Kratos: A Sci-Fi Alien Warrior Paranormal Romance

by Ashley West

  Something had hit these people hard and fast, and if this was the power of The Grey, then hunting them would definitely be worth it. Assuming they could manage to catch and subdue them.

  “Is it going to be like this on every planet?” Kratos asked, looking around.

  Combo’s attention was on his scanners. “We have no way of knowing.”

  The trouble was, there wasn’t much to find on any of the planets they looked on. The few survivors they encountered couldn’t tell them anything about The Grey or even if it had actually been them, just that they hadn’t stood a chance against what had come after them. Even those nearer the end of the path of destruction claimed they’d had no advanced warning of what was going to happen and had been taken by surprise.

  “It was like the Void just opened up,” one man said. He was missing an arm and no one wanted to ask if that had happened before or after the attack. “Cannons came through the clouds and just started shooting. Didn’t make a sound until it was too late, and we were all just sitting out there like targets for them. Some of them didn’t even have time to run before they were just gone.” He bowed his head and sighed. “If it isn’t The Grey, I don’t know what else could do this kind of damage.”

  Milara made a frustrated noise. As they had traveled, she’d gotten more and more on edge about the situation. “That doesn’t make any sense,” she snapped. “The Grey can’t just appear and disappear at will. They aren’t specters or phantoms. They have to have ships. Describe the cannons.”

  She asked everyone who had seen them to describe them and was frustrated with the answers. “Silver and strange doesn’t mean anything,” she kept saying over and over again.

  “It doesn’t mean anything helpful,” Kratos said. “But it’s still something.”

  She shot him a glare.

  For his part, he was getting twitchy with doing nothing. All they were doing was talking. Combo talked and then Milara talked and then whoever they were speaking to talked some more. No one did anything. They had a trail to follow, and at the end of it would be whoever had done this, probably terrorizing someone else. If they moved quickly, they could capitalize on it. Get some payment, get their hands dirty. Do something other than fly around to have the same conversation one hundred times.

  It wasn’t until the end of the trail that Kratos got his wish. He was sitting back in one of the seats in the command center, feet propped up on the dash as usual. He whistled a tune he remembered from some cantina or other and wondered if he could go find something to fight on his own. Maybe Sanaal would want to spar. He’d been looking restless himself lately, and going a few rounds with the burly man was better than doing nothing.

  As usual, Combo was beside him, fingers skimming over his screens and sensors, tracking things that Kratos probably didn’t even want to hear about.

  Suddenly, the thin man went ramrod straight and still, and Kratos noticed instantly. “What is it?” he asked. “Combo?”

  “I’ve got a trail,” he said, coming back to life as his fingers flew over the holographic keyboard he projected into the air. On the screen, the image zoomed in. It was a thermo trail if Kratos was reading it right (and of course there was every reason to believe he wasn’t), and it was leading right towards Earth.

  Chapter Five: Resistance

  For all the people who tried to have an open mind about what might be happening with the aliens who had come to Earth, in the end, it was just as bad as the doomsday advocating people had expected.

  For a good week nothing happened. The ships appeared and reappeared in the sky and people speculated. There was talk of some people disappearing, but no one could prove anything. Some assumed that it was just those who wanted attention pretending like things were bad. Others thought that the disappearances were unrelated. No one could come to any sort of real consensus about what was happening, and the arguments raged.

  But then, the aliens made their first move and there was no longer any doubt in anyone's mind that they were under attack.

  A lone creature appeared in the middle of a public square. He was hooded and cloaked, making it impossible to see any of his features. All they could tell was that he was a little shorter than the average human, and that he seemed to be a bit hunched over, further diminishing his height.

  As he stood there in the middle, people went about their business around him, some not even noticing that he was there. No one said anything, and there was no panicking, at least not until an unholy screeching sound filled the square, making everyone and everything grind to an immediate halt.

  People turned wide eyed to stare, and as they did, the creature reached into the voluminous folds of his cloak and pulled out a weapon.

  It was a gun of some sort, made of a silver material that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it. It was much bigger than a standard handgun, long and thick, and the creature braced it on his shoulder before he screeched again.

  And then, in the stunned silence, a lone person screamed, and that heralded the beginning.

  The creature opened fire on the square at large, firing large bullets that seemed to be made of pure energy into the crowd of people. They all fell when struck, searing holes in their bodies, sightless eyes staring up at the sky.

  The crowd erupted into chaos, running and screaming, tripping and trampling over the growing pile of dead bodies in their haste to escape.

  In the center of it was the creature, who never moved from his spot, never did anything other than shoot and screech, and was responsible for the deaths of a hundred people that afternoon.

  It wasn't an isolated incident, either. All over the state there were reports of hooded and cloaked figures coming out of nowhere to open fire on people. The numbers of dead and missing climbed and people started to speak of the Alva again, remembering the way things had been under their rule. That hadn't been so widespread, and people worried that whoever was behind this had their eyes on something closer to world domination and were working their way up to it.

