Table of Contents
Payton’s Surprise
Copy Right
Stay in touch
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
From the desk of…
Other books by the author
Payton’s Surprise
The Perfect Match
Book 2
By
Serena Simpson
Copy Right
Payton’s Surprise – Thee Perfect Match - Copyright © JUne 2020, Serena Simpson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, including electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.
Cover Art by Peri Wolford
Published by Serena Simpson
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Chapter One
Payton was going to die, and she knew it. That didn’t stop her from trying to escape. Her and the bird on her shoulder. Not like a pigeon, or a Robin, or anything earth-like. It was as large as an eagle with sharp talons that never seemed to pierce her skin. His feathers – she had a feeling it was a male – were an iridescent blue. They caught the light and made her think he was so much more than she could see with her eyes. This was an alien bird that decided it liked her and was going to hang out with her. Why? She didn’t know.
What she did know was she woke up on this bucket of bolts one day and hadn’t been able to gain her freedom ever since. If the marks on the wall by her cage meant anything, she’d been here for over a year. A year of aliens testing on her, abusing her physically, and speaking a language she was just beginning to grasp. They could make sounds with their throats that she didn’t have a chance in hell of making.
A siren went off. “Oh shit, they know I’m gone. We’re gone.” She talked to the bird-like creature that was on her shoulder. She ran down a corridor looking for a place to hide. She was in space.
At first, she didn’t believe it. She thought she’d done too much coke, ecstasy, or smoked one too many joints, except she didn’t do drugs. Her friends called her straitlaced, but she was okay with it. All that was left was that someone slipped something into her drink. She went with that for the first week, but a year later, she was willing to accept the facts. She was on an alien vessel that kidnapped her from Earth. Instead of wanting to force her into the best sex of her life, they were using her as a human guinea pig. #howmarvelous.
Her hands went to her knees as she found herself bent over. Her breath hitched, and the stitch in her side demanded she stopped running. She used to be in perfect physical condition. ‘You’ll live to be a hundred,’ one of her doctors teased. That wasn’t happening now, even if she wasn’t on a ship in the middle of space.
There was a muted glare from the dull walls around her. She was trapped, nowhere else to go. The thumping of her heart slowed while she leaned, then slid against the wall until her rear hit the floor. The pain in her head made her stop hitting it against the wall. If this were a movie now would be her big scene, but this wasn’t a movie, and her life was about to be over. She was going to die, and what was worse, she was going to die fat. The desire to feel sorry for herself was riding her hard, but no, it didn’t matter even if she brought this on herself.
“Fly bird, shoo, maybe you can get away while they come after me. One of us should live.”
The bird had been in a cage next to hers. She always thought it was weird because his cage was twice the size of hers. It didn’t matter now; they were both stuck in this dead-end hallway with nowhere to go.
“Go bird, please.” She begged the bird, not wanting the tears in her eyes to fall. Sometimes you needed to face the future like a grownup.
She hated flies. Her hand swiped at her head. It was just her luck that she would die surrounded by flies that would probably infest her dead body. She was a ball of good thoughts! Her head shook as the sound got louder. A shiver went through her; her hands started swatting at the insects, trying to crawl on her when she saw it.
It was a small shadow on the wall, almost like a secret door. Getting up, she ran to it. She knew it was too late, but the way her heart pounded in her chest and as fast as her brain was working through the problem told her that she didn’t care. She was going to hold on to hope until it was snatched from her dead hands.
The door slid open. The mechanism to open it had been hidden. She stumbled into the room. It looked like… well, hell, she didn’t know what it looked like. Maybe the cockpit of a plane. She looked around for something to drag in front of the door. There was nothing; everything was bolted to the floor. It made sense. She ran to the console, pushing buttons. They would all die together if she had her way. That way, her friends, hell her planet, would be safe.
Shit! The pounding on the door said they were here. She hit and kicked on the panel doing her best to destroy it when the door finally opened. There was a pain in her throat, and darkness that flashed before her eyes. She pounded on her chest, trying to make herself breathe. They stood a good eight feet high, not that they needed the height to intimidate her. They reminded her of crocodiles with a thick leathery skin and a long snout. These managed to walk upright as well as crawl along the floor. They were also smart. Never underestimate aliens, especially ones that flew the dark skies.
The deep alien growl that came out when the first one came in had Payton running to the other side of the room. It ran across the open space mouth open teeth gleaming; she screamed as pain tore through her leg.
*~*~*~*
“Collision warning,” Sassy’s voice echoed over the ship, backed up by the siren going off.
