by L. A. MARIE
ACROSS STARS AND BLOOD
The Malaki Series, Book One
L.A. MARIE
Contents
Prologue
1. Earth Year 2050
2. Emori
3. Thane
4. Emori
5. Thane
6. Emori
7. Thane
8. Emori
9. Thane
10. Emori
11. Thane
12. Emori
13. Thane
14. Emori
15. Thane
16. Emori
17. Thane
18. Emori
19. Thane
20. Emori
21. Thane
22. Emori
23. Thane
24. Emori
25. Thane
Acknowledgments
Across Stars and Blood
© Copyright 2020 by L.A. Marie
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission from the author or publisher, except reviewers in connection with a review.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Cover design: Dayna Watson. Misfit Designs
Formatting By: Magnolia Author Services
Edited/Beta read by: Yours truly book services
Prologue
Thirty years ago, everything the scientists kept warning the humans about happened. Global warming, nuclear war, disease, draught. The Earth was devastated, and humans were on the brink of extinction. It seemed the only possible future was to succumb to the fate they had created for themselves.
Until the Malakus arrived. They were an alien race, appearing from the skies when it seemed all hope was lost, and they invaded in an event the humans came to refer to as the Arrival.
The Malakus were kind and they were resourceful, and just when it seemed that life as everyone knew it would end, the Malakus offered the humans a way out.
A treaty. A truce.
They offered humanity the option to live under their rule. Obey their laws. They offered humanity the chance at life. And the Malakus would have access to every natural resource the Earth still had left.
As an added bonus, humanity had access to the Malakus advanced technology.
The answer had come. Humanity was saved. The Malakus allowed humanity to avoid destruction and saved the planet.
The choice was an easy one to make. No one batted an eye at the idea that if the humans refused, the Malakus would obliterate them as if they had never been. The world leaders accepted the terms.
Since then, the Earth has been restored. Pollution diminished; the animals returned. The humans recovered and started working alongside the Malakus to create cures for the diseases they could not naturally fight. They created technology that would help to save the planet.
The Malakus were seen as friends. As saviors.
Humans and Malakus alike lived in harmony. Unity.
The humans had to sacrifice their world to an alien race to survive. What was the alternative? It seemed to have worked out just fine. The humans and the Malakus coexisted. There were aliens who apparently ‘come in peace.’
What could go wrong?
Chapter One
Earth Year 2050
Thane
“Get your fucking hands off me!” I shouted, ripping free from the guards for the umpteenth time. They were useless, all of them. If I ran a prison, I wouldn’t have guards so pathetic. The only thing that had stopped me from getting away from them over and over again was this damn shock collar they made me wear since the moment they’d realized I could kill them with my bare hands if I wanted to.
“If you stop fighting, everything will be easier,” Choton said. He was one of the Malaki guards, a particular breed of asshole.
“Fat chance of that happening,” I said and fought the chains that they were using to try to hold me down. The two guards that held onto me dragged me across the floor like ragdolls when I fought them, and I started toward Choton. I was going to give him a taste of what it meant to cross me.
He looked me dead in the eye, he didn’t even flinch, not so much as a snarl, and pressed the button.
Electricity pulsed through my body and I dropped to the floor. I gritted my teeth and bit out every colorful word I could think of until Choton lifted his finger from the button. Blessed reprieve. I lay on the floor, breathing hard, feeling the aftermath of the electricity tingle through my body. My hair was long enough to cover my face, but I wasn’t going to use the opportunity to wince. They were not going to break me.
“Are we going to try this again? I’m going to teach you manners, yet.”
Yeah, right. That wasn’t going to happen. Manners? What for? They didn’t do anyone any good. I could be the nicest kid on the block, and they were still going to stab me in the back
So, why be the nicest kid? It was dog eat dog out there.
I was yanked to my feet. The chains bit into my skin but I wasn’t scared of pain. When you could feel pain, you were still alive. That part was either a blessing or a curse, but that was besides the point.
Choton looked at me with a raised brow, waiting for me to act out again. But okay, I would play along. For now.
They weren’t going to keep me in here forever. Not if I could help it. To hell with their verdict. They didn’t know what they were talking about, anyway.
They dragged me through the tall iron gates that led into the prison. Blackford Penitentiary was a maximum-security correctional facility for both Malaki and humans alike. Why did they throw us together? Because it was easier than dividing us. Who complained about discrimination? We were all treated the same.
A mistake, in my opinion, but everything my dad did, was.
One the right side of the walkway, behind the fence, Malakus looked at me with expressionless faces. To my left, also behind a fence, I could basically feel the hatred radiating from the humans.
Well, the feeling was mutual. I hated all of them.
All of my kind, too. But the Malakus were silent when they stared at me, uncaring. The humans hated me loudly. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I was in here because I’d slaughtered a bunch of them. In cold blood.
