COWBOY ROMANCE: Devon (Western Contemporary Alpha Male Bride Romance) (The Steele Brothers Book 2)

by Amanda Boone

  “Mainly first aid stuff, a few translation programs...” He stops as I shake my head. “What?”

  “Just you,” I say. “You and Envirocorp always thinking you’re going to meet some alien species and figure a way to communicate with them. More than sixty worlds and moons across forty star systems have been visited since humans began to colonize other worlds, and the most advanced thing we’ve ever found is plant life.” I look at them both. “This is going to be the same kind of thing, so you might as well leave all your sophisticated computers and translation thingies here because I’ll bet, no, I will guarantee it’s going to be a big mushroom, or something like it,” I add. Their faces fall a bit, obviously overtaken by the excitement of finding life, and I’m excited too, but I know this thing is not going to be a sentient life form. “Look guys, it’s just a case of thinking.” I look at Deakins. “You’re a doctor. If this was a creature, what would it eat?” I ask him. I watch as the realization hits him, followed by the depression.

  “Yeah,” he admits. “Yes, of course you’re right. I let the infectious energy of these guys get to me.” Deakins looks at me sadly through the glasses he wears, for some strange reason, and adds, “I won’t let that happen again.” He gets up and hauls his pack towards the exit as sadness hits me.

  “I didn’t mean to upset him,” I say to Trant.

  “It’s not you, Hetty. He’s had some bad news from home, and he’s due to leave on the next shuttle, which is bringing his replacement.”

  I nod in understanding and get up. “I’d better get going.” He nods, and I walk across ops heading for the air lock.

  Deakins and Nerravin are both there. Nerravin only has a small pack with her but the gun she’s got looks almost as big as she does. I grab a breathing mask and put it on. There is oxygen on Erenius three, but it’s quite thin, so we use these masks to filter out the other gasses in the air giving us almost pure oxygen to breathe. Nerravin nods to me and hits a button to seal us outside of the complex. A minute later, I’m standing on the dusty surface of an alien moon.

  ***

  I reach Acrulla, panting from the run and the lack of breathable gas in the air. My thorax aches, and I have to pause, wasting valuable time before I can dash up the ramp into my ship. Reaching the first communications port, I connect directly to the thought center of Acrulla and order him to prepare for an emergency launch, showing him my memory of the alien ship approaching.

  From there, I storm up through his inner chambers, making for the command section, where I have to pause again, as my crew stares at me in shock.

  “Acrulla is powering engines, commander,” my brother states.

  “Give him all assistance,” I pant. “Get all work crews back inside and seal the exit ramp, we have to leave. NOW!” My bellow is not lost on any of them, and the pulses I can see light up the room with their intensity.

  ***

  “Well, it’s certainly not a fungus,” Deakins tells me after hiking what feels like miles across this barren rock. He’s right, but whatever this thing is, it can’t be what I’m beginning to think it is. There is no way in this universe this is a creature that can live in space. My mind refuses to believe it.

  “What you thinking, man?” Nerravin growls at me with her accented English.

  I just shrug. “That I’ve got to get closer to make any kind of examination or judgment as to what it could possibly be.” I reply, and she looks at me with thinly disguised mistrust.

  “Whatever, man. You’re in the lead ’till the shit hits the fan.”

  I raise my eyebrows at her. “What exactly do you think’s going to happen?” I wonder as Deakins huffs a lung full of air and stands once more.

  “She hasn’t got a clue, Hetty, nor do you or I, so why don’t we just go on up there and have a look?”

  “All right, Deakins,” I tell him. “Calm yourself down a bit.” Even if he has got some bad news from home, there’s no reason to take it out on me or Nerravin.

  I look over to where the...thing is, nestled behind a tall cliff formed when one half of a hillside has been sheared off by some force, jagged teeth of rock jutting from the edge and peppering the surface of the vertical face. If it wasn’t so inhospitable, it might be pretty, this moon, with the glimmering dust of hundreds of different minerals reflecting the dim light from the white dwarf star at the middle of the system. A rainbow of colors jumps out to catch my eye everywhere I turn, but there’s no time to look at the scenery. I want to solve the riddle of this biological anomaly.

