Malachi

by Ashley West

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Bonus Book

  Prequel One: Those Above

  Prequel Two: Those Below

  Chapter One: Seeking

  Chapter Two: Saviors

  Chapter Three: Chaos

  Chapter Four: Arrival

  Chapter Five: Acquisition

  Chapter Six: Exploration

  Chapter Seven: Converge

  Chapter Eight: Hesitate

  Chapter Nine: Aggravation

  Chapter Ten: Understanding

  Chapter Eleven: Honesty

  Chapter Twelve: Planning

  Chapter Thirteen: Execution

  Chapter Fourteen: Decision

  Chapter Fifteen: End

  Bonus Book: Water World Warrior

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  About the Author

  Publisher’s Notes

  Malachi

  Defender of Earth

  Ashley West

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  Prequel One: Those Above

  For nearly as long as they’ve been around, humans have been the only creatures in the universe arrogant enough to truly believe that they are the only intelligent life in it. For all the vastness of space, they saw themselves as the only ones out there with the brains and technology to have a working civilization. And they could not have been more wrong.

  Space, almost limitless with its, well, space, has always been home to many different clans and races of beings that all live and work together out of sight and mind of humans. Humans were actually considered lesser lifeforms by most of them.

  However, these species did not always live together in harmony, as evidenced by the fighting that waged long and hard between many of the different races. As hard as the humans fought amongst themselves, the other races out there fought against each other, trying to wipe each other off the face of their respective planets so they could steal their resources and technology.

  Whoever had the best tech and the most resources would surely be the top race in the galaxy, at least that was the thought. While Earth was perfectly inhabitable for humans, many of the other planets out there were inhospitable for any except those who had adapted to living there. Some places were icy and cold and dark, not fit for anything to live or grow there. Some places were all desert wastes, no water or green life to speak of, with barely any animals to hunt for meat. Some of them had once been lush, but overpopulation and overuse of resources has led to their current state, and the beings who had called those planets home either died or fled to other planets to find somewhere new to live.

  It didn't always work.

  People didn't like having their homes overrun by creatures from other planets, monstrous as some of them could be. Cultures clashed, resources dwindled, and that's how the fighting began.

  While many races were perfectly able to defend themselves, others were weak and not made for fighting. Warrior races always had a leg up on those who came from more peaceful backgrounds, and power struggles were born and decided all the time.

  One of the largest was the feud between the Randoran from planet Dorn and the Alva from planet Lavin.

  Their battle was not so decisive, seeing as they were both considered warrior races, boasting huge fighters with skill at weapons. The Randoran had more scientist types in their number, able to create weapons and technology designed to defeat the Alva and anyone else they came up against, but the Alva had double the population that the Randoran had. And they were bigger and generally stronger.

  As such, the two had been locked in a battle for hundreds of years, neither willing to back down or admit defeat. The Randoran had managed to keep their planet for themselves, but the Alva never gave up in their struggle as their resources dwindled. They stole from other planets, wiped out other races in an attempt to prolong their own, and the Randoran set themselves up as protectors of their quadrant, defending those who were less adept at defending themselves.

  They always put themselves first, though, and had managed to keep themselves intact. Every year new warriors, fresh from training, joined the ranks, eager to help defend against the Alva, who all of the current generation had grown up hating.

  Randoran parents told their children bedtime stories about the Alva, putting the fear of the creatures into them.

  "Never go out to the edges of city centers alone," they warned their children. "The Alva lurk there in the darkness, on the fringes, eager to deprive our ranks of someone who could grow to be a great warrior."

  "Always carry a weapon," parents said to their children who were a bit older, their hands ready for a blaster pistol or beam sword. "Never leave yourself unprotected."

  "Joining the warrior ranks is the most noble thing you can do," they were told over and over again. "They protect our kind and those too weak to fend for themselves. They use their strength for the good of all of us."

  And so it was no wonder that training schools were full to the brim with new recruits every year, ready to spend the next three years learning how to use a weapon and fight with skill so they could join the ranks and be a hero.

  For those who weren't inclined to violence and preferred to help the fight in other ways, there was the tech core. These were the Randoran in charge of creating the technology that gave their kind an advantage over the Alva. The Alva weren't quite primitive, but close to it, fighting with steel and wood where the Randoran had left those things in the past decades ago, moving on to easily renewable weapons powered by energy. Crystals had to be harvested to keep them going, but one crystal was good for several hundred years, so they made it work.

  Between the warrior ranks and the tech core, the Randoran had held on to their planet for as long as they had been an organized race, and they were well loved throughout the quadrant. There was even a refugee base on their planet for those who had been displaced from their own planets by the Alva or anyone else, providing them with homes and work and food on Dorn.

