by Anna Carven
If Kalan’s predictions were right, the freighter intended to smash its way through the outer doors.
With the station’s power down, it was probably their only way out.
Sudden movement caught his eye, and Kalan’s attention was drawn to a group of figures standing at the edge of the dock, as far away from the exit as possible.
The familiar black-clad figures of Nythian and Lodan were there, as well as two unidentified Humans who were dressed similarly to the mercenaries Kalan had caught in the power plant. Lodan had his weapons trained on them.
Beside them was the pale-faced Station Boss, Emin, an expression of sheer terror on his face.
And standing next to Nythian, aiming a plasma gun at the Kordolian’s uncovered face, was a small Human female Kalan knew very well.
“Ah, fuck.”
Crazy female. Why couldn’t she just listen to him?
Kalan started to run towards the glass window, gaining momentum. With his body in healing mode, this was going to hurt like a bitch, but he couldn’t waste any more time.
He crashed through the glass, plummeting to the dock below.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“He’s coming,” the Kordolian warrior said, amusement flickering across his face, even though Jia was pointing a plasma gun at his head, at point-blank range. Even with his preternatural abilities, there was no way he could activate his super-armor in time to avoid being shot. He shrugged, apparently not bothered by the situation. “I told you, Kalan doesn’t get rescued, ever.”
“For God’s sake,” interrupted the heavyset man in the suit, who Jia recognized as the Station Boss. “Put the gun down, lady. Are you crazy? Are you trying to get us all killed?”
Relief flooded through Jia. “Kalan’s coming?”
“On his way. You think we’d leave old Ugly Eyes behind?” The warrior shook his head. “Unlike your kind, we look after our own, Human.” He regarded her with his unsettling crimson eyes, acting perfectly composed despite the situation.
Ugly eyes?
A trace of a smile played on his lips. It was the same with the other warrior, the golden-eyed one, who was holding two resentful mercenaries and one terrified Station Boss hostage.
Jia had overheard the warriors talking to them. She’d learnt that the mercenaries had been ordered to get Emin off the station at all costs.
That meant their cruiser was docked somewhere below.
So much for the regular workers; the Corporation only looked after their elite.
The two Kordolian warriors looked at Jia, before sharing a knowing glance. Perhaps she was imagining things, but she could have sworn that had been an… indulgent look.
What the?
These Kordolians were crazy.
A giant crash resounded above. It was the sound of shattering glass, and Jia resisted the urge to look up as shards of glass rained down upon them.
She couldn’t afford to take her eyes off her target. Knowing Kordolians, this one would punish her for the slightest lapse in concentration.
So she kept her gun trained on the red-eyed warrior as he smirked, showing her a glimpse of his white, gleaming fangs.
Why was he still smiling?
That’s when she felt a familiar presence behind her, and all of a sudden, large hands were surrounding hers, disarming her faster than she could blink. “What are you doing, Human?” Kalan’s deep voice surrounded her as he took the gun away.
“I didn’t want to leave without you,” Jia said stubbornly. “They wouldn’t listen to me. I didn’t know how else to get their attention.”
The Kordolian warrior she’d been pointing the gun at laughed. “She’s faster than she looks. What have you done to make this Human so protective of you, Kalan?”
His reply was drowned out by the sound of the Superfreighter, which was preparing for departure. It had moved through the disassembled airlock, and was currently preparing to crash through the huge outer doors, which were slightly open.
While Jia and Kalan had been running around in the power plant at the bottom of the station, a team of mechs had been busy attempting to manually force open the outer doors.
“Have you gotten soft, Nythian? Letting a Human get one over on you?”
“She took me by surprise,” the Kordolian called Nythian complained, raising his eyebrows at Jia. “She was one of the last to board. How in Kaiin’s hells was I supposed to know that this small female was hiding a plasma gun in her pocket?” He sighed. “It’s a long story. I’ll fill you in later, but right now, we need to run.” He gave Emin and the two mercenaries a cold look. “These idiots tried to spirit away their boss under my watch. Luckily for us, they have a cruiser parked nearby. That’s our ticket out.”
The other warrior, who was guarding the mercenaries, nodded, pointing his gun at the three Human males. “Move,” he barked, as a great tearing sound ripped through the dock. Jia glanced over her shoulder and saw that the massive Superfreighter, the Hendrix II, was smashing its way out of the external doors
Everything was getting sucked out into the void along with it; bodies, batches of refined Armium, robots, maintenance vehicles.
Even that strange device, the oxygen concentrator the Kordolians had left behind, was going. The remaining oxygen on the station would only sustain them for so long.
“Let’s go.” Kalan was behind her, sweeping her up into his arms.
Again.
In the midst of the chaos, Jia noticed that the armor around his torso was patchy in places, revealing raw, scarred skin underneath.
“Where to?” Kalan yelled, over the growing roar coming from the dock. They were running away from the giant, sucking vacuum of space. Jia was finding it hard to breathe.
“Smelter port,” one of the Humans shouted back, struggling to keep up with the Kordolians.
“You know where that is?” This time, his question was directed towards Jia.
“Yeah,” she gasped. “Keep going straight ahead. I’ll tell you when to turn.”
