Kidnapping His Rebel: A Sci-Fi Alien Romance (Zalaryn Conquerors Book 2)

by Viki Storm

  But my instincts are another matter altogether.

  “I will forgive your insolence,” Lia says as Sorren stalks away. “Because you are wounded. Every animal lashes out when it’s in pain.” His only response is the whoosh of the doors closing behind him.

  “Now that that’s settled,” I say to Lia, “prepare for departure. We leave in one hour. If everything goes good, you’ll be meeting your crew on Crene in two or three days.” I struggle to keep my voice calm and flippant, but in truth, I’m worried about being on the small ship with her. Her enticing, sweet aroma is driving me mad. It’s not just in my nostrils, it’s in my head. It will be torture.

  “I don’t think I’d ever use the word ‘good’ to describe spending three days in a stealthcraft with a Zalaryn,” she says.

  “It will be good when I finally get to dump you off at Crene,” I say, trying to hide the pure lust I’m feeling. “At least there’s that.” But I’m not sure if I mean it. Even though I can’t stand this infuriating female, the thought of having to say goodbye is already causing a twinge of regret in my stomach.

  LIA

  Luckily, the Zalaryn’s stealthcraft is bigger than I imagined. It is not as big as my five-man smuggler’s vessel, but in addition to the two seats crammed into the tiny cockpit, there are two slim cots that fold down so we can rest, plus a toilet and sink stuffed into a closet in the back. Still, I ache to walk around, to do anything more than just sit next to this alien warrior.

  Because it’s doing funny things to my brain.

  We are sitting in the cockpit, Bantokk piloting and me navigating. I suck at navigation, but I’m trying my hardest to learn. The sooner he can beam the computer virus into the Rulmek ship, the sooner I can get away from him and back to my own ship.

  “Do a gravity scan,” he instructs. I look at the instrument panels, unable to decipher anything because the writing is foreign and the numbers are all in binary. He showed me how to do this before, but I forget.

  “Is it the…” I stare at the switches and dials, trying to remember how to initiate the sensory scanners that will track the surrounding void for minute changes in gravitational pull—a signal that a large ship (or asteroid) is nearby.

  “This one,” he says and reaches over me, thumbing the blue button that I only vaguely remember. His shoulder presses against my arm as he leans over, and when he outstretches his arm, it brushes against the flat plane of my stomach. I don’t remember the last time anyone touched me—let alone in such an intimate spot.

  There’s an odd flip low in my stomach that’s part nerves and part excitement. I push it away, trying instead to focus on the hatred I feel for alien slavers and fleshdealers. The Zalaryns aren’t as unscrupulous as the Rulmek, I’ll concede that, but they did take human women from Earth to be auctioned as breeding slaves. Even if Bantokk never personally bought a human female at auction, his race and society hold such values—namely that human females are merely a commodity and vessel for Zalaryn seed.

  But I can’t deny the attraction. That feeling of being drawn. Of being pulled.

  We’ve been in this stealthcraft for a long time, and in the silence, I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. There is an attraction. He’s an aesthetically pleasing male—that’s objective and cannot be denied. His musculature is perfect, like he’s a meticulously sculpted statue that’s somehow come to life. He’s perfectly proportioned, and it’s like the Zalaryns choose to go shirtless because they know how artful and godlike they look.

  But that’s not it. It’s not just his powerful physique or rakish face that’s causing this attraction. There’s something more. How certain species of birds are programmed to fly south when the weather turns cold. How the leaves of plants will turn toward the sun. How a spider knows the measurements and angles needed to spin a perfect web. Instinct. Something primal and unknowable.

  He flips the switch, and I can tell that he’s trying to smell me. The intake of air through his nostrils is quiet, but this close, in the quiet vacuum of space, I can hear it. I don’t like it. He thinks he’s in charge, this bastard, dragging me out of my ship, making all sorts of dirty comments, demanding that I do exactly what he says. He doesn’t realize I’m not doing it because I agree with him or because he’s bested me. It’s only for my sister Bryn, for Lekyo Prime.

