Yahn: Paranormal Sci-Fi Alien Romance (Alien Mates Book 4)

by Ashley L. Hunt

  The group was so large that it filled the shelter. I wasted no time and got right to the point, “Citizens of Gwuarden, we must attack immediately. Our enemy is puzzled and has ceased their attack to evaluate the situation. This is when we should strike them!”

  “Agreed! A muscular young man said.

  “Yes, we attack now!” A middle-aged woman said. She was clutching a small laser pistol.

  “We will launch a coordinated series of guerilla-style attacks on them until they are persuaded to leave or are completely destroyed,” I stated.

  We began our first attack, taking a group of about fifty of us to the edge of the settlement. We saw armed Sarceastian soldiers marching around, but it didn’t appear to be a full army. They had more than likely sent some of their troops off into the jungle to hunt us.

  "Now!" I whispered and we came at them with our laser cannons and pistols blazing. Many soldiers were hit and others were in full retreat mode. One of them tried to send a warning to the base, but I shot him with a laser blast just before he was able to get the communication through. Still, it was likely that Demarin would know that a counterattack was taking place soon enough. We retreated quickly back into the jungle and watched as more troops poured out of a Sarceastian cruiser like ants. They were swarming around the area where we had invaded. We attacked them again from the opposite direction, a couple of our people were taken out, but their casualties were much greater in number.

  Their survivors began to retreat again. We pulled back into the jungle. Then we went to another position in the forest to carry out our third attack. I knew that this one would be the riskiest because Demarin would be better prepared. This last time, we attacked them from the south, but they shot four of us right away, expecting a third onslaught. Demarin himself made an appearance from well behind several lines of his soldiers. He ended up killing two of the humans and then hastily retreated back to the cruiser. We ended up fighting back and pushing the Sarceastians to a third retreat. There weren’t that many of them left to retreat, so I knew that we had dealt them with a devastating blow.

  “Yahn, we have too many wounded. I don’t think we have the strength for a fourth attack,” Daniel said, clutching his bleeding arm.

  “That’s alright, Daniel, three may prove to be sufficient. I believe that Demarin came at us with the fullest force he has right now,” I remarked. “You go ahead and lead the others back to safety and ask Dr. Harris to set up a triage for the wounded. I don’t think anyone’s wounds are life-threatening. I want to stick around and keep an eye on what the Sarceastians are planning next,” I instructed.

  However, we had made one mistake during our third attack. We did not immediately go back into hiding. Out of nowhere, two Sarceastian soldiers came out of the jungle and took Jessie's weapon. After that, they vanished with her. I desperately searched for them and finally I did catch up with them as they were trying to board the cruiser. I was closing the distance between us very quickly but still I wasn't close enough to be able to hit them with the laser fire.

  They boarded the cruiser and took Jessie with them. I was able to climb onto the bottom set of wings as the cruiser was taking off. I managed to crawl to the cargo hold and get inside it as the ship was taking off. It wasn't the place ideal to hide but it was spacious enough that I could sit up or at least stretch out my legs. One thing was for sure. I was going to rescue Jessie from that ship if it was the last thing I ever accomplished. For now, I had to wait patiently for the ship to land. I tried to send Jessie a message to let her know I was there.

  Jessie, it's me. I hope this message gets to you. I managed to get on board the ship. I'm in the cargo hold. Wherever they are taking you, I will be there to set you free. I promise you.

  Yahn! I'm so glad that you are here, but please be careful. The last thing I want is for Demarin to capture both of us. It would be better if one of us remains free.

  We will both soon be free. I will take them by surprise and force them to let you go. Then, we will escape again just like we always do. Nothing in this universe can stop me from getting to you. I love you, Jessie.

  I love you too Yahn. I will see you whenever we get to where we’re going. I suppose it’s probably Sarceastium.

  I’m sure you’re right about that. Sarceastium is not my idea of a honeymoon destination, I joked.

  After several days of surviving on pillaged Sarceastian food in the cargo hold, I could hear that the ship was preparing for a landing.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Jessie

  As soon as they walked me down the moving ramp way, I knew we had landed on Sarceastium. All of the rumors I'd heard about this planet seemed to be confirmed. It was a white and gray landscape of tundra and snow. The Sarceastian city was all glass and steel with nothing green or natural about it. The buildings were stacked very close together and the amount of smog and traffic made LA seem like a country retreat. I got one good look at the snow-swept sea of steel spires and glass domes before they took me deep into the bowels of a warehouse-like building. Once the upper levels were office like rooms and larger meeting rooms. Then, we got to the prison levels. I saw several suspended cells with invisible barriers where unhappy men and other aliens sat and waited out their sentences. Finally, we reached a level that seemed to be at the very bottom of the facility, the basement so to speak. On this floor were several lab-like rooms where I could hear screams of pain. I knew that the most horrible experiments were probably carried out there, and I wanted more than anything else to escape this place and help the people being tortured.

  I was placed in a chair next to a control panel. Attached to the chair there were all sorts of instruments of torture, some with blades and drills, and others with heat and laser rays. I struggled, but the soldiers would only strap me more tightly. They turned the chair around and there was Demarin, facing me.

