Jax’s Mission: Scifi Alien Adventure Romance (Science Fiction Alien Romance) (Galactic Survival Book 1)

by Hana Starr

  He lightly touched his nose to hers and blinked at her sweetly. “That won’t be necessary. I can take them.”

  “No,” she started to protest, but he cut her off.

  “Really? I am a warrior. More importantly, I am the warrior who broke down 37 walls to rescue you from a giant Yire.”

  He had been hoping to make her laugh about the fact that he had counted the walls for her, but she just shook her head and tears brimmed under her eyelashes. “You’re so stubborn. You’re so impossible.”

  He held her closer, and touched his lips to hers. It was a sweet kiss, unhurried, but he had to cut it short all the same because the slugs were shouting at them again. Their adversaries were growing impatient with the waiting game already.

  “Look, just start climbing. Look,” he pointed, tracing an easy path up the mountain for her with his finger. “Climb up like that. It will be just like going up steps, okay? Climb that, head that way, and I’ll take care of all of this here. I will catch up to you in no time. I promise.”

  Mentally, he whispered the words that an Ula boy would say to keep the promise from being binding. It was trickery –and childish trickery at that- but it was the best that he could do. He wasn’t about to tell her that he was going to give up his life for hers.

  Her eyes still held doubt, but she knew their time was up. “I love you,” she said. “I love you, Jax.”

  This time, there was no need for him to mince his words. “I love you, Beatrice Noble.”

  With no time for another kiss, he squeezed her tight and then let her go.

  Tears glistened on her face, and then Bea turned away and began to climb.

  He turned his back to her and began to stroll towards the canyon exit. He couldn’t see any slugs, which meant they were flanking the sides just out of sight. If they meant to surprise him, they were going to have another thing coming to them.

  Just as he was nearly there, he looked back to see that Beatrice was already near the top.

  Good.

  Taking a deep breath, Jax thundered down the last few feet of the canyon, and then dove out into the open.

  A swarm of slugs charged at him, the sudden high-pitched whine of their engines screaming.

  Jax held out his arms, and electricity pulsed out of his body in a halo. Engines went haywire, and the vehicles began to spin and careen into each other. Like a dancer, Jax wove his way through the craziness. Every bit of his senses were perfectly in-tune for this. It felt like he’d been waiting his entire life for a fight this perfect.

  One of the slugs leapt from his runaway vehicle, tentacles out. Jax slammed his fist into it, a little surprised when his fist burst through its slimy flesh and clean out the other side. The slime wrapped around his limb, and he let out a burst of electricity that sent it quite literally splattering all over. Only half a Yire now, the enemy collapsed into a steaming puddle on the ground.

  The others were advancing now. Jax grabbed lightning with both hands and took on a grounded stance, and met them all head-on.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Rock-climbing in her bare hands was a horrible task, and here she was having to do it twice. Her fingers were quickly scraped raw and bloody, which made her grip that much more tenuous than it already was.

  Still, this was what Jax had wanted Beatrice to do and she was damned if she wasn’t going to do it. He loved her. He was saving her. She was safe from harm, and they were going to arrive at the base together so that he could win his place in the secret Dark Peace organization.

  Everything was going to be okay.

  That was what she held onto as she climbed all the way up the top. She was crying from stress and fear and from the pain in her hands, and from the ache in her heart. She wanted so badly to turn around, to watch the fight, to see who was winning, if those crackling lightning attacks were in defense or if he was kicking ass…but she knew that she really couldn’t stop. If she looked back, she would be disobeying his wishes.

  He must be winning, she told herself as she swung her leg over the other side to begin her descent. The temptation was almost sickening but she held off, watching her scarlet-slick hands instead of looking around. He has to be winning. He said that he would.

  Going down was harder than coming up, but she kept at it one foot at a time. Foot, then hand, and then foot, and the other hand. One after the other, over and over again, Beatrice focused all her intensity on the task at hand until her feet both hit the same level and she looked down.

  She was standing on top of a wide, flat brown boulder. The ground was three feet below. She jumped, stumbled, found her footing, and bolted.

