Alien Romance Box Set: Romantic Suspense: Alien Destiny: Scifi Alien Romance Adventure Romantic Suspence Trilogy (Complete Series Box Set Books 1-3)

by Ashley L. Hunt

  When I got back to David’s cabin, Jessie was sitting on the front porch enjoying her coffee. She seemed surprised to see me running back towards the cabin.

  “Is everything alright?” she asked.

  “Now it’s not. The Sarceastians have landed in a nearby valley and they are heading this way. Come on, we must tell David,” I said. We went inside to tell David. He opened his closet and began to hand each of us a laser cannon.

  “We mustn’t stay here. We must wait in the forest and try and ambush them. They will pick up on our presence with their life detectors and will likely be here at any moment.”

  We exited the got out of the cabin and took up positions behind the large trees. David hid on one side and Jessie and I hid on the other. We didn’t have to wait long before the Sarceastians came walking towards the cabin.

  “Are you still picking up on life forms?” one of them asked.

  “Yes sir. According to my readings they are very close.”

  “Let’s surround the cabin. That is more than likely where they are holed up,” the leader said.

  We waited until they were in firing range just in front of the cabin. David fired first, disintegrating the leader. The others turned towards the tree where David hid and soon the tree was engulfed in flames. David had to run and hide behind a rock. Jessie and I began to fire on the rest of them from the other side. We managed to hit four of them, but there was a fifth that managed to escape into the forest, firing back at us as he ran.

  “Quickly, after him! We can’t let any of them get away!” David shouted. The three of us ran through the forest. The Sarceastian was running for his life towards the east.

  Finally, we came to the boundary of the haunted valley of the Padureans.

  “We should stop here,” David said.

  “Are you sure? He’s getting away!” Jessie said.

  “Yes, just watch,” he said. We were up on a hill overlooking the haunted valley. We could see the Sarceastian off in the distance running for his life. Then, all of a sudden, the phantom Padureans appeared in a circle around him. He turned and ran in the opposite direction as if he would rather take his chances against us. He had no desire to do battle with these creatures from beyond the grave. More Padureans came in to surround him, and soon he was completely encircled by them. The Padureans moved in and soon we could hear an awful shriek being given off as the Padureans attacked the lone Sarceastian. Soon, there was nothing left of him. The Padureans began to hold their arms up towards the sky as one of them spoke in an eerie voice.

  “Now the curse has been lifted. We have been given a sacrifice to avenge the dead. Now we can go to our eternal rest!”

  One by one, the Padureans disappeared into the air until none of them remained. The only thing left was the cloak of the Sarceastian.

  “Now they can be at peace. The curse has been lifted!” David said.

  “What about the Sarceastians? Do you think there are any of them left?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. If I know the Sarceastians, it’s likely that they have left someone behind to guard the ship. We must make sure that none is left alive. Then we will need to communicate with their leaders to make sure that no more are sent as back up,” David said. So, we began the long trek down towards the valley where the Sarceastian ship was located.

  “Let’s make sure that we are cautious. The last thing we want is for the remaining creatures to be alerted of our presence. We need to be as stealthy as possible,” David said. We split up again- David approached from the west and we approached the ship from the east. When we reached the small clearing, there was no sign of life anywhere near the ship. We got as close as we could while still trying to stay behind the trees in order to give ourselves some cover. It wasn’t long before a door slid open from the side of the ship and a cloaked Sarceastian began to descend the ramp.

  “Hello, Hermitis do you read me?” the creature spoke. “Jermitonis, are you there?” He held a laser gun in front of him and proceeded to walk within feet of where David was hidden behind the tree. In a flash, David shot his laser gun and the creature shrieked as it disintegrated into thin air.

  “Come on, we have to see if there are more of them on board,” David said quietly. David led the way and we followed close behind him as he walked towards the ship. All of us had our weapons ready just in case there were more of them.

  David cautiously boarded the ship. He could hear voices coming from their communication radios from their home base.

  “Sargost, do you read me? I said, do you read me?” the voice said over the radio.

  We walked all around the round perimeter of the ship and found no remaining Sarceastians on board.

  “That seems to be all of them. I will try to talk to their commanders and convince them that the life forms they are looking for have been terminated. I just hope my language skills won’t fail me. It has been a long time since I tried to speak in Sarceastian,” he said as he made his way back into the front room of the ship. He picked up the headset device that lay on the ground as the voice from the commander came over the radio again. I had my language decoder device switched on so that I could understand what was being said.

  “Sargost, if you don’t answer soon, we will dispatch a backup expedition. Sir, I’m not hearing from any of the crew. I think something must have gone wrong,” the voice said.

  “This is Sargost reporting in,” David said.