  Since that process had been started over sixty years previous, Randoran culture was something of a melting pot. Their own traditions and ideals sprinkled in with the traditions of those who had fled to them for help. Intermarriage had become popular, and many of those in the ranks and the core these days were half Randoran, half something else.

  "It makes us stronger," was the general opinion. Braiding other races together to stand against the Alva would only result in them being defeated more quickly.

  Among the Randoran, there were those who were prized for being the strongest or the smartest. The core elected a team of five people who were known colloquially as 'the Brains'. All decisions about tech and testing went through them, and they were considered the ones to speak to when you had a tech issue. They liaised with the ranks, speaking with the leaders of each squadron of warriors and supplied them with weapons according to each squadron's strengths.

  The ranks had their own leaders. Five squadrons in each sector of the planet, a hu
ndred warriors in each squadron. Squads could be further broken down into different rotations, one warrior chosen to head each of those.

  Every Randoran, and those who now called Dorn home, was governed by the General.

  The General was their leader, the strongest of them all, the one tasked with keeping everything and everyone in line so that they could all stay alive. He was the head of the ranks, and those in the core reported to him, as well.

  Alongside the General was whoever he chose to claim for his spouse, and just under them was the Champion.

  It wasn't hard to see that strength and valor were prized just a bit above intelligence when it came to the Randoran, though they didn't have a problem admitting that they couldn't do what they did without the help of the core, but the Champion was chosen from the ranks, out of the strongest of them.

  There were no competitions among them, but the General watched battles as he led them. He watched those who stood out, who took calculated risks, who helped save lives and who cut down the most Alva along the way, and from those, he chose the Champion.

  It was a title of honor, of course, and it came with a fair bit of political power as well, considering a champion generally had the ear of the General and was consulted in making decisions about battle. To be chosen out of leagues of great warriors was no small thing, and a Champion was always respected by the Randoran, treated well in return for the service they had provided to the people.

  For the last three years, the Randoran had the same Champion, one of the youngest yet, a warrior by the name of Malachi.

  "How many of them are still out there?" Malachi asked from behind the shed he was using for cover. He checked the charge on his blaster pistol. Good for the rest of this battle if they moved quickly.

  His second in command for this battle came up beside him, breathing hard from having raced from each cover across their side of the field to get to him.

  "Less than fifty, sir," she said, eyes bright. "We've got 'em now."

  Malachi grinned back at her, one hand going to the hilt at his side. "Now, now, Thyrra. We shouldn't get overconfident. They could still have something up their sleeves that will manage to bring us down."

  She had fought alongside him in battle long enough to know when he wasn't being serious. "Oh, yes," she said back. "Two hundred of us, against fifty of them. Could get messy."

  "Let's hope so."

  The rest of his people were waiting for orders, watching their comm devices for whatever Malachi would type onto his to transmit to them. One of the reasons he had made it to Champion and why he was in charge was because of his cool head under pressure. He saw what needed to be done, and he did it, rarely allowing himself to be riled up or controlled by his anger.

  Some of them joined the ranks because they wanted revenge against the Alva. They wanted to make them pay for parents or siblings or loved ones killed in battle.

  Malachi could understand that, but he also understood that in battle, having attachments was dangerous. Letting those attachments and personal agendas decide the way you fought was something akin to suicide.

  He didn't let that happen to him.

  "Alpha group," he said out loud as he typed, fingers flying across the screen of his device, despite their size. "Flank them. Beta group, be ready to assist from the left side."

  "And what about us, sir?" Thyrra asked.

  "We're going straight up the middle from the front," he said. "To give them the fight they want."

  His confidence was infectious, he knew that. That was how these things worked. When whoever was in charge seemed assured of victory, it made those under them more assured of it. It made them fight harder, ready to taste their win and the accolades that came with it.

  The people he led trusted him, and Malachi tried to never lead them astray. This was standard procedure, and they had the Alva outnumbered. If they kept their heads and fought with skill, then they all would make it home.

  Malachi started the countdown, watching as the Alva got restless with waiting for them.

  When the numbers hit one, they moved in force, rounding the Alva up and cutting off their escape. It was easy, and they'd used this method on plenty of enemies over the years.

  With very little effort and hardly any casualties, the Randoran took the battle.

  "Orders, Champion?" asked Cammen, one of those warriors whose job it was to carry out the more unpleasant tasks. Namely, killing any prisoners if the Champion or General deemed it necessary.

  Malachi surveyed the field. The battle had taken place on the outskirts, in an old center that had been mostly abandoned. The buildings were crumbling, and the tech was old and dead. Most of the Alva had been killed in the fighting, but there were still a few on the ground, a crackling hum in the air as beam swords were held to their stomachs, the only place on an Alva that you could strike a killing blow.

