by Maia Starr
When we were done and bonded, the two of us sat at the table and ate and drank as husband and wife as we looked out on the view. It was perfect. I did not like a grand party or ceremony. But I wasn't going to get off that easy.
"This is perfect. I do not like being under the prying and judging eyes of others," I said to him.
He looked at me and bit his lower lip. He looked mischievous.
"What? What is it? Something tells me you have a surprise," I said to him knowing that I would not like it.
"This wedding ceremony is for us. We had to do it in secret. However, we will have to have a reception, a very grand one. It is scheduled for tomorrow evening. I am going to make the announcement today. It is very important, Ella."
"Why? You know these things scare me," I said to him, feeling very weak after I did so. I just could not shake that fear the sisters instilled in me.
"It will let everyone know that we are married. It will be a visual to them. Once they see it and we declare it in public, then we will never be questioned again. That's why it is important."
"Yes, I can see why it is important. I will be strong for us. I will enjoy the reception and attend and show everyone how happy I am to be your bride."
"You are stronger than you think, Ella. You have endured living on another planet. You have endured being the captive of awful creatures. You have endured a battle siege. You have endured being the lover of a very reckless warrior. You are very strong," he said as he kissed my cheek.
"Well, when you put it that way," I said as I laughed. He was right. I was strong. I had been through a lot and I did not let it beat me down.
We had a grand reception announcing that we had been married and providing the proof of it. Everyone was shocked, but no one questioned us again as a couple. Especially when news spread about my pregnancy.
The Loki family was effectively punished for trying to swindle the master out of his rightful slave. They were moved to new living quarters on the outskirts of the city, very far away from the market and the buildings of order. This way it made it much harder to run into the sisters when I went to market. They were never invited to any of the ceremonies again, and that included our wedding reception. It was as if they did not exist, and that made me happy.
Nine months later, I gave birth to our son; he was half human and half Kalazaron. He was strong and had a lot of his father in him. Thaedon had quickly become a legendary master. He fulfilled his promise to make the Belvenreed Outpost stronger. He was much respected by the warrior battalions and often trained with them in the training yards. He had their utmost loyalty, which was good for any master. However, I knew that there was one Kalazaron in particular that he wanted the blessing of, for whatever reason. It was the Consulate Dalik Moscurn. It was at the reception that Thaedon finally received that blessing.
I was shocked when the consulate walked up to us because there was a human female on his arm. She was very pretty, and I had never seen her before.
“Master Kree, congratulations, and I know that you and Ella will be very happy. I must apologize for being so adamant in my opinions. I, of all of the Kalazaron, know what you must be feeling. I felt it for my wife here, Dr. Jade Roberts.”
“Hello, Dr. Roberts,” I said in greeting to her.
“Hello, Ella. I hope that we can visit soon,” she said to me.
“I would like that,” I said, knowing that we would be good friends and I was excited to know that I should have another female friend. I wondered if she knew Dr. Lavender Prost at Belvenreed.
“Yes, Consulate. I knew that eventually you would understand. I think it has just been many years since you went through something similar. It just takes a little reminding is all,” Thaedon said to the consulate. We all smiled and it was as simple as that. Consulate Moscurn never complained again about Thaedon’s out of box ways, or his human female wife.
The wedding and birth of our son were all well received and it had all happened so fast. I could scarcely remember my life on earth. To think I had left earth in order to find a husband. In order to find love and happiness, and I had found it. It was not in the way I had expected, but isn't that the way of life?
THE END (Flip next page to read Kalazaron Ankon!)
BOOK 6: Kalazaron Ankon
(Blue Planet Warriors)
By Maia Starr
Chapter 1
AMBASSADOR AVERY JONES
He stood before me at seven feet tall, with his blue-tinted skin and muscular form. Never in my six years as a Deep Space Ambassador for the United Planets Association of Earth had I seen anything like him. At first glance I thought he was a Kalazaron warrior from the planet Kaethon. His kind was the reason for my mission. However, now looking at him, I could see that he was something different. He looked more human than most Kalazaron, and I wondered if he was some sort of human-alien hybrid. But how could that be? It was known that a Kalazaron male mating with a human female did not result in offspring. But how much could we really know? Once a human female was taken as a Kalazaron Captive, she was never seen or heard from again. This was the reason for my mission.
“What are you?” I asked as he stood before me with his bare, rippled chest heaving up and down in anger. I would have been more frightened than I was with his angry, blue eyes staring at me if there hadn’t been an entire space task force with guns set on him at my side.