  “Sargost, you sound different. Is everything ok down there?” the commander asked.

  “Yes sir. I have caught some sort of virus down here and it has affected the sound of my voice. A few of our radio transmitters are malfunctioning, which is why you aren’t hearing from the others. We have terminated the life forms and will be returning home shortly,” David said.

  “That is good to hear Sargost. Have you extracted the minerals and fuel from the surface of the planet yet?”

  “Negative. We are in the process of amassing the resources now. We wanted to make sure that our progress wasn’t hampered by the life forms that we detected.”

  “What were the life forms? The Padureans are extinct so we were quite surprised to find a life reading that wasn’t a wild animal,” the commander asked.

  “It was two humans and a Karkastian,” David answered.

  “The Karkastian and humans were together?” the voice said.

  “We believe the humans had captured the Karkastian,” David said.

  “Hmm, that makes more sense. Are you picking up on any more life readings? We can send back up if you require it.”

  “Negative sir. Our life readings are registering at zero. We believe that we have taken care of the threat,” David said.

  “That is good news, Sargost. We will check in later to see how the mineral extraction is going.”

  “Thank you sir, over and out,” David said, switching off the communication radio.

  “Whew, my Sarceastian language skills are better than I thought they would be. It seems to have worked,” David said.

  “So what should we do now?” Jessie asked.

  “Well we have bought ourselves some time to be sure, but it will only be a matter of time before more of them come. They will begin to get suspicious if it takes too long to extract the minerals and fuel that they came here to obtain,” David said.

  “For the time being, we can go back to the cabin and figure out our next course of action. I fear that we may never be completely rid of the threat of the Sarceastians. They do not give up easily,” he said.

  We made the long trek back to David’s place and stopped when we ran across a herd of golden stag passing through the forest. I tried to get a shot of and missed, but Jessie hit one.

  “Got it!” she yelled proudly. We picked up the animal and carried it back to the house, knowing that we would have meat for many days to come. That night, we feasted and drank ale that David had brewed himself.

  “I should be going back down to the ship. They will be expecting the cr
ew members to give an end of the day report,” David said.

  “How do you know so much about the Sarceastians?” Jessie asked.

  “When I was a member of the expedition crew, I belonged to a special ops crew focused specifically on the Sarceastians. Even in the old days, the military was aware of the threat that the Sarceastians posed. If only we could have gotten a handle on them before they started to lay waste to the universe. Now it seems that they are destined to rule over everyone and everything,” David said, shaking his head.

  “Well they still haven’t conquered the Earth!” Jessie said, proudly.

  “Not yet, but trust me, it’s only a matter of time before they attempt it. Let’s just hope the military is better prepared than they were when I was a soldier,” David said as he strapped on his laser cannon and prepared to walk back to the Sarceastian ship.

  “I will be back soon. Please make sure that you leave some of that ale for me,” David said.

  “Not to worry,” I said. My head was beginning to get fuzzy. We Karkastians weren’t accustomed to alcohol, but I liked the way it made me feel.

  Chapter 1

  4

  Jessie

  David managed to convince the Sarceastian commanders that the expedition was going as planned, but they began to get impatient with him. One day when Yahn and I had just finished our lunch, we began to get frisky with one another. We figured we had a couple of hours alone together before David returned. I took off all of my clothes and entered the bedroom where Yahn was reading a book that he had brought from his home planet.

  “Well, isn’t this a lovely surprise,” he said as he began to get up.

  “No, you stay there,” I said, cocking an eyebrow at him seductively. I climbed on top of him and slowly slid his clothes off of him. We were just starting to make love when we heard the door open and slam shut.

  “Damn!” I said as I climbed off of Yahn and began to put my clothes back on.

  “Guys, are you here?” David asked.

  “Yes,” Yahn answered back, unable to hide the disappointment in his voice.

  “I think we have a big problem on our hands,” he said.

  As soon as we were dressed, we came into the living room to hear what David had to report.

  “What’s wrong?” Yahn asked.

  “It’s the Sarceastian commanders- they began to ask questions that I couldn’t answer. They know that they’ve been fooled,” David said.

  “What happened exactly?” I asked.

  “Well, they asked why it was taking so long to extract the minerals. I made up some excuse about the drill being broken and they did a scan of all of the systems and said that they didn’t detect a problem. Then, they became suspicious and asked me for my rank and serial number. I looked around for an identification tag for Sargost, but I couldn’t find it. Then, the commander asked who I was. I continued to insist that I was Sargost, but he didn’t believe me. The next thing he said was that there was an army on the way. I am sorry, I did the best I could to hold them off.”

  “So what now?” I asked.

