Sorlo’s Mission: Scifi Alien Adventure Romance (Science Fiction Alien Romance) (Galactic Survival Book 3)

by Hana Starr

  “Didn’t I tell you how annoying that is?”

  He jumped, startled. Grabbing at his chest, he spun around in the direction of the voice. He’d thought the cafeteria would be empty at this hour but Jade sat there with a half-finished tray before her, fork in hand while she pushed at the soggy remnants of something congealing in one of the little compartments.

  “What are you doing here?”

  She just shrugged. “Someone’s been sleeping in my bed. I’m exhausted, so I’m stopping over for a little bit before heading back out. I figure maybe I’ll give that Hymir traitor another go.”

  The jab went straight through him and he just shrugged. “I offered to let you have the bed.”

  “Honestly, that sort of chivalrous attitude won’t get you anywhere. I’m supposed to force an injured man to sleep in a chair? I’m an assassin, not cruel.”

  He sighed a little. “I suppose. I’m just here to get something to eat.”

  She jabbed with her fork in the direction behind him. “Well I’m not feeding you so you’ll have to get it yourself.” She started to stand and turn her back on him.

  This would be the last time he saw her, then.

  On the one hand, he felt very glad. But on the other, he didn’t feel like he should let her get away without saying something. “I guess this is goodbye.”

  “And good riddance,” she growled over her shoulder, growing annoyed with him.

  A flash of her pleasuring herself ran through his mind. “You’re a very interesting and unique woman, Jade.”

  But she didn’t say anything that time and just continued on her way. Shaking his head, Sorlo decided he wasn’t hungry after all. Sleep was the only answer to this loneliness in his heart, even if it meant he had to fight through prying eyes to get there.

  Chapter Five

  The door to her room was automatic but it actually had a locking mechanism. She hadn’t been expecting that, as privacy in these sorts of quarters was normally an old-fashioned thing which the Federation had no time for.

  A quick Scan with her augmented eye revealed the truth, however: the installation of the lock was extremely new and not all that great, which meant someone had shoved it on here specifically for her stay. She was at once exasperated and a little touched that so much trouble had been gone through just for her to leave again in a few hours.

  Washing her face, she then proceeded to strip down completely to the nude and crawled into the first actual bed she’d seen since her cadet years on a base similar to this.

  It was nowhere near as comfortable as she thought it would be. None of this was. Too many people who all stared at her like she was the oddity, when many of them had too many eyes or legs, or tentacles instead of arms. The openness of the hallways, the large rooms, it all grated on everything she had become so familiar with through the years. Her body was like a stiff log resting on the mattress, completely incapable of relaxing.

  Sighing, she rose and dressed again and headed out of her room to the garage, where she checked on her Falcon. Satisfied that it was still in one piece, she headed all the way back to the room and went through the same motions of undressing again.

  This time, as she sank into the mattress, she was able to relax a little bit but she was still very much wide awake and buzzing with thoughts.

  Why do I still feel so dissatisfied with everything?

  Frowning, she shut her eyes and tried to sift through her jumble of thoughts. Her failure, the threat upon her by her own commander, the situation, her current location, Sorlo…

  It all came back to Sorlo, didn’t it?

  There was no escaping the way he made her feel so hot and bothered all the time, but soon he would be nothing but a piece of eye candy for her to remember fondly when she was back on her ship where she belonged.

  Whether or not those memories would actually turn out to be fond ones, instead of vastly irritating ones that she wished would go away, remained to be seen.

  Turning over onto her back restlessly, Jade opened her eyes to stare up at the ceiling. Her hair was tangled uncomfortably beneath her head, so she shuffled a bit until it felt better.

  The hardest thing about all this was suddenly finding that she was still a woman, even though she had stopped thinking of herself as such. Being female wasn’t really part of her job description. She had breasts and a pussy, and that was about the only difference between her and a male assassin.

  Being around Sorlo seemed to have changed that. While he was around, she had been incredibly aware of the fact that he was a man and she a woman. It wasn’t exactly an uncomfortable thing to be aware of, but it was a new experience to just be looking at him and be aware of what lived between his legs, or the fact that her breasts pushed against the material of her uniform.

  I won’t have to worry about that now, she thought, and couldn’t decide on quite why that made her sad.

  At least thinking about him had made her relax. But, now she was also feeling slightly horny. Reaching down between her legs, she found the softness of her folds becoming dewy and needy.

  Sliding her fingers inside herself, she let herself have another fantasy about Sorlo while bringing herself to an earth-shattering orgasm.

  Her body slumped back down onto the mattress and she closed her eyes, when there came a knock at her door.

  It was quite the insistent knock, and she realized that she’d been hearing it go on for quite awhile beneath her excited moans and whimpers. Of all the inconveniences, why this one?

