by Terra Wolf
Quickly he heard muffled voices through the door. “Did anyone see that there is a Trekker out there? We need to move on, gentlemen. Someone is onto us. We can't discuss our business dealings here.”
“Business dealings? Son, we all know that that's not what's really going on here.”
Another voice spoke up, this one deeper than the first two. “I'm in business. All that I do is provide old space station parts. What you do with them is totally up to you, that's not my concern. I'm only here for the Galactic coin.”
The first voice began again. “It doesn't matter what you're here for. The deal is off. If you know what's good for you, you'll scatter. I'm leaving this godforsaken planet tonight. I suggest the lot of you do the same.”
There was mumbling in agreement but Raelor waited for further confirmation.
“Where shall we set our next meeting at?”
Raelor waited for what felt like minutes, clearly the original man was a broker of sorts and he was waiting to see if Raelor barged in and interrupted their conversation. Raelor was smarter than that, he could be patient.
“I'll be in Gordu in about four Earth days. If you're there then I’ll know that you're still fighting for the cause. If you're not, then I wouldn't want to see who you have to answer to. Good night gentlemen.”
Gordu, a small outer rim planet known for illegal trade. It was the perfect cover for criminal acts, hiding in plain sight. Raelor couldn’t do anything to these men tonight, he needed to see what they were up to, what would happen on Gordu. He would alert the Titan, but all these men had to be let go for the evening. Someone would follow them. Then they would be caught red handed.
Just as Raelor was about to back away from the door Marci approached him. “Where did you go? I told you I would meet you at the dessert table!”
Raelor put his finger to his lips a moment too late. He heard the footsteps on the other side of the door stop abruptly. Before he could react a blaster shot through the door and narrowly missed Marci.
“Get down!” he shouted, concerned for her life.
Raelor spun around and began shooting directly into the door. He heard the screams and shouts from behind him as people scattered and ran for their lives. This was a party after all, not a bloodbath. He looked down at Marci as she held her hands over her head trembling on the cold marble floor. He had to protect her, he had to keep her safe. He kicked open the doors and in front of him unsurprisingly was the broker, the original man that he had been watching. He had taken a blaster to the chest. The other group of men were huddled in the back corner with their hands up, while others remained frozen with fear.
“I'm a member of the Galactic Alliance! What you're doing here is a crime against humanity. Put your hands up!”
Raelor was relieved to hear heavy boots behind him and he turned around to see local Galactic enforcement with the blasters pointed in both his direction and the direction of his assailants. Several of the men began pulling blasters out of their jackets and placing them on the floor in front of them. Raelor kicked one away from the body that was motionless on the floor in front of him.
“Arrest these men, and signal the Titan that my mission is complete. I have the intelligence they are looking for.”
“Who are you?” one man asked.
“A Trekker, that’s all you need to know.”
The local law enforcement didn’t question him further, they just nodded and took the orders. Their security would need looking at, but he didn’t have time to think about that right now. Raelor spun around and ran out to the hallway to find Marci with her face in her hands and her dress ripped. She was sitting on the floor with her knees up to her chest crying loudly.
“Are you all right? Are you hurt?”
She shook her head. “No! Just stupid. I was absolutely no help to you. I just don't want to be that girl. You were supposed to be my action and adventure guy, I didn’t want to be that girl for you!”
“That girl?”
“That girl you just always have to worry about because she's not as strong as you are. I am not the damsel in distress all right? The ice cream eating, wine drinking, hot mess in her adult life, sure. But I'm not the type that needs to be saved. And I feel terrible that you felt you needed to do that.”
Raelor just shook his head. This woman got more confusing by the minute, but it just made his feelings for her even deeper.
“I don't think of you as a hindrance. I wanted to protect you, it wasn't out of duty. It was because I care.”
“I care too,” she whined. “God, all of this is so ridiculous. I should have told you in the kitchen, or even in the closet. P.S. why do we have these important talks in weird places? Anyway I should have told you that I care about you too. I don’t hate my therapist anymore. Because she brought me you. She was right. I do need you.”
Raelor thought back to their brief moment in the coat closet, so this wasn't just all about lust for her. She had feelings like he did.
“What do we do now?” she asked him as her tears continued to stream down her face.
“I know where they’re meeting next. I have the intelligence that the Titan wanted. So now? I don't know. But we still have two weeks left to figure that out. That is, if you still want to try?”
Marci wiped her tear stained face as Raelor lifted her up and fixed her gown. She still looked beautiful even if the gown was ripped.
“Let’s get out of here,” Raelor said, in his best human impression.
She nodded, wiping her tears once more. “Where should we go?”
“Home. Ice cream and then home.”
She smiled weakly. “That sounds good.”
He wrapped his giant arm around her and tucked her in close to him. He could smell the sweet scent of her shampoo. Two weeks. Two weeks until he had to decide what to do with the rest of his life. Two weeks to fall in love with her.
