Alien Romance Box Set: Alien Former: Sci-Fi Alien Romance (Books 1-5)

by Ashley L. Hunt

  The Deepseeker only smiled, his eyes turned to dark slits between pale, bruised-looking eyelids. “Every god needs a champion.” The rage began to twist his face again, slowly, starting with the corners of his mouth. “Now get up. I must show you to your gear before I can no longer remember.”

  I stood, warily, suddenly aching all over as if I had run the gauntlet of my initiation into the rangers all over again. Without preamble, the Deepseeker strode out of the room, and realizing I had little choice, I followed him.

  …

  It turned out that the Deepseeker had been tending to my wounds in one of his hidden Sanctums far beneath the village, a short distance from the side of the mountain that housed it. Though the small series of chambers was separated from the home of my people by a seemingly endless layer of solid ice and stone, it was barely a spear deep compared to fathomless depths of Ravanur’s frozen skin. Apparently, when the Deepseeker had realized that the council had been corrupted, he had retreated here, but not before he had retrieved my frozen body- by means he still would not reveal to me. I really was lucky that Elder Lot had stabbed me where he did- if he hadn’t ruined the blessing I had been wearing at the time, I wouldn’t have frozen, and I would have bled out where I fell. As it was, the blood had frozen in my wounds, and I had slipped into a sort of near-death trance, making me a prime target for the Deepseeker’s arcane assistance. And look where my luck got me.

  The crazed Elder led me through the small complex; every spare scrap of space packed with a hundred different varieties of old metal and glass magicks, artifacts from deep below, that the shaman hadn’t gotten to preparing for use. We wound up in a sort of workshop. Different half-assembled artifacts and relics were piled around the cramped space, some of them dangling from chains set into the pipe-strewn ceiling, spilling intestines of copper, silver, and gold in grotesque tangles towards the floor. I wanted to stop and just stare around at all the ancient magick on display around the room, but the Elder was on a mission, and he didn’t slow down a bit as we came into the workshop. He gestured to a small corner table set next to the broad stone worktop that took up one wall of the room. The tattered remains of my furs laid on it, stained with drying clumps of my own blood. There was no sign of my pack or the complement of weapons I had carried. Likely Elder Lot had ordered it all stripped away from me- the Erin-Vulur wasted nothing on sentiment.

  Before I could remark on the lack of tools, the Deepseeker pulled aside a tattered cloth that had been draped over an uneven series of shapes on the table. There, bright and polished new, laid an array of beautiful weapons like nothing I had ever seen before. The Elder lifted the first of the weapons, a bow made entirely out of metal, several alloys that I couldn’t identify, braided together in a way I couldn’t even begin to name. It was recurved, an elegant serpentine shape about half a spear longer than the standard Erin-Vulur shortbow. The ends were wrought in the shape of antlers, sharp points glittering dangerously in the steady light of the workshop’s glowing orb lamp. A shimmering braid of string was wrapped around the stave of the weapon, waiting for someone to bend the bow and string it. I had no idea how I was supposed to bend a bow made of metal, but when the Deepseeker held it out to me, I took it. With the same movements I had used many times on my old horn weapon, I twisted my leg around one stave of the bow and braced it, and heaved, bending it back into tension. The motion was far easier than it should have been- it should have been impossible- and I felt my eyes smiling like I was a child. The Elder had not been lying. With just a little effort, I slipped the loop of one end of the bowstring over a point of the antler on the bottom of the bow and fitted the other end into its place at the top. I held it there for a moment, fascinated by its lightness, and gave the string a little flick with one claw, eliciting a buzzing ‘twang’ from the taut cable.

