Married To The Cowboy (Love In Collin's Ranch 3)

by Veronica Wilson

  “May Earth be as merciful to you as I was.” He gestured dramatically as he ended his speech, arms extended at his sides, the sound of the medical machine’s electrical buzzing barely audible in the background.

  Epilogue

  Covered in cold sweat, Mary Anne awoke from her dream unnerved, as she had many times before. Immediately, the room lit itself up somewhat, confirming that she was still on the spacecraft, and not locked up in a mental hospital.

  Is there a real difference? she asked herself, the answer to her question lying right next to her in bed. Har’kreen had become her life, having provided everything she’d ever needed and then some. When Mary Anne felt like she was about to wither away back in Wayward, he had elevated her to rule the expeditionary force with him. When some of his subjects were less than impressed with his decision, he had the lot of them banished to Earth. Granted, he still did not release the human prisoners, insisting that doing so would most certainly lead to a civil war, but there was no way around that. Yet.

  “I am the Garoh of this fleet,” he would say. “But I am not the undisputed leader of everyone. Actions have consequences, as I’m sure you know.”

  Oh, I do, my love. I know it all too well.

  Softly, she ran her fingers through his blond hair, messy due to him being several hours asleep. Life on the capital ship had become a bit more tempestuous than it used to be now that Har’kreen had eliminated his detractors in such a brutal fashion. Granted, they were fitted with new, regular sets of eyes, not unlike those of humans, but for those of the great race it was considered a fate worse than death. Add banishment to that fact, and you’ve got yourself a fertile ground for more and more dissenters.

  Mary Anne sighed, remembering that war still raged on her home planet’s surface, but somehow that fact bothered her far less than it should have. The human prisoners appeared to have been in great health, and the aliens’ expeditionary force seemed to attack to capture rather than kill, an approach that humans did not share. Still, this was understandable given how mankind fought with lives of their own soldiers on the line, while all the great race ever sent to the battlefield were ch’orrds.

  What have we all gotten ourselves into? Mary Anne asked herself, thinking of the potential future for both races. The solution was understandably nowhere in sight, so she let it go.

  Whatever happens, happens. Lovingly, she observed her alien abductor’s chiseled features, admiring how perfectly they all worked with each other, and musing on they made her feel. Someday, a usurper might succeed in his plot and grant Har’kreen the same fate he had given the previous batch of traitors. Mankind might somehow turn the conflict around, taking advantage of the alien’s kid-gloved approach to strike with nukes at a crucial moment and obliterate everything.

  There are so many ways for everything to go to hell, she concluded. Then again, isn’t it always like that?

  “My love?” Har’kreen’s voice fondled her on the cheek with no lesser intensity than her hand fondled his. He always knew when she needed him, and tonight was no exception.

  How foolish of me to doubt in my Garoh, she realized. If there was anyone who could make the impossible possible, it was him. He was still in charge of the expeditionary force, and he knew the system better than any other. She was safer here in his arms than anyone else in the fleet, that much was certain.

  Seductively, she lowered her head down in front his, their glowing pairs of eyes meeting in an intimate fashion. For a few moments they stared into each other like that, until Mary Anne chose to break the silence.

  “I’ve had a nightmare, honey.” She chuckled as the words left her mouth. “I think I might need some help forgetting about it.”

  THE END

  My Alien Invader

  The wasteland

  The crimson rays of the setting sun on her back, a lone girl rode her motorcycle across a blasted landscape.

  This place used to be beautiful.

  She maintained top speed, not an easy task with all the rubble lying about. Still, junior courier Cynthia Greene had a lot of experience with missions like these. Some would say way too much for someone of her age.

  Was the shopping mall located to my left… or to my right? She couldn’t tell, even though the city had been annihilated less than half a year ago. The area had changed so much since then, and she along with it.

  Everything and everyone is completely different now.

  She tried to remember the way things were before the war, but it was all blurry. It was more like telling a story than recalling actual images, sounds and sensations. It bothered her to no end.

  Against her inclination she slowed down a bit, having hit more dangerous territory. The debris was particularly plentiful here, and one misstep could result in injury, or loss of bike or her life.

  Goddamned aliens.

  Cynthia tried to pin the bulk of her rage on the arrival of the alien invaders, but deep down she knew full well who was at fault for this particular calamity; it was the military.

  When an organ is cancerous it has to be cut out, and that’s exactly what happened here.

  The concentration of cats (the aliens’ robotic soldiers) in the city had grown beyond containable levels, and the local population kept decreasing at a rapid pace. The United States was losing both soldiers and civilians. And so, the decision was made. The place was bombed until nothing was left.

  One worthless wasteland, coming right up.

  Nothing lived here now, every single survivor having been rounded up by either the military or the invaders.

  Although there is that one rumor.

  She recalled a tale, probably not much more than hearsay, about a mysterious figure that supposedly called the waste his home. This hermit was known as the Hood, first of the many new urban legends sprouting among the war-torn land. Cynthia couldn’t help but laugh at the thought. She had traversed this ruined place more than a dozen times, and she had never caught even a glimpse of the Hood.

