The call ends with a crackle of dead air. Angry, I rip my comm off and throw the tech against the ground. We don’t need it anyway, not when we’re locked onto their signal.
“Contact the authorities!” I order, turning to our dams. “Tell them to stop all air traffic in this sector. The Viktoids are either landing a shuttle here somewhere or Sa’rin is taking a shuttle to them, but we cannot let them get Polly off this planet!”
“We’re on it, now go!” they say in unison, running back towards the house.
“I’ll run back to the ship and see if I can pick up anything on the scanners,” Ha’dir shouts, following on their heels.
A skimmer veers into the alley, speeding towards us and grinding to a stop. The doors pop open. “Get in!” Kuma yells.
No one hesitates and we all jump aboard, then strap in.
“Where to?” he asks sharply.
“Hold on,” Duresh replies, linking his tech up with the skimmer’s navigational unit.
“Go!” I shout. As the words leave my mouth, all I can do is hope that we aren’t too late.
Chapter 20
Va’naar
Kuma steers the transport at breakneck speed, careening through traffic like a damn maniac. If he doesn’t slow the hell down we might hit someone, and then we won’t make it to Polly in time. I wish Duresh was driving instead. At least he has the skill and finesse to maneuver in situations like this.
Suddenly, the skimmer’s proximity scanner blares loudly, alerting us that we’re on course for a collision. I reach for the dashboard to turn it off, but it’s been a while since I’ve been in one of these, but I can’t find it.
“Watch out!” Messa howls, pointing her finger at a vehicle heading straight towards us. Duresh tightly grips her hand.
“Hold on!” Kuma shouts, jerking us hard to the left to avoid the collision, but he barely manages to.
“This vehicle is just not made for this!” I warn him, my claws digging painfully into the armrest.
He snorts his acknowledgement, then tries to gain some height to avoid the other traffic. Skimmers don’t typically get a lot of height, but Kuma pushes this one to its limits, even hopping over other transports, which shocks us all.
Another alarm blares, which painfully bleeds into the original one. I flatten my ears against my head to help drown out the sound because I can’t find the switch to turn the blasted thing off. It’s making it hard to focus on anything.
“What’s taking so long?” Ca’lek growls from the backseat.
“I’m trying!” I snarl back, but it’s no use. Another alarm goes off as the skimmer veers wildly to the right. “A little warning next time!” I snap at Kuma as my shoulder bashes against the door.
“Fuck this,” Ca’lek snarls. Removing his belt, his crazy ass pushes his way into the front.
“What the hell are you doing? Sit down before you hurt yourself. Kuma can’t drive for shit!” I yell at him over the alarm, truly worried.
In one quick motion, he digs his claws on the right side of the console, removes the plating and rips out the damn wiring, then falls back into his seat. The alarm dies out in a final, sickly squawk.
“That wasn’t hard now was it!” he gripes. “I thought my damn ears were going to bleed.”
“HERE!” I shout.
Kuma pulls the brakes hard, but we’re going so fast that we end up passing Polly’s signal, which stopped in the far end of an old, abandoned warehouse district.
The back door pops open and Ca’lek foolishly jumps out. I grumble, undoing my belt to follow him before he gets himself killed.
“You know where to find us!” I shout over the wind to the others before I jump out as well.
I crash to the ground, then roll several times before I finally stop. Bruises start to form, but I don’t care. Ca’lek’s firm grip wraps around my arm, and yanks me up. Rolling my shoulders, Ca’lek whacks me upside the back of my head.
“I thought I taught you how to land better than that,” he says darkly, pulling me in the direction of Polly’s signal.
I grunt. He’s right but I’ll be damned if I was going to let my primary take on our enemies alone. This is my fight too.
“Quick, let’s go get those bastards!” Ca’lek orders.
Without a second to catch our breaths, we both race the few hundreds steps towards where Polly’s signal stopped moving.
We skid down an alleyway and emerge into a cluttered courtyard formed by three warehouses. Derelict equipment sits moldering in the overgrown shadows of the unkempt property. Pulling out my now cracked datapad, I check Polly’s signal again, then smack the finicky device a few times.
