Her Alien Warrior

by Viki Storm

  “Him,” I say.

  “I don’t know. I hope not,” she says. I want to go to her, but I resist the urge. Protocol is to ensure the target is eliminated before tending to the wounded. I know this in my bones without needing to think about it.

  Why was my instinct just now the complete opposite of everything I’ve ever learned?

  I toe the enemy’s body and he moans, then coughs. A glob of blood shoots from his mouth, undulates in mid-air, then splats in the dust. He’s human, fit, and obviously about to die. He doesn’t seem to know that last part, because he gropes his belt for his raygun. It’s not there, of course, it blew out of his hand when I shot him.

  The crystalline shard is sticking out of his neck, the only thing slowing the bleeding and keeping him alive. “Who are you?” I ask.

  “He’s a pirate,” the female says. Pirate? Interesting. I’ll have to interrogate her next.

  “Where is your ship?” I ask. He smiles, his teeth stained red. “Who sent you?” High-pitched whistling fills my ears as he struggles to breathe. His fingers creep up the side of his neck, playing at the edges of the shard. Before I can blink, he pulls it out, freeing the torrent of blood.

  “No point questioning him now,” the female says.

  “I guess not,” I say. I reach down and take the crystalline fragment from his hand and slip it into my waist-pouch. He’s got a tattoo on the inside of his wrist, what looks like a spiral inside an eye. I check his pockets and find fifty Palladium coins. I slip those into my pouch.

  “You’re looting the corpse?” the female asks, voice dripping with indignation.

  “He’s not going to need fifty P.C. where he’s going,” I say and shrug. “You say he’s a pirate? Why?”

  The hard lines on her face soften a bit. Is she scared? I can’t quite tell. “Because you can’t swing a dead cat in this galaxy without hitting a pirate ship. You’re probably a pirate. Why else did you rush to the site of a shipwreck?”

  “Female, I am no pirate,” I say. My warrior’s pride is wounded. I’m about to tell her that I am a named warrior of Virix and she should give me the respect to which I’m entitled.

  Then I remember. I’m not a warrior. I’m just a mercenary, a hired thug.

  “Well, whatever you are, I am glad that you showed up when you did. This guy wasn’t fucking around.”

  “Your gratitude is accepted, though not necessary. I saw your ship descend and came to render aid.”

  “You’re the opposite of a pirate,” she says, but she’s guarded—as well she should be.

  “What are you doing in this galaxy?” I ask. “And why do you think you’re a viable target for a pirate?

  Closer I see that her eyes are blue and hard as methane clathrate. She knows why she was targeted—but she’s also not going to tell me.

  “Every ship is a viable target for a pirate,” she says.

  “Come on,” I say, “get on my ship, I will take you to civilization. I have no wish to linger around a corpse and a burning ship.”

  “At least we can agree on that,” she says. She struggles to her feet, favoring one leg. I go to her side, lending her my arm for support, but she pushes it away. Her touch is electric, her little fingers so fierce and insistent. “I can walk.”

  “If you say so,” I say, not bothering to repress a smile.

  “I do,” she says. “I don’t need some muscle-bound bonehead getting his sweaty mitts all over me.”

  But by the time we’re halfway to her ship, she’s limping badly, and beads of sweat have sprouted on her upper lip and the hollow of her throat. I have to slow to an excruciating pace, but I rein in my impulse to pick her up and throw her over my shoulder. It would be amusing to see her reaction, but this type of female, she won’t ask for help, so I’m not going to give it to her unless she asks.

  “Hold on,” she says, stopping at her ship. “I need to get a few things.”

  “No,” I say. “There’s still flames at the rear, and you don’t know what type of damage it sustained. It could explode or—”

  “I’m going in,” she says. “It’s not going to explode.”

  “I’ll go instead,” I say. “Tell me what you need.” I put my hand on her wrist, but she yanks it away.

  “Give your macho protector thing a rest,” she says. “Save it for when you need to waste another pirate—that was really badass.”

  “As you wish,” I say. “I’ll be in my ship.”

  “Thank you,” she says.

