by S. E. Smith
Jana rolled over and sat up. She looked wildly around the room before emitting a low squeak and pulled up the covers when she saw K-Nine was staring at her. Matrix shot a heated glare at the wolfhound.
“We’ll meet you in the living room,” Matrix stated. “How far?”
“One, maybe two klicks from here,” K-Nine replied, turning to leave the room. “I will see if I can get a fix on it.”
“Don’t go outside yet,” Matrix ordered.
“What is going on?” Jana asked, scooting off the bed and grabbing her clothes.
“The Crawler is nearby,” Matrix replied in a grim tone.
“The Crawler? How far?” Jana asked, hurriedly pulling her hair back and twisting it up into a ponytail. She grabbed a hairband off the dresser, quickly wrapping it around her hair to hold it. “What do we do?”
“We... don’t do anything,” Matrix stated. “K-Nine and I will lure it into the open and kill it.”
“What happens if you don’t?” Jana asked, hopping on one foot as she pulled on her shoes.
Matrix paused in the doorway. “We don’t have a choice,” he said. “K-Nine, I need my blades and the energy cartridges.”
“On the kitchen table,” K-Nine stated. “Your boots are next to it.”
“Thanks!” Matrix growled.
“What am I supposed to do?” Jana asked with a worried frown.
Matrix turned and cupped her cheeks between his large palms. He stared down into her eyes before he bent to brush a tender kiss across her lips. There wasn’t enough time to get her to the transport. He had sent it to hover above the tree line. They would have to kill the Crawler before it got to the house.
“Stay inside,” he ordered in a soft voice. “K-Nine and I are experienced in dealing with situations like this. I need to remain focused and I need you to stay inside. We’ll keep it from getting to the house.”
Jana swallowed and nodded. She watched as Matrix finished dressing and slipped into the harness with the two long blades. Her gaze narrowed on the cartridges he was loading into a weapon that looked like a cross between a large gun and a small cannon.
Several minutes later, they left the house. Jana debated whether to turn on the lights or to keep them off. She finally decided that having them on might make her feel safer, but it could also make it easier for the creature to see Matrix and K-Nine. In the end, she retrieved her cell phone, a small flashlight, and the biggest damn knife she could find in her kitchen.
“Meow,” a tiny whisper of sound came from the hallway. “Meow.”
“Come here, darling. Biscuit, Honeybun, Butter, come here,” Jana whispered, calling to the three kittens. “Come to Momma.”
Jana opened the door to the pantry and poured a small amount of food into their glass food bowl. The sound of the dry pieces was loud as they struck the glass. She slid to the floor and pulled one of her large cloth shopping bags close to her. After the kittens were finished with their early morning snack, she picked them up and placed them in the bag.
“Hush now,” Jana whispered, laying her hand in the bag and letting the kittens play with it. “Please, keep them both safe. I don’t think I could handle losing either one of them now. Please, oh, please.”
Matrix nodded to K-Nine. Three of the scanners to the southwest were going off. A fourth one suddenly lit up. The Crawler was half a klick away. K-Nine stood near the back of the house while Matrix had taken up a position just inside the tree line. He squatted on a low branch to minimize the chances of being detected.
“It’s coming,” K-Nine muttered through the communicator in Matrix’s ear.
“The fifth sensor just activated. It must be still traveling underground,” Matrix warned.
They didn’t have to guess. Seconds later, the ground roiled, then erupted as the Crawler emerged. Matrix cursed as he counted the legs – an even dozen. His mother had been right as always, this one was a fully mature female; an egg-laying, eating machine. If the other information was correct, and he feared it was, the Crawler could lay over a thousand eggs. Every one of those eggs was capable of laying another thousand when they matured at the end of a solar year. Within two years, the planet would be infested with the Crawlers and the planet’s inhabitants would become the Crawler’s food source.
