by Anna Carven
But instead of going out there to investigate, as the heroine would normally do, Jia had every intention of staying put.
No way was she going to end up as minced-meat for some flesh-eating monster.
She listened for whatever sounds the Kordolian had heard, but there was nothing but silence. Jia mentally added preternatural hearing to the list of unfair physical advantages the Kordolians possessed.
She didn’t know what was scarier; the Kordolians, or the Xargek.
She waited, becoming edgier as time went by. Had something happened to the soldier?
No way. He seemed practically invincible.
A dull thud echoed from the outside corridor, making Jia turn her head wildly. She heard the sound again, and this time it was followed by a faint chittering noise.
Jia tightened her grip on the plasma gun.
Silence surrounded her. She peered into the distance. A faint glow radiated from a few of the monitors, but everything else was shrouded in darkness.
Jia’s heart hammered, her pulse thudding in her ears. Her senses were stretched taut, her breathing was rapid and hoarse, and her hands trembled slightly.
There it was again, that eerie skittering sound, much louder this time. It was followed by a screech, a grinding noise, and a metallic thunk.
A shadow loomed in the darkness.
Jia didn’t hesitate. She took aim and squeezed the trigger.
A searing blue bolt of plasma ripped from the gun. She was thrown back into the corner, crashing against the shelves. Bolts and tools and spare parts clattered across the floor.
“Kaiin’s hells, Human! I told you to shoot anything with more than two legs. Do I look like a fucking Xargek to you?” The Kordolian soldier picked himself up off the floor and started to advance on her.
As he entered the radius of the guide-light, she saw faint tendrils of smoke rising from his chest.
Oh, crap. She’d just shot a Kordolian warrior. With a goddamn plasma gun. The fact that he was somehow still alive and able to stand after she’d just unloaded a full plasma charge into him freaked her out even more.
And right now, he looked pissed.
Who the hell survived a thing like that?
What kind of a monster was he?
He stalked towards her, his face like thunder. He was huge and powerful, and he was one of the most terrifying things Jia had ever seen. She shrank back amongst bits of clattering metal, her hand finding the Callidum drill-bit.
Not that it would do her any good against him.
He came to a stop in front of her, impossibly tall and menacing. He glared down at her.
Jia fought to keep calm. “I’m sorry,” she said slowly, surprised at how even her voice sounded. “I thought you were one of them.”
He regarded her silently, his hard features twisting into a frown. His silvery brows were drawn together, and his dark lips were pressed into a tight line.
Jia waited. She was completely helpless before this dark warrior. Her only hope lay in the fact that up until now, he’d been surprisingly decent with her.
Surprisingly decent for an alien whose race was supposedly the terror of the Nine Galaxies.
He stared at her for what seemed like an eternity. Jia returned his gaze, not once looking away, calling on all her self-control to keep her breathing even and force her heartbeat down. She felt like a rabbit caught before a wolf, but unlike the rabbit, she had a little bit of power here.
“If the coast is clear,” she said, forcing herself to sound calm, “I’d like to get back to work now.” She curled her fingers around the drill-bit and held it up. This Calldium metal, if the compound could even be called a metal, was deceptively light. “I have what I was looking for. The sooner I can get back to work, the sooner you guys will be out of here.”
The Kordolian did something strange. He smiled, revealing a pair of perfect gleaming white fangs. It wasn’t a nice smile. It the least reassuring smile she’d ever seen. “You are quite possibly the most naive, or the most fearless alien I have ever come across.” He made a sudden movement and Jia flinched, but then she realized he was only holding out his hand.
As if to help her up.
Relief washed over Jia as she put her small hand in his gloved palm. So he wasn’t going to kill her after all. His large fingers curled around hers and he hauled her to her feet as if she weighed nothing at all.
He was surprisingly gentle, and his hand was warm. Jia shuddered, in a good way.
She took a moment to study him as she rose to her feet. In the white glow of the guide-light, his silver skin appeared almost luminescent. He was handsome in a rugged kind of way; no-one would ever dare call him pretty, but he had the same sharp, elfin features that seemed common to all Kordolians.
Actually, he was a spectacular specimen, honed in all the right places and impressively built.
If only he weren’t so damn scary.
“Walk in front of me,” he said roughly, as Jia bent and collected the weapons she’d dropped.
She returned them to him, holding out the plasma gun butt-first. “I think you’d better take this,” she said, as the warrior raised an eyebrow. “It packs too much power for a girl my size.”
“And you can’t differentiate between friendlies and enemy targets,” he said dryly, taking the gun from her. “Clearly, you need training.” He stashed it in some discreet holster on his person as Jia picked up the dagger.
“So are you a friendly, or an enemy?” Jia gave him a sidelong glance. “If the brief was to shoot all enemies, then I think I succeeded.”
The Kordolian glowered at her, and she instinctively tightened her grip around the drill-bit, not that she was foolish enough to think about doing anything with it right now. “If you comply with our demands, then you won’t be harmed. I thought the General already made that clear.” He snorted derisively. “We may be technologically and militarily superior, but we aren’t bloodthirsty, indiscriminate killers. Against the Xargek, you can consider us allies.”