  She’s not gone very long, and when she limps up the stairs into my ship, she’s only carrying one small crate.

  “What’s in the box?” I ask.

  “None of your business,” she says. I would not tolerate this defiance from a male, but coming from such an utterly delectable female, it’s both amusing and arousing.

  Her defiant attitude, she’s just begging to be put in her place.

  “If it’s going on my ship, it’s my business,” I respond. I’ve put the pieces together. She’s likely smuggling something valuable, and that’s why she was accosted by the pirate. I’ll let it go. I don’t really care what she wants to do with her life. It doesn’t affect me. She wants to deal in stolen goods or run a smuggler’s ship, eventually get caught and thrown in jail or gunned down by a rival, then what do I care?

  “Then I won’t go on your ship,” she says. “I’ve got an emergency comm. You’re not the only one in the galaxy capable of helping me. I appreciate it—don’t get me wrong—but helping me doesn’t entitle you to control me. If there’s strings attached, I politely decline your help.”

  There’s no way I’m leaving her out here all alone—especially now that I know she’s carrying something valuable.

  “No strings,” I assure her. “Welcome aboard the Vulp.”

  “Thank you,” she says. “And don’t take this the wrong way, but your ship, it could use a little body work. The Vulpecula-2100 isn’t supposed to have tinted windows or reinforced panels. And the hood ornament’s gone.”

  “Don’t get me started,” I say.

  A feisty smuggler who doesn’t take anyone’s shit and knows how to talk ships?

  I think I’m in love.

  Chapter 4

  Vela

  Did I think that this guy had a junky ship? Boy was I wrong. The interior is immaculate, every detail lovingly attended to, accurately and pristinely restored to original condition.

  “Nice ship,” I say.

  “Thank you,” he says. “I am Auvok. What is your name?”

  “Vela,” I say.

  “You speak my language?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.

  “Implant,” I say, tapping the side of my head.

  “Most humans do not get those,” he says. “They choose to keep to their own kind.”

  I don’t want to tell him that I, too, usually like to keep to my own kind. I wasn’t brought up on one of the cosmopolitan Federation planets where there’s hundreds of different languages, cuisines and cultures all mixed together in one place.

  I’m from a small non-Federation backwater planet. Total population less than a hundred thousand. When I moved to New Europa a few years ago, I was shocked (and more than a little horrified) at the number of alien races there were. Even after being away from home for so long, I’m still a little uneasy around non-humans.

  Especially this one. He’s gigantic, which isn’t helping. Easily six and a half feet tall, he’s as broad as he is tall. Thickly muscled shoulders almost scrape the door jambs as he walks about the ship. He wears no shirt, only tight-fitting pants that highlight the bulging muscles in his legs… and the other huge bulge between his legs. I can’t help but stare—and when he catches me, I know I turn red as a supergiant star.

  The most striking feature about him is his shimmery, albeit rough, skin. It’s a silvery-grey color. When he took down the pirate, though, I thought he was a reddish-tan color. I guess I was wrong. His chest and shoulders are covered in thick plates—scales I guess y
ou’d call them. The plates have curved edges but come to a sharp point. It’s a little creepy, but at the same time, I want to touch his chest so bad, feel the ridges and tips of those scales with my fingertips.

  His facial features give me the most pause. He looks human, sorta, not really. His ears are large and pointed, giving him a wolfish characteristic. His eyes are strange. I didn’t notice it at first because I was concerned with not dying. There’s no white to his eyes. It’s all iris, a beautiful calico pattern of browns, yellows and oranges. The pupil is vertically-oriented, but not quite like a snake or a cat. The edges of the pupil are scalloped and ringed with a thin white border. If I need any reminder that he’s an alien, I just gotta take a quick look at his eyes. Despite being so odd, they’re amazingly beautiful.

  He says nothing, just gives me a little sneer, displaying an extremely long set of upper fang-teeth. Although I guess at this point, they’re just called fangs.