  I begin the short trek from where we paused for a few seconds, dragging myself up the slope, and even though it’s fairly steep, the gravity here is about a third of Earth, so it’s not all that difficult. At about thirty meters from the anomaly, I pause and have to check myself. It looked as if a section of the outer skin of it just closed, almost as if…

  “Did you see that?” I ask.

  “What, man?” Nerravin barks back at me. I glance over and see her eyes are darting around everywhere, not really fixing on one point but scanning the entire area for threats.

  “It looked like there was a...door or something.” Nerravin halts me with a hand across my chest.

  “What the hell you talking about? You going loco on me, man?”

  A grunt of a laugh escapes me. “Of course not, no. I just thought I saw...something.” She eyes me suspiciously for a few more seconds before turning her attention away again.

  It’s vast, this thing we’ve found, and it brings back the feeling of size I got from my visit to the White House after it was rebuilt. This is the same sort of size, and I feel tiny in comparison. Its size is the only similarity shared with the old presidential building though because this object is rounded, almost ovoid, with a row of dark circles, each about my height in diameter and apparently openings of some kind.

  Now we’re closer, and I can see there’s a gap beneath it, not all that big, about chest height to me, and as I crouch to look under it, Deakins shouts wordlessly as he falls over.

  “I told you to leave that stuff back at base,” I tell him as he struggles back to his feet. “What was that?” I snap my head round towards a sound I just heard. It was a wet sound, yet like someone drawing a zipper up or down as well.

  Nerravin must’ve heard it too because she’s squinting into the darkness between the jagged cliff face and the object. “Ain’t got no idea man, but I don’t like this. I say we haul ass and come back with some heavy fire power.” She looks over at me, and I see a glimmer of what looks like fright.

  “Sierx, there’s no danger from this,” I reach out and pat the side of the object and pull my hand away fast. It’s got the feel of warm rock, smooth but with billions of interlocking plates almost like scales...

  Terror rips into me as I hear a growing scream coming from everywhere. The ground underneath us lurches sideways, and we all fall over this time. A brilliant flash of light makes my eyes slam shut in agony, and my ears ring with the screaming.

  ***

  “Impact imminent, commander.” One of my crew calls from the middle of the command section.

  “Launch now!” I shout at Talacrus.

  My brother turns and looks at me with an unreadable stare. “I am unable, commander. Acrulla is overriding my commands.”

  “Jonober, what is wrong?” His proboscis pulses a few times, and he answers. “All systems are operational, commander. Engineering cannot give an explanation for this failure.” It must be something to do with Acrulla then.

  “Commander, I have picked up three life signs outside Acrulla,” Shaktee reports. “It appears they are attempting to gain access.” Are these members of the alien race which attacked us without provocation?

  Acrulla lurches sideways as the shock wave from the impact of the other craft rolls through the moon like an earthquake, and I know we have only got a few heartbeats to live.

  “Get them aboard, but under quarantine, take everything but their clothes and assign a monitoring team,” I
bark my orders out. “Then get us off this rock before it explodes!”

  ***

  I can feel the ground shaking under my feet and panic welling in my chest. This moon was not supposed to have suffered from seismic events. I’ve got my hand on the anomaly again, steadying myself when it gives way, and I fall against a hard edge. It looks like a door or hatch has opened and become almost transparent as well.

  “Deakins!” I scream over the shriek and rumble of the quake. “Nerravin! In here!” Nerravin doesn’t even bother to argue as I jump in and turn to grab her wrist, hauling her small frame up inside this thing. We both help Deakins get on board and collapse to the floor which is warm, as if alive.

  I roll over, panting and covered in dust from the moon, and my stomach flips as the gray and brown surface drops away from us. I feel myself slammed into the floor with the massive acceleration, but it’s the floor itself which helps to cushion my body, holding my organs in place and stopping my skin from bursting with the overwhelming pressure. On the verge of passing out, I watch in horror as the third moon orbiting Erenius explodes in a bright flash, which is quickly gone but stays on my retinas as a ghost image. Chunks of rock which will become asteroids now fly off in all directions, and I just see the tiny pool of boiling rock at the core splash out into the cold of space when my consciousness finally winks out.

