by C. F. Harris
Contents
Copyright
A Taste:
1: Attack
2: The Deal
3: Intrigue
4: Attacked
5: Rescue?
6: Overwhelmed
7: Old Customs
8: The Challenge
9: Old Friends
10: Loyalties
11: Escape
12: Protection
13: Captive
14: Trust
15: Captain
16: Battle Mate
17: A Proposal
18: Waiting
More from C.F. Harris
Preview: Star Warrior's Bride
1: Duel
2: Summons
3: New Challenge
4: High Society
5: Dangerous Currents
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Star Warrior’s Mate
Star Warrior Book 2
C.F. Harris
Copyright 2016 C.F. Harris
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Individuals pictured on the cover are models and used for illustrative purposes only.
First digital edition electronically published by C.F. Harris, July 2016
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A Taste:
The alien was doing a good job of being stealthy. I’d give him that. He almost might have blended into the crowd except that he didn’t match anyone else down here. This was the dregs of Livisk society down at the bottom level which is one reason why it was so dangerous down here, and he didn’t look like that. He had the look of a soldier with those broad shoulders and elaborate tattoos. Plus he didn’t have the bored look that the overseers had.
That was a Livisk on a mission. Not Jorav, but Jorav could easily have someone working for him to tail me.
I sighed. And here I thought things couldn’t get any worse. I turned and continued walking and looking over my shoulders as I had been, but I tried to act like I wasn’t seeing anything. I didn’t want to do anything that would signal a change in behavior. If this guy was any good that would just tip him off.
I kept up the act until I ducked into a small alley off to the side. It was merely a sliver between two massive buildings, but even something that looked like a sliver on the scale of the construction of this planet was about as wide as a road back home on earth. It would have to do. I just prayed there was an end to it. The ground level on this damned planet was a maze and I could only hope that I lost my pursuer before I got too lost myself.
The only problem was apparently someone had already thought ahead to potential avenues of escape. There were a couple of Livisk standing in the shadows of the alley looking at me, and I’m not talking about the sort of homeless Livisk you normally saw in a place like this. They had the same look as the one who’d been following me. Broad shoulders. Dangerous smiles on their faces. Also? They were armed to the teeth with nasty looking blades.
Not the kind of person I wanted to be stuck with in a dark alley, thank you very much.
They were hidden in shadow, but I knew from a simple look that neither of those Livisk were Jorav either. I felt a tingling between my shoulder blades. Something was very wrong here. I thought back to what he’d said about the emperor having it out for me, and wondered if I’d just stumbled across a group of imperial assassins.
I turned to leave the alley, but of course my exit was blocked by the one who’d been following me in the first place. Foot traffic moved past behind him, but I didn’t bother to scream or anything. It’s not like there was any help on this world for a human woman screaming in a back alley anyways.
That was business as usual around here, but I wasn’t your usual human prey.
“Right. So if you leave now I’ll let you go without killing you,” I said to the one at the alley. I assumed he was the leader. Something about the way he carried himself screamed that he was the one in charge.
And he looked confused. He paused for a moment and looked over his shoulder as though expecting some sort of attack from behind. When it didn’t come he turned back to me and frowned.
“Why would I have anything to fear from you, human?”
He reached behind him and pulled out a long curved blade that looked dangerous. And sharp. And pretty useful in close quarters combat. I frowned. Not good. Very not good. I should’ve taken Jorav up on that offer to learn how to do hand to hand combat against a Livisk without power armor, because I could use that sort of training right about now, damn it.
“Last chance buddy,” I said.
I tried to keep my voice calm. Collected. Always act like you were the one in control of a situation even if you weren’t. It could throw someone off, though it didn’t seem to be throwing off this guy. I looked around at the two behind me but they weren’t doing anything. Just standing there preventing my escape.
Which was plenty, thank you very much.
The one with the nasty smile stepped forward. Well then. I guess he wasn’t going to play nice and listen to my warning after all. At least I could say I gave him a warning. I reached behind me to a knife I’d hidden away in the back band of my pants. It was the sort of thing that would probably have me put away for life if any of the Livisk out there had an inkling I was carrying a weapon, but I figured better in prison than dead.
I pulled it out and brandished it. The blade was large, but here in this dark alley surrounded by armed Livisk on all sides it suddenly didn’t seem nearly as impressive as it had when I snuck into Jorav’s private office before we went down to the simulator. He thought I was engrossed in learning their damned written language.
Instead I’d been engrossed with casing the joint in the few moments I had before I went down to kick his tight sparkly blue butt in the simulator.
My attacker laughed.
“Am I supposed to be afraid of you or something human? You wouldn’t have the guts to use that even if you could get close enough to try,” he said.
I shrugged. “Can’t blame a girl for trying.”
