Veiled Vixen: Sci-Fi Alien Romance (Harem Station Book 6)

by JA Huss

  Because the world is nothing but white light. Endless and opaque. And silent.

  The chaos of war—gone.

  Just quiet.

  Veila? I say it but I can’t hear it.

  “I’m here.” And she is. Suddenly. Immediately. She is here with me and I’m here too. Just us two immersed in her brightness.

  “What the hell just happened?”

  “Whatever you do, just don’t let go of my hand.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. But I think… I think that might be the only thing connecting me to you at the moment. And if you let me go—”

  “I won’t,” I say. “I won’t let go.”

  “I think I did something, Valor. I think I did something bad.”

  “Come here,” I say, tugging on her hand. And for a moment there is no resistance. No sign that her hand in mine is even real. I feel it slip away. I feel everything slip away.

  “Veila,” I say sharply. “No.”

  “It’s calling me, Valor.” Her voice is shaky and trembling.

  “What? Who? Who’s calling you?”

  “That place. The golden place. I want to go.”

  “No,” I say. “You just told me to not let go of you. And I’m not sure I want to see the… golden place. I want to stay right here. And I want you to stay with me. Harem Station is in the middle of a war. Crux and Lyra and Serpint are about to be killed by psychotic princesses and we don’t even know where Luck and Jimmy and Nyleena and Delphi are.”

  “I really want this to end,” she whimpers.

  “I know,” I whisper back, still pulling on her hand, still trying to reel her in to me. “And it will. I’m going to make sure of it. But you can’t leave me. You can’t leave me, Veila. We’re stuck, remember? We’re in this together. I know you’re tired and you want it to end. I have a feeling that’s what this light is. It’s your… end. Your answer to all that pain they inflicted on you. But I want you to dial it back now, Veila. Pull it back so we can see what’s left.”

  “I don’t want to,” she says. But there’s resistance to my pulling now. She’s here. With me. And when I tug just a little bit harder…

  “There you are,” I say, putting my arms around her. “There you are.”

  She wraps her arms around my middle and presses her face into my chest. “I don’t want to do this anymore. And the light is here, Valor. All I have to do is walk into it and everything will stop.”

  “No, it won’t. Listen to me.” I push her away a little and look down into her face. Her eyes are all white. Nothing but white glow. But there’s a crackle of pink around the edges. A hint that she’s not gone yet. The silver hasn’t gotten all of her.

  Just most of her.

  “Listen, OK?” She nods. But I can’t tell where her eerie eyes are looking. At me? Not at me? I don’t know. “We can fix this. I think we’re stuck in a… pause. Or something. Just dial it back. Dial back everything you feel right now. Everything but me, OK? Just me. Look at me.” I shake her by the shoulders. “Look at me!”

  She blinks. And everything goes black. Like we’re lost in space. Drifting in nothingness.

  “Veila,” I say, more forcefully now. “Look. At. Me.”

  She opens her eyes and pink light flows out like perfect sunshine. She blinks again, only this time the darkness is gone and in its place is a golden fog. And through that fog I can see Harem Station.

  Vague forms and shapes. Still. Utterly motionless. But it’s there.

  “See,” I say. “See. You’re still here. We’re still here. There’s Serpint. And Lyra. And Crux.”

  And the redheaded bitch. But I don’t say that part.

  Captain Red is floating in the air, her SEAR sword ready to cut Veila’s head off.

  Everyone is still here. And when I look around I see all the Harem Station citizens. Mid-battle, but motionless.

  She stopped time.

  She stopped everything.

  “I could kiss you right now,” I whisper, awed into a new sort of respect for her.

  “You probably should,” she says, looking up at me. And now I can see her eyes behind the pink. Her face. Her hair. Her white sweater. “It might be your last chance.”

  I don’t let go of her hand. I’m afraid if I do, she will float away and I’ll never see her again. But I bring my other one up and place it on her cheek. And then I lean down and touch my lips to hers.

  It’s in this moment that I feel it.

  For real.

  The bond we have.

  The bond they made. That they put into our biology and forced upon us.

  But you know what? It doesn’t matter how that bond came to be. It’s here now. And I won’t let her walk into that light and leave me behind.

  I won’t give her up or let her go.

  “You’re mine,” I whisper into her mouth. “And I’m yours. And we’re gonna do this together or not at all. So if you want to check out, Veila, I’m going with you.”

  She shakes her head and pulls away from my kiss. “I can’t take you.”

  “You don’t have a choice. I’m not letting you go alone. Ever again. And I’m not going to take away your choices, either. I won’t be like them. I will not force you into agreeing with me, or being my partner, or loving me, or fighting for me, or any of it. It’s all you now, baby. All you. So choose. We can stay and win this fight together. Or we can go. See what’s next on our journey. Your choice. You tell me what you want and that’s what we’ll do.”

  She swallows hard and looks around.

  The golden fog is fading. And I don’t know what that means. I don’t know if that means time will start up again any second now and we’ll be back in the fight, or that she’s just thinking clearer now.

  The only thing I know for sure is that she’s the one in control.