“I… see. Thank you for clarifying that.” Jia fought so very hard to keep the snark out of her voice. Common sense told her to tread carefully with this one. One corner of the big warrior’s dark lips quirked upwards.
“In other circumstances,” he agreed, “we might have been your enemies.” He took the black dagger from her, his fingers again brushing against her gloved palm. They were both wearing gloves; there was no skin-to-skin contact, so why did it feel so good?
He’d just scared her half-to-death, and now she was thinking she’d like to see what was under that form-fitting black armor of his.
Perhaps the shock of it all had turned Jia half-mad.
So quickly she didn’t have time to react, the warrior spun and hurled the dagger into the darkness. It hit with a metallic thunk. She heard a faint screech, then silence.
“What was that?”
“Vermin,” he said nonchalantly. Jia shuddered. “Walk in front of me,” he insisted.
“What, like the sacrificial lamb?” She retrieved the guide light from where she’d set it, holding it up so that its brilliant glow surrounded them.
“I need to keep eyes on you. The passage is clear for now, because I tracked down and killed the juvenile, but I’m not taking chances. I need you in my line of sight.”
Jia nodded, dutifully going before the warrior. As they walked silently out of the mech bay, or whatever this room was supposed to be, Jia saw a mess on the floor. A black creature the size of a football was pinned to the floor, the black Callidum dagger speared through its body. Yellow fluid pooled around it, and a rank stench, something that smelt like a mixture of wet socks and rotten cheese, filled the air.
The creature had multiple short, spindly legs on either side of its body, but Jia couldn’t make out much else, because the dagger had shattered its carapace.
“What’s the best way to kill them?” Jia’s skin crawled as she looked at the slain creature.
“Those at the early
larval stage are easy to kill,” the Kordolian said, as they passed back into the corridor. The awful smell seemed to follow them, making Jia feel a little queasy. “The carapace is still soft and you can pierce them anywhere. Late-stage juveniles are harder. You need to hit them in the head or chest. As for fully matured Xargek, just pray they don’t reach that stage. If you ever see an adult Xargek, just run, and don’t look back.”
“So, basically, once they reach the adult stage, we Humans don’t have a chance.”
He was behind her, and his low, deep voice resonated throughout the corridor. “The best thing is to run, and hope you run into one of us.”
“And if you guys aren’t around?”
Silence.
Jia decided not to dwell on his answer as they moved. She was about to take another step forward when a strong hand curled around her shoulder. “Stop,” he said softly.
“What?” She looked down and saw a disgusting mess on the floor in front of her. Xargek parts were scattered everywhere, and all of a sudden, the putrid smell hit her like a slap in the face. “Oh.” Her stomach heaved in protest.
Yellow fluid and bits of guts and insides were splattered across the dark floor. “You did that?” Her voice came out as a stunned whisper.
“That was a juvenile. The hemolymph starts to become strongly corrosive at this stage. Don’t step on it. Your boots won’t withstand it.”
Corrosive fluid? This just kept getting better and better. “Then what am I supposed to-”
Jia let out a strangled cry as the big warrior curled his hands around her waist and lifted her up, swiftly carrying her over the sickening mess.
He seemed to have a penchant for lifting her, particularly when she least expected it.
After they were well clear of the Xargek sludge, he set her down.
Jia was thankful she walked in front, because that way, he couldn’t see her face. She was blushing furiously. She seemed to be doing that a lot since she’d met this mystifying Kordolian, especially whenever he put his hands on her.
They walked slowly through the thick darkness, and although Jia couldn’t hear the warrior at all, she could feel his presence behind her. It was strangely reassuring to know that this lethal male had her back.
“What about fire? Does that harm them?” They were almost at the exit now; she could tell by the way faint light flooded into the passageway, becoming brighter as they moved forward.
He replied to her question with… was that an approving grunt?
“Larvae are susceptible to fire,” was all he said, as they reached the outer hatch. Jia stepped across the threshold, the guide-light in one hand, and the drill-bit in the other.
The warrior remained half-shrouded in shadow, peering off into the impenetrable, inky blackness. Something had caught his attention.
Jia was relieved to be back in the familiar surrounds of the dock. She looked out over the scene below, watching her fellow workers as they started to weld together Armium plate-metal. The leader of the peacekeepers, Arin Varga, stood on the perimeter, closely watched by another Kordolian male. Varga looked up and met Jia’s gaze, her steely blue eyes widening in surprise as Jia started to make her way down the ramp, as if to say: what the hell are you doing up there?
“Kalan.” His rumbling voice echoed behind her.
“What?” Jia whirled.
“My name. If you have trouble down there, just ask for me. I will find you.”
“Oh. Thanks,” Jia uttered. Well, that was unexpected. Even after she’d shot him in the chest, he’d been surprisingly… nice.
Perhaps all the unsavory rumors about Kordolians were exaggerated.
Jia jumped as Kalan raised his arm and fired off a bolt of blue plasma into the darkness of the ship. A loud roar shook the dark passage, followed by a crash.
