by Mina Carter
Alien Paladin’s Redemption
Warriors of the Lathar
Mina Carter
New York Times & USA TODAY Bestselling Author
Copyright © 2020 by Mina Carter
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Epilogue
Also by Mina Carter
About the Author
1
This was complete and utter trall.
Nyek S’Vaan sighed as he looked over the training hall filled with a load of bumbling idiots who didn’t know one end of a s’tovik blade from the other. He was an imperial warrior, not a draanthic babysitter, yet that’s what it felt like. He tilted his head back for a moment, concealing his expression and rolling his shoulders to resettle the tightness across the back of his neck. Perhaps the Lady Liaanas would take pity on him and give him some real warriors to work with.
But no… when he looked back again the same group of bumbling warriors in mismatched leathers still filled the hall in front of him. Goddess help them if the Tev’tolath was ever attacked. Half of them were too incompetent to survive real combat while the others were too green to even know they should be scared. Instead, they were buoyed up by being on their first real posting and filled with overconfidence from being the top dog at whatever backwater planet training hall they’d graduated from.
He hid his grimace as the training pair in the circle nearest to him clashed. Both were young, their hair unbraided, but they yelled and attacked each other like they were heroes of the Nine Wastes. Neither of them was in any danger of hitting the other. They were aiming for each other’s blades rather than the real target—their opponent’s torso.
He swept in like an avenging angel, s’tovik in his hands in a heartbeat. With a hard shoulder-barge, he shoved one out of the circle and sent him sliding almost into the next. His blade caught that of the remaining warrior before he could pull the blow. A second later the warrior was on his ass as well. Both looked up at Nyek with wide eyes.
“Which dull-witted master at arms allowed you two infants out of the training halls?” he growled, motioning them both to their feet. His voice didn’t echo back at him, the lower ceiling unlike the high-vaulted halls on an imperial vessel. Another reminder of how far he’d fallen from his original purpose.
“Try a draanthic trick like that in a real battle and you’ll end up trying to hold onto your guts as they spill from your body instead of holding onto your blades.”
Both leaped to their feet, refusing to meet his eyes as they stood in front of him. Bright banners of color decorated their cheeks and he realized the room had gone silent. All the warriors in the other circles had stopped training, watching them instead.
Great, just tralling great.
“What do you lot think you’re looking at?” he snarled, his deep voice reverberating around the training hall. In the face of his anger, they all returned to their training, but he didn’t miss the sideways looks from some as they turned away.
Ignoring them, he returned his attention to the warriors in front of him—if he could even call them warriors after what he’d just seen. This was what his life had been reduced to... Assigned to a garrison on a civilian freighter, training incompetents.
Perhaps it was all he deserved.
“Okay,” he growled, in no mood to mollycoddle anyone, much less males who should know better. Moving into formation with them, he spun his blade around his wrist and assumed a guard stance. “Let’s take this from the top. Position one, now…”
He spent the last two hours of training drilling the younger warriors in the basic sword craft positions and making them repeat the sequences over and over until he was sure they had them. At the end of the training session, their form had been a little sloppy still, but at least they were actually aiming for the correct targets rather than empty air. It was a small distinction but an important one. It would… might… make the difference between life and death when they saw their first real battle. Because one thing was certain, the enemy sure as hell wouldn’t be aiming for thin air. They’d go for any target they could, unprotected or not.
He entered the barracks after his shower, towel still slung over his shoulder and his hair damp. Ignoring the fact that the conversation trailed off and died as soon as he walked in, he headed for his bunk at the end of the room. The one above was empty.
No one wanted to bunk with him, even though on a normal assignment, the warriors would have been falling over themselves to flatter and impress the garrison’s second in command. Instead, they kept themselves apart from him, no one willing to sully their reputations by kissing up to him. Not a Veshina.
He didn’t care. He was used to it. If he harbored any residual sting from his ostracization, it was buried so deep in his psyche he no longer registered it.
Looping his towel over the end of the bunk to dry, he approached the small altar set up between his bed and the wall. Lowering himself to his knees, he made the sign of the goddess—a circle drawn in the air in front of his chest and then a line from his forehead down to his heart.
His lips moved silently as he prayed, his eyes fixed on the small statue of Liaanas on the altar cloth. Unusually for a warrior’s altar, it wasn’t of the battle goddess in her armor, outfitted for war. Instead, she wore the simple robes and cowl of a wise woman, Neranitis blooms woven into a crown on her flowing hair.
It depicted the goddess after battle, when the full import of decisions taken became known.
As he prayed, his hands clasped his forearms in the traditional manner, and his fingertips brushed the furrowed flesh on the insides of his wrists. The skin there was marked with deep scars.
The ritual scars of atonement.