  Not me. Not Crux. Not Luck. Not ALCOR. None of us.

  Her.

  “What happened?” she asks. And then before I even know what she’s doing, her hand has slipped from mine and I swear to the sun, my heart stops.

  But she doesn’t disappear. Time does not start back up.

  We just… look around.

  Everyone is in mid-battle. Serpint and Crux are wrestling with a green-haired princess who is baring her teeth at them like a wild animal, their protective purple bubble of light extinguished.

  Lyra’s mouth is open in a scream, her plasma rifle in position to mow down a few more princesses. But no light pours out of her eyes now. They are just… eyes. Filled with fear and desperation.

  We look around. Take it all in.

  Everyone is filled with fear and desperation.

  Everyone is making their last stand.

  I pull Veila a little further away from Captain Red. Just in case time suddenly starts back up and she is back in the fight.

  “How?” Veila says, spinning in place. “How is this happening?”

  “Fuck if I know, princess. I guess there’s more to you than meets the eye.”

  “What do we do?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, running my fingers through my hair. “I don’t know.”

  “Should we go find Luck? And the others? Are they all…” Her words trail off as she walks over to the edge of the platform and leans over.

  I reach out and grab her by the arm, afraid she’ll fall. “Don’t get too close. There’s no safety bots, remember?”

  “Oh, my sun,” she breathes. “Did I do this?”

  I cautiously look over the side and see thousands and thousands of people stuck in the moment. “I guess you did.”

  “But… I’ve never done anything like this before. All I remember is the red one. Coming at me. And then you”—she turns to look at me—“you took my hand and then…”

  “Poof,” I say. “Time stands still.”

  “Was it us? Are we…”

  “A team?” I say, raising my eyebrows.

  She nods.

  “Looks that way, doesn’t it?”
/>   “Can we bring time back?” She looks around again. “We can’t just leave them like this.”

  “I dunno.” I sigh. “But…” I walk over to Crux and Serpint and push the green-haired girl back. She falls over. Lies there like a freaking statue. Eyes wide with hate. Mouth still open in a scream of anger. “But if time is gonna start up again, then I don’t want us to be on this platform when it happens. Ya know?”

  “Yeah,” she says. “Maybe we should take them back upstairs to the harem room? At least they’ll be safe there, right?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, let’s do that. Let’s get them safe. Then we can think about time again.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN - VALOR

  So that’s what we do. It takes both of us to carry Lyra into the harem room. We put her on the empty couch, propped up with pillows. And then we’re just about to go back for Crux and Serpint—both surely dreading carrying those two walls of muscle—when I spy a lift bot that was stopped mid-trip carrying supplies down the hallway leading to Crux’s office.

  I walk over to it, look up at Veila, and say, “Too bad we couldn’t just… bring this one online. To help carry Crux and Serp.”

  Veila furrows her brows. “Maybe we can.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. But we’re in charge here. So there has to be a way.”

  It takes hours. Hell, we could’ve moved a dozen people to safety by the time we figure out how to turn on the bot without turning on anyone else.

  We say his name—thank the sun every bot on Harem has an engraved nameplate on their person—and touch him—both of us, at the same time—and he lights up and comes to life. Starts slowly floating down the hallway like nothing happened.

  We wait until his job is done, more out of our own stunned realization that we actually did it than any kind of consideration for his job, and then tell him to follow us.

  We place Serpint and Crux on the couch next to Lyra and then we decide to go looking for Luck, Nyleena, Jimmy, and Delphi. To get them somewhere safe before time catches up with us again.

  The lift bot we use for carrying. It doesn’t have that much lift. But we wake up another bot, one that is used for traveling, and ride it down to level one twenty-two.

  We don’t know for sure that Luck and company are in the museum spinning up the node, but level one-twenty-two is on the way to the bottom level. So we stop to check it out.

  The node is open. But it’s not any kind of spin node I’ve ever seen before. The center of it—which is usually gates upon gates upon gates, and sometimes a spinning galaxy, and sometimes a portal to an abandoned Angel Station, and possibly even a portal to Earth—is a flexible… gel? That might be the best word to describe what the interior of the spun-up node is at the moment.

  It’s also not really there. Like it’s transparent. Like a shadow of a spin node.

  And Luck, Nyleena, and Jimmy are… gone.

  But Delphi is here.

  She stands in the middle of the gel node with her arms in a position that indicates she was holding hands with people when she tried to cross through, but failed.

  Jimmy, for sure. And probably Nyleena.

  “She didn’t go with them?” Veila asks in a whisper.

  “She did,” I say. “But it didn’t let her cross.”

  “Why?”

  “Because…” I sigh. “She’s not Jimmy’s soulmate. They were holding hands. That’s how Nyleena and Luck open the portal. They have to hold hands. And it only works because they’re soulmates.”

  “Oh,” Veila says, deflating a little. “Oh, my God. That’s awful. So they got to the other side, wherever that is, and she… she’s still here.”

  “She doesn’t even know yet.”

  Veila puts a hand over her heart. “I feel sick just thinking about her waking up from the time freeze. We need to put her somewhere safe.”