  “Just a moment,” she called out, but her throat was hoarse from constricting a scream and it came out as a croak.

  Grabbing her uniform, she shoved her legs into the bottoms and was just finishing with stuffing her breasts into place in the top as she undid the lock and allowed the automatic door to do what it did best: open.

  An alien stood there that she hadn’t seen before today. It was a Kanilakisut, lavender-skinned and furrow-browed. She spoke enough of their language to be vaguely passable at it, but this one wasn’t speaking to her.

  In fact, it wasn’t doing anything at all. Just staring with moody eyes.

  “Did you need something?” she asked, wishing that she’d cleared her throat first before opening the door because it sounded like she’d been crying.

  In response, the purple alien hefted one hand and fired its weapon at her.

  Jade reacted faster than lightning, careening to the side. Falling on purpose, she grabbed her arms around the alien’s waist and sent it sprawling. Rolling to her feet as it struggled to rise, she grabbed her charge gun from its holster and thumbed the safety light away. The muzzle began to glow with blue heat as the charge warmed up, and she brought it to the center of the Kanilakisut’s forehead.

  “Stop!” a voice cried out. Jade didn’t move, just kept her eyes and gun trained on her attacker. She recognized the voice, though. It was that chief who was in charge of the entire base. What had his name been? It was escaping her but she thought it was something like Byron.

  “What are you doing? What’s going on?”

  “This alien knocked at my door and attacked me,” Jade said, her voice clipped and angry. She was also scared, which only served to make her feel even angrier, if she was honest. A glance down at the creature cowering beneath her served to quickly confirm her suspicions. “This cadet, that is. Don’t you know how to discipline your children?”

  Byron approached but kept back a ways as he regarded the situation. “And your state of disarray in dress?” His voice was heavy with dread.

  Jade understood. “Not his fault. I was retired for the night when he knocked. I thought it might be important.” Her voice tightened. “He’s lucky he isn’t dead.”

  “Yes,” Byron agreed, much to her surprise. “Yes, he is.” Picking up a thin handheld monitor from one of his uniform’s pockets, he spoke into it, a request for armed backup.

  Backup arrived in the form of several mixed aliens. Jade backed away and holstered her weapon, thou
gh she kept her hand on it –even having been instructed not to, she felt this was a situation where breaking the rules was very much okay.

  The young purple cadet was gathered up, detained, and marched away with his hands restrained behind his back. His species was known for their moodiness, but if looks could kill, the entire base would be dead in seconds.

  “What was that about?” she asked, staring after the shameful procession.

  The chief’s shoulders slumped a little as he sighed. “Sometimes, I think you assassins have it right. Such rigorous entrance trials and working out there on your own…It would certainly keep a thing like this from happening, wouldn’t it?” He sighed again. “Some of these kids these days, they’re so full of anger so they join the Federation because they think they’ll be able to go out there and kill right away. I think he didn’t like an assassin in our midst, though I’m not pleased that my base has devolved into baseless rumors.”

  “And what about you, sir?” she asked, piercing him through with a hard stare. “What do you feel about the assassin in your midst? You were certainly very nearby my sleeping quarters for such a busy man.”

  “Even a busy man must have hours of sleep,” Byron said, giving her the same tone she’d used on him. “And I did intend to sleep but a situation has arisen that I believe will benefit us all.”

  “All?”

  “Me, you, Sorlo. In any case, after being made aware of this situation that you may be able to assist with, I was headed here.”

  Plausible enough, I suppose. He strikes me as a righteous sort of man. Much like Sorlo thinks he is.

  “Very well. And this situation that I’m supposed to help with?”

  “Perhaps this is something better discussed in my office.”

  And now she couldn’t resist giving him a hard time. “And do you feel safe alone with me, sir? After I nearly blew out your young cadet’s brains just now?”

  Byron looked at her and lightly lay his hand on his own weapon, reminding her that she was still all but gripping hers. “You took down a cadet. I am the best warrior here. You may be an assassin but I spend many hours of my day taking part in rigorous training sessions with actual participants. You are in great shape yourself but without your stealth and your beloved dark ship? You would not stand a chance against me. You cannot threaten me, Jade.”

  Her respect for him went up several notches, and she let her hand fall away from her charge gun. “That’s fine, then. Shall we?”

  Byron regarded her for a moment and then nodded, turning to lead her back down through a maze of hallways and lifts before reaching the top floor of the base. And then he continued on past everything to one last elevator.

  “This goes up into the communications tower,” Jade said curiously. “But you’re the chief.”

  “And who do you think needs to hear the communications first?” he replied lightly, stepping into the lift with her. The doors shut automatically behind them and the elevator began to rise smoothly and rapidly. “Besides, the designers of this place seemed to think that the one in charge should be above all others. I don’t quite agree with the philosophy but nevertheless, this is where my office is. Come along.”