He was silent, with that angry look burrowing into me. He wore a kilt-like panel of material that dropped from his waist to his upper thighs that made him look like a Roman gladiator. His hair was blue-black with a very thick, one-inch streak of blond hair. Not the silver-white that I was used to seeing on the Kalazaron; this was blond, human blond. His blue eyes also did not have that stunning blue that looked aqua on the Kalazaron species. This was a more docile blue that I would see in human eyes. He had to be a hybrid.
“Answer my question. Are you Kalazaron?” I asked again with my voice sterner. Even though I was a petite female, I had a knack for authority, which was how I got as far as I did in my political career as a space ambassador.
“I do not take orders from females!” he shouted. His voice was so fierce that the task force realigned their guns on him.
I put my hands up to calm them and said, “Well, I am the one in charge here. If you would like, I could have one of my soldiers repeat the order in their male voice, but it is still my order.”
I was pissed. I knew the Kalazaron males thought nothing of the females, even in their own race. I would not be talked to in that way. I was not on the planet Kaethon after all. We were in space.
“Do what you will and get it over with. You will have no answers from me,” he barked.
“Contain him,” I said.
The task force moved into action. The sounds of their boots on the floor made a loud ruckus as they encircled him.
“Hands behind your back,” a soldier ordered him. He turned and sneered at him. His pearly-white teeth flashed from under his perfect lips. Then he turned his attention away from the soldier and looked at me. As his eyes locked with mine, his arms went behind his back. The soldiers grabbed his wrists. His stare was making me uneasy so I looked away from his face and down his arms. There were many tattoos on them. I did not know the meaning of any of them, but I wanted to.
They put iron cuffs on his wrists and ankles.
“Don’t put him in with the others. This one is the captain of this ship and I want him in a separate cell. I will question him later.”
At those words, the Kalazaron male warrior looked at me in shock. He had not said that he was the captain of the ship, but I knew. To me it was obvious. To the others, it was not, but I knew a leader when I saw one, especially after what he had done when we captured his ship. As they led him off, he continued to stare at me. It made me very uneasy for one damn reason: I was turned on. Crap! I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but I knew that’s what it was. I watched him as he was led away.
I would question him la
ter, after our capture of this ship was secure. When I set out from Earth six months before, I was not planning on capturing a Kalazaron war ship, yet it happened.
Six months before, I, Space Ambassador Avery Jones, was finally being granted the mission I had petitioned for. I had been petitioning for it for six years, having started as soon as I had taken office. It was a mission to research the disappearance of human females at the hands of the Kalazaron warriors of the planet Kaethon. It was just going to be a data-gathering mission, but because so many Earth ships had disappeared before, I was given a full military ship. Now, I was glad that I had been forced to take the military-equipped ship.
The Kalazaron warriors and the disappearance of human females in relation to the warriors had been an obsession of mine since I was ten. I was the protégé of a millionaire named Jill Teren. She was the daughter of Jocelyn Teren. Jocelyn had passed down a story to Jill that was then told to myself and a few other girls in her charge. The story that Jocelyn told Jill was about a female scientist. Jill would sit down at afternoon tea and tell us this story.
“Her name was Dr. Jade Roberts. Mother was very fond of her research and she reminded my mother of herself. So, she sponsored a research mission for Dr. Jade Roberts. My mother had great faith in Dr. Roberts’ abilities. But Dr. Roberts never returned to Earth. Only one piece of a transmission was received on Earth from the ship that Dr. Roberts was on. It was a distress call with the words, ‘Kalazaron war ship.’ Then the research ship was never heard of again,” Jill Teren would say to us over afternoon tea whenever we bugged her to tell us the story about the missing scientist. She would tell this story as though it was some sort of mythical legend. Because of this, I grew obsessed with this tale of the missing Dr. Roberts and the Kalazaron war ship and made my career in space politics.
Because the distress signal mentioned the Kalazaron war ship, it was deemed likely that the research vessel and its crew had been captured. After growing up with this story, I paid attention to every disappearing ship news story. Mostly they were the bride ships sent to the miners on Merton Loy, or the military ships that went missing. This made sense on a supply level to me.
“Isn’t it obvious, sir? The Kalazaron are stealing human females for their own amusement! They know which ships to target and now, even though the bride ships go nowhere near the M83 Galaxy, they go out of their way to seek them out. They are also taking our military ships for their own surplus of weapons and supplies. They are probably taking them apart and seeing how our weapons work in order to defeat us!” I shouted as I paced back in forth in the office of the United Planets Association Vice President’s office.
“Yes, yes, so you have said before, Ambassador Jones. You think they are purposefully after us. I think it is something else entirely. Ships get lost in space. They break down; things happen. It is space for crying out loud. I do not think that every incident is a Kalazaron incident,” he said to me.