“Avoid the collision,” Captain Rale said as he ran to the lift that would take him to the bridge. One day of peace was all he wanted. Was that too much to ask?
He banged into the wall of the lift when the ship came to a full and sudden stop. He’d take that over a collision. The door slid open to show a ship dead in space. It was much too close for comfort.
“Sassy, where did the ship come from?”
“It came from hyper-drive and stopped dead in front of us. There wasn’t enough time to avoid it. Either we did a cold stop, or we ran into it.”
“Rale?” Julze his second in command, and one of his mates questioned as he came onto the bridge.
“We’re dead in space. Sassy had to make a cold stop.” Rale gave him the news lik
e it was no big deal.
Julze nodded. “Sassy, can you identify the ship?”
“It appears to be a Fulyer ship. They haven’t been spotted in this sector of the galaxy for over two hundred standard solar cycles.” The ship disappeared as a picture of the Fulyer took its place.
“Make contact,” Rale told her as he went over everything he learned about that race. To say they didn’t get along with the rest of the galaxy was putting it mildly. They believed that the other races of the galaxy were insignificant to them. They were either to be eaten as an exotic food or to be used as slaves for experimentation.
“They are ignoring all requests for contact.”
“Scan them.”
“I have been. They are dead. I can only detect two life signs on the ship. I do not know if they have advanced cloaking. Their technology was considered advanced at one point, and they were reluctant to share it.”
The Fulyer shared-nothing, not even how they planned to cook and eat the other citizens of the galaxy.
“We’re going to have to board them,” Nevaeh left the lift with Kalyr at her side. He went to the science station; she went to hug Rale. He was one-third of their triad. Julze being the other third.
Julze walked over and wrapped them both in his arms. “We also need an engineer. I can’t do this by myself.”
“We’ve already gone from three, sorry Sassy four crew members to seven. Now you want to add two more.”
“Don’t forget the chef,” Nevaeh told him.
“We need the chef,” Julze agreed.
“Both of you are thinking with your stomachs.”
“And?” Nevaeh said.
There was a time there was only Rale and Julze on the ship, and their computer didn’t have a personality. Julze was dying, and they needed the one thing that would give them both a chance to live – their third. That was Neveah with her came a computer with a personality, aka Sassy, and several cryo pods that she swears she had nothing to do with. He ignored her and continued to tease his mates that his life was this strange combination of living, loving, and frustration due to them. It was a life he would never willingly give up.
Rale gave a long dramatic sigh, one he learned from Nevaeh. “Julze, speak to our possible new engineer. Nevaeh, talk with Cassic, make sure medbay is ready for casualties. Sassy send a message to the others. Tell them to prepare and meet me at the breach hull in ten. We have a ship to secure.
Malic rushed out of the lift that Julze and Nevaeh were entering.
“Something wrong?”
“I’m going over the scan that Sassy has been making of the alien ship. It’s trying to slip under our defenses and penetrate Sassy’s memory. I can’t find anyone directing it, which is unusual. Not that it matters, they aren’t welcome.”
“Stay here; keep Sassy safe. Sassy, I’ll need you when we breach the hull.”
“I’ll be there, Captain.”
Rale made his way to the breach hull, the eleven passengers he picked up several weeks ago on his mind. He had set out to save his mate by finding their third and ended up with more Hasian’s on his ship than he had dealt with in the past several years. He walked into the breach hull to find the seven Hasian males who weren’t assigned a duty waiting for him. He hated to take untried warriors with him, but they were all he had. Julze and Nevaeh had been training them; being taught by them increased their chances of survival.
“We are going to infiltrate a Fulyer ship. The last one seen in this part of space was over two hundred solar cycles ago. I don’t know what we will find. Do not hesitate to protect yourself and each other. The Fulyer have proven it is survival of the fittest, and they mean to be the fittest.” He took the lead, stopping before he forced a breach with the other ship. “Don’t hide behind your weapons. They are only as good as you are.” He gave a nod of encouragement. The jewels around his eye glowed for a minute as they reached out to touch the others.
“Shields on.” Rale forced the breach before rolling onto the ship, looking to protect his crew. There was nothing but silence. “Sassy, where are those heartbeats?”
“Down two levels, captain. It looks like whoever they belong to are in the backup bridge.”
“The ship has two bridges?”
“That is what the schematic I am looking at suggests.”
That was interesting, maybe ingenious if a full manual override could be done from the second bridge.
“Stay alert. Their technology may be more advanced than ours; it could be keeping us from seeing life forms on the ship.” He led them down the corridor and then through the access hatches, not wanting to be caught in a lift.