Is it broken?
“Where is she?” Ca’lek growls, his eyes filling with panic.
“I…it says she’s right here,” I say, choking up on my words, unable to respond further. My heart fills with dread. Her signal led us to right here, right in front of us, but the entire area is empty. There’s not a single soul to be found.
Ca’lek rips the device out of my hand and checks it himself, then growls loudly. Meanwhile the skimmer pulls in behind us, its doors slamming as everyone climbs out.
“What happened?” Kuma asks, rushing over and skids to a halt.
“Are we too late?” Messa asks worriedly, gripping onto Duresh.
It’s very clear that our entire crew loves Polly in their own little way.
“I don’t know,” Calek replies darkly, his eyes holding the very same torture clutching my heart.
“But the signal says she’s right here,” Duresh replies with a helpless gesture. He taps his datapad just as I had. “Maybe we can ping it?
“No. We’re wasting time. Spread out. She has to be here, otherwise someone from the house would have alerted us that someone has made it off planet,” Ca’lek replies angrily, however, I can see his misplaced anger for what it is.
Everyone spreads out, desperately searching the deserted area for any clues to Polly’s whereabouts, except for Duresh, who ignores Ca’lek and tries to ping Polly’s kiritas anyway.
Unfortunately for us, the stone pavement is sprinkled with dust and debris which has been disturbed by too many animals. It leaves us without a single trace to follow. I growl and grit my teeth.
Out from the corner of my eye Ca’lek angrily kicks a nearby rock then pauses, taking a sharp inhale. Slowly kneeling down on the ground, he picks something up in a scrub of grass growing from a crack in the pavement. A moment later something pings and my heart lurches in my chest.
No...it can’t be.
I head towards Ca’lek as hesitation lines each step I take. If that’s what I think it is, I’ll die.
He turns to face me. I’ve never seen him look so defeated before.
“No,” I shake my head in disbelief.
His dead eyes penetrate me further.
“No.” I tell him again, refusing to believe what he’s going to say.
He slowly raises his hand, opens his palm. I fall to my knees.
There it is. My mate’s kiritas. Clearly snapped from her beautiful neck, strands of her platinum hair are caught between the broken links.
Fisting it in his hand once again, Ca’lek snarls like a savage beast, who is one step away from losing control.
Our crew wisely stay silent, just as hurt as we are.
I close my eyes, ignoring everything around me while I try to concentrate on my mate’s scent. I detect it, but barely. It’s drowned out by the dust irritating my nose and every other assaulting scent that doesn’t smell like her.
How is this possible?
This is all my fault, I tell myself, my claws digging painfully into my skin. I should have stayed with her. Should have never let her out of my damn sight for a single second!
This is our ceremonial mating day. It was supposed to be the happiest day of our life. Instead, my mate is now missing, possibly even dead because of Sa’rin. Had I went with her and made sure she was alright when she was having cramps, this never woul
d have happened. I would never have allowed for it to happen.
For the first time since I was a pup, tears escape my eyes and my chest fills with morbid pain. She’s gone. She’s gone and I don’t know how to find her.
“Where is she?” Ca’lek mutters, pulling me out of my own thoughts, his tone dark and feral. He sounds more menacing than he had when he’d been snarling threats at Sa’rin.
Then something in him breaks and I break with him.
“WHERE IS SHE YOU VREN CURSED BITCH!?” he roars, throwing his head back and howling in anger.
I close the distance between us and grasp his shoulder. He pushes back, but I hold my ground. We need to face this uncertainty together.
He howls in pain and so do I while I grip the back of his head, pulling his face towards mine, touching our foreheads together. His eyes bore deeply into mine.
“She’s gone,” I tell him.
“No,” he whines, refusing the truth.
“We’ll get her back,” I promise, barely holding myself together as it is. “Wherever Polly is, or whatever has been done, we’re going to find her and bring her home. There’s no other alternative. We will find them.”
His hand buries painfully in my mane and he grabs me back.
