Kratos: A Sci-Fi Alien Warrior Paranormal Romance

by Ashley West

  Maybe it wouldn’t be a big thing. Maybe it was just the nice aliens coming back to make sure that everything was still fine. Progress checks and all that. Maybe.

  Or maybe the government would know how to fight them this time, and it wouldn’t be a huge mess. Kirstie supposed it could happen, even if she wasn’t going to hold her breath. There was that anxiety in the pit of her stomach that she’d had since she was a little kid and she knew something wasn’t going to work out well. Like when she knew her sisters were going to gang up against her or blame something on her, or when her brother and mother would get into screaming arguments.

  It wasn’t a good feeling, a churning sensation right in the pit of her stomach that tended to spread up into her chest like heartburn. She tried to block it out with more wine while Cara and Anise debated what could happen. Apparently they weren’t going to make it to the part of the night where they just watched movies, and she leaned back on the couch and sighed.

  From the kitchen where she had left her phone, she could hear the gentle chimes of her ringtone, and she excused herself quietly and climbed over Anise again to get to it.

  Even now, years after her childhood, Kirsten Biddle just seemed to fade into the background of any room she was in. She didn’t take up much space, even though she was of average height and was plenty curvy. Still, she tended to tuck herself into small corners, small rooms, quiet and unassuming.

  It was a hard habit to shake after being the youngest of four and having three older siblings who were determined to be noticed. Her sisters and brother were the ones who caught their parents’ attention by being loud and vain and obnoxious, and Kirstie had always kept to herself, trying to get them to pay attention to her by being good at school and winning awards.

  It hadn’t really worked.

  So now she was twenty-two, freshly graduated from college, and trying to enjoy her summer before she started her job as a librarian. She’d lived with Anise and Cara since their junior year of college, and they were her best friends, even if they did tend to overlook her sometimes.

  Kirstie always reasoned that she let it happen, so it wasn't their fault.

  Even now they were still talking like she hadn't just walked between them, and she sighed and picked up her phone to answer it just before it stopped ringing.

  'One missed call', the screen proclaimed, and she sighed when she saw Keith's name and number under it.

  Her brother was the sibling she got along with the best, but that didn't really mean anything. He was quiet too, but it was hard to hold a candle to the noise Lynn and Emily could make, so really. He was obsessed with engineering and mechanics, and instead of going to school for it, like everyone had encouraged him and expected him to do, he'd become something of an apprentice for an old man who liked to fiddle with things.

  Needless to say, their parents had not been pleased with that development. But now it was ten years later, and Keith was making good money fixing things and turning old, broken things into new, exciting things, so Kirstie supposed they had to be content with that.

  She sighed and hit the redial button to call Keith back.

  "Kirs!" he said loudly when he answered, and she winced.

  "Hi, Keith. What's up?"

  "What do you mean, what's up? Can't I just want to talk to my baby sister?"

  It had never happened before, so she wasn't expecting it to happen now. Usually he only called her when he wanted something, and she would be surprised if this was anything other than him needing a favor.

  "I suppose," she said, instead of pointing out the obvious.

  "Did you see the news just now?"

  "Yes."

  "Isn't that cool?"

  "That the Earth might be under attack again? Oh yeah, Keith. So cool." She leaned over enough to see out the kitchen door and back into the living room, and the news was still on the television, so clearly Cara and Anise hadn't made any more progress towards getting a movie started. Maybe she would just go to bed after this.

  "Leave it to you to go straight to the negative," Keith said, and she could hear him rummaging around for something in the background, the sound of little metal things rubbing against each other loud in her ear.

  "What are you doing?" she asked because that was easier than trying to explain to her brother why she was so negative sometimes.

  "Looking for a tool," he replied. "Oh, come on, where is it? The Doctor left a bunch of antique clocks here before he went on vacation, and I get to take 'em apart."

  Kirstie rolled her eyes. "Sounds like fun. Did you really just call to talk about the news because I have stuff to do." She didn't, but she didn't want to listen to Keith ramble on about how much he loved the Doctor and working with him. The man wasn't even his boss anymore since Keith had been made a full partner in the fiddling with things business, and all they ever heard about even now was how amazing he was and how smart and how much Keith looked up to him.

  “What?” he asked. “Oh. No. I got a call from Dad earlier, and I promised I’d call you and deliver a message.”

  Of course. Her parents could call Keith but couldn’t call her and tell her whatever it was directly.

  “They talked to Lynn, too, but Emily’s still not answering her phone apparently. I told Dad we might need to start considering the fact that she’s dead.”

  Everyone else but her. They’d called everyone else but her. Kirstie supposed she shouldn’t even be surprised or hurt by it. The way she felt now was how she’d been feeling for her whole life, but still. There was an ache that came with knowing your parents didn’t even find you important enough to call when they had something to tell you.

  “Emily’s not dead,” she said softly. “She’s just mad at Mom, so she’s ducking their calls.”

  “Eh, same difference. Emily’s always mad about something. Anyway, Lynn’s in the Bahamas for the summer, apparently, working on some novel, I guess. Left her husband back in New York to manage his dental practice. You want to know what I think? Affair.” He said in a sing song voice that made Kirstie frown.

