Ordar’s Mission: Scifi Alien Adventure Romance (Science Fiction Alien Romance) (Galactic Survival Book 4)

by Hana Starr

  She felt the blood drain from her face as she saw him correct his aim, leveling the gun at her head and charging another shot. Before it had even gone off, however, a burst of light whizzed through the air, connecting with the captain's hand and forcing him to drop the weapon and render it useless. The Almer in command of the dying ship clutched at his now severely damaged hand, cursing in a tongue that Mary didn't understand.

  She turned to face the direction the shot had come from, surprised that Ordar had fired his rifle at his commanding officer. That is, until she reminded herself that he was willing to blow up an entire ship for her sake. Taking that into account, it really wasn't that surprising that he would shoot his captain.

  “We are leaving.” Ordar said plainly, leveling his rifle to aim squarely at the captain's chest. “You cannot stop us.”

  “Can I not?” The captain countered, his lip curling darkly into a smirk. “I alone have access to the launch sequence of the escape pods in the event of system failure. They will not launch without my command.”

  “Is that why you're holding everyone hostage, then?” Ordar snarled. “No one leaves alive until we are dealt with?” He began to charge his rifle once more. “You would condemn the entire ship just to ensure that we would die?”

  “For the good of the Empire!” The captain cried out, charging at Ordar, ducking so that the shot that fired from his gun only barely scraped his shoulder as he moved forward.

  Mary only just managed to get out of the way as the two titanic combatants wrestled with the rifle. When The captain managed to wrench it from Ordar's grasp, the Guardian simply threw his weight into a punch to the rifle's side, damaging it beyond use. He then used the momentum from the punch to push back against his captain, and the two began to fight for control of one another.

  The battle for dominance played out in front of Mary, who could only work to stay out of the way and fidget nervously, fearful of interfering when there was little that she could do; her stature, comparatively, was diminutive and thin, and she didn't have the strength to push against someone so massive.

  Even if she could distract the captain long enough for Ordar to finish the job, there was no guarantee that she would even walk away from the encounter; one of his hands alone was large enough to encompass her entire head, and the thought that he could crush it in his fist wasn't a hard one to envision. So, she looked around frantically, trying to find some type of tool for her to use to help him, but only finding the broken rifle.

  Suddenly, Ordar landed a heavy punch to the captain's jaw, sending the behemoth reeling. Seizing the opportunity, he followed it up with a second punch to the face, followed by his other hand coming up to slam the captain's head against the wall. With a grunt, the imposing figure slumped over, dazed and almost unconscious.

  “Warning: systems failure has reached dangerous levels. Evacuate immediately. Ship wide detonation in five minutes.” The wrist computer on all three of them warned at once. Ordar snorted, hitting the captain in the head one more time for good measure.

  “We must quit this place.” He spit out a bit of blue blood from his lips as he searched the captain for the code that would allow them to leave. Fishing it out of the breast pocket of his coat, he hastily opened the door to the escape pod that he had secured for them, and ushered her over, helping her into the pod.

  It was spacious, just being by herself in it, and she saw that there was a small screen to display where she was at that given moment. No doubt it would update as they moved, once the pod was launched to Earth. She settled herself into one of the seats, and Ordar helped secure her into the chair, bringing down a cord of fibers that almost looked like a seat belt, fastening it around her waist, shoulders, and chest.

  “This will keep you safe,” he promised, removing her gas mask. Out of the corner of her eye, just outside the open door of the escape pod, she saw movement, and before she could let out a scream to warn him, the captain lunged forward, grabbing Ordar and grappling him from behind.

  “You will atone for your mistake against the Empire, Ordar!” The enraged captain cried out, wrapping a thick arm around Ordar's neck in an attempt to strangle him. Ordar staggered backward, tumbling out of the pod and slamming the captain against the wall in an effort to shake him off. “You know what you have done is against all that you have ever stood for! Why do this now?” The captain's voice boomed, reverberating in the narrowed space of the pod.

  As secured as she was in the emergency safety belts, Mary struggled but found that she couldn't take them off; they would only remove themselves once it was safe to exit the pod. Trapped as she was, she could only watch in horror as Ordar leveled his gaze steadily on her, a strange calm seeming to take over his face as he raised the remote in his hand.

  “I do this to stand for myself, for Mary Ingram, and not for the Empire.” With one last, gentle smile, he pressed a button on the remote, and the escape pod's doors slammed shut. There was a sudden, violent rumbling, and she realized a second too late that he had launched the escape pod with her inside.

  Chapter 9

  She hadn't realized she had started to scream out Ordar's name until her own voice rang in her ears, seeming louder in the small space of the pod. There was a soft beep by the monitor on the wall in front of her letting her know that the pod was now a safe distance away from the ship that the pod wouldn't get damaged from the imminent explosion, but that was little comfort, knowing who was left behind.

