Star Warrior's Mate: A Scifi Alien Romance (Star Warrior Book 2)

by C. F. Harris

  “Also, you were sort of right cap,” he said.

  I cocked an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

  Kehn looked down and blushed. It was easy enough to see even as we floated through the darkness over the Livisk city. There was plenty of light coming from the buildings surrounding us and the other cars whisking through the air around us.

  “I was too lax with the crew. I was upset that I’d been assigned to a backwater so close to the action. I guess we all deal with a posting like that in our own way, and my way was to say ‘fuck command’ and do as little as possible. I realize it was partly my fault that all of this happened.”

  I reached out and slapped Kehn on the shoulder. “Well then. I guess that means you’ll make sure this sort of thing doesn’t happen again, right?”

  He looked up and his eyes burned with an intensity that surprised me. “I know we won’t make that mistake again, and I’d also like to say that it’s an honor to serve with you. I know what you did before your career was derailed. That was a fucking crime, but I wasn’t going to say anything while you were riding my ass.”

  I blushed. Okay. So maybe I wasn’t after any approval from Jorav, but getting that sort of vote of confidence from Kehn who spent most of his time acting like he hated me did mean something. Damn.

  “Well we’re going to do our best to make sure they all pay for what they did to us,” I said. “How’s that sound?”

  Kehn grinned. “Sounds wonderful captain.”

  “If I might interrupt. We’ll be descending to the mine processing facility in a moment. You should prepare yourself.”

  Kehn took in a deep breath. Let it out all at once. His cheeks puffed out in a gesture I’d come to recognize as resigned worry. It was something I saw all too often when he knew I was about to lay into him on the ship for some fault from one of the crew.

  In these different circumstances, though, it was almost endearing. Almost. It still brought up too many bad memories of the sort of behavior that got us in this predicament in the first place.

  “I suppose this is it then,” he said. “Back to the mines. Literally.”

  “I’ll do my best to get you out of there as soon as possible,” I said. “All of you. I’m not going to leave you behind.”

  Kehn held a hand out again. This time I didn’t hesitate before grasping it. He had a strong grip. Confident. Not at all the grip of a slave who was resigned to his fate. I suppose if that was all I gave him, if all my plans came crashing down around us, then that was worth it.

  I didn’t plan on letting my plans come crashing down around me though. There was too much work to do, and freeing my former crew was only one thing on the list.

  Our craft set down on the outskirts of an area of the city that didn’t look nearly as hospitable or shiny as the rest. As we came in for a landing I could see a massive pit that scarred the planet. Not that it was any more ugly than the rest of this planet.

  The whole place was ugly considering it was built with Livisk sensibilities and crawling with Livisk who wanted to kill me.

  “Surely it isn’t as bad as all that,” Jorav grunted.

  “You’d be surprised. I’d give almost anything to see a blue sky with white fluffy clouds floating by right about now,” I replied.

  “Sounds disgusting,” Jorav said.

  “What are they mining down in there anyways?” I asked.

  “It’s reclamation work,” Jorav said.

  “Reclamation work?”

  “They have us down there hunting out any salvageable materials from the cities that existed on this spot before the current capital city was built. Sort of like the situation in New New York back home,” Kehn said. “Turns out there’s a lot of scrap and old technology left over even when a city has been destroyed a couple of times.”

  “Indeed,” Jorav said. “Not mining in the traditional sense. All such mines were long since exhausted on our planet and moved off world.”

  “Interesting,” I said. “So the whole city is built on the ruins of older cities that were destroyed?”

  “Indeed,” Jorav said, as though he was explaining the simplest fact in the world to a child who was having trouble understanding. “I thought everyone knew about that.”

  I reached up and ran a hand along Jorav’s cheek. Enjoyed the feel of his hot blue skin.

  “Jorav, you could fill a book with everything I don’t know about you blue sparklies, but that’s one more interesting fact to keep in mind.”

  The door to the craft opened and a Livisk stepped forward. When he saw Jorav he snapped a smart Livisk salute, both arms crossed over his chest in an X pattern, and bowed low.

  “My General,” he said as his body came parallel to the ground. The guy had to have really fucking impressive core strength to pull that off without collapsing. I would’ve had trouble with it.

  “This one is to be taken back to his quarters with no questions asked,” Jorav said, pointing to Kehn.

  The soldier looked up and there was a moment’s hesitation. He looked from Commander Kehn to me, a question plain on his face.

  “Only the one human, my General? We could make the other disappear as well if that’s your desire.”

  Jorav put a hand to his forehead. He rubbed at his temples for a moment and I could feel his temper threatening to flare, but he got it under control.

  “I don’t want the human to disappear. I simply want him to return to his quarters, and I want you to make sure he is unmolested by the authorities here. Is that understood?”

  “Understood, General. My will to serve yours,” the soldier said. He grabbed Kehn who suddenly didn’t look so sure about this plan. I couldn’t fault him for that. It sounded very much like that soldier thought he was supposed to kill Kehn and cover it up. Hopefully he got it loud and clear that it wasn’t part of the plan.