He’d undergone the Vesh—the trial of judgment. In the temple of the goddess, his wrists had been sliced down to the bone for the sins of his past, letting Liaanas herself decide whether he lived or died. In her wisdom, she’d deemed him worthy of life, and he had pledged himself to her service.
He opened his eyes, catching sight of his reflection in the polished mirror behind the altar. His dark hair hung around his face like a cowl, his eyes in shadow. Why had she let him live? It was a question he’d asked himself many times over the years. Had the goddess saved him only to condemn him to a half-life without connection with anyone else? As soon as others saw his scars, they knew what he was, a Veshina, and treated him accordingly.
Movement behind him caught his attention and he looked up. A warrior hovered by the end of his bunk, obviously unwilling to intrude on Nyek’s prayer. He might be reviled, but no warrior would risk the wrath of the lady goddess.
“Yes?” he asked, not turning around.
He was technically off duty, but the work of a garrison command officer, even a second officer, was never done. They had to be ready always in case of pirate attack. The cargo the Tev’tolath carried was critical for the surviva
l of several colonies out in this sector.
“The commander wants to see you,” the warrior grunted, obviously not at all happy about being sent as a messenger. “Says it’s important.”
Nyek’s eyebrow winged up toward his hairline. Even though Nyek was the garrison’s second officer, the commanding officer, Karth D’Rek, normally liked to ignore his existence. For the male to send for him… well, things must be dire.
“Of course, I will attend him at once.”
Levering himself up, he turned. The warrior who’d delivered the message was already gone, probably happy to escape. Reaching for his uniform jacket, Nyek slid it on, settling it over his shoulders. Tall, he wasn’t as broad as some warriors, but he was whipcord lean and filled with the sort of corded muscle that meant people underestimated him.
Flicking his braided hair back over his shoulders, he left the barracks to find out what his superior officer wanted. Hopefully, it would be an attack, a glorious battle in which he could finally give up his life for the goddess and spend eternity at her side. Knowing his luck, though, it would probably be a discussion on cleaning rosters.
“Are all human females like you?”
The words were uttered with a combination of such horror and fascination it made Indra smile. She broke away from the warrior she’d been attacking, twirling her weapon over the back of her hand with a practiced gesture.
Aastan, the poor sod who had lucked into being her babysitter for the day, watched the movement out of the corner of his eye as he brought his guard up again. “I have never seen anyone pick up and master the s’tovik so quickly.”
Indra raised an eyebrow, spinning the alien weapon in her hand again. “This? Simple once you get the balance of it. You should try a tazvarth’s lance gun,” she said, naming a street weapon common to the gang she’d belonged to. “Now those take some getting used to. Seen newbies take their own feet off the first time they used one. Bit of an… initiation you might say.”
She grinned and attacked again. After a week of inactivity, it felt good to be doing something again. To be fighting… working out… moving finally. And with all the food here, she felt good. Better than good. She’d never eaten so well—not back home and certainly not in prison—and it showed in the responses of her body.
Moving smoothly and fluidly, she swung the double-bladed staff at Aastan in a series of glittering arcs. Constantly moving and changing direction, it didn’t give him a chance to attack. All he could do was defend against the incoming strikes, each arc smaller and faster than the last. She grinned, feeling the strength in her muscles, the speed… it was exhilarating.
Aastan’s expression tightened, and she felt the shift in the air. The mood between them went from a man forced to play bodyguard, humoring his charge, to imperial warrior fighting for his life.
“Yes!” she caroled in triumph, breaking away only to attack again and this time dropping to the ground. Spinning, she swung a hard leg at both of his and grinned as he was forced to leap to avoid being taken to the ground. Damn, these alien soldiers were good. She might even bet on them on the streets against a protection squad… maybe not against a group of praetorians, the elite of the gang, but fuck, they’d screw up most and then some.
“You… are… draanth… you’re insane!” he hissed, performing a backward flip to get out of range and eyeing her like she was a cross between Armageddon and a cockroach.
She grinned. Now there was a look she was used to. She felt right at home now.
“I was told human females were sweet and gentle,” he grumbled, turning his own blade over his hand as he circled her.
She barked a laugh. “Yeah… maybe civvie ones, handsome. But I was born on the streets and I just got fucking meaner.”
That wasn’t the whole story, but she’d been born poor, and on Talax-Four that amounted to the same thing. The gangs ruled the streets. You lived by their rules or you disappeared. If you were lucky, they found your body in a back alley somewhere. If not… well, no one checked the district’s waste reclamation units. Hell, the way they smelled, no one even wanted to go near the things. Just over nine million crammed into a space meant for under half that? She’d grown up with the stink of others coating her skin and the insides of her lungs.