  Still, she could see from the display that the ship had not exploded just yet. A small flicker of hope dared to spark in her chest at the thought that he could have time to get to another of the pods and get away before the ship was destroyed. That there was enough time for him to live, for them both to live, and find their happiness together.

  She quietly cursed herself for not being able to count the time that had passed since the countdown warning that they were given before she had been jettisoned off of the ship; not knowing how much longer Ordar had to escape did nothing but further fray her already burned out nerves. Still she vainly struggled against the belts that secured her in her seat, wanting to at least pace about the pod a bit to try and work out the anxious energy that she was feeling.

  Her thoughts were cut off as the monitor let out a soft ping followed by a bit of static. She stared at the screen, not understanding what was going on. After a few moments, the static cleared itself out, and Ordar's face appeared on the screen. She almost wanted to sob with relief.

  “Ordar!” She cried out, her eyes welling up in tears at the sight of her lover alive. What stopped her from feeling joy that he was still okay was the grim expression on his face. There were a few cuts and scrapes that she could see, but she couldn't be sure of the extent of his injuries. She could only hope that he wasn't that injured.

  “Mary,” his voice sounded tired, almost as if he had lost all the fight in him that he had when he guided her through the halls of the exploding ship mere minutes ago. “I have made it to an escape pod.”

  “Oh,” she breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, I'm so glad-”

  “I do not think that I will have time to escape the blast.” At his blunt words, she swore that she felt her heart drop out of her stomach.

  “What-?”

  “I only just got inside the pod.” He said, his gaze flickering off screen for a moment, most likely to look at something related to the escape pod itself. “The captain put up a valiant fight.”

  “But you made it,” she whispered, tears streaking down her face at the thought that they had come so close, so near to making it, only for a last second tragedy to steal it all away from them. How had it come to this? Her mind reeled at the sequence of events that led up to this moment, and she wanted to scream at the overwhelming feeling of it all.

  “The captain initiated a secondary lock down of the pods after your pod launched.” He said, and she could see his arms faintly moving, as though he were hitting buttons and switches that she couldn't see. “I have almo
st managed to override the sequence, but I am uncertain that the pod can escape the blast of the ship by the time it launches. If I can even get it to launch.” He paused for just a second to look back at her. “I am sorry, Mary Ingram. I wanted nothing more than to find my happiness with you.”

  “We can still find it!” She sobbed, her shoulders shaking and her chest heaving from the weight of the sense of loss felt against her body, against her soul. “We can still work together to find it, you just have to keep trying!” Her hands gripped at the belts keeping her in her seat, and in that moment all she wanted was to rip them apart with her bare hands for how powerless she felt to help him.

  “I will continue to try.” He said with a small, tired smile. “I will continue to try until my dying breath to get back to you, Mary Ingram. Know that, if nothing else.”

  “How will we find each other?” She asked around the heavy sobs that wracked her body. The vision of him on the screen was blurred from her tears but all she could to was frantically blink them away to clear it up, her hands seemingly frozen in their vice grip on the belts keeping her in place.

  “The gloves that you wear will let us find one another,” he explained, the alarm on the other side of the monitor growing louder and more frantic in its insistence that he leave. “They have trackers in place, so that we may always find one another. For you are my Oracle, and it is always my job to come to your aid.”

  “Warning: systems failure critical. Immediate evacuation is required for optimal chance of survival. Ship wide detonation in one minute.” Mary swore her heart stopped at the faint but distinct robotic voice of the ship's intercom system telling of the unavoidable destruction of the ship.

  “The pod is mine to control.” He said with a small amount of relief in his voice. “I will cease communications with you now, Mary-”

  “No, please, Ordar-!” She gasped around a fresh wave of tears that hit her, feeling the fear grip her heart in its icy clutches until it robbed her of breath.

  “I will not risk you hearing my dying breath, Mary Ingram.” His tone was final, and she swallowed whatever meager pleas she had managed to think of in the span of the breath she had taken. “That is not something I would wish upon you.” He looked at her, his face so at peace with what he was doing, with the fact that he might very well die that it made her stomach churn uncomfortably. “Should I survive, I will find you, Mary Ingram. But if I do not, know that my heart lives on with you, always.”

  “Ordar!” She screamed as the screen flickered into nothing, leaving only a faint reflection of her own horror stricken face staring back at her. Her voice cracked as she kept screaming his name, and her heart broke shortly after that when she felt more than heard the aftershock of the explosion of the ship rock the pod. The reality of just how uncertain her future was once more crashed into her, and she couldn't shake the emptiness that she felt in her very soul at the unknown that she was now facing.