Kalan ran like the wind.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The Kordolians reached the smelter port well before the Humans, and found the mercenary cruiser exactly where they said it would be parked. Through the round windows of the Armium loading dock, she could see the vessel parked outside, tethered to the platform where the loaders usually came in to dump their Armium ore for processing.
Jia recognized the model; it was an SX-45, a small, sleek craft, designed for speed. Two menacing bolt-powered blasters were attached to the front of its hull, along with a pair of missile-launchers.
It was much better suited to a quick getaway than the bulky Superfreighter which had just departed the station.
Thankfully, there was no complicated airlock and door closure to navigate here, just a bridge that led to the door of the cruiser itself. The bridge was designed to enable the quick entry and exit of the loader staff so they could disembark whilst the Armium ore was being sucked down a giant chute.
With the entire area deserted, they had a clear route to the ship’s entrance. Kalan ran down the bridge, the other two warriors following closely behind. Emin and the two Human mercenaries were nowhere to be seen.
He crossed the threshold and set Jia down. She noticed that he was breathing heavily. His jaw was clenched tightly, and his lips were pressed together in a thin line.
In the dim light of the cruiser, his strong features appeared slightly more austere than usual; he seemed a little gaunt.
The difference was subtle, though. Jia wondered if she was imagining things.
“You okay?” She looked up and met hard violet eyes that softened wonderfully as they drank in her appearance.
“Fine,” Kalan grunted, sounding slightly breathless. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
“What?” Jia gave him her best innocent look, although she knew that what she’d done up there in the loading dock had been silly and impulsive.
She hadn’t had a choice, though.
The Kordolian warriors, who couldn’t tell her from the rest of the Humans, had tried to herd her onto the damn freighter like everyone else. Everything and been frantic and crazy, and Jia hadn’t been able to get a word in.
“You shouldn’t have threatened a First Division warrior with a gun, Jia of Earth.”
“I got what I wanted, didn’t I?”
“And what is that, Human?”
Jia didn’t say anything; she just shot Kalan a sly look as heat rose in her cheeks. The other Humans finally appeared, scrambling into the cruiser as the two other warriors dragged the mercenaries aside.
“You’re going to fly us out of here,” Nythian growled, pushing the men into the cockpit.
The interior of the cruiser was simple; there was a seating area behind the cockpit filled with some standard looking passenger seats. A narrow ladder led to the upper decks, where Jia assumed the sleeping quarters were. Against one wall was an old-fashioned 2D monitor which was split into multiple views, covering each side of the cruiser.
“Let’s strap in,” she said, watching Kalan carefully as he moved. She’d been around him long enough to know that something wasn’t quite right. Jupiter knew she’d been pressed up against him enough times. His movements lacked their usual grace.
Kalan sat, ignoring the safety restraints that would protect them against brutal G-forces as they took off.
“Do it like this.” Jia demonstrated with her own restraints. Kalan raised an eyebrow as the straps tightened over her shoulders and across her chest, accentuating her figure.
However, he made no move to follow her.
“You’re going to get thrown out of your seat,” Jia warned, as the thrusters roared to life. Nythian dragged the Station Boss into a seat opposite them. Emin looked like a man resigned to his fate, woodenly strapping himself in as he stared straight ahead with a blank expression. The other warrior had remained in the cockpit, presumably to hold a gun to the mercenaries’ heads as they piloted the ship out of here.
“Hm.” Kalan eventually adjusted his restraints, as Emin and Nythian followed suit.
Jia had been on edge for the past few minutes, wondering whether the station was going to blow. Any moment now, they could die in a giant ball of flame. They’d disappear in an instant, their bodies vaporized in the emptiness of space.
Even the almost-invincible Kordolians would be done for.
The thrusters revved, the noise vibrating through the poorly insulated cabin. The pilot was going for all-or-nothing.
Jia held her breath in anticipation, as both Emin and Nythian stared at her, Nythian looking amused, Emin looking mildly horrified.
It was all rather awkward.
She was about to ask them what they were staring at, when a huge force ripped through her body and she was thrown back against her seat. The cruiser shot forward, its thrusters roaring as they blasted off into space. Jia tipped her head back and watched the monitor. The cruiser had broken away from the floating bridge and the metal tethers that had held it in the dock; they flailed wildly in zero-gravity as Fortuna Tau was left behind.
Jia breathed a sigh of relief.
The ominous threat of a massive explosion hadn’t caught them, even with Kalan’s dubious timekeeping skills. She suspected he’d intentionally underestimated the time they had to escape, just in case.
With her body pressed firmly into the chair, the forces of acceleration tearing into her, Jia had no choice but to look straight ahead and stare at the monitor. The rearview screen showed an image of the station. It grew smaller and smaller as they continued to accelerate.
Light flared from the lower section of the station, becoming a huge plume of flame that was quickly extinguished as it met the oxygen-deprived vacuum of space.
Jia blinked.
Was that it?
Was that the whole freaking explosion?
That was unexpectedly tame.
