Last Call (Stranded in the Stars Book 1)

by Naomi Lucas

  Jack repositioned himself to use his body as an energy source and forced his ship into overdrive, making one last push to get close enough to Larik. He wouldn't last long as a battery but he may still get the job done today.

  It was then, during several critical seconds and closing in on success that his ship got hit again. What the hell was that? He found no readings on the second impact and had no choice but to give up the chase, to land, and repair his ship.

  He watched as the pirate ascended into the sky and flew away, the communication link disconnecting after a faint taunting laughter snaked through the intercom.

  Grudgingly, he changed course to land on the rock called Argo.

  ***

  Jack maneuvered his vessel as carefully as possible, unconsciously scanning all meteor activity happening around him. Slowing down and then abruptly picking up speed while zigzagging left and right, he felt like he was still dancing through a rain of bullets like he had done often during his war days.

  He was almost in the clear, dipping into Argo's atmosphere where the meteors reacted and turned back into meaningless specks of dirt. The chemical reactions that were happening outside his ship were briefly intriguing but he soon lost interest as he descended to the ground.

  This planet will do just fine.

  He scanned everything for miles in every direction from his location. There was less life here blipping on his radar than a graveyard on Earth. He could immediately sense the giant behemoth wurms deep under the outer crust of the planet.

  Those fuckers are big. His scans indicated that the monsters were sensitive to light and that he would have to remember to take extra precautions at night. Strangely enough, he could sense one moving lifeform, an anomaly, that was traveling towards his ship above surface. It didn't appear to be a threat but he decided to examine the life-form further.

  ... a lone female. He took his attention away from the giant bugs under the planet’s surface and solely focused on the girl moving his way. This is an interesting development... how does a female end up on a rock like this?

  He could tell from analyzing her movements, heat signature, and heart rate that she was young and that she had to be Earthian. Unlike any other female he encountered in the past, this one was alone and unprotected.

  The closer she got to his ship, the more he could sense her presence, her erratic heartbeat, and her uniquely scented pheromones.

  It must be something on this planet.

  The surface climate was hot and dry, a blistering, undisturbed heat that sat stagnant over the landscape. The female would have to be Earthian to withstand this amount of heat and lack of water. Jack could sense an underground network of springs below the planet surface but no bodies of water above ground or clouds in the sky to indicate a change in weather.

  He decided to keep half of his processors, which he knew was overkill, to track her every movement while he went about preparing his ship for maintenance. He reconnected himself to his flyer and ran several diagnostic reports on all his ship’s vital parts.

  Filing away the pieces that needed to be repaired, he realized he would have to salvage metal from other parts of his flyer to properly repair the damage to his impulse drives. It frustrated him to think he would have to harvest from his own ship.

  The girl must have come from somewhere. Maybe he could take what he needed from her vessel so he wouldn't have to take apart his. His ship was his home, an extension of himself and taking apart hers would teach her the age old lesson ‘Survival of the fittest.’

  Scanning the rest of the planet's surface nearby, he found no other heat sources, no other recently active ships.

  The female may just be as stranded as I am right now, or maybe her ship has heat signature cloaking. Shit, for all he knew there could be a hidden colony of humans thriving here and she was sent forth as a trap.

  The girl was close enough now to his location that she would be able to see his ship and its minor details. Her heat signature had stopped moving and he could tell she was now crouched down between the rocks and dunes outside.

  Jack decided it was a great time to leave his ship and get a visual on his drives. He headed to the hatch and opened the capsule door to step out.

  A blast of dry heat assailed him. It’s a fucking wasteland.

  Straight ahead of him was a desert that gradually turned into a forest of rocks that morphed into giant dull brown mountains in the distance. There was no color on this planet unless you counted every shade and hue of brown. The only thing that could make this rock a paradise for him was a splattering of blood red and an active battlefield. His favorite color and pastime.

  Above him the meteor shower was ending and the vibrant colors it had caused were fading away. Jack pretended he didn't know she was there as he casually looked around at the terrain, covertly keeping an eye in the direction of the female and wondering what move she would make.

  After several minutes of waiting for her reaction, he gave up and half turned toward his ship to assess the damage.

  Chapter Three:

  ---

  It had taken her hours but she had finally managed to get within viewing distance of the ship. Excitedly, Allie realized that this had been the most interesting day that she has had since leaving the crash site to make her way out into the planet; and each day that preceded that terrifying day had been a stale state of existence, a blur of days, weeks, months, years of just surviving, of having no hope of rescue.

  The day hadn’t been a complete loss though.

  She had been fortunate to find sustenance several times over the course of the afternoon and today she had located over half a dozen dead baby wurms along the ground. The wurms were a source of food on this planet even though the thought of eating them still disgusted her.

  They resembled grubs but had a milky white sheen to them and in the sunlight they had a purple glisten. It was that sparkle that made it so easy to spot them and after a sandstorm, the little dead bugs were everywhere, being picked up by the wind and dying during the turbulence of the storm.