  “Thank you again for landing and helping me,” I say, choosing my words carefully, avoiding the phrase ‘saving me’ for reasons I can’t understand. I don’t want to be in his debt, don’t want to owe him anything. Because a giant slab of muscle like him, a high-power bruiser, a walking talking heap of pure masculinity—there’s only one thing he could possibly want from a girl.

  “Do not thank me,” he says. “Gratitude is not necessary. Sit down. We will take off soon, after a few preparations. I need to inspect my weapon, but first let’s attend to your wounds.”

  I set down my crate and breathe a sigh of relief. My ankle is killing me. Fucking pirates. I swear, the Federation has plenty of money to throw around at anything they want, except proper protection of the Black.

  I sit down at the mess table and cross my leg over my knee. The latch on my boot sticks, as it always does, and I have to jiggle it free before I can slide it off my foot. I whip off my sock and hoist up my pant leg. This isn’t good. It’s already swollen, looking like I’ve got a ball wedged underneath the skin. I’m going to be late for the drop as it is, but when you add the fact that after I land on Mutza's World near the lake, I have to hike two kilometers to the drop, I’m not sure how I’ll be able to manage it.

  “You’re injured,” Auvok says. He’s not asking.

  “It’s fine,” I say and hurriedly try to pull my pant leg back down to cover it up. But there’s his hand again, wrapped around my wrist tight as a manacle. I can tell he’ll brook no argument. The strength of his grip around my arm sends a strange shiver down to the pit of my stomach. Excitement? Is that what it is?

  “It’s not,” he says. “You will let me treat it.”

  He’s not asking, so I do not bother giving him permission.

  His fingers gently probe the swollen red bolus under the skin, and I grit my teeth, not wanting to hiss in pain like a weakling. I’m not sure why I care so much, but my pride is a hard thing to argue with—not entirely reasonable and definitely not open to negotiations.

  “It is not broken,” he says.

  “Don’t tell me you’re a doctor too?” I ask.

  “No,” he says, “but I have had enough experience field dressing injuries to know a broken bone when I see one.”

  I think of the implications of that statement. He’s broken enough bones to be an honorary member of the medical community.

  He gets up briefly to rummage in a drawer and he returns with an auto-injector. When he turned around I caught a look at his bare back. His shoulders and neck are marked with bright orange and black patterns, like a poisonous frog. Probably a signal to anyone foolish enough to fight a Virixian that they’d be better off staying away.

  He hovers over my ankle, and before I can ask what’s in the syringe, he presses it against my skin and deploys the button. The little needle pops out and releases the medicine. It’s cool inside the muscle, the spreading sensation instantly calming the inflamed tissues.

  “Better?” he asks.

  “Yes, actually, it is,” I say. “What was that?”

  “Tetrasalicortisoid,” he says. Maybe he is an honorary member of the medical community, if he can pronounce a word like that.

  “I don’t care if it’s eye of newt, as long as it works its magic.”

  “Good,” he says. “Now for your head.”

  “My head?” I ask. I didn’t get whacked on the head. He picks up a small hand mirror and holds it up. It takes me a minute to realize what I’m looking at. I think I got something on my head, a wet clump of leaves. Then I realize that’s the ruins of my hair and the badly burned flesh underneath.

  “I’m sorry,” Auvok says. “How bad does it hurt?”

  “Honestly, it doesn’t hurt at all,” I say. I touch it with a tentative finger, and that hurts alright. A prickly heat spreads through my scalp, intense and unforgiving.

  “Hold still,” he says. He squeezes a thick unguent from a foil tube and slathers it on my scalp. Those huge hands, those long claws, I expect it to hurt, but his touch is surprisingly gentle. Like my swollen ankle, the relief is instant.

  “Oh yeah,” I moan. “That’s better.”

  “You can reapply as necessary,” he says and hands me the tube. “Keep it.”

  “Thank you,” I say.

  He shrugs and takes his weapon out of its holster. It’s long and metal and there are three buttons on one side. A grip at the butt end provides some stability, but there’s nothing else. No scopes, no laser-guided aiming mechanism, no replaceable blast cartridges. I’ve never seen anything like it. “What is that thing?” I ask.

  “My weapon,” he says curtly.