  “Well I don’t think it would be wise to try and go up against an entire army of Sarceastians. When they are ready for battle, they can be formidable indeed,” David said.

  “So I guess we have just one choice then. Leave this planet before they arrive,” Yahn said.

  “Yes, that is precisely what we should do. I would recommend that we take the Sarceastian ship. There will likely be Sarceastian ships patrolling the atmosphere. They will shoot us down for sure if we take your space cruiser.”

  “Just when we thought we had found a place we could call home,” I said, sadly. Yahn came over and put his arm around me.

  “Don’t worry, my love. One day we will find a place where we can permanently settle down,” he said.

  “For the time being, we need to focus on remaining alive,” David said.

  We gathered up as much food and water as we could carry and prepared to make the trip to the Sarceastian ship. At the moment, we weren’t sure what our destination might be. All we knew was that we had to beat a hasty retreat before the army arrived. As soon as we got on board, I strapped myself in and David began to push buttons on the control panel. He kept the radio switched on so that he could hear the conversations of the commanders.

  “Ok, I’m starting the launch sequence. Everyone prepare for lift off. Yahn, I need you to man that laser cannon in case we have some visitors,” David said.

  “I’m on it!” Yahn said.

  “What about me? I can fire a laser cannon like the best of them,” I said, feeling that there was a bit too much testosterone on the ship.

  “I need you to help me navigate,” David said. “Find us a pale where we can go and hide out until the threat has passed.”

  I sighed and went over to the seat beside David and began to scan the surrounding area as the ship began to lift off from the surface of Padure. I looked down at the tree-covered surface of the planet, feeling disappointed to be saying goodbye to a place that was starting to feel like a second home to me.

  “Goodbye Padure,” I said as I scanned the area.

  “There is a habitable planet about fifty-nine parsecs from here. We should be able to reach it in about two hours,” I said.

  “Are there life forms?” Yahn asked.

  “Yes, but I’m having trouble getting a reading on what the life forms are, exactly,” I said.

  As soon as I finished speaking, I looked out through the main windows of the ship and saw a huge Sarceastian war vessel approaching the planet. It was grey and round with large, pod-like rooms attached to it. It looked somewhat like a sea monster to me hovering above the green surface of Padure.

  “Oh no, looks like we’ve waited too long,” David said.

  “Identify yourself, vessel 4598,” a harsh voice said through the radio.

  “Yes, we read you,” David said.

  “Who is in command of the ship? What have you done with the crew?” the voice asked.

  “We do not understand. We are Sarceastians as you are,” David said.

  “Surrender your vehicle and land it on dock twelve or you will be attacked!” the voice said.

  “Hang on everyone. I haven’t tried to outmaneuver a Sarceastian army vessel in a long time. It’s just like the old days,” David said. Suddenly, I felt my heart drop into my stomach as David steered the ship away from the war vessel in an attempt to escape. The war vessel immediately began to follow behind us.

  “Jessie, get those shields up!” David yelled as he began to dart back and forth in an attempt to outmaneuver the army vessel. I tried the best I could to get the shields up, but the army vessel was jamming the frequencies and making it impossible.

  “I can’t get the shields up! The Sarceastians are jamming the frequency!” I said, in panic.

  “Crap! Hold on!” David said again as the ship dropped downwards, pitched and rolled through space. The Sarceastians began to fire the laser cannons at us. David managed to maneuver the ship in such a way that we avoided being shot. Yahn fired our laser cannon back at them, but they had their shields up and the lasers simply bounced off the large hull of their ship. David turned the ship sharply, dipped and turned again, but he couldn’t lose the ship.

  “I’m trying to activate light speed but they’ve jammed that frequency too,” I said.

  “Damn, this is not looking good. We may have to surrender,” David said. Yahn and I exchanged a disappointed glance when suddenly the ship was hit with a massive laser blast.

  “We’ve taken a direct hit to the second engine. We will have to crash land!” David said. I looked at the navigating screen and saw that an inhabitable moon was just below us.

  “Try to land on that moon down there. According to my readings it has a slight atmosphere. We should be able to survive there,” I said.

  “Alright, everyone hang on!” David said as the ship went hurtling towards the surface of the moon. It was a typical crater-covered
moon with an orange tint as if to imply that there were high levels of iron in the soil. My life detector began to flash, showing me that the planet was indeed inhabited by some life form or another. We could only hope that they were friendly. Soon the dusty surface of the moon came into full view. The ship was coming in too hot as David began to lower the landing gear. With a snap, the gear was broken off as the ship scraped a gigantic boulder. It tumbled over and then ground to a halt. The ship sensors were lighting up and beeping, indicating that massive fires had broken out in the engine room.