I had heard his reasoning over and over again. I was sick of it. It was like talking to a brick wall. So, I finally came up with a different approach to it.
“I thought you might say that. So, I have an alternative plan, but it still needs your approval,” I said, standing in front of his massive, oak desk with the tall, glass windows behind him overlooking the city.
“What is that?” he asked.
“I have arranged for a privately funded mission. If the United Planets Association will accept these funds, they shall be allocated toward a research mission to find out once and for all whether the Kalazaron are taking our women and military ships.”
“Privately funded?”
“Yes, by the Teren family. As you know, Jill Teren was my mentor and she had set aside a fund for each of us girls that she mentored when we were young. Through investments, those funds grew, and I now have access to them. Jill Teren has offered to pay for half of the mission. So, I have the funds, but not the necessities or permission.”
“I will run it through council, but they will not let a research mission with an ambassador on board go without a task force and a heavily armed ship.”
“What?! No! I’m not going to war. I simply want to collect data,” I said, my brown eyes wide.
“Yes. You want to go on a ship to areas where ships have disappeared. Don’t be idiotic. It’s obvious that you will need protection. It is that way or no way. Now you are dismissed and I will let you know if the mission is granted in a month.”
I huffed as I walked out of the room. My heels clacked down the hallway of the United Planets Association building. I was on fire. How dare they turn my mission into a military one!
I did not want to be heavily armed. It was being heavily armed that made a ship a target for the Kalazaron. I assumed they had the technology to know what was on a ship, an ability to detect weapons on the inside. This is what allowed them to capture only specific ships. I did not want to be on a ship that got their attention. If it did, we would have no choice but to have to fight back, or be captured and lost like all the rest.
That would be ironic. I would never let that happen. Everyone took me for granted because of the way I looked, but I was tougher than they thought.
I had spent my whole life since I was a child thinking of the Kalazaron as a race of evil, alien, male warriors that snatched Dr. Jade Roberts from her research ship. I was on a mission for answers; I would let nothing get in my way. But the rest of the association did not take my mission seriously. I was only put in front of the media and I gave talks to the public. It was more like I was used to portray a pretty face for the United Planets Association instead of doing real work. They liked my petite, five-foot frame, long, brown locks, and full hips. They just wanted a neat, little package wrapped up in the perfect business suit, like I was the United Planets Association Barbie. That’s what I was to them and I was tired of it.
This was when I took matters into my own hands and set about figuring out how to sponsor my own mission. Even if I had to quit and do it on my own with my own research vessel, I would. I had worked my whole life for this, and it was now or never.
After waiting for a month and being incredibly annoying to the Vice President, I was finally called into his office.
“Vice President Thompson will see you now, Ambassador Jones,” his secretary said to me as I sat tapping my foot nervously in his waiting room.
“Thank you.” I stood up and walked into his massive office.
“Ambassador Jones, good to see you again. On the matter of your data collection mission that you have been persistent about, I am happy to report that it has been granted permission with regulations.”
“What regulations?” I asked, knowing there was always catch.
“First, it will be privately funded as you had stated with your funds and Miss Teren’s. We will decide which ship you will be using and which task force will accompany you. You will have long-range, automatic communications that will send us your coordinates every five minutes. This is just in case your ship is captured or suffers some other emergency, we will have an idea of your last position,” he stated.
“I understand. And when can I launch?” I asked, expecting it to be a year or two later.
“In five months.”
“Five months! That’s practically tomorrow.”
“Yes, you have five months to do deep space training and learn the ins and outs of the ship, and to get your funds in order.”
“Can I not petition to extend it to a year from now? Five months is so fast!” I shouted unable to grasp that they would give so little time for preparation.
“No, the date of launch is firm and is the only open window. If you do not take that launch date, then the next available one will be in three years.”
“Crap!” I paced the room, biting my nails. I had a big decision to make, but I already knew what it was. Still, it would be so damn stressful.
“Do you need time to think about it? Though time is ticking away, and if you take a week or a month to thi
nk on it, then that is valuable time wasted,” VP Thompson said.
“I’ll take the launch date. Let’s get started,” I said firmly and anxiously.
Two weeks later I was deep in training when I was introduced to the task force captain and the ship I would be taking. It was all very suspicious and I knew that something was going on.
“Ambassador Jones! Come take a minute,” Vice President Thompson said as he waved at me from across the gymnasium. I was in a fitted, black space suit doing ladder climbs in preparation for climbing on the narrow ladders of a ship.