Two Weeks Later
Marci
“Why am I so god damn nervous?” Marci said watching Raelor's back as he walked in front of her to the docking station.
He turned around and set down their bags. “Because they're my parents.”
She rolled her eyes. “But they're not just your parents, they own a freaking planet. I mean I knew you had said that your dad was a high commander, but I guess I just didn't get into my head that meant that you were pretty much royalty. And here I am just plain Marci, human extraordinaire.”
Raelor sighed and cupped his hands around her face. “You're extraordinary to me. That's all that matters.”
In the past two weeks Marci had found that Raelor shared her love of old classic movies and crappy Chinese food. They also drank enough wine for about thirty people in the past fourteen days. He was perfect. Now she was going to meet his parents, a trip across the galaxy in order to meet with could be her future mother and father-in-law. And Raelor had only started to tell her about them. His father was a warlord, and his mother was a philanthropist. What he failed to mention is that when his father decided to retire, Raelor would take over the throne. He would have a planet to run. And Marci would rarely if ever come back to earth. It had been the single point of contention in the relationship thus far. Was she ready to give it all up? Her overbearing mother? Her therapist slash only friend?
As she looked into his yellow eyes she realized she was. What was she really giving up anyway? A dead-end job? There wasn't much here for her anymore. She was using up a little vacation she had to take this trip. One week on Urdiv. Enough time to see if she really liked it there. Raelor had made it very clear that she couldn’t come on the Titan with him. So after this week they were embarking on a long-distance relationship. Since Raelor had gained the intelligence from the Gala and shot the broker, everything had been quiet on the human harvesting front. But that didn't mean the bad guys weren't still out there. So Raelor had to return to the Titan and continue to chase them down. They would talk through holograms and see each other as often as they could, but they were definitel
y going to be very long distance. However, meeting Raelor's family was a big step, she knew that meant that he was serious about her.
“What if they don't like me?”
Raelor raised an eyebrow at her. “Back to that again? It's going to be fine. Plus my father really doesn't like anyone less than me, so you're in good company.”
Great, her future father-in-law probably also hated his son. So much winning.
“That doesn't make me feel any better.”
“Sorry, but really it's going to be fine. My mother is an absolute dream, and my father is well… My father. Nothing is going to change him. It's just a week on the planet to see what you think. And then you'll be back here on Earth.”
“Yes but without you. And what fun is that?” She gotten so used to him living with her, being together twenty-four hours a day, and now they would be separated by hundreds of thousands of miles of deep space.
“As soon as this harvesting situation is resolved I’ll be back. There's things that I'm sure that I've missed being down here on Earth, I know that they’re close to finding them. And then we can be together.”
“But where?”
“I like it here on Earth. We could spend a few years here before I have to take over as high commander. Would you like that?”
Marci smiled, he was always thinking of her and her feelings. At the end of the day he was just big teddy bear with yellow eyes and bad guy fighting skills. “I really would. But I'm okay if we have to go to Urdiv too. So long as we’re together.” She sounded mushy, but she didn’t care. Clearly he had changed things in her. Alien boys were weird like that.
Marci heard the metal doors slide open behind her and she turned to see their pod a docked the gate. Raelor laid a sweet kiss on her lips and then released her grabbing their bags and walking confidently into the pod.
Marci took one last deep breath of the Earth's atmosphere and boarded the pod. Raelor was putting the luggage into a bin and he nodded to two seats next to one another. She sat down and buckled in, trembling slightly from nerves. She was going into space, with an alien that she was in love with. She wondered for a moment what Dr. Wilson would think about that. Probably something cocky. No Valentine’s Pizza for her.
“Are you afraid?”
She chewed on her lower lip but didn’t answer. She didn’t know how to.
“You don't need to be afraid as long as you’re with me. I’ll always protect you.”
He held out his giant hand and she slipped her petite one into it. He closed his fingers around hers and she felt a surge of warmth go through her veins. Raelor would always protect her, she knew it. Whether on earth or in deep space, as long as they were together everything would be okay.
Do you want to know more about the Trekkers?
Turn the page to read the first chapter of Nash!
Chapter 1
Nash
“Look alive, boys. You never know what's coming around the corner.” They were in another dump. Nash hated these missions. The commander was always putting them in these dangerous situations for stupid pieces of space junk. All these little things that he just didn't want the rebels to get their hands on, but they didn't even matter. It was busy work. And Nash didn't like to see the rest of his squad get shot over busywork.
“Hold your fire until we’re sure that it's not a friendly, right boss?” Aevar said over the handheld communicator.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Nash responded so the whole team could hear.
“Well, last time you blew that spaceship out of the sky, the commander wasn't too pleased.”
“It wasn't like anybody was on it, it was just a piece of space trash. Not even worth a human dime.”