K-Nine emitted a loud, high pitched howl sending the creature into paroxysms of pain. The high pitch, unheard by most creatures, pinged the sonar built into the Crawler’s frontal lobe. Matrix jumped to the ground and charged while the creature was temporarily debilitated. He was almost upon it when it whipped around and spit out a stream of acid.
Matrix lunged to the side, rolling before he regained his footing. K-Nine darted forward, attacking one of the exposed legs. He clamped down on the third limb on the right side. The force and speed of his attack allowed him to grab the leg and wrench it off.
The Crawler turned with a howl and struck at K-Nine as he jerked the twitching limb away from the creature. The force of the blow threw K-Nine up into the air. He landed almost a dozen feet away, the twitching leg still hanging from his jaws.
“You will not kill me, warriors,” the Crawler hissed in a guttural voice. “Thissss will be my world!”
“Not as long as we still are breathing,” Matrix swore as he circled the creature. His finger stroked one of the cement charges. “Why don’t you do us all a favor and just hold still so we can kill you?”
“Not likely, warrior,” the Crawler snapped as it turned, intending to dive back into the hole gaping behind it.
“I don’t think so,” Matrix growled, surging forward and tossing the cement charge into the massive hole.
Matrix felt the impact of the Crawler’s back legs striking against his chest. The blow tossed him through the air. K-Nine, seeing the blow, raced across the yard just as the charge exploded.
The force of the explosion in the hole threw K-Nine and the Crawler backwards. The hole caved in, filling with the rapidly expanding cement material that quickly hardened into stone. The Crawler struggled for a moment before she curled into a ball, her interconnecting plates creating a protective shield around herself.
Matrix’s expression hardened when he saw what the creature had done. He knew from the vidcom of the creatures on the asteroid that she expected him to use the standard laser charge against her. Her protective shell repelled those types of energy bursts, making them useless against the Crawler and the ricochets dangerous to anyone nearby. He and K-Nine had trained for this possibility from what they had learned in the briefings and the vidcoms.
Pulling out his blades, Matrix circled the Crawler. Blade raised, he swung it, striking at one of the hard, armored plates. Brilliant sparks lit the air and his arm shuddered with the force of the blow, but the blade didn’t penetrate the plating.
“Matrix, something is wrong, I can feel her moving,” K-Nine said, pressing his nose against the ground.
“I covered the hole,” Matrix snapped, striking the plating again.
“She’s not in there,” K-Nine insisted, taking several steps before he stopped and looked up. “She’s shed her outer casing and is heading for the house.”
A curse erupted from Matrix and his arm froze even as his head turned toward the dark building. Fear gripped his heart, and for a brief second he forgot how to breathe. He glanced at the hollow shell of the creature, then back at the house. There had been nothing in the briefing about the Crawler being able to shed her outer casing. Pulling out an energy charge, he pointed it at the empty shell of the Crawler.
“Run,” he ordered, pulling the trigger.
Jana hugged her knees as close to her chest as she could. The kittens had finally fallen back to sleep. She absently fingered the knife lying on the floor next to her. Every time she heard a shout or a thump from outside, she would grab it. If she had thought the noise was scary, it was nothing compared to the silence.
Her heart jumped into her throat when she heard a creak and felt the faint movement of the support beams und
er the house. Her gaze went to the back door. It and the screen door were securely locked. Her eyes widened when she saw the kitchen floor rise up before settling back down.
Her fingers slowly closed around the knife as she gripped the bag with the kittens in it. The portions of the floor rising up and down appeared to be heading away from her. Whatever was causing it was moving beneath the hall toward the other side of the house.
A strangled scream escaped Jana when the house suddenly rose up off of its foundation, then crashed down. She slid forward out of the narrow pantry just as the horrific sound of wood creaking and splintering echoed loudly through the air. The kittens, awakened by the sudden movement and noise, began to emit a series of pitiful meows.
Jana struggled to get her footing when the house shifted under her again. She lost her grip on the bag with the three little kittens inside. Horror and fear choked Jana when she saw first one, then the other two, dart out of the bag and disappear through the doorway.