  At least with the Alva there had been something to pin their fears on. Those creatures had been huge and monstrous, claws and scales and sharp teeth, like something out of a nightmare. It was easy to spot them coming, easy to see when they were about to snatch someone up and make a captive of them, but it wasn't so easy with these creatures. They killed more than they took, and they never said a word.

  With no idea where they were coming from, and no way to predict when they would appear, people were warned against leaving their homes more than they needed to. Curfews were put into place, armed soldiers were stationed at malls and plazas, places where there were often large gatherings of people. For all the good it did, really.

  In one situation, one of the armed guards opened fire on a creature, and it seemed to do nothing at all. It saved lives, but the creature didn't fall, no matter how many bullets it had absorbed.

  The supposed invulnerability of their attackers made everything worse, and people started evacuating as quickly as they could, heading for safer places where there weren't any reports of aliens and their madness.

  Some people tried to continue with their lives as usual, going to work, to school, and holding all their old routines as something almost sacred, but for the most part, people were more concerned with their safety than anything else. And no one could blame them. With the two cities that had been the most affected by the Alva just a state away, no one had forgotten how bad things had been just fifteen months ago. No one wanted a repeat of all of that. Families called their children home, people abandoned their property, and survival became the most important thing.

  "Are you sure you won't come with us, Kirsten?"

  Kirstie sighed and rubbed at her temples while she watched the red bar flash on the television screen. Another mall had been basically destroyed by an attack, and several hundred people were injured, some of them not expected to live.

  "Where are you even going to go, Mom?" she asked. Her mother was dead set on all of h
er children fleeing together, even though she didn't have anything even resembling a plan for how they would escape or where they would go.

  She understood the fear, and the wanting to be as far away as possible, but with everything so chaotic, Kirstie was loathe to just leave with no clear idea of where she was going.

  "I don't know yet, but it has to be better than this. We can head across the country. Something. Anything."

  The attacks were becoming so widespread that it was starting to seem almost impossible to find a place that might be safe. Three states already had multiple attacks, and two more were reporting minor attacks and disappearances. Every day it seemed like they were moving further outward, spreading into other parts of the country, and it would only be a matter of time before it was hard to find somewhere safe.

  "I don't just want to run right into them, Mom. You don't know where they're heading next."

  "So you're just going to sit there and wait for them to come to you?"

  It was a good question, and one she didn't have an answer for. That didn't sound ideal, but neither did throwing herself headlong into the chaos of evacuation. The interstates were pretty much always in a constant state of jammed and backed up, and if they got trapped out there when someone decided to attack...

  The thought of it was horrific.

  "I don't know, Mom. I don't know what we should do."

  Her mother huffed. "You sound like your brother," she said, and it was clear that wasn't a good thing. "He doesn't want to leave either. He thinks that it's better to stay and figure this out."

  "I didn't say that," Kirstie pointed out. "I'm just trying to think of the safest option."

  "Staying still is not the safest option!" her mother insisted. "Can you, for once, just be like your sisters? They're coming home."

  Kirsten frowned. Of course it would come down to that. Lynn was much more of a family person now that she was older and married, and her husband would follow her to the ends of the Earth if she asked him to. Emily was a coward when it came down to it, and while she liked to rebel against the family and act like she was independent and didn't need anyone, Kirstie knew that she would feel safer with their parents in all of this.

  Keith probably wanted to get his hands on some of the tech from these creatures and play around with it, and that just left her.

  Like always, Kirstie was left trying to decide what was the best thing to do. She knew what her mother wanted her to do, and she knew that if she went back there, it would be just as chaotic. Everyone arguing over what the best course of action was and no one having anything that even resembled a plan.

  It would drive her nuts to be there, and honestly, she was thinking about taking her chances here. So far, there had just been rumors of sightings and disappearances, and none of the ships had been seen hovering over her city. Maybe it would be fine.

  Just as she thought that, the door to the apartment banged open and Anise rushed inside. She was deathly pale, her eyes huge in her face, and she was breathing hard.

  That couldn't be good.

  "I have to go," she said to her mother, and ended the call before she could protest. "Anise, what happened?"

  "I was...on the way back here from work," she panted, pressing one hand over her chest. "And...and...I was on 45, you know, coming back here from the office, when..."

  Kirstie felt like she was going to explode. "What happened?" she asked again.

  "This...thing came out of the sky."

  "A ship?"

  Anise shook her head. "No, it looked like...like a long cannon, actually? Like on an old pirate ship, you know? Except silver and weird. Like it had a...a void around it or something. It just stuck through the clouds and then bam!" She clenched her hands together and then let out a deep breath. "I think...I think most of 45 is gone now."

  Kirstie's mouth dropped open and she leaned heavily against the counter. "Gone?"