  The Deepseeker smiled proudly, a little lucidity, returning to his ancient face. “I made all of your gear myself. These aren't like any of my blessings- bits and pieces of the work of old gods cobbled together into one-shot trinkets. These are my own work, from the beginning.” He gestured to the array of weapons laying in neat rows on his worn stone worktop. Everything was there, all the weapons that made up an Erin-Vulur ranger’s standard kit- a sledgehammer, short spears, climbing axes, arrows- all of them were beautifully crafted. I looked back up at the shaman with awe, trying to find words to express how I felt about this exquisite arsenal. I felt tears start at the corner of my eyes, and I dashed them away with a sleeve, embarrassed. The Deepseeker pretended not to notice, for which I was grateful. “That bow will drive an arrow completely through an adolescent burug. In one side and out the other, and it will kill a man standing on the other side.” He pointed to the rest of it. “It is all similarly strong, and nearly unbreakable. You will need it all.” He gestured to the arrows, which had been made from some matte metal I couldn’t identify. “Be sparing. There are thirty shafts in that quiver. You won’t be able to find replacements where you’re going, and in any case, the standard iron arrows most of us Erin-Vulur use would bend if you used them with this bow.”

  But the Elder wasn’t done, as I found. As I stepped forward to run my hands over the weapons arrayed for me, he tore away another sheet of fabric that had been covering another lumpy shape on a different section of the broad worktable. The armor he revealed was yet another unparalleled work of beauty, and I could tell, just by looking at it, that it had been made to fit me perfectly. It was all made of a colorless, crystalline material, similar to what one of my hairs would look like if I plucked it from my head. The plates were light, but clearly strong, and the Deepseeker happily demonstrated their durability by snatching up my new sledgehammer and bringing it down two-handed on the breastplate. Though the blow rang like a great bell, leaving the whole weapon singing with vibration as he set it back down, the faceted armor plate showed not even a single scratch. With each plate of armor came pale, expertly tailored leathers, in the places where the plates wouldn’t cover stitched with sections of impossibly fine, light mail. Completing the whole ensemble, there was a cloak made of the same strange cloth that hung throughout the Deepseeker’s sanctum, embroidered with numerous sigils and signs.

  I took it all in, feeling overwhelmed. “Elder, how… how can I possibly repay you for this?”

  The Deepseeker’s fatherly pride vanished in an instant, blown away by the flash storm of his mad fury. His face twisted, his fangs bared, and his eyes flashed with molten, unfocused hate. He clenched his teeth and growled, “You can go save the world, boy. Take your things and get out before I change my mind and kill you.”

  Though the sudden shift in his mood was alarming, it was also the standard for dealing with the Deepseeker. He handled forces and powers no ordinary person could understand. He exposed himself to the evil and the danger of the places down far beneath the ice, all to protect our tribe. He might have been touched by madness, but he was one of us, one of the Erin-Vulur, and he had saved my life. My tribe had abandoned me, had killed me, and the old shaman of the dark places had been the only one to lift a claw in my defense. I would put up with his foul moods no matter what. How could I not, compare to everything he had given me? How could I repay him? I could go save the world. Save the Mother, Ravanur. Save the last tribe of Palamun’s Chosen, the last of the Erinye. Even if the Erin-Vulur had abandoned me, I would not abandon them in their hour of need. I had been made their champion, whether they liked it or not, and the responsibility for their lives had just been laid across my shoulders. I would not drop that burden, no matter what it cost me.

  Within the hour, I was dressed in my new armor, my cloak about my shoulders and the brand new arsenal of weapons strapped to a fresh pack of supplies, lashed to my back. The Elder led me to a branching network of tunnels and pointed to one, indicating that it would lead me toward the place where Joanna’s camp had once stood. I had my mission. I set off without a backward glance and marched into the dark.