  It had been such a long time since she ran anywhere and finding her rhythm was difficult, but it didn’t matter. She receded back into her mind, catching the memories of their lovemaking and reliving them over and over again. And she ran for hours, until every breath of air was like the stab of a knife. She ran until her legs started to give out, and she kept falling. Her palms were quickly scraped even worse than before, but she just picked herself up again every time and kept going until the next fall. Black spots swarmed her vision. She was so hungry, so thirsty, so exhausted, so heartsick and so afraid…

  “Sir!” someone cried out from far away. It sounded feminine, but she was so hazy-minded that she could hardly remember if she herself was female or not. Everything had become distant and dreamlike.

  Then, she tripped over her own feet again and collapsed down hard. She was too slow this time to swing out her exhausted arms and catch herself, and she hit the ground hard.

  That does it, she thought. I’m never getting up again.

  She passed out, but was quickly woken again by the warm touch of a damp cloth to her lips only a minute later.

  “Drink.”

  That was a man’s voice this time, and it carried the sound of an order. Beatrice pulled at the cloth with her lips, wetting her tongue. Her thirst suddenly exploded, and she suckled urgently at the cloth until the damp corner gave her nothing.

  Yet a third voice commented, “Well, she’s not dead if she can still drink like that. Maybe not too fast, though. You’ll make yourself sick.”

  After she had sucked on the cloth upwards of twenty times, her thirst only slightly sated, Beatrice was finally able to open her eyes.

  She was being cradled by one soldier, fed water by another, and watched over by the third. No, that wasn’t quite right. The only giving her water wasn’t quite a soldier. He had all the markings of a top commander.

  “Sir,” she croaked respectfully.

  His hardened, battle-lined face cracked with the beginning of a smile. “Well, I’ll be damned. Still some life in you yet. I don’t suppose you’d happen to be Beatrice Noble, would you?”

  “I am,” she murmured, and tried to sit up on her own.

  “Give her some space,” the commander said. Only then did she realize that she was surrounded by a lot more than three people. The whole of the crew of the gigantic ship at the edge of her vision was surrounding her, and then all stepped away and began to mill about at their commander’s order.

  The man supporting her helped her to sit, then got her propped against her hands so she wouldn’t fall over before leaving.

  The commander looked into her face, all traces of his smile gone. “Where is Jax?”

  “I…”

  She struggled to remember.

  “He was…He saved me. We hid for a bit. But, the Yire found us and he stayed behind to distract them.” Beatrice swallowed hard, fighting womanly tears that this iron-tough man probably had no patience for. “He said he would follow me shortly. Is he here? Have you seen him?”

  For a long moment, nothing was said. Fear started to break through, bleeding into her voice. “Is he here? Is he hurt, is it bad?”

  “Calm down,” the man said, almost impossibly gently for one so weathered and experienced. “No, he’s not here.”

  Her shoulders slumped and she nearly passed out just from relief.
The look that crossed his face completely erased that feeling however. The terror was back, her emotions seesawing.

  “I…am seeing that he must have meant a lot to you,” the commander said awkwardly, and then cleared his throat. “Which is none of my business, of course. But, Miss Noble…I don’t think he’s going to be coming back.”

  “But he said he would,” Beatrice insisted.

  The commander placed his hands on her shoulders, and then looked her right in the face. Her control was breaking.

  “Yes, I suppose he did tell you that. But, I can tell you that he knew he wouldn’t be coming back. It’s obvious that he gave up his life for yours.”

  She wanted to protest, to scream and cry, but she had known all along what he was doing; she just hadn’t wanted to admit to herself that his farewell was exactly the goodbye it had seemed to be.

  Beatrice dissolved into tears, hysterical sobs jumping up her throat from deep within. Covering her face with her hands, she leaned forward and keened.

  Something warm wrapped around her shoulders, and then she was being carried inside the gigantic ship. Gentle hands buckled her into a bunk in a shiny metal room that looked to be a medical bay. Still crying, she couldn’t help but to catalogue all the sounds. Time had run out for Jax to return, and so she heard the deep engine purr awake. Then, the pressure rose and the ship started to move. A bit more ground covered, and the roar broke out into a peal of thunder as they took off.