“Murderer!” some of the humans shouted.
“Do you think that fence is enough to keep me out?” I asked, offering a deadly smile. “We’ll just add a few more warm bodies to my list, what do you say? I’m free for the foreseeable future.”
The Malakus on my right snickered at my comment. I gave them a cold look and their smiles faded, their eyes going cold again.
The humans who shouted at me fell quiet, glancing at the others. Was I going to get to them? I could see them trying to calculate it. But the guards wouldn’t allow it, not right now. Not until I got this damn collar off my neck.
I chuckled and kept moving. The guards looked suspicious that I was playing along. Good, let them stay on their toes.
I was led to my cell, and locked in. My hands were uncuffed through the metal gate, and I was allowed to take the collar off my own neck. I shoved it through the gap where the cuffs had been taken off and hoped to the Gods that the collar would malfunction and shock the guard.
It didn’t. Disappointing.
I rubbed my wrists and the spot on my waist where the chains had chafed me. I sat down on one of the bunks.
There were two. Which meant I had a cellmate.
Perfect.
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I hated being here. How many times had I been thrown into prison? More than I could count. And I resented my dad for all of it. Fucking asshole, that was what he was. Scum of the Earth. I hated that we were related, that I had anything to do with the son of a bitch.
The cells were horrendous. No running water and a bucket to relieve myself in. It stank like shit. Clearly, it had been used. The cells were dirty, too. Reeking of piss everywhere. My cot didn’t have a mattress on it, it was just a plank to sleep on.
But that was where you ended up when the first cells you were in didn’t do that trick.
That was what my father had told me.
A large Malaki appeared in front of the gate and snarled at me.
“Who the fuck are you?”
“Hiya, neighbor,” I said with a grin.
The Malaki spat on the floor. “I don’t want you here.”
He was a tall SOB, possible taller than my own six foot ten and that was saying something. His black hair was cropped short and he had a scar across his face that made him look even meaner than his snarl made him come across.
“Yeah, well, government issue, am I right?” I laughed at my own joke. Cleary, Scar face didn’t think it was funny.
The metal door slid open with a clank and there was nothing between me and Scar Face.
I stood. He turned when the gate closed and pushed his hands through the bars to allow the guard to take off the cuffs. The guard barely featured next to this beast of a Malaki.
But I wasn’t scared of him. I hadn’t ended up in a place like this because I was a coward.
When Scar face turned around, his teeth were bared.
“Let me tell you how things are going to work around here,” he said. “This is my cell. You’re a guest. So you do whatever the fuck I say, or else—”
I didn’t let him finish his sentence. It sounded boring, anyway. I punched him with a left hook, clipping him in the mouth, and he staggered backward, surprise on his face. His arms flailed as he tried to keep his balance and blood trickled down his chin. Maybe I’d busted his lip. Or he bit his tongue.
“The way I see it, I’m the boss of this joint. So, I’m not going to do shit when you say it. I do not jump when you snap your fingers. You’re lucky to be alive.”
Often, Malakus were intimidated by me. Not just because Enach of the House of Dacoi, ruler of the Americas after we had invaded Earth, was my dad. But because I didn’t make threats. I followed through on my promises. Hell, sometimes I followed through first and only thought about making statements, later.
Scar Face recovered from the blow and stormed me with his teeth bared, rage on his face. He tried to grab for my hair. Rookie move. I was ready for him – I’d been trained in the military. Fighting was as natural to me as breathing. And even though this was a big guy, he was rough around the edges. He’d learned to fight on the street, it was easy to tell. His size could be used against him – it made him clumsy, he wasn’t quick on his feet.
When he grabbed me around the neck, I elbowed him in the stomach. His hands gripped me like an iron manacle, but I steeled myself and stopped breathing for a while. Beast doubled over when I elbowed him but didn’t let go. Admirable, if I was in the business of admiration.
I wind-milled my arms and slammed then down on the Malaki's grip, forcing him to let go of my throat. He stumbled forward in the process, trying to recover his balance, and I took advantage of the fact that his face was so close to mine. I head-butted him. I slammed my forehead into his face, and I felt his nose crack against my skull. Blood sprayed over my face and pissed down on his shirt.
Despite having a broken nose, he kept coming. I had to give it to the guy, he had tenacity. I was ready to finish this guy. I was sick of him coming back again and again. Dead guys didn’t do that, and I had a feeling that death was just about his size. But our cell opened, and guards ran in. Two of them grabbed the bleeding Beast who looked like hell on a platter with his faced covered in blood and menace dripping from his bared teeth.
Two of them came for me but they weren’t taking any chances. Out of nowhere, tasers were shoved into my side and the voltage was to high for me to fight. I dropped to the floor like a bag of shit.