I heaved the knife at him with every ounce of strength I could muster. Not that I thought throwing the thing was going to do a damn bit of good. Not that I thought a thrown weapon was going to do much of anything. I wasn’t good at the whole ground combat thing unless I had power armor.
My branch of the Combined Interstellar Fleet lived by the motto that if the enemy was close enough for hand to hand combat then you’d done something terribly wrong and probably deserved what was coming to you.
The knife sailed past him harmlessly and clattered to the ground with a loud clang, but it was enough to distract him momentarily. His eyes followed the blade with that same cocky smile plastered on his face and he watched it fall with satisfaction.
That moment of cocky satisfaction where he was turned away was all I needed. I reached behind me a second time and pulled out the second surprise I’d managed to get out of Jorav’s personal study, or whatever the hell he called that room that overlooked the Livisk imperial palace off in the distance.
I wheeled around and fired at the two blocking the entrance. The first took a blast of charged energy right in the chest and fell to the ground with a smoking hole where his skin had been. I didn’t quite hit either of his critical hearts directly, but from the way he was twitching it didn’t seem like he’d be causing me any trouble any time soon.
The second had enough warning to jump out of the way, but the blast still singed a muscular arm before the energy weapon flew out of the alley and into the crowd beyond. I heard
an explosion as it slammed against a building on the other side and screams from humans and Livisk filtered into the alley.
Not that I had time to think about any of that. I wheeled around with every intention of stopping the third one who’d been distracted, but on completing my turn I saw that he wasn’t quite as distracted as I’d hoped for. He towered over me and he’d moved right behind me. His hand grabbed my wrist and the weapon fired harmlessly past him as I squeezed it to set it off.
“That was clever,” he said. “They warned us you might do something clever. I’m glad to see it was true.”
“Who warned you?” I asked.
I had a pretty good idea of exactly who was doing the warning. I had a pretty good idea of who’d sent these assassins out to try and take me out. Something told me it was the asshole who lived right in the center of that palace Jorav could stare at from the comfort of his own building.
I also hoped there was a chance this guy might be in a mood to talk. Only he smiled and wagged a finger at me. He must’ve learned that from some human at some point. Then he pulled something from his side. My eyes went wide as I realized he had an energy weapon of his own. It let out an ominous hum as he held it up to me at point blank range.
His hand squeezed. The weapon went off. My world was filled with blinding light and then darkness.
1: Attack
Talia:
Stars danced in front of me as I accelerated into another dive. The blasts of charged plasma that had been about to slam into my ship sailed past me, though not harmlessly. One of them got close enough that I could feel a slight bump in the ship and several warning lights came on.
“You’re not going to win this,” Jorav’s voice came through the mental link.
I ignored the voice. I could feel irritation pulsing through the mental link, but that was all I was getting from him. He was doing that thing again. Masking his thoughts from me. Useful trick, that, though I wasn’t sure if he’d figured out that I’d figured out I could do it too.
So all I got from him was a vague sense of how he felt. No mental sense of where he was or anything like that.
The cockpit screamed at me. I glanced over those warning lights trying to make sense of them. The only problem? They were in that damned Livisk chicken scratch and whatever sparkly blue asshole had designed the ship hadn’t bothered to put in a translation for citizens of earth.
Very inconsiderate of them. It’s like they didn’t want to help out intrepid earth space captains who might steal one of their ships and use it to go on a destructive joyride through their capital city.
“Give it up Talia!” Jorav sent through the mental link.
“And ruin all the fun?” I sent back at him. “You should know me better than that by now.”
Let him chew on that.
I looked back to the warning lights I couldn’t read. I really should’ve spent more time trying to learn reading Livisk. It’s not like I had much to do on my last assignment cataloging all the various chunks of rock and ice floating around the outer solar system.
Another warning light came on. I was pretty sure that one meant missiles were coming for me. I couldn’t be entirely certain, but the last two times it came on an angry little heads up display showing missiles coming straight for me had popped up so it seemed a safe enough bet. Sure enough another display popped up this time letting me know someone was shooting at me.
“Unidentified craft,” a message came through in garbled Livisk. Garbled not because I had a tough time understanding them so much as because I was jamming everything I could in an attempt to keep all of those missiles they kept tossing at me from actually hitting. The only reason Jorav could reach me was because there didn’t seem to be a way to jam the mental link entirely even if I could mostly hide my thoughts from him.
The garbled voice got more irritated as I didn’t acknowledge them. “Power down immediately or we will be forced to destroy you. Those missiles are armed.”
I thought about responding. A couple of choice phrases I’d learned early on in my exploration of the Livisk language came to mind, the sort of stuff that was useful for telling an enemy combatant exactly what you thought, but I didn’t say anything. How was I supposed to respond to that? “Oh sure, let me call off this attack so I can present an easier target for you to destroy at your convenience.”
