Marauder Kronos: Scifi Alien Invasion Romance (Mating Wars)

by Morningstar,Aya

  “I thought about just bringing Malcolm with me,” Ramses says, “But they might open up some kind of path down into their city. I think it’s best if we get as many people into the negotiation as we can.”

  “Negotiation?” Minna asks. “You think that’s what’s going to happen.”

  “It’s plan A,” Ramses says.

  “What’s plan B?” I ask.

  Ramses shakes his head. “Plan B is crazy, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  Ramses and Malcolm saw a hole into the ice, and soon they cut loose a big circle, which floats freely over the sea. They pry the circle out and slide it away. The ice is a half-meter thick, and I don’t envy Ramses diving down into that void. I realize that the chances of him ever coming out of there again are slim to none.

  “Don’t you have a wife and kid?” I ask.

  “On Venus,” Ramses says.

  “You sure you want to do this then?”

  He looks up at me. “If I don’t do this, my wife and kid won’t be safe. At least this way I’m the one taking the risk.”

  “What do we tell them,” I ask, “If--”

  Minna elbows me and scowls up at me.

  “It’s alright,” Ramses says. “Kain will deliver a message if needed.”

  And then Ramses dives headfirst into the water. There’s a small splash, and then he’s gone. I can’t help but imagine he’s already dead. The water is probably only a few fractions of a degree above freezing, and heat packs and gene modification isn’t enough to convince me that this hole in the ice is anything but a frozen tomb.

  But the rope keeps uncoiling, and everyone lets out a sigh of relief.

  “See,” Malcolm says, “That means he’s swimming.”

  “If he died,” Ramu said, he’d float up against instead of sinking, right?”

  Delphie elbows him.

  We stand and wait. It doesn’t feel right to sit down, knowing what Ramses is doing and risking. So we stand, for over an hour, and then the rope stops.

  “What does that mean?” Minna asks.

  “It means he reached the city,” Malcolm says. “He’s knocked on their door, and he’s waiting for an answer.”

  That’s an optimistic interpretation. If he drowned, the rope wouldn’t go back up, it would stop. Just like it has.

  But then I sense something below. I look over at Ramu and Delphie, and I see their ears angled down toward the ice. They sense it too.

  “What?” Minna asks. “What is it?”

  “Something’s happening down there,” I say.

  And then I feel a vibration.

  “Fuck!” I shout. I grab Minna, hoist her over my shoulder, and start to run back from the opening.

  I see Ramu and Delphie running in the opposite direction. We should have stuck together, but it’s too late now, we all just wanted to get the hell away. None of us other than Ramses have modified genes to survive this frozen sea.

  Malcolm is standing stubbornly at the opening, grabbing hold of the rope. He’s hoisting it up.

  “Fuck the rope!” Ramu shouts.

  Malcolm pulls more, and the frayed and ruined end of the rope pulls out of the water. Malcolm starts to run.

  I’m still holding my gun in one hand--the other is keeping Minna secure on my shoulder, but what good is a gun against a horrible alien vibration coming up from below?

  There’s a slosh, and when I look back water is splashing and bulging out of the opening. And...glowing?

  I put Minna down and hold the gun in two hands, pointing it at the opening. I notice Ramu too is taking aim. We’re far enough from the opening now that--hopefully--we won’t be sucked into the sea.

  Chunks of ice blast up into the air around the opening, and they crash onto the surrounding ice shelf, and then a huge shape breaks the surface, carrying huge amounts of water with it. It lands on the ice. It’s shaped like a huge oblong egg, and it has dozens of long, tendril-like legs. They lash out and stick to the ice, stabilizing the big egg-shaped body, which is a dull orange color.

  The top of the egg opens up, and it spits Ramses out up into the air. One of the tendrils whips up around his waist, and it slides him down across the ice toward Malcolm. Ramses slides across the ice, seemingly unconscious, and the egg thing closes its top.

  “W-w-w-ater spider!” Minna shouts.

  I open fire on it, but when the bullets hit, a green glow appears at each impact point, and the bullets bounce right off.

  I stop firing when the egg-shaped, tentacled monstrosity leans toward me. Ramu is still firing at it, but it doesn’t seem to care.

  It whips a tentacle out--toward Minna.

  I roar and dive at the tentacle, drawing a long knife from my shin. I ram the knife at the tentacle, but the green glow is on the tentacle as well, and my knife hits it like a concrete wall. The blade shatters, and the tentacle swats me away.

  I slide onto the ice, the air knocked out of me, and when I look back up I see the tentacle pulling back in toward the body.

  “Minna?!” I shout.

  When I look up at her, I see her on her knees, shivering.

  “It shut Jerky down,” she says. “It’s c-c-cold.”

  I rush to her side and strip my clothes off piece by piece, wrapping them around her to stop her from freezing.

  Then a voice booms loud from the monster. “LEAVE! HERE!”

  Ramses is still unconscious on the ground. Hopefully he’s not dead, but why would the monster bring him up again if he were dead? The rest of us are staring up at the thing.

  “It’s not a spider,” Minna says, her jaw clattering. “It’s a machine. An Atlantean machine.”

  Whatever she has to tell herself to not be scared.

  “We have a copy of Harmony!” Minna shouts. “You can analyze it to--”

  “NO!” the thing’s voice booms. “YOU CREATED HER. YOU DESTROY HER.”