Not like now, though. She took a deep breath of the clean air, filtered courtesy of wonderful alien tech, and launched herself at her opponent again. He grunted, their blades clashing together as he blocked, holding his ground against the force and momentum of her attack.
“You’re meaner than a draanthing liiraas,” he hissed, throwing her off and slamming two hard strikes against her blade on the left. She caught them both, her block automatic.
Fighting had always been easy for her. It was the only way to survive. Her personal mantra was “be better than anyone else.” She might not be on Earth or any of its colonies anymore, but that didn’t change anything. It actually made it all the more important.
“Yeah,” she threw back with a hiss, “and I fucking bite, so don’t you forget it!”
She hadn’t missed the way these men looked at her, or any of the human women aboard. There were a few, rescued from some outer system colony, and the alien men looked at them all the same way—with a mixture of fascination, obsession and hunger. She knew they’d never seen women before… at least, not women who looked like they did… but fuck, she was beginning to feel like a goldfish. Or a snack. It wasn’t a nice feeling.
“I would not want you as a mate,” Aastan growled, throwing off her next attack and stalking to the opposite side of the circle painted on the floor. The Lathar didn’t bother with rings or fight cages. They just traced a big ol’ circle on the floor wherever they were and went for it. First blood didn’t mean jack. You lost if you were forced out of the circle. So far, to his obvious frustration, Aastan hadn’t managed it.
“Good for you,” she agreed amiably. “I’d make a crap wife. I don’t know how to cook and I’m a fucking shrew.”
“This shrew must be formidable indeed.”
“Nasty as fuck,” she agreed. “The female eats her mate after sex... or if he pisses her off.”
He circled her, his heavily booted feet silent on the metal deck beneath them. She watched him closely, alert for the tiniest movement of his body that indicated which way he would attack. Of course, that meant she got an eyeful of his tall, heavily muscled… ripped… warrior’s body. Fuck’s sake, were any of the Lathar ugly?
They were all centerfold worthy, panty-wettingly hot and they definitely had a thing about leather. In the couple of days she’d been aboard the Izal’vias, she hadn’t seen any of them wear anything else. Leather pants, leather jackets, boots made of some kind of heavier leather. She’d even seen a couple of guys in leather cloaks that brushed the floor as they walked.
Aastan wasn’t one of the leather-cloak types, but he was just as hot as the rest. Not dangerous hot like Madison’s new hubby or that mercenary captain but more… cute hot. If these alien guys weren’t so heavily into the “I dos” so damn quickly, she’d totally have climbed him like a damn tree. But... yeah, she wasn’t into commitment. If she let people get close, they died. Or left. The end result was the same. She was left on her own.
Aastan’s eyebrows winged up and she spotted the movement a second before he made it—the slightest clench of muscle in his left pec before he launched himself at her. The amusement fell from her face as she matched his rapid-fire volley of strikes, forced to block hard and fast until she was almost on the edge of the circle. With a snarl, he knocked aside her blade with a complicated wrist movement. It clattered across the floor, out of reach.
“You’re good,” she commented, lifting her chin as his blade kissed the side of her throat.
A deep sense of calm fell over her, even though she’d been beaten. If he decided to slit her throat, she couldn’t do a damn thing about it, so she focused on the move he’d used to beat her. That totally shouldn’t have worked. If she’d tried it, she�
�d have broken her wrist. Which left one possibility… the Lathar had freaky double joints or something.
Slow clapping from behind her broke through the staring contest she had going with Aastan, and he started, his gaze sliding past her.
“Now that you’ve proven yourself a worthy warrior, Aastan, are you done? Because I really would rather you didn’t slit my friend’s throat, especially not just before lunch,” Madison Cole said dryly.
He coughed, color high on his cheeks as he yanked his blade away from Indra’s throat, sliding it into the sheath across his back in a swift move.
“Yes, Lady K’Vass, of course. And I can assure you, the Lady Indra was in no danger at any point,” he replied, his tone vaguely offended.
Indra rolled her eyes.
“Lady Indra now, is it? Not too long ago you were calling me a liiraas, whatever that is when it’s at home. Now you want to get all nice and formal?”
She huffed as she turned and stomped out of the circle to scoop up her blade. Winking at Madison, she strode over to the weapons rack at the side of the hall. Replacing her s’tovik with the others, she turned to offer Aastan a formal bow, a holdover from long-ago training in the dojo on Nebulae street down on southside.
“Thank you for the training session. Same time tomorrow?”
The look on Aastan’s face said he’d rather scrub the engineering deck with his toothbrush, but he nodded sharply and gave her a small bow in return. “It would be my honor, Lady Indra.”
Straightening up, he stalked from the room, back ramrod straight. Since Madison had arrived to relieve him, his babysitting duties were over, and it seemed he couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