  Anise nodded. "It was so fast, I didn't see most of it. Just, there was this flash of red light and people started crashing into each other and then there was an explosion and..." She was trembling. "I was already at the exit, or...or I might have..."

  She didn't seem capable of saying anything else, just shook her head and put her hands over her face. Kirstie wanted to go comfort her, but she felt like she was rooted to the spot. Apparently, they weren't safe here, anymore.

  "Why would they destroy the highway?" she asked, voice soft. "Are they trying to trap us here?"

  "I don't know. I don't know."

  For the rest of the afternoon, Anise locked herself in her room. Kirstie watched the news, listening to the reports as they recounted the events over and over again. There was helicopter footage of the destruction, a huge ditch carved right into the middle of the highway, twisted and half melted cars on either side of it and some right inside.

  It had all been shut down, and a state of emergency had been declared. People were urged to remain in their homes just in case this attack wasn't over yet.

  No one seemed to know what to do or what to say, and Kirstie's stomach was so knotted with fear that she didn't even eat that night.

  What was worse was that no one knew where Cara was. All the calls to her cell went to voicemail, and as it got later and later, she still didn't show up.

  Kirstie paced the living room and gnawed on her lip, unsure of what to do. Going to look for her was out of the question, and she didn't know where to start anyway. The office she was a receptionist for was on the other side of the highway, and if she was trapped over there, Kirstie wouldn't be able to get to her. And if she'd been on the road when it had gotten attacked...

  She didn't want to think about that.

  Cara was one of her best friends, and her being hurt or worse was a terrible thought.

  So far she had been viewing the list of people missing or dead as an abstract thing. A terrible thing, yes, but not something that pertained to her. No one she knew was on it, at least no one she knew well enough to miss, and she wanted to keep it that way if at all possible.

  She considered calling her mother back and telling her that she’d changed her mind and would be home immediately.

  Something curious happened to human beings when they were under duress. It was seen time and time again in books and movies, and there were plenty of examples of it. Sometimes they crumpled under the weight of their fear and the things that were happening to them, and sometimes they managed to flourish and keep themselves alive.

  What happened was this: survivors and the family members of people who had been killed or taken started to watch out for each other. In cities all across the lower half of the country, people were pulling together, swapping supplies and weapons and offers of safety. People who were good with weapons took them up, and people who were quick and had extra money bought supplies, stocking warehouses and shelters so that people who couldn't get their own food and water would have somewhere to go so they wouldn't starve.

  People whose homes had been destroyed were offered places to stay, and in the face of a government who seemed ill equipped to handle this threat, despite the fact that it was the second time this had happened.

  There was outrage and cries of incompetence, and so a resistance of sorts cropped up as the attacks started to get worse.

  Now there were always ships on the horizon, the sky dark with the fleet of them and the cannons that came down and blasted intermittently.

  Life as people were used to it had sort of ground to a halt. No one really went to work, no one went to school. People were more focused on surviving than anything else, and no one knew what would happen from one day to the next.

  Kirstie's brother Keith flourished under this new way of living, though. His expertise meant that he was rigging up solar panels and rechargeable batteries, keeping people connected to the outside world even while they hid in their homes or in the shelters that had been turned into places for people to go when they needed to be safe. He did what he could for people, working tireles
sly to make sure that families could be connected and that phone calls could get through.

  Without any other direction, Kirstie joined him. She didn't have the same skill set as he did, but she could help people. Cara had never come back, and Kirstie and Anise had been at a loss for what to do. Neither of them wanted to take their chances out on the roads trying to get back to their families, and with most of the people in their building cleared out, including the landlord, they worked to turn it into a shelter.

  Keith and the Doctor kept the utilities going, and they tracked down the apartments that were empty and put out calls on social media with the address for safe places to stay.

  And people showed up. They showed up in groups and alone, families and friends, partners and strangers who had been pushed together by the chaos around them.

  Kirstie used her soft voice and calming demeanor to soothe people who seemed the most shaken up, telling them it would be alright and that things would work out, and Anise used her skill at organization and keeping the peace to make sure things went smoothly.

  It was a good strategy all things considered. The aliens, whoever they were, didn't hunt them, mostly they seemed dead set on causing confusion wherever they could, but mostly in public places. From the outside, the building seemed quiet, and so they were safe. Those who were in charge of getting supplies moved quickly, in twos and threes and managed to avoid being noticed.

  This was the holding pattern for weeks once things started to get really bad, and while it wasn't the most ideal situation, it was doable. They could live like this until something, anything changed.

  Not that anyone knew what that would be. The government and the military was supposed to be coming up with a plan, but no one could say for sure what that was going to look like, and they hadn't announced anything yet. The official word was still that they were 'looking into it' and people should remain in their homes when at all possible.

  "Yeah," Keith grumbled as he fiddled with a laptop. "Because people don't need to eat or anything. We're perfectly fine being cooped up in our houses forever."