  “Good,” he says. He’s studying the graph on the display panel, the results of the gravity scan. “They’re twelve hours away, toward the Stavox local group. Hopefully.”

  “Hopefully?” I ask. “You sound like you have no idea what you’re doing.”

  “Obviously I don’t, if my plans involve being stuck on a stealthcraft with you for the last—” he makes a big theatrical show of looking at the date and time display. “Thirty-four hours.”

  “We both know that you’re an idiot,” I say. “But do you care to elaborate on why you ‘hopefully’ think that they’re twelve hours away?”

  “Female,” he says. “I have ignored a lot of your rude behavior because you are so far beneath me in terms of being an actual threat that it’s not worth it to correct you. But I am giving you an official warning: you’re starting to annoy me.”

  “Excellent,” I say. “At least one thing is going my way.” But I make a mental note to curb my attitude, just a little bit. Unless he really deserves it.

  “As I was saying,” he continues, “there’s a gravitational disturbance of the magnitude we would expect from an object with a mass of approximately 40,000 tons. It’s not stationary, either; it’s traveling in the expected route if it were headed to Lekyo Prime. So hopefully it’s the Rulmek warship and not an apocalyptic asteroid or, Void help us, a Kraxx warship.”

  “I see.” I don’t say anything else. Considering he’s from a warrior race of aliens, he’s actually pretty mild-tempered. He could have pointed his missiles and turned The Golden Plague into space dust. He could have boarded my ship and slaughtered us all; one little blast from that long weapon hanging from his belt and my entire crew would have been turned into space dust, as well.

  He could have done other things to me… He had me tied to the bed. There was no one there to stop him from doing whatever he wanted. He could have torn off my clothes and used my body to satisfy his warrior lust. He could have ravaged me in every way imaginable… but he didn’t. He teased me a little, sure, but he could have done anything to me and I would have been powerless to resist.

  “What sort of a job you got lined up on Crene?” he finally says after a long silence.

  “You really want to know?” I ask. “Or are you just asking so you can lecture me about it?”

  “Can it be both?” he says. I shoot him a look but hold my tongue. “Although I am curious about what you rebels do with your time.”

  “We try to take down vile creatures like the Rulmek,” I say. “Anything we can do to disrupt their plans, from sabotaging their ships to blowing them up. Busting up the slavers’ markets. Raiding storehouses. We’re a lot like the Zalaryns. You know, except we help other people rather than just taking shit that doesn’t belong to us to enrich our own planet.”

  “Nice lecture,” he says. “But you didn’t exactly answer my question.”

  “Our job’s not any of your business. Wouldn’t you agree that a captain shouldn’t give away details of their mission?”

  “I’m not asking for the coordinates and timetables,” he counters. “I’m just curious what noble deed your crew is going to undertake.” I know he’s trying to bait me, but I can’t quite resist it.

  “There’s a shipment of antibiotics,” I say. “And let’s just say that it’s going to go missing.”

  “Stealing medicine?” he says. “I was right. That is noble of you.”

  “When we sell it for a third of what the manufacturers charge, shit yes it’s noble.”

  “And you make a profit,” he says. As if that’s a bad thing.

  “Everyone makes a profit off of something,” I say. “I don’t need a lecture fr
om a fucking raider about why I shouldn’t steal.”

  “I’m not saying you shouldn’t steal,” he says. “But call it what it is. You’re stealing from someone who is greedy and weak and ill-equipped to defend it. Just don’t pretend that what you’re doing is some righteous crusade to help the less fortunate. The only person you’re interested in helping is yourself.”

  I absorb his words—and they sting.

  The truth usually does.

  I don’t care if the farmers on some dirt planet get their doses of Onyxcillin for eighty coin or two-forty coin. That’s not why I do it. I do it for the challenge. It’s satisfying to pull off a heist like that. The money is just tangible proof that I outwitted someone.

  And that’s what’s important. Outwitting people. Coming out the winner. Not letting anybody screw me over. When I escaped my captivity, that’s what I swore to myself. I would always come out on top.