  “You think Dominic is having an affair?” As far as she knew, her sister’s husband worshiped the ground she walked on. Which was one of the reasons why she’d married him in the first place.

  Keith snorted and something crashed in the background. “No, not him. Could you imagine? Dr. Dominic Carlo even looking at a woman who’s not his goddess of a wife? Not happening. I mean Lynn. She’s in the Bahamas and plans to stay there for the next two months. Anything could happen.”

  “Like she could work on her book and then come home to her loving husband who she also loves?”

  “Maybe. Wouldn’t hold my breath, though.”

  Kirstie sighed. “The message, Keith?”

  “Oh. Right. That. Mom and Dad have been hearing stuff, apparently. Some guy Dad works with? He claims his son got abducted last week. Went out for a smoke break at their weekly family dinner and never came back in. His car was still in the driveway and everything, and when the mom went to check on him, all they found were his shoes.”

  She swallowed hard at the mental image of that. A pair of lone shoes lying on a porch, empty of their owner, and the night silent with no traces of where their son had gone. She shuddered. “They think it was the aliens?”

  “Apparently. Reminds some people of when the Alva came that time, you know. Only that was a lot more violent, but still. People disappearing. Mom and Dad want us all to be careful.”

  “Seems like that would go without saying,” Kirstie murmured softly, her stomach twisting in knots at the thought of being snatched up by some alien creature.

  “Well, yeah, but they’re parents. They have to say it.”

  “I guess.”

  “Hey,” Keith said. “You okay? You’re not scared, are you? Have there been any sightings over where you are?”

  “Not that I know of. I just heard about it on the news today, and no one said where the sightings even were.” All she could hope was that
they weren’t near her.

  She zoned out for a bit, trying to figure out a way to make sure that the aliens weren’t in the city, but then she blinked when Keith kept talking. “Mom and Dad said the guy who got abducted lives in Fremont and his parents were over in Highpoint. Too close for comfort, if you ask me.”

  “I thought you were excited about it.”

  Keith sighed. “I mean, it’d be interesting. I bet they’ve got awesome tech. The Doctor managed to get a hold of some stuff from one of the Alvan ships and it’s so complex we don’t even know what anything does. But people getting abducted is bad news, you know? Hopefully it’s unrelated.”

  “Yeah.” She listened to her brother ramble for a bit longer and promised that she’d tell their parents that he’d passed on the message before she hung up.

  Without fail, talking to her brother left her head spinning, and this was no exception. He was always going a mile a minute or talking about complex engineering theories that she didn’t understand, but now she was thinking about aliens and abductions, and she knew that she wasn’t going to sleep well that night.

  Someone had already been taken, and she wondered if it had been reported to the police or if they were just trying to pretend like it had never happened. Or that it was unrelated.

  It was too much to think about. Her roommates were still deep in conversation when she went back out into the living room, and she excused herself from whatever might be left of movie night to go to her room. At this point, she didn’t even think she could concentrate on a movie, let alone enjoy it.

  “I hope you sleep well, Kirstie,” Anise said with a smile, and she returned it before she made her way to her bedroom with a sigh.

  The relaxing night she’d been envisioning was clearly not going to happen, and she wondered if it was even worth trying to go to bed. All she would be thinking about was what Keith had told her and how things could get really bad really soon if this threat of aliens coming to Earth was real. Images from the last time they’d been invaded flooded her mind. The destroyed businesses and homes, the long lists of people who had been taken and not seen for over a year. People had died, families had been torn apart, and despite how much her own family tried her nerves sometimes, she didn’t want to see any of their names or faces on a list of casualties because of some intergalactic war she didn’t even understand.

  Kirsten threw herself on the bed face first, groaning into her pillow. Usually, she shared a wall with Cara, but it seemed like she and Anise were going to be in the living room for a while more, either talking or finally getting around to watching their movie.

  She bit her lip, turning her face so she wasn’t suffocating in her pillow as she thought. It had been a while for her, since she’d had the inclination or the privacy to...take care of herself, and it was an excellent form of stress relief. Her sister Lynn had told her that when she was thirteen years old, and while she’d been disgusted at the time, now she could see the benefit of it.

  This definitely counted as her being stressed out.

  She had toys, but they were a good ways away in her closet, buried under a pile of sweaters, and she didn't feel like digging through them to find what she wanted for the night. Her hand would work just as well, she was sure.

  Kirsten flopped over onto her back, staring at the ceiling for a moment as she tried to get herself in the mood. She stopped thinking about aliens, replacing the images of little green men or the monstrous things that had come to Earth the last time with images of the ones who had saved them.

  The news stations had shown their faces non stop after the Alva had been declared defeated, and they were...well, attractive seemed like the wrong word somehow.

  They looked just like humans, which was nice, but on a much bigger scale. They were much taller and broader than humans were, and there had been all sorts of stories about how well they wielded weapons.