  She followed him past many rooms, all of which were open-floored and stuffed with different types of desks. Every single seat was filled with an array of humans and aliens, all of whom were busily speaking into or working on their monitors. Even though they were all much too busy to pay attention to her, Jade felt edgy anyway and was glad when they moved away from the racket and entered a sound-proofed room at the very back.

  It was very large and grandly decorated, but sparse in the area of personal accoutrements but for awards and badges hanging on the wall.

  “Impressive,” Jade commented politely. There was everything there on that wall from the certificate given to new cadets, all the way up to the papers he signed upon becoming chief of Red Riser base.

  “You flatter me,” Byron said. “Please, take a seat.”

  She walked over to the only desk in the room and took a chair, then watched as he did the same. He pulled up a holographic monitor up on the desk between them and began to flip through it to find what he needed.

  “Here we go,” he said, and ran one hand through his silvering hair. “It seems this is a day for losses because communications informed me that yet another of our ships has dropped out. They were behind enemy lines, looking to establish a new border. We had not received an update from them in forty-five minutes, and then the line went dark.”

  “I see,” Jade said.

  Inside, she didn’t understand at all but she wasn’t about to commit herself to this conversation until she’d heard absolutely everything that he was willing to give her. She had a niggling idea what this was about, though. What she didn’t know was how it made her feel.

  “The thing is that this ship is a rather important one to our organization. As we do not know what happened, we can’t update our logs on it. Having an unsolved mystery is not a good thing. It needs addressing immediately.”

  Byron paused and looked up at her now, seeming to beg her with his tired brown eyes to understand. It occurred to her that he said he was supposed to have been sleeping when all this happened, and how tired he must be. Sympathy rose in her throat, but she wasn’t going to give voice to it.

  “And are you thinking that I’ll be able to address this problem of yours, somehow?”

  “I was thoroughly briefed by Sorlo,” Byron said. “I know that you currently have no obligations –unless you want to chase after that traitor while he’s still wary, and I think you’re smarter than that.”

  He was about to say more when she interrupted. “That’s twice now you’ve mentioned Sorlo. Exactly what does he have to do with this?”

  “I know how awful he feels. I’ve had heavy losses in my time but this is a first for a good man like him, even if he is a bit of a stuffy Illurian.”

  The joke was funny, but Jade didn’t give him the honor of laughing at it.

  “Coincidentally, those enemy lines were very much near his home planet.”

  I understand now.

  “I want you and Sorlo to take one of the larger Peace Bearers out there and see if you can find the reason why there are no more communications. If there is a wreckage, document it. Bring back survivors, if any. It would be a good way for both of you to have a bit of your honor restored. And if you can establish the border, it will include the Illurian planet. There will be peace there, even if it’s much too late.”

  “Basically,” she said, “you want me to take on this mission to make everything wrap up all nice and neat like it’s a storybook for kids. Everything all makes sense in the end and shit like that?”

  “Yes,” Byron said honestly. “I would like all loose ends tied up. And I feel that with your expertise and Sorlo’s knowledge of the area, you two would make a perfect team.”

  “Just the two of us.”

  “Yes.”

  “With no other crew?”

  “Not unless you find survivors,” he agreed.

  Jade shook her head. “Sorry, but I can’t agree to this. Really. I appreciate the offer and everything but…”

  A sudden change came over Byron, although perhaps it wasn’t so sudden and it was more of an act of him throwing away the amiable mask he had mostly been wearing up until this point. He regarded her with eyes that were no longer warm, but rather cold and serious. His face was grimly-set, and his hands tightened slightly with aggression.

  “I see how it is. Jade the assassin would rather be known as a failure than collaborate with anyone for a significant amount of time.”

  “That’s not it,” she protested, and the immediately berated herself for sounding like a child. It was so much a Sorlo tactic, to pout about things like that.

  “Oh, but it is. I bet your life is on the line right now. One more minor fuck-up and you’re dead in the water, right? If I were in your position, I would want a bit of leeway and the
best way to get some is to do something worthwhile. Besides –or have you forgotten?- Dark Peace is part of Peace Federation. This is as much your responsibility as it anyone else’s.”

  “If you’re so desperate for this, why not just send Sorlo out on his own?” she replied, shaking out her long hair with frustration that they were still having this conversation. She wanted to get up and leave but she actually wasn’t so certain how safe that would be.

  “I don’t think you quite understand that I’m doing this is a favor for you. But, why not Sorlo by himself? It is because he is still recovering from his grief. He would not act appropriately in such a time as this.”

  “You want me to babysit,” she protested, but Byron didn’t even reply this time because he knew. And she knew. All her protests this whole time had been for nothing because she really didn’t have a choice one way or another. Everything the chief had said was true, and all her resisting had been merely a way of stalling while she tried to figure out a way to get out of this.