  ***

  “NOW!” I thunder, and even Acrulla must have been able to hear as he leaps from the surface of the moon, jumping harder than a Jarknobian Tralodite. My knees collapse, and I just manage to steer myself enough to be lying on my back. Acrulla’s deck begins to absorb me as I see a flash of white engulf the command section. Must be whatever power source the other ship used exploding behind us. Luckily for us, they hit on the far side of the moon, so we should be able to escape. I feel the change as Acrulla clears the atmosphere the little moon hung on to. His speed increases in the vacuum of space, although the pressure of inertia is beginning to make my eyes fail as the blood is pulled from my eyes to the back of my head. If we are not at safe distance soon, I will lose consciousness, yet I cannot allow that to happen as someone such as Jonober would see it as an opportunity to slaughter me and take my place. I find myself looking through a tunnel, which is narrowing by the second, and eventually, I am shrouded in darkness. I can hear the groans of pain coming from the crew and the roaring hum from Acrulla’s giant engines but my sight is gone.

  ***

  Why do I feel so awful? The memories hit me, and I snap my eyes open, looking around to get my bearings. All three of us are in a small, dimly lit room. The walls and floor look to be made of the same materials and are all warm to the touch. Someone or something has taken the opportunity to steal all our belongings apart from the clothes we’ve got on, but they’ve been through the pockets as well, leaving me with nothing.

  I crawl across to Deakins and Nerravin, feeling their necks for a pulse. Relief floods me for a second when I find they’re both still alive, but the terror I feel is almost overwhelming, and I curl up, hugging my knees until one of them wakes.

  They’re all dead and gone. Neela, Derenius, Trant. Everyone I knew from the expedition and even the couple I only caught sight of. Seven lives extinguished in some kind of explosion. It was gigantic, whatever caused it, ripping the moon to pieces like that. Sorrow, sadness and guilt hit me as Nerravin starts to wake up. I watch her as she comes to and looks for her weapon. I see the emotions play across her face, unguarded as she hasn’t noticed me yet. Then she shuts down, her angular face becoming hard again. She checks Deakins then looks to me, surprised that I’m looking back at her.

  I raise a hand, weakly. “Hi.” My voice comes out as a whisper.

  She raises her head once. “What the fuck is going on, man?” I can only shrug.

  “You said this thing was like a mushroom or something, and now we’re inside it?”

  “Looks that way,” I can hear the tremor in my own voice, my fright ringing through.

  “So what, you think this is some kind of space craft?” She wants me to give her the answers, tell her everything, and I can’t.

  “I don’t know!” I cry, “I don’t know what this is or what happened. I just know everyone else is dead.”

  Her face changes then, the expression unreadable. “You don’t got to tell me that, man. I seen that moon go up like the fourth of July too.”

  “Oh, my head,” Deakins moans, and I shuffle over to see him.

  “Are you injured?” I ask gently. “Is anything broken?”

  He squints up at me. “Just because I’m the oldest one here doesn’t mean I’ve got brittle bones,” he barks back. “What happened?”

  I’m just about to tell him when Nerravin cuts in. “It looks like the exobiologist can’t tell the difference between a mushroom and a fucking spacecraft, man. We’re aboard some kind of alien ship or some shit like that.”

  Deakins looks at me with a mixture of emotions, shock, wonder, disappointment. His eyebrows go up. “Is that right, Hetty?” he asks.

  I can’t hold his stare. “It looks that way but...” I trail off and they both stare at me, waiting. “I think the whole thing is alive.” I gesture around the room. It’s Nerravin who gets it first.

  “We’re inside some kind of creature, man? Is that what you saying?”

  I sniff and wipe my tears. “Think so.” I say.

  Deakins gets up and moves to the wall, punching it hard, his fist makes a small slapping sound but the surface bows in around his knuckles, absorbing the blow.