  Minna takes two steps forward, clutching my oversized coat to her body. “No, asshole! You think she’ll hesitate to destroy your planet? We can probably stop her now, but she’s getting exponentially more advanced, we can’t delay--”

  “LEAVE HERE!” The voice booms, and the tentacles all pull into the body, and then the thing dives down into the water, barely even leaving a splash.

  “Did that really just happen?” Delphie asks.

  “Wake Ramses up!” Ramu shouts. “Let’s leave here! We don’t stand a chance against that thing.”

  “No,” a weak voice says.

  We look over and see Ramses rising to his knees. He trembles as he rises to his feet. “It’s time for plan B. Malcolm!”

  Malcolm looks rattled. His ears are low and his eyes are wide, but he delays only a moment before reaching into the bag. He pulls out what looks like some kind of large firework.

  “Make sure the gyroscope is functional,” Ramses says.

  Malcolm wiggles the thing, then nods.

  “Launch! Now!”

  Malcolm reaches into the bag again, pulls out some type of primitive gas lighter, and holds a blue flame up to the device.

  He starts mouthing something--a countdown?--and after a few seconds he throws the thing into the air.

  Just before it begins to fall, fire explodes out from the device, and we watch it streak up into the air.

  “Ramses,” I say. “What the fuck happened?”

  “You know the real reason I made all of you come with me?” Ramses asks.

  We shake our heads.

  “So that no one could say I was crazy or hallucinating when I told this story.”

  He moves to the bag, zips it up, and hoists it over his shoulder. “Come on, we need to run back to land.”

  “You can run?” Malcolm asks.

  “I don’t think anyone can carry me,” he says, “Come on!”

  We run as fast as we can over the ice. I’m trying to imagine what the hell plan B could possible be. Malcolm launched a rocket up, and it looked powerful enough to propel itself out of Atlantis’s f
ield.

  So it must be some type of signal. And now he has us running furiously to solid land.

  “Did you just call in a fucking orbital strike, Ramses?” I shout. “That’s not very much keeping the peace, is it? Bombarding a dormant and powerful alien race from space?”

  “Just keep running!” Ramses yells from behind.

  He’s barely keeping up with us. He must be completely exhausted, but like he said, no one is going to carry him.

  With the shoreline in view, something lights up in the sky.

  “Go! Go!” Ramses shouts.

  I grab hold of Minna and run with a final burst of speed.

  When I hit the shoreline, I help her down carefully, and then I collapse into the snow. I’m totally naked, but I guess my superior Marauder genes have adapted.

  I look up at the sky as Minna falls down next to me. I take her hand, and we watch the light in the sky rip through the clouds. It gets larger and larger, until it finally slams down into the ice. It’s so hot it melts right through, disappearing down into the sea.

  “Ramses you crazy fucker,” I say, awe in my voice. “But what if the missile can’t break through their shields?”

  “It’s not a missile,” he says.

  “It’s Harmony,” Minna says. “Isn’t it?”

  “You idiot!” Ramu shouts. “You shot Harmony onto this planet?”

  Ramses laughs. “Now it’s their problem. Let’s hope the solution they come up with solves our Harmony problem too.”

  Epilogue

  We were about to go to battle. Jerky was back, and the crew of the Time’s End was fully prepared to fight.

  And then the virus hit.

  The Atlanteans must have decided that the extra bit of effort to send the Virus out to the other planets was worth it, and the virus hit Earth first. Harmony’s brain was fried, and then the virus spread quickly through her entire fleet. All smaller aspects and hidden backups of her were infected within days--the virus broadcasting itself through comms channels and all other types of vectors that humans or Marauders would have never thought a computer virus could go.

  We did have to fight--for a while at least. Kronos knew the war was almost over, and he made sure to not risk The Time’s End or its crew more than absolutely necessary. The Earth forces--terrified of their A.I. overlord--fought against the Earth-Venus-Privateer coalition for a few days after Harmony gave her last order, but when they realized she was really gone, they threw down their weapons and disarmed their ships.

  Full surrender.

  Even better, that got us out of our one-year contract, which meant we were rich and didn’t have to take anyone’s orders.

  The only compromise I had to make was agreeing to continue working on human biosuit research, but they let me do it remotely from the Time’s End. And they let me keep Jerky too, if I promised not to use him for piracy.

  Ramu and Delphie got married first--they did it on a whim, and me and Kronos were the only ones who were even there. Ramses and Malcolm were busy cleaning up Harmony’s mess and didn’t have time to attend a wedding--and I doubt Delphie or Ramu really wanted either of the two asshole peacekeepers there anyway.

  “You ready?” Delphie asks me.

  It’s my wedding now, and as cute and sudden as Delphie’s was, mine is going to be bigger. My parents and cousins and almost everyone I ever knew is here on Mars.

  “You’re really going to marry a pirate?” My mom asks me, securing my hair with an extra pin.

  “Privateer,” I say, smiling.

  “Don’t mince words with me,” she snaps.

  “We’re retiring,” I say. “Only legitimate jobs from here on out. And even when he was a pirate...he was a pirate with heart.”

  My mom clicks her tongue in her mouth “What does that even mean?”

  “Once you get to know Kronos, you’ll see what it means.”

  “How am I going to get to know him with you two flying around on that awful ship? You have all that money, why not just get a nice house on Mars, and I can help you with the kids.”

  “Mom,” I say, looking her square in the eyes. “Can you please just be happy for me?”

  “I am,” she says. “I just never thought my baby would be marrying a half-alien pirate.”

  “Alright, Mom,” I say. “Once we have a kid, I promise we’ll come back here. Even a pirate has to settle down sometime.”