  Which is why this Zalaryn bastard rankles me so much. He outwitted me, out-muscled me, out-maneuvered me in every way.

  The hours pass and we don’t say much. I keep my eye on the time display, waiting for this to end. As much as I would have liked to meet the Rulmek with missiles and lasers, I have to admit that Bantokk’s plan has a little bit of humor in it. I imagine those slimy aliens running around their huge warship, first trying to reset their coordinates, then panicking when they realize something with their navigation system is seriously wrong. The look on their wide, scaly faces when they chart the new coordinates and see that they’re headed right for a Kraxx settlement. The despair when none of the escape pods will initialize. They can do nothing but ride out the voyage that will take them to certain doom.

  Because not even evil bastards like the Rulmek want to fuck with the Kraxx. No one wants to fuck with the Kraxx.

  I find myself looking forward to this. Beaming a computer program into the ship’s system does lack the panache of a firefight, but the results will be satisfying nevertheless.

  Bantokk gets up and stretches, then relieves himself in the small bathroom. When he comes back to his seat at the cockpit, he starts twisting knobs and pushing buttons. Even with the differences in the language and number system, it’s obvious to me what he’s doing: activating the stealth shields.

  That’s when I see the warship. We are close. Bantokk had blockers covering the windshield, as viewing passing objects when traveling at such high speeds causes vertigo and worse sensory side effects. And now that the coverings are retracted, I see a gigantic ship right in front of us. We’re two kilometers away—in space distances, that’s like a millimeter.

  Our stealthed ship won’t go undetected forever, but we should have plenty of time. I’ve run lots of heists like this before, and it’s easier than you’d think to sidle up to a huge ship in a tiny little stealthcraft. As long as you don’t overstay your welcome. It’s like how an elephant doesn’t notice the ant crawling on his leg—until the ant makes it into the elephant’s eye.

  “Here we go,” Bantokk says. He pushes a button to reveal a recessed storage area between the two cockpit seats. The lid slides back automatically and he reaches inside. He pulls out a small plastic box and sets it on his lap while he types something into the ship’s computer.

  “You kept it on a disc?” I say, confused at the primitive technology. My ship doesn’t even have a disc reader, and it’s an old, limping vessel.

  “Chip,” he says. “Couldn’t risk something screwy happening to my control panel and accidentally deleting the program.”

  He thumbs up the cover on the chip reader and pushes the button to turn it on. A little red light comes on and I can hear it humming. Primitive technology compared to the rest of the ship, but I guess sometimes the old ways are better.

  I watch as he opens up the little box on his lap. I can sense the air change as his face screws up and he starts pawing through the storage area.

  “Void-loving darkness,” he hisses. “Did you do something with it?”

  “Me?” I ask. “Did you lose the damned chip?” What a rookie mistake.

  “I didn’t lose anything,” he says, rage coloring his already red face. “It was in the box, in the secured storage area.”

  “Was?” I say. “Great. Can you have one of your buddies send you a copy of the program?”

  “Not without deactivating the stealth—and I don’t think you want to do that, now do you?”

  “Then I don’t know what to tell you,” I say. I know the frustration he’s feeling, so I don’t needle him, but good grief, keeping the only copy of the precious file on a chip? If it was me, I’d have had twelve chips hidden around my ship, plus two more made into earrings that I could wear at all times. “Take me to Crene, and then you can contact your superiors and get another copy of the file. There’s probably time to catch up with the Rulmek ship.”

  “Oh no,” he says. “I’m not just dropping you off on Crene. Don’t you see what happened? One of your crewmembers took my chip.”

  “Everything you just said is ridiculous,” I tell him. “There’s no way any of my crew had the opportunity to do this. And I’m sure that storage area is secured with a code. Plus, in case you forgot, my crew wanted you to deal with the Rulmek. They didn’t want to have a firefight.”

  “Someone on your ship took that chip,” he says, “and you’re not going anywhere until I figure it out.”

