by Aria Bell
Our ships had passed through the turbulent upper atmosphere of Soepra and reached the surface. A harsh-looking wilderness sprawled around us in every direction, full of jagged rock formations that reached as high as some space towers I’d seen. Strange plant life grew everywhere, resembling coral or colonies of tinuvi bacteria, but I didn’t have time for sightseeing. I was lining up my shot on Ryrke’s ship that would disable his engines with one well-aimed blast.
He wasn’t making it easy, though. He was juking and rolling and looping around. He sent his ship through canyons and around rock formations, desperate to lose me.
But he couldn’t.
“One last chance, Ryrke,” I transmitted to him. “Or next you’ll be coming with me trussed up in my cargo hold. And on this ship, the cargo hold is about as big as a garbage bin. That’s if you survive the crash. So land your ship and come quietly.”
He didn’t reply, only sent his ship into another series of maneuvers that took all my skill to match. That’s it. I was done with this. It had gone on too long already. I’d given him plenty of chances to surrender peacefully. Now a girl had to take matters into her own hands.
My targeting locks all were green. I opened fire with my ion beams, not my blaster cannons, because I didn’t intend to kill him, no matter how irritated I was that he refused to surrender. Or that he’d called me “little human woman.”
He tried to dodge at the last instant, but I had anticipated. My shots hit his shields, disabling them, and the next blast took out his engines.
“Ha-yeah!” I yelled in triumph.
Then his disabled ship came flying straight back at mine.
“Oh crap!” I yelled in dismay as I juked hard to the left.
But not in time. His disabled ship slammed into mine. My shields held, but the force sent my ship careening into the side of a rock formation. My ship’s wing hit hard. A shower of rocks and dust flew in all directions. I muttered curses, the wind nearly knocked out of me by the jarring impact. The controls were fighting me, the ship was in a wild spin, and the last thing I saw before everything went dark was a landscape of rocks around a lake of green-blue water.
The water was the exact same color as the ocean in my VR fantasy. That was the last thought I had—and not one I would ever admit aloud—before everything went dark.
CHAPTER TWO
Ryrke Zo’dan
Elite warrior of the Jardan
Sometimes being a warrior of honor was difficult.
As when an annoying human law officer hunted you down just when you were getting close to the men who had murdered your friend and fellow clanmate. I’d been forced to flee the Kyel Yost Station to avoid her. I was hunting corrupt, evil men. I had no desire to harm an upstanding officer doing her duty. But she had relentlessly stayed on my tail. I couldn’t seem to shake her, even with my best maneuvers. And I was no inexperienced child when it came to flying.
Troublesome little human. I could hear the eagerness in her voice over the communications link when she demanded my surrender.
As if a Jardan warrior ever surrendered.
I tried to warn her off, but she was stubborn. Then my fighter’s computer warning systems all went red when she got a lock on me. I let loose with a string of my most colorful curses as the infuriating female blasted my favorite ship with her ion cannons. All my systems immediately went dead as my shields failed and engines were lost.
She was good. I could raise a glass of prystlyn mead to that.
The problem was that my prized star fighter hit a patch of turbulent air and crosswind and immediately veered backward. I could only grit my teeth and clench my fists on the now-dead thruster and flight controls. A shaking, shattering impact rattled me as my ship slammed into hers, or hers hit mine, because she’d been so close on my tail.
Then everything was spinning wildly. I had a hard time telling which end was up. Even as my ship hurtled out of control toward the ground, I felt no fear. I was Jardan. We did not feel fear. But neither could I die with Terx Ko’dal, my friend and clanmate, unavenged.
I cursed again. I’d been so close to the criminal cowards who had killed Ko’dal… Until the maddening little human arrived.
Growling with frustration, I pulled the manual eject lever. My starship’s cockpit served as the escape pod, launching out and upward from the rest of the fighter’s frame. The escape pod jetted small thrusters to stabilize itself as we plummeted toward a ridge of jagged rocks. Then a parachute deployed. I scanned the sky for the human’s ship or her escape pod. I spotted her ship not too far away. It was smoking and clearly damaged by an impact as it spun toward a wide body of water. It hit the lake with an enormous splash, throwing water dozens of meters into the air. But I knew galactic police cruisers were made well and were tough. The ship didn’t break apart with the impact.
The bothersome little human, a true yredo thorn in my foot, might still be alive.
Now I just had to decide if I should go and save her or leave her and try to get back to my vengeance quest at the space station.
As if there was any other choice, I thought, hearing myself let out another aggravated growl.
The first thing I did after my ejection pod slammed down on the rocky surface was grab my iteran blade and step out, searching for danger. The yellow sun warmed my bare skin with its rays. My torso was uncovered at the moment because all Jardan fought bare-chested to show our battle scars. Besides, I’d wanted the men I’d been hunting to see the zerophyte necklace I wore. The unique necklace told the tale of my quest to wreak vengeance for Terx Ko’dal’s murder. This was the traditional way of the Jardan.
