by Hana Starr
Sorlo’s Mission
By Hana Starr
Copyright © 2016 by Hana Starr – All rights reserved.
The author holds exclusive rights to this work. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form including photocopying, recording or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior permission of the publisher.
WARNING: This book contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language. It may be considered offensive to some readers. This book is intended for adults 18+ ONLY. Please ensure this book is stored somewhere that cannot be accessed by underage readers.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are used in a fictitious manner and not to be construed as real. Similarities to real people, places or events are entirely coincidental.
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Contents
Introduction
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
About the Author
Introduction
Intergalactic warfare isn't always so simple as gigantic spaceship battles. Jade is a member of Dark Peace, an organization of silent assassins that take out enemies of the universal Peace Federation. Confident and proud, she was worked alone for over a decade and is about to complete her most important mission yet.
Unfortunately, her perfect assassination is ruined by the arrival of a Federation warrior alien named Sorlo, who is drifting in a broken ship. Sacrificing her target in favor of saving Sorlo, Jade dutifully returns him to his home base. Neither of them get along well and she'll be glad to see him gone.
Fate has different plans, however. Jade and Sorlo are sent out into space together again, on a mission to recover information about a spaceship that has disappeared behind enemy lines. What will they find at the end of the trail? A tragedy, a miracle, or heartbreak?
Chapter One
Jade. Just, Jade. That was her only name and had been for quite a while, to the point where she could no longer remember what her parents called her from birth. The innocence of that life back on earth was long gone and forgotten, the painted blue-and-white sky a thing of the past. Now she roamed the stars in her lonely ship, seeking to eliminate those who would do harm.
It was a thankless job but she’d chosen it exactly for that reason. A person like her didn’t need any thanks or recognition, or even any real human contact. She was a wanderer and always had been, so when she’d heard rumors of a silent assassination group in the midst of the very loud and brash Peace Federation, she hadn’t hesitated to sign up. And as that group had a way of knowing things, with eyes all over the place, she had quickly been noticed and put through every trial imaginable –and some she still couldn’t fathom. It had been a long and dangerous series of events but at last she had made it and been inducted into an organization so secret that not a single member knew its entirety.
And that was for the best, she mused, scanning her radar thoughtfully as her ship hid behind its cloaking shields. The singular captains of Dark Peace were a sought-after treasure by their enemies, who wouldn’t hesitate to resort to torture to get their way. As a result, it was definitely for the best that no one knew all the information to give away.
Even she, who had been in the organization for over a decade now of wandering the skies alone, still knew very little.
Ever since the humans of Earth began to populate the stars, they had been forming alliances and enemies, the distinctions between which were occasionally hard to determine. Alien technologies were a blessing to their ever-expanding reach across the galaxies, to the point where Earth was actually more of a leftover than anything else. Still, it was considered the epicenter of the budding Peace Federation, an organization which crossed all boundaries of life. Anyone could join, human or alien. The fight was against the threat of those from other planets who acted out in a hostile manner, rejecting the advance of other civilizations on their territory.
Dark Peace was the smallest and most important sector of that, a team of assassins who gathered intel which was used in all other areas. Quite often, they were called upon for risky missions that the larger fleets would never be able to pull off. A single vehicle, like her cloaked battleship, stood a far better chance of completing its goal.
And that was what she was doing here, far beyond the mapped edge of the galaxies where Peace was established. The trail of a much-wanted alien –a slick and oily traitor who had once been a member of Peace but had recently sold out to members of his own species, resulting in heavy losses on all sides- led in this direction, and she had been assigned to it. This was her life. She lived and breathed this tracking mission, and her thoughts were full of it when she slept, and she could continue at it until it either came to an end…or she did.
Such was required of her, and all the other assassins who were out there performing their own tasks.
Jade had followed this alien through glimpses and rumors, though now she no longer had much to go on but plain intuition and instinct. The planets here were dark and untouchable, the nearest sun so far away it was indistinguishable from all the other drifting stars. She was the only sign of any sort of life, as this area was lacking in the debris and trash that habitation normally brought with it.
Honestly, that was the way she liked it.