“No!” She cried, struggling to her feet.
In the distance, she heard the sound of an explosion. She was almost to the doorway leading to the hall when a powerful, concussive wave came at her from behind and threw her forward to the floor. The kitchen windows and doors had burst open. She wasn’t sure what had happened; all she could do was cover her head and hope to protect herself from the glass which blew inward. The deadly shards pierced the walls of the kitchen, just a few feet above her trembling form.
Dazed, Jana lifted her head. Her gaze caught a slight movement in the filtering light just beginning to shine through the eastern facing windows. Butter’s creamy fur disappeared under the couch.
“Butter, come to Momma,” Jana cried out, scrambling to her feet.
She had taken only a couple of steps when another movement, this time from near her bedroom door, drew her attention. The scream that started to escape froze in her throat as the massive arms of an enormous creature gripped the door frame and pushed outward. The wood crumpled like paper under the force.
Jana stumbled backwards into the small hall table. The creature’s head turned and stared at her with half a dozen eyes that seemed to be looking in six directions at once – until they all locked on her. Her fingers tightened on the knife she was holding.
“Jana, don’t move,” K-Nine said in a calm voice from the living room.
“I… I can’t… my… legs… won’t listen to me,” she whispered back. “What… what is that thing?”
“It’s a Crawler,” Matrix said, stepping into the hallway.
“You have mated with this warrior,” the Crawler snarled, pushing against the walls of the narrow hallway. “I will eat you first.”
“That’s just… wrong,” Jana retorted in a trembling voice.
“K-Nine, get Jana out of here,” Matrix ordered, turning to face the Crawler. “This is between the two of us, Crawler.”
“No, it will be between the female and me,” the Crawler hissed.
“The kittens,” Jana whimpered, pressing back when the creature struggled to move closer. “They’re under the couch.”
“Kick the bag to me,” K-Nine ordered.
Matrix released a snarling curse, but kicked the bag that Jana had dropped toward K-Nine. The wolfhound uttered a series of low calls. Instantly, the kittens raced out from under the couch toward him.
“Use the other charge,” K-Nine shouted as he hurriedly scooped up the kittens in his mouth and dropped them into the bag.
Jana watched in shock as K-Nine gripped the handles of the bag in his mouth and took off at a run out the front door. Jana turned in time to see Matrix point the weapon at the creature that was hissing and snarling so loudly that her head hurt.
“Trust me,” Matrix ordered, wrapping his left arm around her waist.
“Always,” Jana replied in a trembling voice.
Everything seemed to happen in slow motion then. Jana saw Matrix shoot a bright red bullet of some type at the Crawler. At the same time, her feet left the floor. Matrix slung her over his shoulder and raced toward the back doorway. She saw the walls bulge again as the creature tried to get out of the narrow confines of the hallway an instant before everything started to turn red. She felt her body twisting as Matrix pulled her off of his shoulder and into his arms as he continued to charge across her backyard. They were almost to the woods when a bright red flash lit up her house and an explosive wave of energy knocked Matrix off his feet.
The force of the wave was so powerful that Jana could have sworn that it sucked the oxygen out of the immediate area. She watched over Matrix’s shoulder as the red light faded, leaving nothing behind. The next moment, they hit the ground and everything went black.
Several hours later, Jana sat on the wooden swing that was hanging from one of the trees near the woods. She stared at the empty spot where her house had once stood. There was nothing left of it but a large burned area.
She actually felt much better than when she had first awakened after the blast. The headache was gone thanks to whatever Matrix had pressed against her skin. She also wasn’t having issues with the red dots still dancing across her vision. Finally, she was thankful that she wasn’t blubbering like a baby – well, anymore at least. Granted, she had cried hysterically at first, but that was because thought Matrix was dead. It had taken several minutes before K-Nine could reassure her Matrix just needed time to recover from the blast.
“He’s been enhanced as well,” K-Nine had explained. “It just takes a little longer for him to heal than it does for me.”