The traditional way of the Jardan did not include crash landing. Everything had been going so well until the irritating human female had arrived, forcing me to…retreat. A Jardan warrior did not flee. But I’d been faced with an impossible choice. I couldn’t gain my vengeance with a galactic cop hunting me…and I would not harm another warrior of honor if it could be helped. So I had decided to try and lose her in Soepra’s atmospheric interference and wait on the surface of the planet until she was recalled to the galactic core.
That had not worked out exactly as I’d planned.
I peered around at the planet surface. Smoke from my fighter billowed from a mountain in the distance where my ship had crashed. I chanted a song of honor for my destroyed ship. It had served me well. But the rest of the landscape around me was harsh. Not a desert, thankfully, with that lake in the distance, but it would be a challenge. I accepted that challenge. It was not the dense and dangerous jungles of Jardan where I’d been sired, but few places were.
Thinking of water made me stare at the lake where the human had crashed. Her ship was partially submerged but not sinking fast, which might mean the lake was shallow, or that her cruiser had some kind of buoy system for a water landing. Even as I squinted through the bright light and clear air, I could not see her climbing out and swimming to shore, and that concerned me.
Something must be wrong. I hoped she hadn’t been hurt…or died. Humans were interesting, but they weren’t nearly as physically robust as Jardan. I quickly gathered the emergency pack from the pod with food and some basic tech. My starship’s systems were offline after the pod had disconnected from the main body of my star fighter, but her ion blasts would’ve fried them regardless. I tried my wrist computer to reach the subspace net to get aid but had no luck. Too much interference for the strength of the cell powering the transmitter. The pod had a distress beacon, but I doubted it would pierce through the magnetic distortion in the upper atmosphere to the orbiting station or any passing ships.
Another challenge, but one I would have to deal with later. I slung the pack across my shoulder and strapped my blade to my side. Then I set off for the lake at a run. Jardan could run fast and tirelessly for long distances. It would take much more than sprinting a few kilometers to make me weary.
When I reached the water, I noted that her ship was fifty or so meters out from the rocky sh
oreline. I dumped the pack but kept my blade. I also kept my wrist computer on because it was fully waterproofed and I might need it to hack into her ship’s systems or to scan her for injuries. My blade I kept because there might be predators in the water.
Ready, I ran into the water. When it grew deep enough, I started to swim. The water was clear and cold. Every so often I varied my stroke to dip underwater and glance around me. I was looking for predator creatures who might not hesitate to swim over and try a taste. At first I only spotted small fish that scattered before my powerful strokes and drifting gelatinous creatures in the distance. But I did notice a dark, aggressive shape lurking through some of the vegetation on the bottom of the lake. It might be hunting me…or simply going about its life. I pushed my swimming to the limit, knowing I had to keep an eye on it.
When I reached her ship, I pulled myself out of the water onto the frame. The impact of our two ships or another part of her crash had done major damage to the right side of her cruiser, crumpling the wing. Even though her ship had deployed floatation devices to keep it aloft, much of the damage was below the surface of the lake. The star cruiser frame had to be slowly filling with water. At some point, it would go under.
I hurried across the body of the ship still above the lake surface to reach the cockpit. Inside sat the human female, slumped over the controls. My heart tightened as I looked at her, hoping I hadn’t been too late. I had not intended for the fierce little warrior to die. There would be many songs and chants to honor her if she had been slain in this unfortunate battle.
I quickly found the manual release for the cockpit. It took a few minutes for the hack program on my wrist computer to break the firewall and release the lock. When it succeeded, I pulled the handle. The canopy lifted. I climbed inside and scanned her with the sensors of my wrist computer. It had a database of physical and genetic data on various species. The scan told me her body had no major injuries, either internal or external. From her brainwave pattern, she was unconscious, but she hadn’t suffered a concussion. That was good. The readout on her suit said she had another hour of oxygen. Also good.
I gently pushed her back enough to see into the tinted visor of her helmet. I noted that her eyes were closed, but there wasn’t much else I could see of her face.
Her ship slowly continued to sink as I undid the straps holding her in. Soon the water would flood the cockpit. I didn’t have much time and I couldn’t leave her here. Her spaceflight suit and helmet were airtight, but if I left her here, she would wake on the bottom of the lake, possibly with her air supply running low. That was, unless some predator attacked her first.
I gently lifted her up and carried her to the edge of her ship frame. She was so light and delicate in my arms. Holding her like this, I felt a surge of incredibly fierce protective instinct flare inside me. She was helpless and I needed to save her, because I was in part responsible for what had happened to her. That didn’t mean she wouldn’t try and kill me later. That would be fair, if unfortunate, because we would be facing each other as true warriors. But for now, honor meant I had to see her somewhere safe.
In the few minutes I’d been working, the ship clearly sank at least another half meter into the lake. I slowly climbed down into the water, floating her limp body beside me. She couldn’t drown because the suit kept the water out and she still had plenty of air. I began to swim, repeating the same stroke pattern as before, occasionally dipping below the surface to check for trouble.