  Set adrift toward Earth once more, Mary could do little but weep.

  Chapter 10

  The landing on Earth an hour later was far gentler than Mary had expected it to be; in spite of it being an escape pod, it still had enough programming installed that it could safely and gently land itself as though it were a shuttle, ensuring that she could safely leave. When the belts that Ordar had secured around her finally lifted once the pod had settled, she sprang forward and frantically fumbled to open the door that she could leave from.

  Finally having got that sorted, she nearly jumped out of her skin when she was greeted by several armed forces and politicians that they had escorted, all of whom were waiting for the door to open. A small part of her couldn't help but scold herself for not expecting that; the invasion was literally just two days ago, after all. Still, she realized that she wasn't that much more surprised than they were at the sight of a human, alone, landing back on Earth in a small space craft that looked like the ones that had invaded days ago.

  “What... what is the meaning of this?” One of the politicians, an aging woman in a smart business suit finally asked after a long moment of the whole group of people gawking at one another silently. None of the armed forces that had escorted the politicians raised their guns, but still had their eyes keenly trained on her, as if waiting for the moment that some big ruse was exposed.

  “I was allowed to come home.” Though her eyes were puffy and red from all the crying she had done as she had traveled here, and though she felt a bone deep tiredness that she had never felt before in her life, she pulled herself together enough to stand tall with her shoulders back. “A sympathetic Almer helped me escape. The other humans,” she swallowed. “The other humans that were taken died, as far as I know.”

  “What of the warship? The invasion?” Another politician type spoke up, a raspy old man that she swore she almost recognized from watching the news.

  “The invasion is over. They're not coming back.” She said simply, her shoulders going lax. “I don't know how, or why, but the Almer that helped me made sure that knowledge of Earth was never given to the rest of his people.”

  “And we're just supposed to believe that?” One of the armed guards spoke up incredulously.

  Amidst the tiredness that plagued her, a bubble of righteous fury welled within her. After the last few days that she had, after all that she had been through, they wanted to interrogate her for answers that she didn't have? What right did they think that they were owed by her?

  “Believe what you want.” She snapped, hands clenching into fists. “I'm tired.” She looked out beyond the group of people, six altogether, and recognized the street that she had landed on, knew the bus stop on the corner and saw the familiar trees, only just starting to turn colors in the November weather.

  She was right where Ordar had caught her two days ago.

  Had she not been so tired, she would have laughed herself to tears at the thought that after all was said and done, she had come full circle. After all the drama, the chaos that her heart had been put through, she was right back where she started two days ago: on the road to the bus that she would take to work.

  She would go in today, though.

  “I'm going home.” She said in a tired voice, stepping out of the pod and past the people. They called to her, but she couldn't care less; home was now a mere two blocks away, where she could have her teas and her books and pretend that she was fine for a while.

  Without Ordar.

  The thought made her heart clench. How would she know that he had made it? How long would she be able to hold out hope, before having to admit to herself that he was gone? She didn't have the answers to those questions, and she didn't know how long she would allow herself to ponder on them.

  All she knew was that she just wanted to get to her house, sequester herself inside, and just be alone with her thoughts and her feelings, to at least begin to try and sort through them. Pinning down a starting point was nearly impossible, as she didn't even know where to begin to think about the process that she was going to have to go through to recover, but she could at least take comfort in the familiar things again, things that she had taken for granted.

  The walk to her apartment was all at once too short and felt like an eternity, but eventually, she found herself winding through the achingly familiar apartment complex toward the place that she called home. She saw some of her neighbors gasp and gawk at her through the window, and wondered if they had managed to put up a list of people that had gone missing following the invasion.

  Another thing she couldn't bring herself to care about in that moment.

  Slipping inside and locking her door behind her, she stepped out of her shoes and walked over to the electric kettle, letting her morning routine that she had done a thousand times before take over as she fought of the numbness that consumed her entire being.

  The kettle gurgled the same way it did every morning as it brewed her favorite tea, and she stood by the counter in the same spot she always did to wait for it, but everythi
ng around those actions felt different, as though she no longer belonged there now that she wasn't the person that she was a mere few days ago. The thought unnerved her, but still she pulled out her favorite oversized mug and set it on the counter, ready to pour her tea in, and allowed herself to pretend that she was at least a little okay with herself.

  Idly, she reached to take off the gloves that she had been given, her only personal memento, the only thing that she had that proved that it wasn't some fever dream, and contemplated taking them off. Removing them, finishing that chapter of her life.

  Her hands stilled.

  She couldn't. Not yet, at least. She had to hold out for Ordar, have faith in him, in them, that he would try with everything that he had to get back to her. Letting the gloves stay where they were, she reached for the kettle when it beeped to let her know that her tea had been brewed.