No thank you. I didn’t graduate from the academy yesterday.
I arced around a massive building that was all shiny reflective glass. Or something that looked an awful lot like reflective glass, at least. I went in for a steep dive towards the bottom of the thing and at the last moment, just before those missiles had caught up with me, I did a quick turn.
I was fast enough, but even with their artificial brains the missiles weren’t. They slammed harmlessly into the bottom levels of that massive building. Well, they were harmless from my point of view at least. Probably not from the point of view of anyone in that building as it buckled under its own weight and started collapsing as though someone had done a perfect vertical demolition.
Even more irritation flashed through the bond and I grinned. Just what I was hoping for.
I let out a whoop of triumph as I circled around and clawed for the air. The engines whined underneath me and more plasma blasts went harmlessly past me, but I knew it wasn’t going to be too long before the air over the Livisk capital city would be so full of fighter craft that I wouldn’t be able to go anywhere without finding a plasma blast waiting for me.
Which was a damn shame. There was so much more fun I could have. I let loose with a couple of guided atomics and they went streaking off into the distance. I let out another triumphant whoop and only barely got my hands back on the controls in time to avoid getting hit by my pursuers.
I squeezed my eyes shut at just the right moment as the two atomics hit their targets at about the same time. The only bad thing was they were small nukes. We’re talking kiloton size here. Not the megaton size that was needed to really do some damage. Curse whatever asshole ever thought any yield less than a strategic nuke that could take out a city was necessary, but I figured there’d be plenty of damage there.
More missiles. They didn’t bother talking to me this time around. I tried to dive again, but it seemed my opponents were ready for me this time around. I swerved out of the way, but this time there were a couple of plasma blasts waiting for me. I steered right into them and the entire cockpit started screaming as angry bright warning lights I couldn’t understand flashed at me.
Not good. Very not good.
Jorav would be furious about this. I could feel how annoyed he was knowing I’d just taken out an appreciable chunk of his planet’s main city. It was a pity I couldn’t see the look on his face, but that irritation traveling through the bond would have to be good enough.
More blasts. I just barely managed to swerve out of the way and turn around. I dove my craft at one of my pursuers who seemed a bit surprised that I would do something as stupid as launch myself right at him. Fortunately for him he didn’t have to worry about it for long. I let loose with a couple of blasts from my own plasma cannon and that was all she wrote. The thing exploded in that weird sparkly pink mist that came up every time a Livisk craft was destroyed.
“Yes!” I shouted.
“Talia!”
I blinked. Looked down at the comm panel to make sure I wasn’t hearing things.
“Jorav?” I asked. I grinned. “You broke through my jamming! Nice day for a flight around the city, isn’t it?”
“I have you in my sights Talia. You will end this now or I will destroy you,” he said.
“I wondered when you were going to get here sweetie,” I said. “Did you see what I did to that building? Or those two nukes I managed to set off?”
“I did,” he said. Oh yeah. I could imagine him grinding his teeth and it was magnificent. “And if you surrender now there is a chance I might be able to spare your life, but you have to surrender first.”
&
nbsp; “Wait, I thought you said you were just going to destroy me and…”
It hit me what he was doing just before it was too late. I sent the ship into a steep dive just as a pair of somethings sailed through the air in front of me. I shook my head and grinned. Hit the button on the comm panel that I was pretty sure meant I was transmitting.
All around the city I could see more craft rising into the air and heading straight for me. This was going to be over soon, one way or another.
“That was clever. Using a mass driver so the system wouldn’t pick up the signature of a launch,” I said. “You’re starting to learn!”
“I still have you in my sights,” he said. “Surrender now or die.”
“Hm. Tough choice,” I said.
I looked at my surroundings. Took an assessment of my situation. It wasn’t good. Jorav on my tail, and I knew he was a damn good pilot. A bunch of mooks coming at me in their own craft, and even if most of them sucked there were bound to be a few in there who were also damn good pilots.
Surrender or die. I hated to do this, but I knew exactly what had to be done. I knew what my duty was. I knew what I had to do to prove once more that between me and Jorav I was definitely the better pilot and the scarier warrior.
Which was a tall order. Jorav could be pretty damn scary when he was in a fighting mood.
I pulled my ship into a climb. The hazy orangeish hues of the Livisk sky appeared above me. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. It would’ve been a perfect day if I was back on earth where I could really appreciate the skyline. As it was all I could think about was how ugly that orange color was and how nice it would be to liven things up a bit. Say with a massive fireball that obliterated this entire city and the emperor with it.
More blasts. Some of them hit my ship but I ignored them. More warning lights came on but I ignored them too. It’s not like I could do a damn thing if I didn’t even know what they meant. The best I could do is keep flying and hope that everything worked when I needed it, though the more red lights came on the less likely that was.