  Incidentally, Cynthia also used to be one of the few surviving natives of this place, having been evacuated a good while before the bombing. One would think that coming back here would have caused her pain, but nothing could be further from the truth. The place she grew up in and this pile of dirt were so different that mental disassociation came effortlessly.

  I used to live in one place, but it stopped existing, she would tell herself. Now something else is in its place, and I just happen to do business there.

  Business. The word she chose surprised her. She was military, yet there was no place for patriotism inside Cynthia’s heart. Being a courier was a way for her to pay for food and shelter for herself and her family. As far as she was concerned, the army was just as much at fault here as the invaders were.

  Still, one must live off something. Even back in the camp, nothing but the basest of needs came freely. The rest had to be earned.

  There isn’t really that much choice in the matter.

  Now out of the debris-filled zone, Cynthia gladly picked up speed again. The sooner she got out of this place, the sooner she could deliver her package. The sooner the package was delivered, the sooner she could go back home.

  Home? So that’s what we call a military base these days.

  Still, the camp was much more than a military base. It was a refuge for civilians as much as it was a fortress and training ground for new recruits. Scouts like Cynthia were tasked with delivering messages and packages through the most dangerous of places. Radio, phones and the internet had been rendered useless, the invaders privy to every single piece of information on them. All messages were now delivered personally, and it was up to the couriers to make sure that the system worked. Some packages were valuable, pieces of some important plan of action or message. Others were red herrings, merely there to confuse the enemy. A courier might be granted any one of those, and would always be expected to guarantee its delivery with their life.

  And all of that for what? Preparation for an actio
n against some enemy we know practically nothing about? The futility of her plight sometimes weighed on her like that, oftentimes passing as quickly as it came along. But it would always return.

  There were only two things she (and most likely every other human) knew about the invaders. First off, they took people. In the beginning, they only took women. When humanity struck back, the enemy started taking whoever they could get their mechanical limbs on. Speaking of mechanical limbs, the other thing that was known about the invaders was that they never fought personally, always sending their pet robots to do the fighting. Nicknamed cats because of their similarity to a cross between a humanoid and a large feline, those things could take a beating that would kill a trained soldier—and come back for more.

  And that was it. There were no ships in orbit, at least not detectable ones. Transports carrying shipments of cats seemingly sprang out of nowhere, probably due to some impossibly advanced stealth technology. Whatever type of communication was used to transmit orders was beyond anyone on Earth’s ability to figure out. In other words, the invaders had a huge advantage.

  If someone ever found a way for us to win this war, that’d be the punch line of the century.

  Suddenly, some hundred feet in the distance, an unusually large lump of dirt started moving around. Shocked, Cynthia gasped, her articulated thoughts shattering into a million pieces. She knew this area as well as she knew her back pocket. That bump way ahead in the road was not supposed to be there. It was even less supposed to rise into an upfront position and stare at her with a glowing white eye.

  Speak of the dev-

  Some sort of crash was imminent. Going at top speed, as she was, all that Cynthia could possibly do was to try to slow down as gently as she could and avoid a frontal collision. Teeth gritted, she slowly decelerated while executing a miniscule change of direction.

  The thing in her way did not seem to care, standing its ground as if there was no problem at all. This inaction persisted until the bike was but a few feet from it, just barely out of the collision radius. Then, it extended one of its legs toward the bike’s front tire.

  The result was as unpleasant as it was expected. Upon contact, the motorcycle passed over the cat’s mechanical limb, flying through the air past it like a newly taken-off airplane.

  Mustn’t let go! Cynthia gripped the control handles as hard as she could, ignoring the sharp pain that bloomed in both of her shoulders. With a dull thud, the vehicle hit the ground the proper way—wheels first, the suspension bursting immediately. A split second later the pain in her right shoulder tripled in intensity, practically screaming at her to let go. But she refused, remaining with her wounded beast of a vehicle up until it stopped moving completely.

  You’ve done well, old friend.

  All sensation gone from her fingers, Cynthia finally loosened her grip, allowing the bike to fall to its side accompanied by the sound of crumbling alloys. Full of adrenaline, she swiftly turned around—ready to face another hulking pile of metal.

  I’m not going down without a fight, you poor excuse for a household appliance!

  Opening the holster on the side of her right leg, Cynthia reached for her pistol. But at that moment, the full extent of her injuries rose up and hit her right in the face. The pain in her right shoulder was so intense that she practically fell to the ground. Shivering, her right hand flat-out refused to raise the pistol she was grasping.

  So it seems that my right shoulder is dislocated…

  On the verge of panic, she observed the metallic thing that stared back at her through that ominous, glowing eye. Her heart rate intensified up to the point where it seemed that it was just about to leap out of her chest. Then, all of a sudden, it slowed down as she came to a realization. Small arms fire was, for the most part, completely ineffective against cats.

  Dislocated shoulder or not, it’s taking me with it either way…

  Now ready to face her fate, Cynthia stared into the blank face of the enemy, its eye glowing brighter and brighter.