  “We can’t. She’s stuck in the portal.”

  “What’s going to happen to her when we start time up again?”

  “I don’t know.” I sigh. “I don’t know. But we should bring Tycho down here. To be with her when she does realize she was left behind. And Leonis too.”

  “That’s her guy?”

  “I guess there is no way past it.” I look down at Veila. “We are bonded to the ones they chose for us. Not even love was enough to get her through this portal with Jimmy.”

  “But where do you think they went?”

  “Earth,” I say. It’s just a guess, but it’s a good one. “When we came here to ALCOR Station twenty-one years ago we were given this… code. From Corla. To give to ALCOR. And it turns out these codes were spin node coordinates. That’s how Tray and I went through and landed on Angel Station. That was his code. And I think they used Jimmy’s to get to Earth.”

  What she doesn’t ask, what neither of us asks, is where would my code take us? Where would Luck’s code take him? And Serpint’s? And Draden’s, if he were still here.

  But it doesn’t even matter. When time resumes I’d bet every credit Harem Station had in its accounts that the spin node will just vanish. And Delphi will be standing in the middle of a room full of nothing. And without Luck and Nyleena to spin it up again, we no longer have a spin node.

  When we leave the museum on level one twenty-two there’s a general feeling of sadness in the station. Like all the despair inside all the people is starting to seep out and permeate the air.

  There’s a huge battle in front of the museum entrance. Dozens of outlaw warriors duking it out with various weapons. People bleeding. Some of them, when they wake up, will only have a moment or two left in this life before they die of their wounds. And some of them are already dead.

  We start with the dead ones first, enlisting the help of a few nearby bots to help get them down into the mortuary. We enlist more bots to start on the hundreds and hundreds of others on every level. And eventually we have to wake up even more bots to bag up the bodies and start shooting them out into space.

  Then we deal with the wounded.

  There are about eight hundred clinics on Harem Station. Each level has at least two medical centers. And by the time we get all the wounded onto lift bots and positioned near the closest clinic, we have run out of bots. So we wake up Veila’s borgs and conscript them into our little army. And one person at a time is taken care of.

  Then we wake up Baby. He is disoriented. It takes several hours for him to cycle through a debug program and become himself again. But once that happens, and we explain the situation, he’s eager and willing to help.

  His first report is that the Succubus is gone and so are Lady and Dicker.

  There’s a lot to think about but not many answers forthcoming. So instead of thinking we go to each and every person on Harem Station. Find their name, their job, their home—or where they’re staying, if they were unlucky enough to be on vacation when this whole shit show started—and begin the process of removing them from the battle.

  We consider taking away all their weapons. It would be the logical thing to do when you’re trying to end a war. But we aren’t really trying to end a war. We need all these people to fight—just not amongst themselves.

  So Veila and I decide to disarm them in a more temporary way. We will remove their charge packs and ammunition and stow them somewhere on their person. So when the time comes back—online? Is that a thing?—they will still be able to fight, but it will take them a minute to realize they have no ammo and reload.

  Hopefully, in the time between waking up and reloading, we will have their full attention and can push a reset button on this whole civil war thing.

  Then we assign borgs and bots to move them to their place of employment, or their room, and leave them there.

  That way, when the time comes back online—we’ve decided to go with that phrasing—they will not wake up in the midst of battle rage. They will come back confused, but in a familiar place among hopefully at least a few friends.

  We also take all the freaking
princesses down to the lock-up. Fuck those girls. They cannot be trusted.

  But once that’s done, we realize that this might be the only time to fix the air and water systems, so we wake up even more bots and borgs and assign them to help with repairs.

  Except no one can see properly because most of the freaking lights are off. And the trash compactors on seventeen levels are down. And there are twenty-seven non-functional airlocks, and three hundred and fifty-four broken autocooks throughout the station. Plus all the air-screens are down. We’re totally out of communication. On top of that, there are six open reports of missing children who need to be located and put somewhere safe, a rogue ship floating in the main docking bay on the lower level, and then—surprise, surprise—we learn something that no one else in the universe knows: dragonbee bots live outside of time. Because we find Flicka in a sexbot bar down on level fifteen, drunk and farting out poison, rambling on in her little dragonbee language about the Succubus leaving her behind.

  Who knew?

  It takes several lifetimes to get everything back in order.

  But here’s the thing… it’s just time. And here, at least in this world, time has no meaning.

  What we’re doing, how we’re restarting things right, how we’re remaking the war into something else… that’s the only thing that has meaning now.

  It’s just like the virtual with Tray and Brigit. We have limitless time right now.

  And we need to make the most of it. Because once time is back online and running forward again, we’re right back in the middle of the crisis.

  This is our only chance.

  There is no surrender. We can’t afford to surrender.

  People are coming for us and when they do we need to be united again.

  We need to be ALCOR’s army of outlaws.

  And we need to win.

  Throughout all this Veila and I have been working as a team. There is no other way to wake up the bots and borgs. And we work endless hours, nearly to the point of exhaustion. And when we reach the point where our eyes will not remain open one more moment, we go our separate ways.