“Captain?”
He saw it. The corridor was littered with parts. There was blood, bones, and gore. Unless he missed his guess, he was looking at the remains of the Fulyer. What could do that? He walked closer until he was able to see into the room with the door missing. It was a second bridge, but that’s not what caught his eyes. In the corner, there was a human with…
“Retreat.”
Chapter Two
“Are you trying to tell me the Great Captain Rale is scared of a bird?” Nevaeh stared at him like she didn’t know who he was.
They were gathered in the common area with all the crew and passengers watching them as Rale puzzled out what he had seen.
“It’s not a bird.”
“Then what is it?”
“If I knew that, I’d tell you. Believe me, it’s not a bird, and it’s the only thing that can justify that amount of damage on that ship.”
“I believe you. What are we going to do? One of those heartbeats is coming from the woman on that ship. A human woman, we can’t leave her to die when we can save her.”
The Hasians let out a collective breath when they realized that Captain Rale’s female partner not only believed him but was willing to support him. They were in a cryo pod for seven years, and it was still an adjustment for them to believe a female.
“The risk—.”
“I’ll take the risk, Captain. I can’t let someone die when I can save their life.” Cassic stood up. His hand was gripped by Malic’s. They were partners, half mates, unable to truly bond unless they formed a triad with a female. The one female whose Biometric DNA matched theirs.
“Cassic, your chances of coming back are lower than your chances of finding your second mate,” Sassy told him.
“Then, I have nothing to lose.” His eyes scanned Malic with a silent apology. “Captain?”
“Grab what you need and meet me in five. Malic, you’re coming with. No one else is coming or is to enter that ship if we don’t return. That’s an order,” he looked directly at Julze and Nevaeh.
*~*~*~*
“What are you thinking?” Malic asked when he caught up to Cassic.
“I’m thinking; I’m tired of waiting to die.” He placed his hand over his heart and thumped it. “I’m tired of putting my head down and hoping the swinging sword misses me. That’s what I’m thinking. Do I even deserve a mate if I’m too scared to live? If we are too scared to live?”
“I don’t deserve you.” Malic kissed him before taking his hand and leading him to medbay. “We live, or we die together. One last adventure?”
“You deserve someone better.” Cassic gave him a shaky smile before collecting what could travel. He was the one that didn’t deserve Malic. He knew that if Malic had bonded with someone else, he would be living his best life. Not trapped on a spaceship, albeit a nice one. He could be on their planet living a life of luxury in ignorance of what was happening around him. Cassic wasn’t that selfish; he wanted that for the male he loved.
Life didn’t care what you wanted, and most of the time, it didn’t care what you deserved. It simply dumped on you and went on. If he had his way, he’d find a way to break the bond and allow Malic to go free.
“I’m ready.” They hurried up to meet the captain at the breach hull.
“There is nothing on that ship but those two life forms
. Our priority is the female, but I won’t risk either of you to save her life.”
“Understood, Captain,” Malic told him.
Cassic nodded. Life was about risk. He’d do whatever he could to see others around him live until the day he died.
“Follow me.”
He thought the last several weeks of living on a ship were strange. This was stranger. The construction was like nothing he had ever seen before. The height of the corridors made him want to duck his head. There were barely inches between him and the ceiling. He noticed that Malic and the captain who were just a bit taller than him, were ducking.
They moved quickly until they came to a corridor littered with body parts.
“What were they?” Cassic covered his mouth before taking shallow breaths. Whatever killed them gloried in their deaths. There were body parts thrown all over.
“Sassy confirmed they were Fulyer.”
Cassic took out a scanner as he walked closer to the open doorway. He surveyed the room, noticing that unlike the corridors, the ceilings in here were high, and there were splashes of what he presumed was blood on them. In the corner was a beautiful female. He stopped himself immediately. He was a healer, looking at the female form was against the rules of his trade. “The female’s heart is struggling. I don’t think she will survive much longer.”
He approached her, stopping when faced with a birdlike creature sitting on the female’s chest. He crouched, putting himself more on the level of the bird. “My captain says you did this.” He had a captain; this wasn’t the time to be amazed by that fact. “I can’t imagine a little fellow like you taking down that crew, but it’s hard for me to imagine that she did it. If you did do it, thanks. She looks like she needs a protector. You saved her, but unless you let me treat her, she’s going to die.”
Cassic stayed still, not moving. He felt when Malic walked up behind him on silent feet. The bird jumped down after staring at them like he could see through them.
Payton's Surprise (The Perfect Match Book 2) Page 1