  They looked pathetic. Eight foot tall creatures in the dirt, defeated for all their armored skin and defenses. Malachi only approved of killing in battle, and he hated this part, but it had to be done all the same.

  Letting any of them go was not an option.

  "Make it clean," he said to Cammen. "And then we tend to our wounded and search for civilians."

  Cammen nodded and gave the order, and Malachi turned his head so he wouldn't see the swords raise and then lower in unison, slicing into the Alva and killing them.

  Battles always ended this way, though the battle that had led to Malachi becoming champion had been much different. In that one, they had been outnumbered. Several of their people were down, hurt or worse, and it wasn’t looking good.

  A group of their warriors had been pinned down, the Alva using crossbows of all things to keep them in place and keep them from being helped by the rest of the army.

  That hadn’t set well with Malachi, and before anyone could tell him not to, he had launched a rescue attempt.

  If it had failed, then he would have been punished. If he’d survived, at least. But it hadn’t failed. Malachi was quick on his feet despite his size, and he’d managed to evade most of the bolts from the crossbows, taking two to the shoulder, but sustaining no other injuries. He’d organized the disheartened warriors, reminding them that they weren’t there to die that day, and in the end, the battle had turned out much better than anyone had been expecting.

  No one had been surprised when the General had named Malachi champion, and the celebration had lasted for a full day and then long into the night.

  As long as he lived, Malachi didn’t think he’d forget it. Thyrra had come to him that night, dressed in nothing but a loose, flowy dress that was so sheer it left little to the imagination as the light hit her body. All that muscle and the surprising curves of softness on display. It had been easy to unclasp, and sometimes when he needed a reason to smile, he thought of that night and how they hadn’t slept until the suns were coming up in the sky, distant and warming, spilling light into his chambers and highlighting the deep red of Thyrra’s hair where it spilled over his pillow.

  He’d felt lazy and warm as he’d watched day break over his home, a home he had dedicated his life to defending. Being recognized for that was a good feeling, one he knew he would keep close to his heart.

  Being a warrior was about keeping his people safe more than anything, but it was also a little bit about being able to defeat the Alva. Sending them running back to where they had come from. There was a certain thrill involved in that, and he wasn’t going to pretend like it didn’t bring him pleasure sometimes.

  The battle between them was never over, though he knew that one day, either side would have to admit defeat.

  As long as he was Champion of the Randoran, it wouldn’t be them.

  Prequel Two: Those Below

  "Keep up, Emma!"

  The shout comes from several hundred feet ahead of her, and her legs move as fast as they can, pushing down to help her feet move the pedals of the bike, round and around, trying to keep up as she rides up the stee
p hill, legs and chest burning with the exertion of it.

  She can hear her father's deep voice ahead, too, and she moves towards it, ready to get back onto the flat part of the street so she can catch up with them.

  "Give her time, Daniel."

  "She's so slow, though," her brother complains, and Emma grits her teeth.

  "It's not...my fault...your legs are...longer," she pants, cresting the hill finally and speeding down the short bit of street that led to the flat part where Daniel and her father were waiting.

  Her dad looked proud, clapping for her when she made it to them. Daniel tried to hide his smile with a disdainful look. He was fifteen, and as their mother said, in the middle of his 'teen angst' phase.

  "He doesn't want to seem too happy," she'd told ten year old Emma one night. "It's a teenager thing. Don't take it personally."

  Emma had wrinkled her nose and rolled her eyes. Being a teenager sounded awful if all you got to do all the time was be grumpy. Sometimes when it was just the three of them, or even just the two of them, their parents off somewhere else, Daniel would be his old self, laughing with her and playing video games with her. She liked those times.

  She liked that she could see the smile tucked into the corners of his mouth, and she grinned back at him, wiping sweat from her forehead and then leaning down to pull the water bottle her mother had insisted she bring from its spot so she could gulp gratefully at the still chilled water inside.

  "Em's got the right idea," their dad said, and he took a drink of his own, giving Daniel a pointed look until he did the same. Once they were all hydrated, he smiled. "So what do you guys think? Around the subdivision to get back home, or go back the way we came?"

  "No more hills," Emma whined before she could stop herself. Her legs felt like they were on fire from climbing the last one.

  "Don't be a baby, Em," Daniel said, rolling his eyes. "But..." he hesitated. "If we go back the way we came, we can fly down that wicked steep hill."

  "Is that your vote then, Dan?" their dad wanted to know.

  He nodded.

  Emma and her dad exchanged a look.