  They were the spawn of the giant monsters just below the surface. There was some macabre satisfaction that the giant beasts below her, were also her main source of food.

  She shivered to herself.

  She didn't eat the worms often, she couldn't, she never found enough to fully sustain her. But she found herself actively looking for the carcasses every time she went out to forage and luckily, her main source of food came from other tiny critters and dried out, chunky roots she often found under rocks near the mountain range.

  It was a day trip to get to the mountain range and back so she only went as often as she needed to as the trek led her closer to the ghostly tomb.

  Satisfied with her find today she settled in to survey the ship in the distance.

  The ship hadn't crashed like her transporter vessel but had haltingly landed instead, disturbing nothing but the sand it packed into the ground. She had expected it to resemble the crumbled metal of the crash site of her flyer but it was unlike it in every way. She concluded that any supposed victims were most likely alive and well.

  I haven't encountered another human in so long.

  Allie now felt deeply insecure in her decision of investigating the ship. What if the beings on board were loyal to the Warlord? Or what if they were men just like him and his generals. The Warlord had never pursued the transporter vessel she had been on nor did he come after the maidens while they were still planetside. Why would he be here now?

  Feeling her stomach sink, she quietly reached in her pouch and pulled out another root to munch on. The ship was unlike any she had seen before and she eyed it appreciatively, she could salvage a lot from its hull. If the beings onboard didn’t kill her first.

  It was sleek, beautiful, and had a chrome gleam to it with streaks of red lights along the sides and above the lights, large, tinted viewing glass ran along its entire frame. There was a dome at th
e top that was all glass, or some other substance that could withstand space travel.

  She could just imagine the supplies such an expensive ship would have inside, cloth, tools, food, soap... Groaning to herself. What I would do for a bar of soap.

  Her thoughts were abruptly cut off when the back capsule of the ship smoothly opened up.

  She held her breath, waiting for something to happen, nervously running her fingertips through her mess of windblown hair. It was a couple of heart-pounding seconds before a figure slowly emerged. A man, a very large, very lethal looking man. Allie felt her stomach dip further.

  She zeroed in on his movements as he surveyed the terrain, his head cocked up, legs slightly apart, exuding an aura that screamed he owned everything he saw before him.

  Good thing he can't see me.

  When he turned in her direction, she slowly pushed herself closer to the ground just in case she hadn’t been entirely hidden. He heart pounded as she tried to relax. Her long brown hair, the thinning leather rags she called clothing, and tanned skin camouflaged her perfectly on Hell-in-Space.

  The strange male turned back toward his ship and she let out the long tense breath that she had kept in.

  He must be looking at the damage. Maybe his ship was also caught in the meteor storm like mine had been. She couldn't really tell from this distance.

  Feeling equal parts curious and courageous, she started moving forward, desperate to see the male up close.

  She crouched behind a small rock outcropping that was several dozen yards closer to the male. He didn't look like a Trentian. He resembled more of an Earthian but much larger. Berating herself, she knew she was putting herself in serious danger being this close but at the same time she knew she had little left to live for and that truth stopped her from retreating.

  If she assessed the risks, he could hurt her, kill her, or even steal her away and return her to the Warlord. He could also do much worse. But refusing to stay on that train of thought, she was satisfied that she was close enough to make out the details of his character.

  He was the most frightening male her eyes had ever laid on in her life. The male was tall enough to climb and every inch of his length was protected by hard black body armor with accentuations of dark grey mesh that sculpted around his muscles. He wore heavy boots that were rimmed with metal.

  But what was most unnerving was the giant gun strapped across his back, the duo laser pistols on his tool belt, and the daggers strapped to his legs. He was not a simple man but a weapon-heavy warrior.

  The man had strong features, a strong chin, high sculpted cheekbones and all of it was uncannily, perfectly symmetrical. The only imperfect feature he had were two scars. One that had split his bottom lip on his left side that descended towards his neck while the other was just over his left eyebrow.

  And his eyes... his eyes were silver and violent. Even from this distance his eyes held a storm of dark emotions raging through them. She could only imagine how many beings died before them. If she could just get a closer look she bet she could see the gateway to hell and the souls of a thousand beings swimming behind them.

  The male equally terrified and intrigued her.

  She couldn't help the strange heat that pooled between her legs or the perspiration beading between her breasts. Her heart felt like thunder in her chest.

  ***

  Jack went about his ship, taking visuals of the damage and storing it in his database. A big damn meteor had struck his ship, not only fucking up the impulse drive but leaving jagged skid marks along the outer body.

  Catching Larik wasn't just a job anymore. It was revenge. The bounty he would get for his capture would more than cover the cost of repairing the perforations but that was just a bonus now.

  The satisfaction of dumping his body on Taggert, a prisoner planet, with his blood still on his hands would be the real reward.

  The pirate will pay for the crimes he committed against me.