Checking her radar once again to ensure that there was no one around to detect her, Jade turned to the console at her right, which was used specifically for tracking. A few inputs, and her ship began to manually scan and categorize the surrounding area. The check came back to her baseline clean, completely free of any fuel contamination or oddities except for what her ship was putting out. Satisfied, she urged her sleek, bullet-shaped vessel forward at a mere crawl, and expanded the perimeter of the scan to continue combing the area for any sign of another ship, or anything at all that would point to the presence of the alien she was tracking.
Ever since she had been a child, Jade was fascinated by the darkness in things. It wasn’t any sort of normal job that interested her, even while the other children were proclaiming they were going to be medics or scientists. No, none of that for her. What she wanted was simply to understand. The motives, the inner workings, all the twisted little secrets and crossed fingers upon which the foundation of life was built.
It was impossible for her to express that at such a young age, though not for lack of trying. She’d been sent to see quite a few psychologists, who all found her re
latively normal except for her macabre interests and the fact that she asked piercing questions about the histories she read, where as other children accepted diluted facts as the truth.
As it turned out, spending months and entire years pondering upon such missions as hers was an excellent way to pass the time. The structured and idyllic life of the average Peace Federation cadet just hadn’t suited her, as she was expected to blindly follow orders; once she’d set her feet on the right path however, those same pointed questions she asked as a child now came back in her favor.
The commander immediately above her said that she was one of the most adept humans he had ever had the privilege of knowing. A high honor, indeed.
Her scanners blipped.
Snapping out of her reverie, Jade whipped her head around to stare hard at the monitor. The scan had found something!
It was incredibly small, hardly larger than a speck of dust by the looks of it. Eagerly, but cautiously, she turned the nose of her dark vessel in the direction of the anomaly and approached. As its presence grew larger on her screen, she examined the details which were rapidly flowing in across the screen. In size, it was about the size of the nail on her little finger, and composed of a complex brew of metals and specialized alloys. Most of the words, she recognized. Those that she didn’t seemed rather alien in origin.
Positioning the belly of her ship right over the speck, she pushed a button.
A hatch in the bottom of the ship opened, and a drone slid out from between the widening doors. It was a small thing, ugly and bronze in coloration. Grabbing the joystick which rose up from her console, Jade easily piloted the tiny craft to the scrap of metal. Depressing a button on one side of the joystick, she extended a fiber-thin alloy net and pushed the drone forward just an inch to snag the scrap. Sealing the net, she secured it back in the drone and brought it back to the hatch.
Curiosity and a low, tense sort of excitement in her gut, Jade scanned again and found nothing, and then abandoned her post at the cockpit to hurry down the thin hall. A few steps and she was past the sleeping and living quarters, and was crouched at the end of the ship right near where the hatch was. Opening it manually, she reached down and withdrew the drone.
Feeling along its sleek side, she pressed a lever and then caught the net as it spilled out. Perfectly captured in the sharp fibers was the thin flake of metal. Shining and colorless, it was as innocuous as a chip of paint and highly valuable –to her.
Returning the drone and net to the hatch, she took the metal over to one of many devices on the counter strip that contained her console and monitors. Everything she needed in a lab environment was all right there, stowed away in various places.
Placing the scrap on the thin base and then securing a tube over it, she then lowered the top to hold it all in place. When that was done, she ran back to her monitor and flipped over to the analyzer screen, and selected the prompt to start the sequence.
A green laser beam dropped neatly from the top, filling the tube and vaporizing the scrap. Its contents were scanned in much the same way as her radar had done, only now it was also being compared against a list of previous things she had found while on this mission.
Each and every detail matched, and she allowed herself a grin while watching them do so.
You’re here after all, you filthy Hymir. I’m going to find you.
A dull sort of loathing filled her stomach with a quiver of revulsion as she thought of what that alien had done. While she knew that there were no such things as good and bad in this game of galactic war, she couldn’t rid herself of the occasional emotion. Peace Federation wasn’t exactly squeaky clean in its track record, especially not when you brought people like her into the equation, but she still sometimes had to wonder at what kind of assholery it took to betray the people who had taken you in and made you family. And while she knew very well that human morals were not the only morals that existed, she still couldn’t understand it.