  “Christ!” he says. “Now what?”

  “I guess we wait and see,” I tell them both. Nerravin looks like a caged animal already, and Deakins slumps back down into one of the corners of the cell we’re in.

  ***

  We have ridden the shock wave from the exploding moon, being missed narrowly by the vast asteroids, which sail by even faster than Acrulla. He has suffered minor damage to three of his systems but no skin breaches, so I can leave the repairs to Jonober and the rest of the crew. I make my way through the ship to the outer skin where a chamber has been sealed to quarantine the three aliens. One of my crew, a female I do not know, is interfaced with Acrulla through a proboscis. She rises and looks down as I pass her to look through a small window. She has kept it opaque so they do not get too much information regarding their surroundings.

  “Report.”

  “All three have woken, commander, I have not had much success in deciphering their language, however.” I turn to look at her.

  “Is that all?” I sense she wishes to tell me more yet is afraid. “What are you called?”

  “Bhentus, commander,” she tells me with obvious pride. “Aboard for thirty-four cycles now.”

  “So what else do you wish to tell me?” She pauses and I feel my anger rise, but she speaks before I roar at her.

  “I do not think this is the same species that attacked Acrulla and destroyed the moon.” I gaze at her, and she holds my stare. She might prove to be an asset after all.

  “Reasoning?” I demand.

  “I analyzed the recording of the attack, specifically when Acrulla’s missiles hit the other ship. I compared the bodies which were ejected with these, and they are markedly different.” I nod at her.

  “Excellent.” This is high praise coming from me, and she knows it. “Continue with your work and keep me informed. Keep them fed and see that they have some more room to feel free, but do not allow them to have access to Acrulla.”

  “Yes, commander.”

  “Let me see them,” I order, and the window becomes fully transparent. Three small, weak forms are huddled in the room beyond. None of them even see me. Most unimpressive, the male has little muscle mass and one of the females is the size of a child. There is a larger female, who...

  “Commander?” Bhentus calls from behind.

  “What?” I snap.

  “You were just staring in there, commander, for a long time,” she tells me. “You did not res
pond when I called.” I do not recall spending too much time watching the female.

  “I choose how long to examine my captives, remember that.” I tell her and then leave.

  ***

  I’ve only got a vague idea of how long we’ve been here, but it’s got to be hours now. Nerravin is searching every inch of the walls for a gap she can exploit, but I know she won’t find one. I can feel it. Plus, it’s like the walls are moving, the space we’re in getting bigger somehow. I’ve been on edge since the moon exploded. Why did I survive? What makes me so special? What’s going to happen to us? Where are they taking us? I should be chomping at the bit to see a sentient alien and try to learn about them, but my fear and anxiety over what’s going to happen to us is eating me from the inside.

  Deakins looks as strung out as I feel, and every time I try to talk to him, he just snaps at me. Nerravin is off limits too. She’s just ignoring me, blaming me for not identifying this ship. What does she think would have happened if I had? We’d have been killed when the moon blew up! I lie down, pillow my head on my arm and close my eyes, trying to calm myself a little.

  I can hear Nerravin mumbling to herself as she examines every inch and Deakins’ heavy sighs, but they are becoming less distinct, much less important, and the hypnotic hum coming from the massive ship soothes me to sleep.

  In the dream I’m walking through the alien ship with glittering walkways and passages conveying me. I’m surrounded by overwhelming beauty, passing a large tank which has hundreds of small, colorful animals inside. They look like fish but there doesn’t appear to be any water, and I wonder how they float around the tank.

  I’m surrounded by beauty and luxury, my dreaming mind bringing my own version of the ship to life. A table and chairs appear behind me, and I sit, drinking the best coffee I have ever tasted and eating a pastry.

  The stranger enters from somewhere. I just become aware of him pacing over and watch as he sits down, sharing my meal. I can’t see his features, but I know he must be the most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen. Something is different about him, but I can’t tell what. He’s certainly got the bulging muscles I like and a pleasant manner about him, even though he hasn’t spoken.