  Still, I was glad I wasn’t the one going back to the mines. Or the reclamation facility. Whatever the hell it was.

  The craft lifted into the air and carried us off into the night. I watched for a moment to make sure that Kehn wasn’t harmed the moment we lifted off, but he was carried into a structure and then that was that. I sighed and turned to face the city. I looked at the imperial palace and then to Jorav’s tower.

  It was odd how much that place was starting to feel like home.

  “I am proud of you,” Jorav said, approval washing through the bond. “You have acquitted yourself admirably both in combat and with your associate there.”

  I shook my head. “You can be proud of me when we’ve gotten through all of this and we’re still alive.”

  Still, it felt good to know he approved of what I was doing. For once I didn’t even care about the fact that I didn’t need his approval. Instead I basked in the warm feeling coming through the bond and allowed myself one moment of enjoyment in the otherwise fucked up shit show my life had become.

  16: Battle Mate

  Jorav:

  It was a familiar view. Something that I’d enjoyed ever since I first took over this tower. I could still remember the glory of playing the real estate market, which had involved beheading the silly old noble who thought he could stand before the greatest general this species had known in a generation.

  Well he’d learned the folly quickly when we invaded this place. I wasn’t quite so proud of my behavior then, back in my younger days when my blood ran hotter than it did now, but I couldn’t deny that the view was almost worth it.

  Or it had been worth it, back when I accepted everything the emperor did uncritically. Now it was simply a reminder of everything that was wrong with this world. With our people. With me.

  Explosions went off around the palace. Unfortunately they weren’t the explosion of some invading force trying to take the place. It’s said that when the emperor was restored two generations past the shields around the palace held for the space of an entire cycle around the sun while the nobility refuse to give up their place of power, but ultimately they’d bowed to the
pressure as they lost every bit of the city except for the palace

  “Any idea what’s going on over there?” Talia asked.

  She looked over to me, though she didn’t have to turn far. She was sitting in my lap causing quite an uncomfortable situation to develop between my legs. Not that I was complaining. I enjoyed the closeness of having her small fragile body against mine. It was always such an odd counterpoint to Livisk women I’d been with in my life. Yet she always felt so good pressing against me as well.

  And that was nothing compared to the mental closeness we enjoyed with one another. I hadn’t realized the damage it was doing to our budding relationship to try and keep her walled off. It seemed that she’d reached the same conclusion as we mostly had a free exchange over our link.

  Yeah, we had some things to work out, but ultimately it had worked out. I suppose that was the important thing.

  “I have no idea,” I said. “They could be celebrating something as simple as the emperor finding his favorite pair of socks this morning. It really doesn’t take much for him to celebrate and feast.”

  Talia shook her head. “That doesn’t exactly seem like the makings of a great leader.”

  “I agree. Otherwise I wouldn’t be willing to go along with this crazy plan you’ve developed,” I replied. “Be glad I agree. Otherwise you might be down in the reclamation mine with your friend right now.”

  Talia reached out and squeezed my nose. I went cross-eyed watching her hand. What was she up to? She grinned and leaned in to kiss me.

  “I think we both know you never would’ve dreamed of doing something like that, sparkly,” she replied.

  I sighed. “You’re right. I probably wouldn’t have, but it doesn’t mean you should rest assured that I’d never consider it.”

  This time Talia leaned down and bit at my nose, though her strange flat teeth didn’t actually make contact. Though that did get me to thinking about other times when she’d put those strange flat omnivore teeth to good use…

  Best not to think about that now. We’d had plenty of that recently. Now was a time to sit back, relax, and enjoy my time with my battle mate.

  “Battle mate,” Talia said. “You keep thinking that. What does it mean?”

  I blinked. “I’d think that would be obvious. It means that you are my mate and my trusted partner in battle. I would put my life in your hands and never worry that I was making a mistake.”

  There was a pause. A moment of silence where I could feel thoughts moving through her mind so rapidly that I had difficulty focusing on any one. She seemed almost conflicted for a moment, and when she spoke again her voice was quiet.

  “Is that why you did what you did when I was held captive?”

  “What do you mean, Talia?”

  “You looked at me with the assassin and then you went to help Kehn instead,” she said.

  I shrugged. “Of course. I knew you could handle the assassin and I knew you wouldn’t be able to reach your second in command in time to save him. It seemed best to leave you to handle a situation I knew you could take care of while I took care of the one you couldn’t handle.”

  Talia leaned in and kissed me again. “I’d say you made the right choice there.”

  “Of course I did. I know I can trust you with anything. That’s what it means to be my battle mate,” I said.

  She raised an eyebrow. “So you trusted me to take on a fully armed Livisk trained assassin who was bigger and stronger than me?”

  I shook my head and chuckled. She sounded slightly sarcastic. I was getting better at picking up on that, though the full breadth of human emotions was still slightly difficult to understand without the mental link to act as a sort of shortcut.

  “Please. I’ve gone up against you myself. I knew that any Livisk who threatened you was in deep trouble. It was simply up to the assassin to find out the hard way that he’d screwed up.”