The fact that there was a random chip of metal just lying around probably meant the Hymir’s ship had been ever so slightly damaged by a passing bit of rock or dust. She couldn’t count on herself to be so lucky as to find another.
And she didn’t, not for another three days until suddenly, there he was.
Her little vessel was as cloaked as ever, from sight and from radar, but the traitor Hymir was just drifting out in the open without a care in the world. His vessel was larger than hers but not by much, probably meant for a crew of fifteen or so. It was just as scaly as he, and twice as unattractive.
Trying to calm her pounding heart, Jade flipped through her monitor options until she found her communications panel, and then she dialed the frequency she knew by heart.
As there were no regulated signals this far out, she was forced to rely on the battery of her signal boost to actually be able to get the connection necessary. It was slow and full of static, with minutes-long gaps between replies, but she made do with what she had access to and merely watched her target in the spare moments.
“Jade.” Her commander, whose name she did not know, greeted her. “It’s been awhile since we have heard from you. Update.”
Knowing that there was no way for her to be certain they were not being eavesdropped upon, Jade spoke in the customary Dark Peace code. It was a jumble of unconnected nonsense words that all had different meanings as according to order and stress. Such a rigorous language would have been impossible to master once upon a time but speech was no longer a barrier. Long ago, TranslateChips had been manufactured. They were the first augmentations to the human body, and now were installed in children from birth. The Chip learned from simply being exposed to other languages, subtly rewiring the brain so that the more you listened, the more you could speak. Many aliens were given Chips as well –at least, those whose bodies could accommodate it.
“I have found my target,” she said in the code. “My last update, I was past the Forty-Sixth Boundary and heading into unnamed darkness. After many scans, I picked up a scrap of metal from my target’s vessel. That was three days ago.” Despite galactic travel taking humans far from Earth, a 24-hour day was still the Federations main unit of measurement. Inconvenient and a pain in the ass for non-humans to have to calculate, it was just one of the many ways in which the system was not perfect.
“And you have found him out there after only three days?” her commander repeated, sounding slightly impressed.
And since he was an emotionless assassin, “slightly” was a big deal.
“Yes,” she confirmed, pushing away the pride to maintain her professionalism. “I am asking for permission to destroy.”
“Permission granted,” the commander confirmed, and then he cut off his connection.
Time to get down to business, she thought, and prepared herself for the chain of events which were about to come.
In one fell swoop of dancing fingers, she prepped her charge cannon and sent out a scan to examine the Hymir ship. A notification blipped as she found the weak point, and set her cannons to aim there.
At this point, the scaly ship that was her target had noticed it was being scanned. Its engines gave a soundless whir that registered only on her monitors, but it was far too late as she started to give pursuit. Nothing in the entire galaxy was more nimble or swift than a Dark Peace ship. They were the wolves of space, chasing prey until the prey ultimately faltered or gave in.
“Steady,” she muttered to herself, gripping the aim as she reached for the trigger with one finger.
And then, from nowhere came a flash of light that split the darkness in half. It was like a comet, and all her alarms suddenly blared with the warning that it was going to crash right into her.
“Dammit!” she swore, and shoved her engines into reverse. Her vessel rocketed backwards as another ship, larger even than the one she’d been chasing but also incredibly damaged, shot past her with only inches to spare. There was no turbulence in the empty vacuum of space, so she got quite the good view of
it sailing on by.
And then when it was gone, she brought her gun around to aim again but her target was nowhere to be seen. Lost. Again.
“Fuck,” she said now, and slammed her fist against the console. “What the fuck was that?”
The damaged ship had quite obviously been broken-up for ages and had just kept going on its trajectory due to a lack of friction in space. Even now, it was well past her.
She was badly torn. Her mission was to destroy, but she no longer had any chance of accomplishing that.
Either way, she would have to start over so she might as well see what had caused all this mess.
It was only a matter of a minute to don her spacesuit. Such technology had really come a long way since the first spacewalks in bulky white. This uniform was form-fitting, sealed to her supple body and luscious curves. Gathering up her dark, flowing hair into a bun at the back of her head, she slid the helmet over her head and secured it.
From there, she circled the damaged ship until she found a landing bay, and brought her dark little vessel down onto the pad. Opening the cockpit, she slid out into the darkness like an infant birthed into nothing.