  “No,” I say. “I volunteered to go with you because I like the idea of killing a ship full of Rulmek. But this partnership ends here. I can put you in contact with someone on Crene who can get you a fast, secure connection to your home planet for the file transfer. But that’s it. I already gave you my word that I won’t interfere, and that’s all you wanted from me.”

  “That was before,” he says, the anger rolling off of him. “I can’t overlook this. This is more than a missing chip. This is sabotage, and it could mean much bigger trouble than a Rulmek ship headed for Lekyo Prime.”

  I can’t repress the shudder that ripples up my spine because I know firsthand just how much trouble they’re in. “I’m not coming with you,” I say. “You can’t just kidnap me.”

  Bantokk gestures to the ship, to the blank void that surrounds us. And it hits me how stupid I’ve been, getting into his ship.

  “Yes I can,” he says. “In fact, I just did.”

  BANTOKK

  It takes all of my warrior discipline not to turn my stealthcraft around and fly back to the rebel ship. I want to round up her crew and make them talk. After I find the traitor, I want to make him pay. I want my chip back, but more importantly I want to know why he did this and what he’s planning with the Rulmek.

  But I can’t. It would be foolish to go back to the ship where I know there is a proven saboteur.

  I hate this, not knowing what to do. This is why I shouldn’t have been chosen for this mission.

  The Rulmek warship is right there—right fucking there. It’s so close I could put on my oxygen suit and float over. But here I am without the program file and no idea what to do.

  I look over my shoulder toward the back of the ship. Lia has been in the bathroom for a long time. I think she’s giving me privacy while I figure this out, like I’m some tantrum-throwing child.

  Except I do feel like throwing a tantrum right now.

  Or maybe she’s not trying to give me privacy. Maybe she’s in there fondling the chip that she stole. She could have taken it while I was in the bathroom. Even though the storage compartment was locked, she could have gotten it open—she’s a professional thief, after all.

  These rebels, they deal with anyone so long as they can make a profit out of it. Maybe she owes the Rulmek a favor. Maybe she wants the Rulmek to owe her a favor.

  The door to the bathroom opens, and she silently stalks back to her seat next to me.

  “What do you think?” I ask her. She might not have honor, but she has sneaky animal cunning—and that’s what we need right now.

  “I think you’re desperate if you
’re asking my opinion,” she says.

  “I am desperate,” I admit. “Desperate and angry. How the holy Void did one of them get the chip?”

  At the mention of her crew’s guilt, she takes in a deep breath and purses her lips until they’re nothing but a severe white knot. “I admire your restraint,” I tell her. “I know you think your crewmen are all above reproach, but one of them took my chip.”

  She just stares at me. She knows she can’t sway me, so she isn’t even trying, which is somehow more vexing than if she was yelling at me. It hasn’t been that long, but I’ve grown fond of our constant bickering and arguing. Her temper and beauty flare in equal measure. Her eyes widen and blaze with energy, and her breath quickens, causing her breasts to heave inside her close-fitting suit.

  “Either one of them took it, or you took it,” I prod. I want to get a reaction out of her. I don’t like her just sitting there, mutely staring at me.

  “I didn’t take it,” she says, finally losing her composure. I don’t know what’s so damned sexy about a female who’s angry. I think it’s because they display many of the same signs when angry as when aroused. The red face, the heavy breathing, the loss of control. “But since you’re asking and we’re already here, I say we just sneak on board.”

  “You want to sneak on board a Rulmek warship? There’s at least a thousand on board, maybe more.”

  “You want to live forever?” she says. I lock eyes with her, trying to detect false bravado, but I think she honestly wants to do it. She’s more than a little crazy, that much I knew, but I didn’t realize she was half in love with death, too.

  “I would like to live a little longer, yes,” I say. “A hundred should do it.”

  “How long do Zalaryns live?” she asks.

  “Are we including unnatural causes of death, like a spear through the eye or being cut in half with a laser gun? You know, the typical fates that can befall you when you sneak aboard a Rulmek warship.”