They passed the Hendrix II, their speed easily outstripping it. That’s when Jia saw the second explosion. It ballooned out into the inky blackness like a rapidly blossoming flower, consuming the entire station and everything around it. It was a vision of awesome destructive power, horrifying and eerily beautiful at the same time.
Kalan’s arm wrapped across her torso, just below her breasts. “Head down,” he said.
“What?” Jia’s thoughts were overwhelmed by the surreal events unfolding before her.
“Down.” Kalan’s other hand was on her neck, gently forcing her head forward as an incredible force shook the cruiser, throwing them back and forth. Bits of equipment fell from hatches overhead, and an alarm started to beep. The cruiser rocked back and forth like a ship tossed about in a violent ocean.
Jia’s stomach flipped. All the while, Kalan kept his sure, steady hand on the back of her neck, protecting her from whiplash.
She should have known there was more to come. That had probably been the nuclear reactor exploding.
Fuck.
She hoped they were moving fast enough, and that the cruiser’s radiation shields were strong enough to avoid contamination.
In the rearview, she saw the Hendrix II veering off in a different direction, pushed off course by the force of the aftershock.
Eventually, the cruiser’s own momentum overcame the disturbance, and they continued forward as inertia kicked in and the G-force lessened.
Once things in the cabin became a bit more civilized and her stomach settled, Jia unstrapped herself and looked around. Across from her, Emin had fainted and was just coming to, rubbing his face and blinking in confusion.
Kalan was staring at the monitor. He looked across and said something in Kordolian to Nythian, who cursed.
Jia followed the direction of Kalan’s gaze. The rearview monitor showed the space where Fortuna Tau had been.
There was nothing there. It was all gone. All that was left was blackness and a swirling mess of space junk, floating like flotsam in the infinite void.
Out of that nothingness emerged the strangest looking craft Jia had ever seen.
It was a massive hodgepodge of spare parts and scrap metal, and it was moving extremely fast. Jia had no idea how the thing was even holding together, or how it was propelling itself.
It seemed to defy all the laws of engineering and physics.
“What the hell is that?”
“Xargek ship,” Kalan growled.
“They’re capable of space travel?” This was bad. As Jia stared at the screen in horror, the Xargek ship veered off, racing away from them at a tangent.
Kalan murmured something into his comm, speaking in Kordolian. Jia guessed he was talking to the Kordolian warrior in the cockpit, the one who was directing the pilots. “We follow them,” he said softly. When he met Jia’s eyes again, she found herself pinned by his brilliant amethyst gaze.
Even though he looked a little worse for wear, he’d lost none of his dark intensity. Jia was drowning in his presence. Once again, warmth coiled in her lower belly, spreading between her thighs.
“Where do you think they’re going?” She was afraid she already knew the answer.
“Earth.” Kalan closed his eyes, his nostrils flaring. One of his hands snaked across to stroke her thigh. A pleasant shiver coursed down Jia’s spine. “We won’t catch them in this primitive craft, but we can at least try and track them. For now, there’s nothing we can do but chase them and see where we end up.”
Jia wriggled in her seat, suddenly aware of how big and imposing he was. “What are you doing?” she whispered.
“Picking up where I left off,” he rumbled, leaning close to her. “Before we were so rudely interrupted.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
As the battle-fever drained from him, another kind of lust took hold. Jia shifted in her seat, trying to conceal her arousal. But Kalan knew.
She couldn’t fool him.
He read it in the way her pupils dilated ever so slightly when she looked at him. He saw it in the flush across her delicate cheek
s. He could smell her sweet, feminine arousal; it intoxicated him.
Dull pain lingered in his torso where the nanites had repaired his wounds, reminding Kalan that he really needed to rest and find a source of sustenance.
Rapid healing used tremendous amounts of energy, and he would need to consume some protein soon, or the nanites would start to consume his own muscle and tissue to maintain their resting state.
But with this female by his side, any thoughts of self-preservation disappeared.
Kalan wanted her, pure and simple. Now that they were away from the chaos of the mining station, his attention was focused only on her.
Her presence was driving him nuts.
Kalan glanced across at Nythian, who was keeping an eye on the the jowl-faced Human, Emin. The man was slumped back in his seat, his expression pinched with exhaustion.
His detainment was strategic; the presence of a high-ranking Human official would be a negotiating point once they arrived on Earth.
The First Division had played this game before with other civilizations. To Kalan, it was nothing new.
The General had given them explicit orders. They were to find and eliminate all Xargek in this sector.
That order was now taking them to Earth, a lush, densely vegetated planet, where the Xargek would thrive. If they didn’t control their spread soon, the Ninth Sector would be overrun in no time.
In recent times, the First Division had stopped colonizing and fighting petty wars. It seemed all they did now was kill Xargek.
That suited Kalan just fine.
He’d long since grown weary of the Empire’s conquer-all agenda. The Nobles, who made the decisions from their sheltered positions in the Palace of Arches, never saw the destruction Kordolians had wrought all across the Universe.
They only reaped the benefits.
Kalan suspected that one day, the Universe would rise up and punish the Kordolian race for all of its sins.
“Kalan,” Jia said, breaking his dark reverie. “Are you sure you’re okay?” Her voice was full of concern.