  …

  Joanna
>
  I woke up in complete darkness; the only thing I could see was the flashing red indicator on my Heads Up Display. It took me a moment to focus on the flashing holographic marker. My head hurt like someone had hit me with a sledgehammer, and my body felt leaden, drained of strength. I squinted and forced the letters into sharp clarity with more effort than the act should have required. Did I have a concussion or something? Could I even get a concussion? Cybernetics or not, that was a question for another time. The message on my HUD. That’s what was important. I focused again. “WARNING”, it said. “ENVIRONMENTAL ENVELOPE BREACHED.” Through my muddled confusion, I felt my blood run cold. The ‘environment envelope’ was the layer of hermetic sealing underneath the plates of my armor. It kept me isolated from the murderous environment of Chalice, and if it had been breached, I could be exposed to poisonous air, virulent microbes, or worse. I lay there in the dark for a panicked moment, trying to determine if I felt sick. It occurred to me that my suit’s oxygen cycling system was probably still working fine, so poisonous air would only really be a problem if it could kill me through my skin. I was more or less breathing directly from my power armor’s enclosed tanks of air, and those were evidently fine. Microbes, on the other hand… the surface of Chalice was so cold that there were no terrestrial species I could introduce to the environment. I had brought samples, and they had had to stay where they were in the tower. You could practically cryogenically freeze someone in this environment. I had a hard time believing any microbe could exist. Though, as I thought about it, Volistad and the Erin-Vulur lived here, and they were carnivores. Carnivores required a complete ecosystem and a full food chain to survive, and that suggested a livable biome somewhere on this frozen rock. So microbes could be a threat...

  Eventually, as my head cleared, I realized that lying there contemplating the possible existence of microbes was as likely to end in my death as any alien pathogen or parasite, so I got up. Well, I tried. My legs were pinned under something heavy- something I wasn’t able to squirm out from under. Besides some soreness, I didn’t feel like I had been hurt. My armor, even if it had somehow been punctured, was still very difficult to destroy, and there was a good chance that even if I was trapped, I wasn’t badly injured. I wriggled my fingers, and they responded. So did my toes. Okay, so I didn’t think I was paralyzed. I was just trapped, and I couldn’t see a thing. I tried to move my arms, and found them mostly free- though several things seemed to have fallen on top of me, and I had to sweep them aside blindly. Once my arms were free, I fumbled for one of the switches hidden behind a panel on the inside of my bracer. I flicked it, and my headlamp burst to life, so bright at first that I had to squint against the glare. I looked around and got my bearings.

  My legs were pinned by a sizeable boulder of ice. The heavy chunk hadn’t crushed my legs because it had been partially caught by a twisted metal spar- probably a piece of my tower, my Terraforming Engine. I remembered then what had happened, and my heart immediately started to beat faster as a jolt of adrenaline shot through me in reaction to those memories. I remembered the Stormcaller, monstrous in her grief and fury, bringing down that crackling black hammer. I remembered the blast as the fusion core beneath the ice detonated, shattering the ground beneath my feet and sending everything falling into the darkness. I remembered screaming for Barbas and getting no answer. I called his name then, heedless of who or what else might be listening, screaming it into the dark. “BARBAS!” No one answered me except for the echoes of my own voice.

  I was alone. I was truly alone. No one was coming to help me. I was trapped God-knows-how deep beneath a glacier on a shitty moon in the back-ass corner of nowhere, in a leaking suit of damaged armor. I didn’t even have my imaginary friend to keep me company until I inevitably froze to death. I was going to die here, a complete failure, and in ten years, those colonists following in my wake, were going to die. They would die cursing my name, and I would deserve it. I fumbled about at my waist and found the butt of the gauss pistol where I had left it. I gripped it tight in my armored hand and caressed the trigger with my finger. I thought about it then, how easy it would be to be done with all this. I had barely been on this planet a month, and already everything had gone sideway. What had the Foundation been thinking, sending us out like this? Pan-America’s finest? I laughed. We were the bottom of the barrel, and they knew it. They sent us out like this because it didn’t matter if we died. And it would be the same with those colonists. They would be the poor, the war refugees, the extra mouths to feed. “Just get in this cryo-pod,” they would say. “There will be a new life on this new world.” And then no one would think twice when all of those thousands of people died. “Acceptable casualties”, they would say. “The price for stepping into the future,” they would say, and they would call us heroes. They would call us pioneers. And they would forget most of our names. The gun felt so light in my hand. It would be so easy. The barrel clicked against the quartz of my faceplate. It would go through, wouldn’t it? Would it really be that easy?

