lot if this is found out.”
“My sworn brother Birik might be better for this job. He’s got more finesse. He’s a master of stealth and shadow. He’s on a job now, but if you could wait a day or two, you can speak to him.”
“I cannot,” he says, tone of voice suggesting that he’s disappointed about being stuck with me. Glox is in the middle of an engine project, which means he’ll barely stop to eat, let alone to go out on a job. Taxuu doesn’t like to go out more than two or three times a rote. Every time he does go on a job, it’s with trembling hands and uneasy heart; he thinks that the Brotherhood will disintegrate into chaos and the Hangar will be naught but a smoldering pile of ash when he returns.
He’s not entirely wrong.
“I will do it,” I say. Of course I’ll do it. Especially now when it’s going to take untold sums of money to restore the Vulp to her former glory. “It will be expensive, if I must work without the files and videos.”
“Not a problem,” he says, “we can pay.”
“I’ll remember that,” I say. “I’ll need a thousand up front for expenses.” I slide the satchel of coin off the table and into my hands. “This enough?”
“It’s fifteen-hundred,” he says. “And double that when the jewel’s returned.”
“Deal,” I say. And with that, I’ve accepted the job. The Virixian honor code now forbids me from abandoning the mission or welching on the deal. I cannot stop until the jewel is back in the client’s hands.
I only have to scour the whole Universe to find it.
He stands up and turns to leave. He gets a few steps before turning back. “One last thing. The jewel, it’s valuable. Are you a lover of the arts?”
“Not particularly,” I say, then think of my ship. It was a work of art until Glox got his hands on it. “But I can appreciate aesthetics.”
“Then maybe you can understand how some things, no matter how high of a price tag you put on them, it’s not enough. Some things, money isn’t the unit of measure you use to describe the value.”
“I understand,” I say. And I do. I’ve lost something that valuable before, and I’m not talking about my ship.
“That sort of an object, people will kill to get it. Be careful.” He spins on his heel and stalks out.
I know the feeling. I’d stack bodies a kilometer high if I could get back what I lost on Virix. But that’s not an option. The only way I could is if I could turn back time.
I think of all the things I’ve done in my long and storied career as a named warrior of Virix. Battles, assassinations, coups and kidnappings.
If I die now, over a piece of jewelry, I’m gonna be pissed.
Chapter 2
Vela
“No,” I say over the comm. It’s so much easier to tell someone no when you don’t have to look them in the eye.
“Please,” Ason says.
“It must be serious,” I say. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say ‘please’ before.” Ason is a hard-hearted son of a bitch. If his dear old granny needed a loan, he’d charge her interest compounded continuously.
“It’s an easy way to earn,” he says. “Forty-five hundred. Where else can you make that much in an afternoon?”
“Oh, so I get to keep all forty-five?” I ask. Ason wouldn’t be pestering me unless he was in on the score.
“Standard rates,” he says. “Three ways, split between you, me and Hal.”
“Fifteen hundred is a little bit different than forty-five,” I say. I’m in my ship, trying to clean it up. I’ve got five years’ worth of crap inside here, and it could use a good top-to-bottom before I start my new job tomorrow.
Tomorrow, I start my new life. I got a job here on New Europa, ferrying people from the mainland planet to the outer moons.
Tomorrow, also, I start my new name.
I’ve had to scrape by for almost five years to erase my past. I got new papers, new ID, new registration for my ship, and finally the last piece of the puzzle: a new chip.
Say goodbye to Vela and hello to Tina.
That’s the only way anyone would ever hire me, even for a job as easy as a ferry shuttle pilot.
What with my extensive criminal record and all.
Everything is lined up, all my ducks
are in a row… and Ason wants me to risk it all for one last job. For fifteen hundred?
“Coin or credits?” I ask.
“Palladium of course,” he says.
Damn it. Coin is so much harder to refuse. Credits, those are just little strings of zeros and ones in a computer database—extremely vulnerable to a delete key.
Still, fifteen hundred’s not that much. A month’s pay, maybe a little more. Am I going to throw away my one chance to go legit for fifteen hundred in Palladium coin?
“Where’s the drop?” I don’t mean to ask, but the words of my old life come out as easily as you slip on a pair of wool socks in the morning to keep your feet warm.
“Mutza's World,” Ason says.
“Shit,” I say. We’re not on a vid-comm, but I can picture Ason’s dopey grin spreading across his broad, ugly face. He knows I’m going to do it now, knows what an easily manipulated sucker I am. Knows how to push my buttons. Knows what my buttons are. I’m a little sickened by my utter transparency.
“Pickup’s the usual place, seventeen-hundred hours.” Ason ends the comm before I can put up a token protest.
“Shit,” I say again. I slide my comm panel back into my side pocket and survey the utter mess of my ship. I’m in mid-cleaning mode, which means everything is all over the place and the ship is three times as messy as it was before I started. It’s in no condition to make the run to Mutza's World.
I’m in no condition.
But I’m still gonna go.
It had to be Mutza's World. It’s a small planet, close to its sun and hot as balls. Since it’s so hot, a rare extremophile bacterium thrives there. It’s resistant to every antibiotic and antiseptic and antimicrobial measure the scientists can throw at it. The first three attempts to colonize Mutza's World ended in the settlers shitting themselves to death after drinking infected water.
They kept trying because the planet is rich in graphite ore and the Federation pledged plots of land free and clear to anyone who could go and establish a community.