  Talia looked out over the city again. This time I could sense her thoughts more clearly. She was thinking about the reclamation mine. About cities on top of cities. And then on top of all of that there was a clear vision of a point of light coming down and hitting the imperial palace. A thought that included an image of everything in the city being eradicated in one massive outpouring of energy.

  The thought was tinged with sadness. There were innocent Livisk in the city as well as uncounted millions of humans who’d committed no crime other than being on the wrong world at the wrong time when a Livisk invasion force came knocking. They would all be taken out in such a blast.

  Yet underneath it all I could sense something else. A feeling that such a use of force would be justified. That sometimes you had to destroy good healthy tissue to get rid of the cancer growing around it. I wasn’t sure if I agreed with her completely with the analogy, but I was starting to agree with her more and more.

  “The emperor is a cancer at the center of our society,” I said.

  “Well it’s a good thing we have this whole battle mate thing going, because we’re going to need it if we’re really going to try and take that asshole down.”

  “Agreed.”

  Talia turned back to me. I paused to reflect for a moment on just how beautiful she was. She was in one of the skintight outfits I’d purchased for her. She still insisted on wearing clothing that covered her entirely, much to my annoyance, but at least she was willing to wear something that allowed me to enjoy her form in its fullness. Her face was illuminated in flashes by the display happening over the palace in the distance.

  “You know it’s weird. Humans don’t know anything about this whole battle link thing you have going,” she said.

  “I should think not,” I replied. “We’ve gone to great pains to keep any notion of it from your people. It’s one of the things that gives us a small edge in what’s seeming more and more like an unwinnable war against your species.”

  “You started it,” Talia said with a shrug, as though that justified humanity wiping entire Livisk systems off the face of the galaxy. Then again considering how we’d acted in the opening stages of the war it was entirely possible she did think it was justified. I was starting to wonder myself.

  “None of that matters now,” I said. I pulled her closer, though it was difficult considering how close she was. I settled for tightening my grip around her tiny waist. “My loyalty is to you and only to you now, Talia.”

  Talia leaned down and kissed me. This time it was a more insistent kiss. A kiss that lingered. A kiss that promised things. The sort of thing that happened in freefall over the city when I was overtaken with the fury of emotions moving between our minds after we were first bonded. The sort of thing that happened in that alley when I was overtaken by seeing her in true battle.

  I pulled away. She was breathing heavily as though she’d just finished a sparring match. She practically purred as she pressed against me and started grinding her hips in a motion that I’d come to enjoy quite a bit.

  Thank the warrior spirits of ancestors past that the convergent evolution inexplicably resulted in humans and Livisk having the ability to mate!

  “You know my loyalty is only to you as well,” Talia said. “Not to humanity. Not to the Combined Fleet. Not to the Livisk. You and only you, and maybe me and my crew just a little on top of that.”

  “I am glad to hear that,” I said.

  “Of course if that means we also do something good for both our species while we’re out there saving each other then that’s all the better.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Talia smiled and for a wonder I realized that there was a part of her mind she was shielding from me. Which was odd considering I was well aware of her plans to kill the emperor if she got the opportunity. But I trusted her, and I meant it when I said I trusted her. If she felt the need to hide some of her thoughts from me then I would trust that she had a good reason for doing so.

  “Don’t you worry,” she said. She turned and looked back out over the city once more.
Off to the palace where they were still celebrating something, though I had no idea what it would be. I wasn’t joking with Talia when I said that there had been celebrations because the emperor found his favorite pair of socks in the morning.

  Of course that wasn’t how the celebration was presented to the public. They were simply told the emperor had won a great victory that morning. I wondered what they would think if they knew that half of the “conquests” the emperor celebrated were actually him finding willing whores to share his bed for the night.

  No, he did have to go. If Talia had a plan for taking care of that then I was willing to go along with her. And if I died while carrying out her plan then at least I could know I died fighting for what was right. I died fighting alongside my battle mate.

  “Glad you agree with me on that score,” Talia said. “Because the emperor needs to watch out. He just made a very dangerous enemy, and we’re coming for him.”

  17: A Proposal

  Talia:

  I felt something odd from Jorav. I was masking some of my specific plans for taking out the emperor, but suddenly he was masking something as well. I felt fear moving through me. What if he decided that he didn’t want to go after the emperor after all? What if he’d decided that he’d rather turn me in than rock the boat, politically speaking, here on his home world?

  All of that ran through my mind in an instant and I pushed those thoughts away. I hadn’t gone through hell and then some with Jorav over the past month just to go right back to not trusting him.

  I did trust him. I wouldn’t worry about him betraying me because he wouldn’t. But he was still masking something, and I was curious what that was.

  “Out with it,” I said.

  Jorav looked up at me with an expression that I’d come to recognize as his attempt to seem innocent. Not that he did a very good job of it. Even when he was trying to shield some of his thoughts from me his face was like reading an open book. Sure it took me awhile to get used to some of the intricacies of Livisk emotions, but it was getting easier and easier.