  "Oh, my dear, Jessie. What a state you found yourself in. Oh, you are worried about those hi-tech torture devices attached to your chair no doubt. Do not worry. I don't use such unsporting weaponry. I much prefer whips, maces, knives and more primitive ones. I shall only be a minute while I select what is most fitting for today's sport," he said with a wicked laugh.

  “You can do what you want with me, but your kind’s days are numbered,” I threatened.

  “You’re in no position to make threats, my dear,” Demarin said as he got closer to me. He pushed a button and a heat ray scorched the side of my neck.

  "OUCH!" I yelled. The side of my neck had a red burn on it.

  “That’s only the beginning,” he said, turning away from her. He went over to a tall closet of sorts and opened the door. Inside the closet there were myriads of weapons, including a whip, a mace, a club, two spears, a series of swords, throwing stars and daggers.

  “I’ve always said a coward needs a million weapons,” I chided.

  "You will only make me take more pleasure in hurting you, my dear if you keep talking that way," Demarin assured me. He proceeded to pick out a large whip with spikes at the end of it.

  Just as he was about to turn around, I saw Yahn come up behind the guard at the door. With a flash, he hit the guard in the back of his head with the back of his laser cannon and grabbed the digital keys to the locks of the torture chair. Demarin turned around quickly and saw that Yahn was about to shoot him. He dove for cover and managed to escape through a door in the back of the chamber. Yahn came over and untied me from the chair.

  “Let’s go after Demarin!” I said.

  “We really need to focus on getting you safely out of here,” Yahn insisted.

  “We have to take him out. Once we do, the Sarceastians will be substantially weakened.”

  "All in good time, my dear," Yahn said as he began to take the hooded uniform off of the guard that he had knocked out. Then, he tied up my hands. "Here, put these around your hands," he said.

  “Ah, I see where you’re going with this, but will they buy it?” I asked.

  "We'll find
out." Yahn led me out of the torture area and we wandered back through the floors where the torture had been taking place. We tried our best to ignore the screams we heard. At that moment, we had to get out of the lion's den before the lion came to attack us. I knew that Demarin was going to warn the whole place of our presence there, so we had to hurry out of the area. We passed a couple of guards as we made our way to the upper levels on the moving, suspended walkways that linked the levels together.

  “Where are you taking this human?” one of them asked Yahn.

  “Demarin has asked that I take the prisoner to his quarters so that he may do with her as he chooses,” Yahn stated.

  “Hmm, we haven’t received any word of this,” the guard said. Then, another guard ran up from behind us.

  "Sir, we've just received word that the prisoner has been kidnapped by a Karkastian."

  “Get them!” the guard yelled and they drew their laser guns. I drew mine first and took out the guard nearest to us. The other guard began to shoot at us and we had to jump from the platform to the lower level to avoid being hit. We exchanged fire and finally one of my shots hit its target and the guard fell over the rail.

  “Let’s get to the upper floors and get out of here!” I yelled as we climbed back up to the next level. Prisoners shouted at us as we ran through the prison complex. Laser shots were flying everywhere, barely missing us as we ran through. The whole place had been alerted to our presence, it seemed. We ran down a side hall and hid in a utility closet while the bulk of the guards on that level ran on. We gathered our breath so that we could continue our escape.

  We made our way up to a supply and maintenance level. There were vast storerooms of weaponry and machinery. Sleek, new space cruisers were being built for the Sarceastian military and heavily-armored hover copters, the likes of them I had never seen.

  "I guess I never realized just how well armed the Sarceastian army was," I remarked. We passed through this level exchanging more gunfire with the soldiers, but again, we managed to get through to the next level. Soon, however, the access doors to the upper levels were being closed. We could hear an alarm sound and an announcement that intruders were in the vicinity. We realized that we were trapped on that floor and the guards were moving in fast.

  "Quickly, in the armored assault vehicle there!" Yahn exclaimed. The Sarceastian armored assault vehicles were basically huge hover tanks, armed with missiles and laser fire. We climbed into one of them and began to take out several guards at a time. The rest of them retreated to the exits. I began to drive the vehicle out of the warehouse it was stored in.

  “Where are you taking us?” Yahn asked.

  "Through the armored door!" I exclaimed and began to make the vehicle operate at full throttle. I activated the large battering ram at the front of the vehicle and first fired several missiles at the door. These all bounced off, but the door was now burned black. I rammed the door with the battering ram and we managed to punch through the door. We got out of the vehicle and continued our escape through the upper floors. Now we were on a floor with what looked to be offices and meeting rooms. In fact, we ran into a room where several well-dressed Sarceastians were in an important meeting. The soldiers were close behind us as we made our way through this floor. We hid out in a place that looked like a bathroom, losing many of the soldiers, but soon they found us hiding there and began to fill the room with laser fire. We barely escaped out of the door.

  We were now on the ground floor of the building. Right away, we could feel the colder temperatures coming from outside. We were both nearly out of breath and needed to stop and rest if we could. We found a clothing supply closet with many hooded military uniforms and other supplies. We got far back in the closet and remained completely quiet as a group of Sarceastian soldiers moved through the room, searching it. Finally, they left and we both breathed a sigh of relief.