  The knockout beam, everyone called it. A target hit by the focused ray of light suffered complete shutdown of the nervous system with the exception of certain parts of the brain. Scientists speculated that this was done to enable greater efficiency in capturing humans. Had the beam shut down the entire brain, subjects would suffer brain damage within minutes—not that the process worked perfectly the way it was. People were found from time to time, those hit by the weapon but not taken by the invaders. The results were not pretty. The unconscious state they were put in did not pass by itself. For that, medical attention was necessary. Without it, victims of the knockout beam faced severe brain damage within twenty-four hours, or death from starvation and thirst within several days.

  I guess I’m about to find out just what that’s like, Cynthia tried to comfort herself with some quick humor. Averting her eyes due to the light having become too intense, she mentally prepared herself for the inevitable blast.

  The blast that never happened.

  Surprised, she turned to face the cat again, noticing that the light’s intensity had significantly diminished. Before her stood the mechanical creature, its focus disrupted, apparently trapped in some sort of electrical web. Mercilessly, the bolts of lightning that had ensnared it (not unlike a spider’s web) ravaged the thing’s body and made it convulse as if with some sort of seizure.

  Faster and faster the cat kept twitching, struggling against its restraints all the while. The episode lasted for several seconds, and the unsettling spectacle almost kept Cynthia from noticing the strange figure that stood in the background. It was dressed in a ragged black cloak, its hood lowered over its face.

  The Hood.

  She didn’t have much time to ponder the implications of the new arrival. Apparently in agony (or whatever passed for agony to robots) the cat let out an ear-piercing screech, drawing Cynthia’s attention back to it. A moment later it fell to the ground, its eye not glowing anymore.

  Relieved, Cynthia felt the stress leave her. In its place there came an even greater quantity of all-consuming pain. Surprised by the pain’s sudden arrival, she took a quick look at her shoulder. Instead of the usual, slender joint, there was a mass of misshapen, swollen tissue.

  I guess it was worse than I thought.

  Faced with a horrific view she wouldn’t even expect to see in a movie, let alone on her own body, Cynthia Greene blacked out. The sight of the Hood approaching was the last thing in her memory.

  An unknown location

  She could not remember the nightmare nor even what it was about. All that remained was a persistent sense of dread accompanying her as she woke.

  Reflexively she turned toward her injured right shoulder, the unpleasant sight from before she had fainted still fresh in her memory.

  Someone bandaged it up. The swelling is mostly gone as well.

  Letting out a single sigh of relief, Cynthia felt how dry her mouth was. After that sensation came another—the scent of freshly prepared stew. Sweet and powerful, the aroma completely overtook her senses. Much more importantly, it awakened her interest in her surroundings.

  Turning to face every direction like a disoriented animal, Cynthia tried to analyze the place. She had been placed on a bed, an old and squeaky type, yet still quite comfortable. The floor, the ceiling, and the walls were all crudely made of stone, signifying that she was in some sort of cave. The illumination was provided by several neon lights, tossed around in no particular order. Then she noticed something that didn’t belong in such a place by any means: cables.

  In no particular pattern optical, electrical and all other sorts of conductive wires covered everything she could see. It looked like the home of some gearhead Neanderthal.

  “So good that you’ve decided to wake up, my dear,” a voice echoed from one of the many passages in front of her. It was deep and a little coarse, as if the speaker had not spoken for quite some time. “I was beginning to think that the meal I made would go to waste.”<
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  A moment later, stepping in from the rightmost tunnel, a man came into the room. Adorned in a loose-fitting indigo jumpsuit, all that she could make out was that he was tall. His face was clean-shaven and ovular, definitely handsome in a non-rugged sort of way. His hair was a dark shade of brown, worn slightly longer and combed backwards.

  He looks like a dandy crime-boss-turned-hermit. Cynthia chuckled for a second, amused by his unconventional yet rather eye-pleasing appearance. It had been so long since she was alone with a man who was not her military superior. The feeling was new and exciting.

  So this is the Hood? Her memories resurfaced, downplaying the pleasant aspect of the situation. She had been in deathly danger, and the Hood, this man, had saved her life.

  “If you’re going to be busy staring at me for much longer, my dear guest” —he approached, pulling a deck chair from somewhere beneath a nearby pile of cables, before he set it up and placed it next to her bed— “then please allow me to put this somewhere.”

  Smartasses. The world is full of them, even now.

  It was only then that she noticed the large silver plate he held in his left hand, two bowls of stew carefully balanced on it. Greedily, she grabbed one of them with both hands, completely ignoring the cutlery carefully placed to the side. Her stomach roaring like a wild beast, Cynthia sated her hunger by unloading the contents into her mouth. She didn’t care how hot it was.

  That’s going to disagree with me later on, she thought when she placed the bowl back on the plate. The Hood stared at her with a significantly amused expression. His eyes didn’t go well with his face, she noticed. Their shade of brown was similar to his hair, but such a common color seemed kind of off on such an uncommon male face.

  “Care for another?” He tilted his head toward the other bowl, the hair on his head rippling in a synchronized fashion. “I am not all that hungry. At least, not compared to you.”