  The rage hit me all at once, like a shot of adrenaline right in the center of my chest. It boiled out of the dark places inside me, crawling through the cracks in the mask of bored acceptance I had worn for so many years. I had been quiet for so long. I had gone the way they had wanted for so long. I had been who they wanted me to for so long; since that day, since the first time I had ever held a gun. I had buried it, the anger, the loss, all the fire that had kept me alive through the dark times. That kind of thing wasn’t suitable for the civilized world. That practically feral little girl didn’t fit in the new, sanitized, reconstructed, hopeful tomorrow that El Presidente was making. I didn’t make it through the war by being soft. I didn’t crawl out of the nuclear wreckage of my home and make it through all those years by being a ‘lady’, whatever that meant anyways. I had been who the state wanted, but they weren’t here anymore. I was completely alone, and though I might have made myself forget it, I was better this way. Stronger this way. Tigers didn’t live in packs.

  Galvanized by the fury coursing through my muscles, I dropped the gun at my side and sat up, shedding scraps of rubble and chunks of ice that had been piled on my armored chest. Though my trapped position robbed my fists of the full power I might have put into the blows, I used the substantially augmented strength of my armor and slammed steel-clad knuckles into the boulder that trapped my legs. The blows did nothing at first. That much ice had quite a bit of mass, and strength to match. But ice was always somewhat brittle, and there were cracks somewhere. I just had to hit it and keep doing it until I won. I pounded the ice over and over, keeping my rhythm even as my muscles started to burn; each blow drove straight forward like a hammer, each strike like the repeating action of a jackhammer. I did this for a quarter of an hour before I heard the first crack. Another quarter-hour and the crack was wide enough for me to wriggle my armored fingers into. I stopped my metronomic assault and forced both hands into the little space I had opened. I strained my already burning shoulders and I began to tear it open wider. It didn’t want to give in, I wasn’t stopping, and I had the enhanced strength of my armor on my side. I forced that crack wider, and wider, until the ice started giving off sounds like a firecracker. I screamed and pushed as hard as I could, and without warning, the boulder let out a violent BANG and came apart, splitting neatly into two jagged pieces. No longer balanced in its place atop my legs, the two halves of the massive chunk of ice shifted, and I was able to pull one of my legs free with a screech of grinding metal. With one leg free, getting the other one out was a simpler effort, and within a few minutes, I was standing in a low cavern, peering about at the wreckage around me for somewhere I could start putting things back together.

  I bent and picked up the gun from where I had dropped it, and I shook my head. I couldn’t believe I was about to… I shook the thought from my brain and holstered the weapon quickly, letting go of the grips like I had been holding onto the tail of a venomous snake. It was time for me to figure out
where I could go from here. Like it or not, I still had a mission on this hateful planet, and it wasn’t getting done while I just sat in the darkness feeling sorry for myself.

  I picked through the wreckage, shifting aside chunks of ice. The real trick of things would be to find my Fabricator. That piece of equipment had been designed to survive anything short of a direct shot from a Pan-American gunship, and even that might only crack the case. If I could find the rugged little box, I could start again. I didn’t know what had happened to Barbas, but I didn’t think he would be there when I got into that damned Bullet back in terrestrial orbit. I knew what I needed to do, was to rebuild my Terraformer Engine, though the trick with the storm generator Barbas had rigged up, might be a little beyond me. I would have to start small, this time thinking about defenses, about concealment. Maybe I could start here, below the ice.

  I ran a self-diagnostic on my suit, along with a medical scan. The suit was mostly fine. The breach my HUD had warned me about was an inch-long puncture in the durable Environmental Envelope, most likely by a chunk of ice or a shard of metal during my fall into the glacier. The suit was using negative pressure to keep the outside atmosphere at bay, but I was leaking my suit’s excess nitrogen doing so, and before long, I wouldn’t have any. If I had the Fabricator, I could both patch my suit and replenish my nitrogen supply from the surrounding atmosphere. Barbas hadn’t said much about the air on Chalice, mainly because breathable or not, it was cold enough to turn my lungs into popsicles. I had read a chemical breakdown at some point in those few weeks while working on the tower, but I had let the AI handle most of the technical details, assuming he would be around to help me for the next decade. Rookie mistake, that had been, relying on someone else. Joanna Angeles, ward of the state, might have needed other people, but who I had been before I had been given that name… well, that bedraggled, vicious little cub had grown up, and the tigress needed no one. I had to remember that.