  “No fooling,” I say. That’s another thing with these aliens, they get so literal, have no sense of humor, no nuance. “But what is it? I never saw anything like it.”

  “Because there isn’t anything like it,” he says. “I just call it Fear Shard. The chamber propels one of three crystalline fragments into my target. It’s no use at close range, but over longer distances there’s nothing in the Universe more accurate—or lethal.”

  I have a thousand questions about this Fear Shard, but I realize that asking a question will only lead to more questions. But I have to at least ask. “Where did you get it?”

  “I found it washed up on the Gilmagnian shores.”

  Case in point.

  He sets the shards aside and disassembles a small mechanism near the haft. There are several pistons and springs, and it’s a wonder anyone could remember how it all fits together.

  “Can I sync into your comm network?” I ask. “So I can find a mechanic to fix my ship.”

  “You can sync into my comm network,” he says, “but your ship is beyond salvage. You’re coming with me.”

  He’s not asking. He’s telling.

  It hits me just how screwed I am. My ship is toast. My emergency comm might not reach another ship for weeks. I'm totally alone, vulnerable, unprotected.

  Or am I?

  This warrior, he could do whatever he wants with me. I'm at his complete and utter mercy… I just hope he has mercy under that silvery, scaled hide of his.

  And he's not letting me go, that much is clear. He wants to keep me on his ship, and I think it's obvious what a barbarian like that wants with a vulnerable human girl like me.

  “I’m on a job,” I say. “I need to go to Mutza’s World.”

  “That’s too bad,” he says. “Because I’m on a job too. You’re not going anywhere until I’m finished with it.”

  “Excuse me?” I say. I have to muster up some phony outrage to put into my voice because deep down, I’m terrified. He’s a huge warrior, with his own damned built-in armor plating. He’s got a mysteriously deadly weapon. And oh yeah, I forgot the fangs. And claws. “You can’t keep me here.”

  “Then go back outside to the smoldering wreck of your ship,” he says, gesturing outside. As he talks, I think I’m going nuts because his skin seems to wink and then it’s red.

  “Um, not to derail the conversation,” I say, “but did you change colo
r?”

  “Probably,” he says. “Virixians are covered in chromatophores that express different pigmentation depending on different conditions.”

  This is fascinating. He’s like a mood ring. “What sort of conditions? To blend in with your surroundings? When your mood changes?”

  “Yes,” he says. “Outside I was probably brown to blend in with the dirt. Maybe red because I was in the heat of battle.”

  “That explains it,” I say.

  “Let’s fly,” he says. “We will finish my job and then I will take you to Mutza’s World so you can complete yours.”

  “We?” I ask. “I don’t know what your job is, but I doubt I’ll be able to help you. I’m not an investigator or a bruiser. As you can see from the smoldering wreck over there, I’m not even that great of a pilot. What do you want me to do for you?” But as soon as I ask, I feel more of that heat creep up into my cheeks.

  Am I so naive that I just asked the walking testosterone molecule what little old me could do for him? He smiles at me and it’s a good thing I’m sitting down, otherwise my knees would’ve given way and I’d be no more than a puddle on the floor. His sexy smile is more than I can handle. He’s an alien, for the sake of the Black, complete with weird reptile eyes and scales and color-changing skin cells—but something about his cocky smile is so damned irresistible.

  “I can think of a few things you could do to earn your keep,” he says.

  Something washes over me, a ripple of heat that gathers low in my belly, fluttering and demanding attention. I’m glad that the only part of me that can change color is my cheeks—and those are bright red.

  “I… I…,” I say, not able to form a sentence. Is the payment for transport really going to be paid with my body? And am I actually excited at the prospect? Am I eager to accept that the price of his help is to splay open my legs and let this primitive warrior ravage my trembling body until I’m spent from his rough treatment?

  “What’s that?” he says, sliding closer to me on the bench. “Your scent just changed.” He sniffs the air with a quizzical look. His pupils narrow. Damn it, he’s a beast. “Are you thinking of different ways you can earn your keep? Do you have any good ideas?”