  “We are really close to the outside, I can feel it,” Yahn whispered.

  “In that case, we had better stock up on these uniforms. I hear that the landscape is a lot like Yukon, back home. Oh, but you probably wouldn’t know about that,” I said.

  “Yes, Yukon is in northern Canada,” Yahn pointed out.

  “How did you know that?” I asked him.

  “As I’ve said before. We Karkastians would study Earth culture. Mostly as a cautionary tale about how not to give rise to civilization,” he joked.

  “Ha ha. Earth is not all bad, Yahn. I’m sure you have seen that by now,” I said, defensively.

  “I know, but it has a long way to go,” Yahn concluded.

  “Well, I’d like to argue about this with you later, but now I think we need to focus on getting out of here,” I said.

  “We can both agree on that. I say we just run for the exit as fast as we can and shoot anything that is in our way,” Yahn suggested.

  "I'm with you!" With that, we made our way to the entrance. It was actually quiet because most of the guards had moved on to another area. We looked down the hallway from where we were and saw two soldiers guarding an oval door to the outside. By now, we could hear the howling wintry winds outside the huge facility. We immediately began to fire at the soldiers guarding the door. They fired back at us. One of the guards called for backup and soon we could hear the sound of Sarceastian boots approaching from farther down the hall.

  "Ok, follow me. We have to run straight at those guards and take them out before we get hemmed in between them and the soldiers. Come on!" I said. I ran right at the soldiers firing repeatedly as I ran. Yahn was right behind me doing the same thing. Finally, we took out the two guards and used one of their security scanners to open the doors to the outside. The cold winds were worse than I expected. We bundled up tightly and headed out into the frozen lands. Snow was mounted a foot high on every surface we could see. There were mostly steel and glass buildings, all so close that there was barely enough room to walk in between them. Guards that were protecting the outside of the building began to chase us, so we ran into an abandoned building and hid behind a stairwell. We were very cold but warmer than we had been on the outside. We rested there for a minute to plot our next move.

  "We can't stay here long. They will search the place soon enough," Yahn pointed out.

  "Yeah well, another five minutes out there and I was going to become a snowman," I said.

  "What's a snowman?" Yahn inquired.

  "Something we used to make out of the snow when we were kids. Never mind, it's not important," I said. I felt very upset.

  “Jessie, I know it’s upsetting to be in this situation, but we are together and we are still alive. That is something to be happy about,” Yahn pointed out. I hugged him.

  “You are always there to make me feel better, aren’t you?” I said, smiling. “Well, we talked about being in the lion’s den. We are certainly there now. How are we going to get out of here?”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Jessie

  We could hear the movements of Sarceastian guards outside of the building we were hiding in and knew we had to keep moving. It wasn't easy because a snow storm had begun just as we left our hiding place. We decided that our best move was to make our way to the most crowded portions of the city so that we could blend in and hide. As soon as we went out of the back door of the abandoned building, we heard the guards enter it. We made our way down an alley towards some sort of power station that was located at the top of a small hill. There were several tall energy beacons that transmitted energy particles using light. Sarceastians also used light waves to send communications. We hid behind the beacons and looked out over the surrounding city. From there we could get a bird's eye view and get a better idea of where we should be headed.

  We could easily see that Sarceastian cities were sharply divided. Back in the direction we came from there were tall, sleek towers, the large military complex that we had just left which was shaped like a dome, and other dome-shaped hover dwellings that looked to be expensive homes of the more well off. To t
he east, the tall, jagged steel and glass towers gave way to what looked to be the slums- it looked not unlike the pictures I'd seen of the poorer parts of large cities back home such as Sao Paulo, Brazil, only the dwellings were dome-like and stacked practically on top of each other. From what I could tell, it looked like most of them were constructed out of gathered bits of wood, steel, and glass. There was a line of soldiers patrolling on the edge of this part of town, more than likely to keep the poor in their quarters and away from the more prosperous sector. The poor Sarceastians were moving about from place to place down crowded streets. Most of them did not have space cruisers and got around on foot. Many of them wore hooded outfits that were threadbare.

  “We need to get over there so that we can blend in with the crowd,” I said.

  "Wow, it seems that they have the same problems that your Earth has, with poverty and inequality. That is something that will always be hard for me to understand. As I've said before, such problems were nonexistent on Karkast. Oh, how I would love to see the suns rising above my home planet again," Yahn mused.

  “Right now, we need to be getting out of here, look there!” I said pointing to a group of guards that were moving from the military complex in our direction.

  "I have an idea. I will turn into my vaporous state and distract them by reappearing over there to the north. The soldiers will come after me and give you an opportunity to get over to the poorer part of town and blend in with the crowd. I will turn back into a vapor and rejoin you there," Yahn suggested.

  “Alright, Yahn, but be careful!” I warned. He winked at me and turned into a blue vapor. I watched as he drifted down the street and appeared not too far from where the soldiers were making their way in my direction. As soon as he reappeared in his normal form, the soldiers spotted him and took off in his direction.