The creature I’d spotted before began to circle closer. It was a sleek predator, with huge jaws bristling with sharp teeth, black eyes, and fins like blades. It was definitely showing interest in us now. Grimly, I increased my speed. The predator moved faster than even I could swim. It streaked at us like a laser bolt.
Just as it closed in to strike, I dove deeper, ripped my blade from its sheath, and turned the human female protectively against my side. The predator fish’s jaws were huge enough to take a big chunk out of my arm, and I was quite large, even for a Jardan. I stabbed with my blade, knowing the water would slow any slash. The blade pierced the predator through the upper jaw. The creature’s speed drove it further onto the blade, killing it.
I withdrew my blade as dark blood clouded the water. I left the carcass behind. There were emergency rations in my kit, and I didn’t like how the blood was bringing other predators circling closer. After sheathing my blade again, I tightened my hold on the human, being careful not to grip her too tightly, and renewed my powerful strokes toward shore.
Jardan didn’t feel fear, but it was still a relief to leave the water and stride out onto that rocky shore. I laid the little human female down gently by my survival kit and took off her helmet. There was a hiss of escaping air as I broke the seal. Dark hair spilled out around a very delicate and attractive face.
She was so small and beautiful that I paused for a moment. I didn’t know many humans. Their civilization was on the other side of the galaxy, past the core, and Jardan, my homeworld, was farther toward the rim. But I liked her sprawl of dark hair and her high cheekbones. Her flight suit was wet and tight against her body, and she had a pleasing female shape. More than pleasing, actually.
But it was her lips that drew my eye again. They looked so soft and pink, lush. A claiming kiss was part of the Jardan mating ritual. In my society, a kiss was even more important than sex. Females did not give kisses lightly. To be this close to her gently parted lips was an unlooked-for distraction…
I shook myself out of my foolish erotic daze. I needed to control my body, and my rapidly stiffening cock would only be another problem. I needed to protect her until she was well enough to function unaided again. She was a warrior in her own way. It was my duty to her as a fellow warrior and as a male. From a young age, every Jardan male had impressed upon him the need to cherish and defend all females, no matter what. And my honor was renowned in my clan, so I would do the same for this little human.
Besides, she had fire. I’d heard it over the com when she’d ordered me to submit to her. As if a Jardan warrior would ever submit. To anyone.
Something growled nearby. I looked up, my hand dropping to the handle of my blade as I crouched, ready for anything. The sound had come from a shelf of rocks and cliffs perhaps twenty meters away. My sight was sharp, but all I could see were a few dark forms of some four-legged creatures stalking through the cliff shadows.
More predators. This landscape was more hostile than I’d hoped. With predators around, I couldn’t set up camp here and I certainly couldn’t leave her helpless. We had to get out of here and find somewhere safe. Then I could go about finding a way off this world…somehow…and getting back to redeeming the honor of my clan by claiming justice.
Unfortunately, I was ignoring a lot of the challenge this uncivilized, low technology world presented. There was a reason Kyel Yost was a space station and not a city on the surface of Soepra.
Another menacing growl sounded from the direction of the predators. I carefully gathered up the human in my arms, ready to leave.
“Up you go, d’mura osefei,” I murmured as I oh so gently shifted her body onto my wide shoulder and stood again. The words meant “little beauty” in High Jardanian. It partly annoyed me that I was using High Jardanian endearments for an alien female who was my enemy, but there was no help for it now.
Her weight was negligible. I would be able to travel many, many kilometers like this without tiring. And this way left one of my hands free to reach my blade in case one of those predators stalking us grew too eager.
I set off at my fastest walking pace. Even though part of me was highly aggravated this little human had cost me both my favorite star fighter and delayed my chance at revenge, I simply couldn’t have left her to drown or be killed by hungry predators either in or out of water.
I was no fool, however. I might yet be force to kill her in battle if she attacked me again, although I would do everything in my power to avoid that. I had been raised to respect the law
and the officers of that law. But warriors faced each other as warriors, and it was clear that this little human female had the warrior spirit. She certainly had a warrior’s skill behind the controls of a star fighter.
The unfortunate thing was, she probably wouldn’t see it the same way. She no doubt had her orders to arrest me and bring me back to the Galactic Imperium to face charges. Whether the little human officer believed in my innocence, my tale, or my quest for justice or not didn’t matter. I was a Jardan elite, of the clan Xy’dalma. I would act with honor, no matter what.
CHAPTER THREE
Nena Brax
How long the darkness lasted, I didn’t know. But when my eyes fluttered open again, I was immediately aware of three things. One, my head hurt. Two, my helmet was off. Three, I was draped or hanging on something and the ground was moving below me.
It took my scrambled brain a second to realize what was happening. Someone was carrying me. I was draped over someone’s shoulder like a ragdoll high off the ground.