Between our whines, I pick up a soft whimper of sound: it’s distant and feminine. Jerking away from Ca’lek, my ears twitch, trying to locate the muffled cries.
“What is it?” His eyes grow wide as he searches around.
“Ca’lek! Va’naar!” Polly’s faint voice echoes from inside the dark warehouse to our left.
How the hell did we miss that? How the hell did I miss that? Why can I hear her, but not scent her? She calls out again, but her voice cuts off in a cry of pain. Snarling, Ca’lek and I race headlong towards the building, ignoring our crewmates’ shouts of warning behind us.
We only make it about halfway across the clearing when the ground before us blows up in our faces.
BOOOOOOOOM!
The force of the pulsar blast throws us backward in the air by several feet. I wince as my body thuds and smashes into the ground. Ca’lek’s head makes a sickly crack against the pavement. Blood trickles down from the side of his face. Shaking, he rushes to his feet, determined to not let anything stop him.
I do the same. We thought we’d lost Polly once, but I’m not about to let it happen again.
“Are you deaf or just fuckin’ crazy?” Kumas asks, rushing up beside me. He pulls a blaster from his waistband and returns fire, forcing our attacker to duck behind a broken divider in front of the warehouse.
Duresh and Messa provide additional cover while Kuma reloads, giving Ca’lek and I just enough time to recover from the blast and get our bearings straight again. The male returns fire on us. We all dive for the only cover available behind an empty cargo crate about ten feet away.
I squeeze my eyes shut and steady my breath. We’re so damn unprepared. “They planned this,” I whisper.
“What?” Kuma asks, sparing me a quick glance.
“They planned this,” I repeat. “This wasn’t just a spur of the moment decision. They knew we wouldn’t have any weapons on us because of the mating ceremony. They knew our guards would be down because we’d be surrounded by family.”
“And they knew we’d be angry enough to come after Polly without thinking to arm ourselves,” Ca’lek adds, then curses, bashing his fist against the dusty pavement as if that would solve all our problems.
“What? You’re telling me all your gear is at the house?” Kuma frowns at us.
I can’t say I blame him. Thank Vren he’s such a distrusting soul and carries whatever weapons he deems necessary, no matter what the situation is. We might have done the same, but our parents would not have been happy if we paraded around strapped in weapons and gear, though we would never allow them to know or feel the weight of that knowledge. This isn’t their fault.
“What’s done is done. What do you have to spare?” Ca’lek asks with an open hand.
Kuma grumbles as he pulls out one of his spare laser pistols and hands it to him, then he turns my way and gives me a sharp knife. “Sorry, it’s all I have left. Didn’t figure on needing an armory for a mating.”
I shrug. One blade is better than no blade. At least with this I can gut the bastard that took Polly.
“How much ammo do we have? The minute one of us pops out, they’ll blast our heads off,” Ca’lek says.
“None! Messa and I didn’t think we’d need weapons today either,” Duresh replies, his face grim.
“So just my two laser pistols and a knife,” Kuma huffs, shaking his head.
“We’ve faced worse odds before,” Ca’lek says in disgust.
He’s trying to bolster us like any leader would, but we all know how screwed we are if we can’t take that asshole down quickly.
“We need to figure out a way through the warehouse without getting blown up. How do we know they didn’t plant any more explosives?” I ask.
“I don’t know how accurate this will be with all the interference from the last blast, but it’s the best we got,” Messa says, pulling out a device and scanning the area. Dursh quietly says something to her and they share a quick look, before Messa nods.
“There’s two more between us and them. They’re off to the sides, but they seem to have proximity sensors. So whatever you do, you’ll have to go down the middle. It seems they placed the second and third bombs under the assumption that you would think the next one would still be front and center somewhere.”
“This is shit! Vren-damned fucking shit,” Ca’lek mutters beneath his breath.
I spare a quick peek over the corner to see what Sa’rin’s accomplice is up to. It’s painfully clear that his job is to keep us busy and without a plan of our own, and he’s succeeding. I hear the whirring whine of his weapon just as his shot blows past me, barely missing my face. Ca’lek returns fire, wildly spraying a handful of shots across the warehouse.