“Doesn't matter to the commander what it's worth. If he says that we can’t shoot it, we can't shoot it.”
Aevar had a point, even if Nash didn’t like it. He rolled his eyes underneath his oxygen mask. They were on Aflana, a plains nation. All that was out here was thick sandy dust and not enough oxygen to breathe. Ever since they had mated with the humans, Nash’s kind needed oxygen to survive. He took a deep breath as he surveyed the landscape around him.
It was an uncomfortably dark warehouse, lots of corners for the bad guys to hide in. “Keep your eyes open, gentlemen. I don't want any surprises and cut the chatter.” Nash heard silence from the com but footsteps off to his left. None of his guys should've been over there. So either someone had seen something and broken out of rank, or they had found an enemy.
Aevar crossed in front of Nash focused on the target. He must've seen it as soon as Nash heard him. That poor swuya would be dead in seconds. Aevar never missed.
But instead of Aevar's blaster going off, Nash saw him fall back. Nash cocked his head at him. He had been wrong—maybe there wasn’t an enemy over there after all. Aevar shuffled over to him, his footsteps louder than the other person’s had been. He turned his com up so that he wouldn't have to speak above a whisper.
“You see something?” Nash asked him.
“I thought I did. But when I looked in my scope, nothing was there. I thought the commander said this place was abandoned.”
“That's what he always says.”
“No, that’s not what I mean. I was in the war room when they were going over the intel. He specifically said that we were just here on a mission to obtain those navigational maps. No friendlies, no baddies. It doesn’t make sense that someone would be here. This plains development has been abandoned for at least twenty human years.”
The other Trekkers noticed them convening and came over themselves. They also turned the volume up on their coms.
“Everything okay, boss?” Raelor asked. He was the newest on their team, and the biggest. He had a com on, but didn't need an oxygen mask, as his kind had never mated with humans before. They strictly bred with their own kind; they didn’t want to dilute the bloodline. Raelor's eyes were constantly shifting back and forth, always on alert. Sometimes Nash wondered if his senses were better than the rest of theirs—that made Raelor trustworthy even if people weren’t fond of the way he looked. Nobody wanted to be the smaller guy in the room.
“Intel said that this place is empty, but I don't believe it. Everybody needs to stay on guard. I don’t like the way this place feels.”
Aevar nodded. “Guns up, gentlemen. Shoot on sight.”
Aevar was Nash’s second-in-command, and Nash trusted him with his life. He was the only other person on the squad who could give instructions like that. The only other man they were supposed to listen to. Nash crept back over to the corner where the footsteps had emerged from only to see Aevar was right—it was empty. The scope of his blaster didn't even pick up any thermal indication that someone had been there recently. Just before Raelor went back on his line of patrol, he approached Nash.
“I've heard things about some of these plains people. About what's left of them.”
“What does that mean?”
Raelor was from the outer planets, and rumors swirled around those parts like uncaged animals. The further you got out there, the more things you heard. It didn't mean any of them were true, but on the other hand, sometimes Raelor’s intel was better than anything that their guys could get. He knew people. They would trust him with their secrets.
“They got some of the people out of here after the plague hit. That's why this place is deserted. But it's been deserted a long time, get what I mean?”
He meant that they may not have been the only ones looking for those navigational maps. God damn Pirates.
“Swuya. You really think there might be some out here?”
He nodded briefly. “Either that or what's left of them. I've heard that the plague leaves imprints. Some of these souls have been laid to rest, some might still wander here.”
Nash nodded to Raelor even though he didn't believe that part of the story. Raelor’s species was extremely spiritual, and while Nash respected it, he didn't believe half the mumbo-jumbo he spouted about
souls and ghosts. At least that was what the humans called them.
His father was a human and he didn't believe in ghosts, so neither did Nash. He only believed in memories—you remembered the dead and you respected them, but you didn’t think that they would come back.
Nash heard Aevar through the communicator. “Found the war room, let's get these maps and get the hell out of here, this place gives me the creeps.” Nash followed his patrol line using his scope, and for a precaution, they kept it on the whole time they moved. Raelor had his six, and while Nash thought he was a little crazy with all the soul talk, Nash was glad to have him back there. Aevar was right, something was off about this place.
Nash pushed the heavy metal door open and saw Aevar standing over some tables shuffling through papers. Raelor followed him in and then one of the new recruits stood at the door keeping an eye out for Pirates, or worse.
“Find anything yet?”
Aevar shook his head. “Absolutely nothing useful. This place is a disaster, not to mention the dust around here is literally inches thick. Freaking plains people. So damn dirty.”
Nash gave him a look, but through the mask he couldn't see it. Aevar liked to talk about other species like they were less than them, especially in front of Raelor. Sure Nash may have believed it, and some of them didn't live the civilized lifestyles that they did, but it was their life and their right. Aevar and Nash had no room to judge.