I was only semi-conscious when they dragged me out of the cell and toward a different part of the cell block. I heard cheers from all the cells we passed and managed a grin. Yeah, they liked me. I was a fucking hero.
“This should give you some time to cool off,” one of the guards said as they opened a solid metal door and threw me through it. The room was small and dark. The door shut and I couldn’t see a thing. I lay on the floor, groaning, trying to pull myself back together again after I had been shocked to within an inch of my life.
After some time, I felt like I could breathe again. I did a quick body check. Everything was fine, I was just a little toasty. Ha!
When I stood, I bumped my head against a very low ceiling. I cursed and dropped to the ground again. The ceiling was so low I could only sit. And the room was so small I would have to lay curled in a ball, I wouldn’t be able to stretch out.
So, they had thrown me into solitary confinement. Great.
I cursed again and propped myself up against a wall. What the hell was I doing here? Yeah, so I’d been punished for killing those humans. But I didn’t regret it. It was just as I had said to the judge who had tried me – the only thing I regretted was getting caught.
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I had been in confinement like this before. I hated it. I hated being alone with my thoughts. Because the moment I started thinking, I saw her.
Long, soft hair. A gentle smile. Eyes that radiated love and affection. My mother had been nothing like my father, nothing like what I’d had to deal with since the day she’d died. After she’d left me, there had been no reason to be good. And there was no reason for me to try with my father. He didn’t care.
Fuck, I missed my mother so much. Everything had been okay when she’d been around. But the moment she’d passed away, my life had turned into hell.
Yeah, well, no use crying over the past. There was no changing that. I had to look toward the future. And I sure as shit wasn’t going to spend it in this hell hole. No, thank you. I was going to bust my way out of here and go home. Back to Nolmilea, and off this godforsaken piece of shit planet the humans wanted back so badly.
Chapter Two
Emori
Back in the day, the drive from Holbrook to Phoenix used to take us about three hours, give or take a few speeding tickets my dad would pick up along the way. But that was before the world had gone to shit, before I had lost both my parents to the pandemic that wiped out forty percent of the Earth, before everything changed.
Now, it wasn’t that hard to get anywhere. The Malakus had all kinds of technology and we – the poor humans – were allowed to use their scraps. Lucky us.
No, travel between Holbrook and Phoenix took me about half an hour. I had heard that the technology we used was just a shadow of the hyperdrive the Malakus had used to get to us from their planet in another galaxy. Damn them and their tech. Couldn’t they find another planet to colonize? In a different galaxy, maybe. Then they could leave us the hell alone.
Okay, so them being here wasn’t all bad. We were doing pretty damn poorly by ourselves in our little corner of the Universe. In the past thirty years, we’d had everything from global warming to nuclear war, droughts and diseases. The world was set on getting rid of all of us, it seemed. So many people had died. But then the Malakus had arrived. They’d told us they would help us restore Earth, as long as we deferred to them, allowed them to rule.
What alternative did we have? They would have gotten rid of the measly handful of us that were left. And we would have made that happen all by ourselves had they not come along.
So, no. All hail the Malakus , or some shit like that. Because it was thanks to their tall, skinny asses that we were alive at all.
Shit wasn’t so bad no
w, anyway. So, we had to answer to aliens. And we had to ask permission for everything we had to do like a kid who lived with his parents again. But we had tech, and we had help, and we were alive.
For now, at least.
There were rumors about some illness that was spreading. And that scared the shit out of me. Because Naira and I had lost our parents to an illness that no one could control. And I was terrified it would happen again.
I arrived in Holbrook just after noon. Honovi sat outside his father’s shop. They all lived in the Navajo Reservation, but Honovi and his dad had a shop here and travelled everyday to make it happen. A lot of people had given up after everything had gone south on us, but Honovi’s family had worked hard all the way through. They were lucky to all still be together.
“Emori,” he said when he saw me and waved. “Where did you come from?”
“Phoenix,” I said. I gestured to the bag of food I had with me.
“Nenthemar,” Honovi said.
I shook my head. “I don’t care what they call it now. It will always be Phoenix.”
“You have to give in to change, Emori. Adapt and survive, remember? It’s the only way to do it, now.”
“What are you talking about, change? I’m Navajo, Honovi. We don’t change.”
“Half Navajo,” Honovi said with a grin.
“Shut up,” I said, shaking my head. But Honovi wasn’t being an ass about it. It wasn’t a secret that my dad had been British. The lonely tourist who had fallen in love with a Navajo woman. Some of the Native Americans said that made me a half-breed, but I was proud of my heritage. Anyone born from the sort of love my parents had shared was luckier than they would ever understand. Naira and I were who we were because of how beautiful my parents’ relationship had been.