“I think there’s only one shooter. I didn’t see anyone else,” I state. Gripping the blade tightly in my hand, I turn to face Ca’lek. “What now?”
It’s been several minutes since the last round of weapon fire, but I don’t think my hearing is quite back yet either. A growl forms in my throat. This is so much worse than seeing Polly in the arms of that slaver on Rissa V. There’s so much more at stake here.
Ca’lek snarls, firing around the edge of the crate. I reach out and smack him, earning an angry glower from him. “We need a plan, stop acting like a damn animal. Be the primary Polly and I need you to be!” I shout angrily.
He’s too worked up for me to reach him calmly. If I have to knock some sense into my primary, so be it.
He opens his mouth to speak, but instead he nods and his eyes burn brighter with determination made out of the hottest fire this universe has ever seen.
My comm dings. It’s the emergency signal. “What is it?” I bark.
“We’ve got trouble!” Ha’dir shouts over the line. “The Viktoids launched an extraction ship. I wasn’t able to get any more information. The authorities have locked down the skyport and grounded everything. Even Eldest Nea’lah says her hands are tied. I can’t get out of here to help you guys. I’m sorry.”
Ca’lek snatches the comm from me. “Don’t worry about it. Let them know we’re in an old abandoned warehouse on the west end of the old cargo district. That’s where the Viktoids are heading.”
“Tracking your signals now. I’ll have them enroute asap,” Ha’dir replies solemnly.
Duresh snarls. “The extraction ship is a fast surface-to-air ultralight vessel, capable of making a hyper jump from the stratosphere.”
“We can’t let Polly get on that ship! It’ll be virtually impossible to track. I don’t have any of my equipment and even if I did, there’s no guarantee I could tag it with a transmitter in time,” Messa says, the panic evident in her tone.
“It’s now or never then,” I growl. The chances of us all mak
ing it to the warehouse without taking damage is low, but I don’t care. We need to retrieve our mate and pups at any cost.
Ca’lek utters a series of guttural snarls while the reels practically turn in his eyes.
“Duresh! You and Messa circle around from outside, see if you can locate Polly and Sa’rin,” Ca’lek barks, pointing back towards the entry we’d come in through. “We’ll take out this piece of trash and join you. Kuma, Va’naar, cover me!” Ca’lek hands me the blaster and darts out into the open without warning.
∞∞∞
Ca’lek
There is no other choice, I tell myself as I dive out of cover and race towards the warehouse. Kuma and Va’naar fire rapidly from behind me to keep the other shooter pinned behind his wall. Their aggressive counter attack stops him from blasting my face off, but that isn’t what I fear. I could care less about how I look after this. I care more about rescuing my mate and pups from Sa’rin and the Viktoid bastard who came all this way to steal her back. It only proves how valuable they believe Polly is to be and it sickens me.
Keeping my laser pistol aimed ahead, I dodge random shots from the blast cannon, firing back only when I have a clear shot. The other male is too afraid to risk getting hit, so his shots fly wildly past me. Heavy footsteps from behind tell me that my bonded and crew mate are hot on my heels. With this knowledge, I leap over the ruined wall and surprise my enemy.
My feet land heavily on the ground, disturbing the sand and dust. My eyes are trained on my attacker, and I notice what an ugly and scarred piece of shit he is. Sa’rin’s accomplice curses when he realizes he’s not alone anymore and more company is on the way.
“You look like you’ve lost one too many battles,” I taunt.
“I’m not losing this one!” the enemy snarls, dropping his hands from the blast cannon and quickly swings a pulse rifle up into his hands.
I crouch swiftly, then push my feet against the ground and lunge for him. He fumbles with his weapon, but I knock it upright as he fires a shot at the last second. It misses me entirely, blasting a hole in the ceiling. Chunks of rock and steel fall down in a cloud of smoke. I jump to the side, avoiding the debris. He lets out an angry roar and tries to turn the rifle on me again. Using the opening, I bash my fist against his jaw. Hard.
The Alien Pirates' Treasure (Star Pirates Book 1) Page 26