“Enhanced? How?” Jana had asked in shock, staring at Matrix’s peaceful face.
“Didn’t you notice the bands?” K-Nine asked with a flick of his ear.
“That is not part of the enhancement,” Matrix had growled, still pale and not opening his eyes.
That was when she had become a blubbering mess. Now, she was calm, but she was definitely still in shock.
“Are you ready to go?” Matrix asked quietly as he walked up to her.
She blinked, trying to focus her mind back on the present. Her dazed eyes collided with Matrix’s worried ones. She licked her suddenly dry lips and tried to remember what he had just asked her.
“Go?” She repeated when his words finally worked through the haze surrounding her brain. “Where are we going?”
“I thought you might like to see where I live,” Matrix said, squatting down to look at her. “After all, a life mate generally does accompany her mate.”
“A life mate?” Jana whispered, her eyes sparkling with anticipation before his response hit her and she glanced up at the sky in wonder. “You mean, up there?”
“Yes, up there,” Matrix replied, reaching out and caressing her cheek.
Jana looked back at him. “But, what about the kittens?” She asked, biting her lip and looking around.
“They are already on board the transport with K-Nine,” Matrix assured her, standing up and holding out his hand. “Do you trust me?”
Jana glanced over to the area where she knew the transport sat, the outer hull invisible in stealth mode. In the open doorway, she could see K-Nine and the three kittens staring back at her. Her gaze returned to Matrix’s outstretched hand. It was hard to believe she’d just met this guy twenty-four hours ago. Her gaze moved to the empty spot where her house had been. There was nothing left; no home and no family, just nothing.
She’d been orphaned at seventeen and had been on her own ever since; now, she had a chance to have a family of her own. It was just going to be in an unexpected place. Turning her face toward Matrix, she slowly extended her hand and rose off the swing.
“Do you think that the Cyborg Protection Unit could use a highly qualified vet assistant?” She murmured as they walked toward the transport where K-Nine waited with the three kittens.
“Oh, yes,” Matrix chuckled. “They have some new recruits.”
“You’d better not be thinking of using my kittens,” Jana growled in warning, stepping on
board the transport.
“I’ll let you argue that point with K-Nine,” Matrix teased, shutting the door and turning Jana to face him. “I’m falling hard for you, Jana Dixon.” He slid his hand up along her cheek and stared into her eyes. “My world is not that much different from your own in many ways. There will be danger, but I swear I will do everything in my power to protect you.”
“I know things are going to be different. Life here can be pretty risky, too, you know. Not with things like the Crawler, but there are other things that are just as dangerous. All I know is something inside tells me that I would be crazy to let you go so I guess you’re stuck with me and the kittens,” Jana whispered, raising her arms to wrap them around his neck before she captured his lips with hers.
K-Nine grinned as he placed a paw on Biscuit’s tail to keep him from trying to climb on him again. It had been worth chasing that irritating little gray squirrel to find Jana. It might have taken a little time, but he finally had his family – and Matrix had a life mate. Now, he and Matrix just needed to get them all home.
To be continued: Jana and Matrix’s journey is just beginning. There is more to the story as Jana tries to find a place for herself in an alien world whilst Matrix’s fears that there are criminals who would use his life mate as a weapon against him come true.
Note from the Author:
For those who have read this story, let me answer a question you might have… Yes, this prequel novella connects with the Zion Warrior series and yes, there will be more to the story. I’ve already had my editors beg me to write the full novel for it. This story occurs in the present time, and is set a few years before the invasion of the Alluthans. It is a prequel to Gracie’s Touch: Zion Warriors Book 1. The events here are the catalyst that will guide the Alluthans to Earth.
This series will eventually consist of six books. The Zion Warriors series will have two parts to it: the prequel – the story of the remaining members of the Freedom Five, who Gracie left behind; and, the post – the continuing stories of Gracie, her new friends and family who find themselves fighting against the Alluthan forces again in the future.