  Sometime later, she very distantly remembered something. “The medical supplies…”

  The same gentle hands which had strapped her into the bunk stroked her forehead, and then wove into her long hair and spread it out over the thin pillow beneath her head. “It’s all been gathered up,” an accented female voice said. Beatrice turned her head to look at the warrior beside her, but hardly cared about her appearance at all. “We’re heading to your destination now.”

  Beatrice just sighed and closed her eyes again, but the warrior wasn’t quite done.

  “I’m sorry, you know. We’re all sorry. We know how great a guy Jax was deep beneath all his flaws, and I bet you’re just the kind of person who cut right through to his core.”

  She nodded, flipping back through all the conversations she drove herself before he bothered to participate.

  “We were all rooting for him. We knew he wanted in Dark Peace, and he would have gotten in. Actually, I’d be surprised if they didn’t give him an honorary position. In his memory, you know. If they did, would you like to participate?”

  How was she supposed to answer that?

  The female warrior let out a little sigh. “You just think about it, okay? Are you hungry? I can unbuckle you and get you something to eat.”

  Thus began her next three days on the ship. She quickly discovered that the “warrior” tending to her was actually the nurse she appeared to be. Beatrice was her only patient at the moment, so she was fed, bathed, and lavished with attention.

  Everywhere Beatrice went, she was accompanied by the nurse. She really didn’t mind, though; her heart always ached now but it ached much worse when she was completely alone. Everyone else seemed to be walking on eggshells around her, but the nurse was a bright and bubbly woman who often chattered as she just went about her normal day, polishing tools that didn’t need cleaning and doing hourly checks of the supply hold where the boxes were stored.

  Staring into the expanse that held all these boxes in only a third of its space, Beatrice mourned her dumb little ship. The nurse seemed to hear her, because she turned with a concerned expression. “What is it?” she asked gently, clipboard in hand.

  “I was just…thinking about what’s going to happen after all this is over,” Beatrice finished weakly.

  “Well,” the nurse said cheerfully, “I can answer that for you! We’re going to land at Yellow Giant 205, and we’re going to stopover for a few days to give everyone a hand. When everything seems like it’s running smoothly again, we’re going to depart. The commander himself will see to it that you get all the way back to Earth safely, and then you’ll be given some vacation time. Paid for by Peace Federation, for up to six months. I bet that sounds good right about now, right? Where do you live?”

  That took some thought. “My company is in Utah but I don’t really have a place of my own. I guess home is with family.”

  It was the first time she’d even felt slightly talkative in days, and the nurse encouraged it by continuing to chatter at her just like she always did. Just like that, Beatrice felt a bit of her wounds heal.

  Arriving at the base in such desperate need of supplies gave her new purpose, as well. She helped unload the boxes and carry them to their proper designated areas, and then she followed the Federation nurse around as her assistant. She held bandages, fetched water, carried messages from room to room and floor to floor. Her mind was busy, and her aches and pains finally began to dissipate entirely.

  Still, each night alone was harder than the last. She couldn’t sleep alone in her room, and had given up entirely. The warriors allowed her to sit in the common’s area at all hours of night, watching the projected image of blank space.

  Which of those faint blips of light was the planet she crashed on with Jax? Which section of dark nothingness was the area where she had to leave him behind?

  Vacation back on Earth, an extended stay, was starting to sound pretty good to her, but she didn’t think she would go back out on a ship ever again. That part of her life was over –but for one aspect.

  She would never give up on Jax.

  He was so strong and smart, and she loved him so much. No matter what anyone told her, there was no way he had lost that fight. He would have taken control of the stolen Federation ship out behind the hideout, and he was probably flying all across the stars to try and find her.

  They could cross paths again someday, she was sure of it. And if not, she knew he was still alive. Her heart told her that he was alive, and she clung to the hope. As long as he was alive somewhere, she could continue to live, too.

  I love you, Jax, she thought to him, wherever he was, and closed her eyes to sleep.

  The End

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  About the Author

  Hana Starr is a romance author living in the Pacific Northwest. She spends her day at tech startups and at night she day dreams what is beyond our skies – she recently started to puts those dreams on paper to share to everyone. When she is not busy writing, she loves escaping in a book, traveling, and just enjoying life with friends and family.

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