“Leave now, Human,” Kalan said ominously, as he messed with some hidden panel on the inside. The big doors of the outer hatch began to slide together as Jia backed away. “I have some housekeeping to do.”
The Kordolian version of housekeeping just happened to involve killing oversized alien bugs.
Kalan disappeared into the shadows as the strange doors of the warship closed, thousands of black fibers fusing together to form a seamless surface. It was an unnerving sight, reminding her how little she really knew about these strange aliens and their technology.
Jia was glad she was on the outside, and she vowed to think twice next time before entering dark ships with scary alien warriors.
But at least she had a genuine Kordolian Callidum drill-bit in her hands.
Now, they could get down to the serious business of repairing the hull.
CHAPTER SIX
As Jia made her way back onto the floor, a familiar figure loomed in front of her.
“Engineer Morgan, where the hell did you disappear to? We’ve been trying to alert you for the past thirty minutes. You’re needed up on the welding deck.”
Jia glared at her shift supervisor. Adina Roux was a stocky woman with long blond hair that was greying at the temples. Roux wasn’t a mech; she was there to co-ordinate the workers on the floor and attend to administrative tasks.
And for some reason, she always seemed to be on Jia’s case. Jia had no idea why; she didn’t think she’d done anything to offend the woman, but she always seemed to draw the worst shifts on the roster, and when someone called in sick, it was always Jia who got called in.
Jia held up the drill-bit. “I was just getting this. We can’t make any serious structural repairs to the hull without it.”
“What do you need that for?” Roux’s lips smacked as she chewed on a wad of Spike. Almost all the workers around here except for Jia used the gum to keep their energy levels up and stay awake. Chewing Spike gradually released a stimulant into the system. It was apparently legal, similar to caffeine but ten times more potent. And if the advertisements were to be believed, it had no known side-effects.
Jia didn’t entirely buy that last part.
“It’s the only thing that can penetrate Callidum,” Jia explained slowly, eager to get out of Roux’s way so she could get back on the floor and carry on with her work. “Now I can start making holes for Armium rivets.”
Roux regarded her with flat, grey eyes that bordered on hostile. “Give that to me,” she said, holding out her hand. “We’ve got welding bots and drill bots and laser cutters and you go running around looking for a simple piece of metal? This isn’t the turn of the millennia, Morgan. Stop wasting time and get to the welding deck.”
Jia rarely ever got confrontational. The ethic that had been drilled into her by her working-class parents had been to put one’s head down, work hard, and reap the rewards. She’d watched her mother and father, ever calm and ever consistent, going to work for years in the same bot coding facility. Never once had they complained about being tired, and if something at work had upset them, they’d never showed it.
As a result, they’d paid the bills and lived comfortably and been able to afford to send Jia to a good University.
Normally, she’d keep her mouth shut and get on with it. But right now, she had a choice. She could give the drill-bit to Roux and walk away, or she could do what common sense dictated.
“Supervisor Roux,” she said slowly, taking a step forward so she was eye-to-eye with the bigger woman. “There are Kordolians on our mining station. They don’t want to be here. We don’t want them here. The fastest way to get them to leave is to fix their battle cruiser. And for that, we need this.” She held up the black metal object. “So I’m going to go down to the floor now and talk to the chief mech about rivets and Armium plate metal and drilling holes in Callidum.” She looked across the floor. “See that Kordolian over there?” She nodded towards to the black-armored alien who was watching them with a flat amber gaze. “He scares the crap out of me. They all scare the crap out of me. And don’t even get me started on the Xargek. Point is, Roux, that I’m going to go over there and do what I’ve been paid
to do, or in this case, ordered to do, and I’m going to do it properly, because I don’t want to risk the wrath of a technologically superior alien species. You got that?”
Roux’s grey eyes bulged. “How dare you-”
Jia brushed past her, bumping the supervisor’s shoulder. “The Kordolians are watching us, Super. Any trouble from us and they’ll be onto us in a heartbeat. If you don’t want me to cause a scene right now, you won’t say a word.”
“This will go on your service record, Morgan. And I’m going to report you to the Station Boss.”
“I’ll worry about that if we survive,” Jia muttered as she made her way past, not bothering to look back. A bad report from Roux would probably mean Jia’s contract on Fortuna Tau would be terminated, and Jia would probably be out of a job for a while. But she wasn’t worried. She could always get a non-Federation job on one of the grey stations. The chance of getting raided by pirates was higher in the grey zones, but the pay was better.
But if they failed to get this Alpha-Class battle cruiser out of the dock, the consequences could be much worse than unemployment.
They could end up colonized, enslaved and shipped off to some remote corner of the Nine Galaxies, or worse, dissected and digested by some disgusting, oversized insects.
Just because Kalan had been unexpectedly… nice to her in the darkness of the warship didn’t mean she was under any illusions.
They were completely at the mercy of the Kordolians right now, and any Human who didn’t realize that was simply delusional.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A great burst of blue flame shot down the corridor as Kalan ducked for cover, sheltering in someone’s living quarters. He closed the Qualum doors behind him, and they fused shut, protecting him from the inferno.
Even his Callidum exo-armor wouldn’t be able to withstand the heat of a blue incendiary device.