  Kirsten bit her lip and allowed herself to think about them. She let herself think about being small, being so much smaller than them, strong hands around her waist, lifting her up, pinning her to the wall or the bed or any flat surface really. Bending her over. Her face flushed at that last thought, and she slipped a hand down over her stomach and under the waistband of the cotton shorts she was wearing.

  Slowly, she stroked herself through her panties, giving a little moan at how good it felt. She'd always been sensitive, and the drag of cotton over her clit was enough to have her getting wet already.

  Her eyes fluttered closed, and she focused on her thoughts more. Strong, rippling muscles, a serious demeanor. They took their duties seriously, obviously, and she could respect that. People dedicated to keeping other people safe. It was a very attractive concept.

  Her fingers moved faster, rubbing until she could feel her wetness through her panties. Then she slipped them under the waistband and touched herself directly.

  She imagined that her fingers were thicker, rougher, padded with calluses from swords or other weapons. It would be gentle, but with an edge to it, an edge that coaxed her to spread her legs wider and slide a finger into herself.

  He'd be big, this alien man, thick, as he slid into her, and she'd love it. Love to feel herself stretching to accommodate him, her body pushed to its limits.

  His eyes would be on her, only on her, and he'd whisper words of encouragement and praise in her ear as he kissed her neck and then her mouth.

  The whole image was so arousing that it took no time at all for that pleasure to tighten into something white hot and insistent in her belly, and she bit her lip hard to muffle the whine that wanted to spill out of her and announce her orgasm to the entire apartment.

  She worked another finger into herself as she approached that edge, thumb brushing her clit, fingers deep to the knuckle.

  When she came, it was with a low moan and her body tightening around her fingers, and she bucked and shuddered through it, lying flat on the bed once she'd come down some, breathing hard.

  It had definitely taken the edge off, and she sighed softly, staring at the ceiling again. As much as she didn't want to think about it, and she really didn't want to, something told her that she would be wise to take her pleasures now while she still could.

  Chapter Three: Exploration

  'Homeless' was such a rude word. Right up there with 'vagrant' and 'freeloaders'. Kratos didn't see why people had to be rude just because they lived on their ship.

  When you moved around as much as they did, it didn't make much sense to have a permanent residence. You'd just have to leave it all the time, and you'd be paying to stay somewhere that you never actually stayed. None of them had family that they were tethered to, no spouses or children, and parents and siblings could be seen on flying visits.

  The Killander was their home. It was a beauty of a ship, old, yes, but restored and renewed to even more than its former glory by Combo's skillful hands. It got them where they needed to go quickly, able to handle even the roughest of warp paths and asteroid belts.

  And yes, there were dents in the hull and scrapes along the sides of the wings, but that just gave her character as far as Kratos was concerned. She was a ship that belonged to people who worked for their money, who had been places and seen things. The Killander was as broken in as the people who flew her, and that kind of symmetry appealed to Kratos.

  At the moment, he was lounging in the cockpit, feet up on the dash as he watched space drift by through the large window over the command center. They weren't headed anywhere in particular at the moment, work had been slow for the last couple of months, so the autopilot was engaged to just have them floating. A list of supplies they needed was next to the command controls, and Kratos snorted and added a couple of things he wanted to the list.

  "That's not for you," Combo's voice said, and Kratos turned in his seat to see his companion come gliding in effortlessly.

  Combo freaked a lot of people out, and Kratos could see why. If it wasn't for the fact that he knew the guy so well, he'd probabl
y be freaked out by him, too.

  He was tall, even taller than Kratos, but where the latter had bulk on his side to even things out, Combo was rail thin. He had thin, spindly fingers that were always tinkering with something, and head full of bright red hair that stood out even more against his dark skin. All that might not have been so bad if it weren't for the fact that he also had all black eyes, no whites to be seen. When he looked at you, it was like he was seeing through you, and it unnerved a lot of people.

  Kratos had just gotten used to it.

  "Sure it is," he returned. "It's a supply list, and I need supplies."

  "It's a necessities list," Combo corrected in his detached way. "I'm sure that nothing you're putting down counts as a necessity."

  "Combo, I am hurt. Just completely wounded. And you're wrong anyway."

  Combo just leveled him with a stare that was carefully blank and then brushed his feet off the dash with one thin hand before taking the seat next to Kratos. He punched in several things on the command board and Kratos yawned and stretched.

  "Been a while since we've had any work," he said. "It's almost like people don't want their rivals killed or their long lost family members found. I hate dry spells."

  "Mm," Combo replied, bringing up a massive wall of text on the windshield that blocked out the view. "I am sure things will pick up soon enough. This is hardly the longest we've gone without work."

  "I know, but I'm bored," Kratos complained.

  "Tell me something new," Combo murmured. He didn't even seem to be paying attention, really, and Kratos pouted and sighed. Combo was the one who put up with his antics the least. Even Milara indulged him sometimes, but Combo just flat out ignored him most of the time, and it was irritating.

  Before Kratos could say anything else, Combo's face was twisting into a slight scowl. That caught Kratos' attention because sometimes it was impossible to get Combo's face to do anything other than be smooth and blank.

  "What is it?" he asked.