  Jack didn't give a damn about his other transgressions, it was personal now.

  He breathed in deep, trying to calm himself down only ended up being a terrible mistake. The female had moved dangerously close to him. If he focused he could hear her slight breaths. The wild girl either liked what she was seeing or was frightened because her heart rate had increased dangerously high. A human male could have smelled the fear and pheromones wafting off of her.

  Groaning in frustration, Jack zeroed his attention on the girl behind him, only putting up the pretense now about his ship.

  Her breathing was elevated, her heat signature knocking up a degree. He could smell the sweat moistening her skin. It wasn't a bad smell. It was wild and erotic and drew him to the conclusion that this girl had been stranded on the planet for some time.

  His mission was now buried deep in the recesses of his mind because his body was reacting to her smell and even as a Cyborg his cybermechanics couldn't extract the pull she created. It would have been humbling, knowing the part of him that made him a man had more control over his technology but he had a job to do and within the last hour he was beginning to change his priorities.

  His nanobots were not doing a damn thing to cool his fascination. How the hell was she exuding such powerful pheromones? Nothing in his databases had an explanation.

  He entertained the idea of walking over to her, lifting her in his arms and confronting her when the ground began to shake. A wurm passed dangerously close by beneath his feet. Taking his knife out for good measure, he stabbed the ground, knowing the vibrations would be felt by the monster. One of them had to act civilized.

  Jack looked up, the meteor shower that caused this predicament was now over and Argo's sun was on its descent into darkness.

  He made one last perusal of his ship, absently wiping some the dust that already started to collect on it and headed back to the hull. The monsters inhabiting this planet will be making their presence known and he didn't feel like tussling with one tonight.

  He left the hatch open to his ship and waited in the shadows to see what the wild girl would do. If she were smart she would take her leave while she still could.

  Chapter Four:

  ---

  The male was naive.

  He barely acknowledged the environment after his first survey of the terrain and he could have been attacked and killed many times over if it had been night. Allie was always aware of her surroundings.

  He even left his dagger in the sand.

  She wanted to take it but knew he would miss it come morning.

  She wanted to warn him, wanted to tell him of the monsters that came out after dark especially since he blatantly left the hatch to his ship open. His actions were dangerous to his being. Allie mulled it over and decided she would wait awhile longer to see if he would come back out. It didn't hurt to play sentinel for a short time.

  When the time continued to pass and it began to appear that he had retired for the day, Allie determined it was for the best that she retired too. The temperature was beginning to drop and it was always cold at dusk and even colder at night.

  She judged the sun's location and if she ran, she would make it back to her hole-in-the-ground before everything was consumed by the chilly darkness. She really shouldn't have stayed so long to watch him and so giving the open hatch one last look, Allie headed home.

  At full sprint, an hour and half later, she saw her sanctuary come into view. The exertion it took her to get back before dark caused her to nearly pass out and it didn't help that she hadn't eaten more than one critter all day and was now faced with the repercussions, the weakness. She set aside her pouch, disrobed her rags, and slowly descended into the small warm spring at the back of her cave.

  Years ago, when she found this place, she had cried for joy and stayed in the spring for a week, living here ever since and finally cutting off all ties with the tomb she had arrived in.

  The only light she had were from the tiny little organisms
that lived at the bottom of the spring.

  Once she had tried to capture them and bring them above water, only to fail, when they all died soon after. Now she left them alone. They gave off just enough blue luminescence to discern the shapes of the rocks and her personal items around her.

  She didn’t have much, not after being stranded on this planet for a countless amount of time. Her makeshift home had an array of frayed cloth that she had brought with her, small metal brackets and pieces that had broken off of the ship when it first crashed here, and small bone tools that she had fashioned from the exoskeletons of long dead wurms.

  Allie had several other worthless belongings, things that reminded her of civilization that she couldn’t bring herself to get rid of. Her favorite of those pieces was an old, worn lighter that she had used up many moons ago. Now, when she felt wistful and bored, she would roll the spring with her thumb and listen to the soft zing.

  Resting her head on the ledge, she wiggled her feet amongst the organisms beneath her and whispered to herself, "No shame..." then slid her hand between her legs.

  Passion had been strictly forbidden at the commune as the crones drilled into her that it should be reserved only for breeding. The elder women of the group had ingrained the idea that there was perfection in innocence, sublimation in mating, and an extreme importance in sustaining the race.

  The stress and the pressure that she had been under mixed with the hatred from many of the other women she had lived with had worn her down as she struggled to assimilate. Sadly, no matter how often she reassured herself– that, that mantra no longer applied to her, she always woke up the next morning feeling guilty.

  A man had never excited her like the one that had stepped out of the ship today and she wasn’t entirely sure why. She didn’t think it could be that he was the first man that she had seen since her time traveling space but something about the mere presence of him that had caused her stomach to clench and her mouth to water.

  Even now with her core tensing and burning up, she felt wanton shame.