by C. R Corbin
Janar (Jorathian Warriors Book 1)
by C.R Corbin
Table of contents
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
More from the Author
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Introduction
The frigid air of the ship batters his back and I watched him tense. I was underneath him, my jumpsuit partially removed, the two of us finally having consummated this 4 month long game of ours. I had no idea how it lasted this long especially since we were crammed into this tiny ship with little else to do other than converse.
His skin was gaining its blue shade back and those soft green orbs that glanced me over finally had the spark of effort in them in place of the lethargy that had housed itself in his body in the last couple of days. The frigid ice planet had prolonged his illness and in this week long process of caring for him...I finally realized it, he has finally realized it.
I love him...and he’s my mate.
I feel the flames of pleasure wash over me, my entire body bathed in the warm ocean of euphoria that he could plunge me into with simply a word, a gaze, a touch. His breath is shallow and I think back to the darkness threatening to defile what we have built. The man chasing me, the doubt in his eyes, the fear that this moment might be our last.
But it didn’t matter for this powerful Jorathian has claimed me as his mate and he would give nothing less than his life to protect me.
CHAPTER ONE
Lauren
"Lauren! Get the vials!" Jodie yelled out and I groaned, nodding to myself as I left the lab and walked over to the storage room. My loafers clack against the cold marble floor and I take in another breath of the cold, sterile Arasin lab air.
I had signed up in the hopes that I would get some sort of research position that would bring a lot of prestige. Colonies were a hotbed for research and usually spearheaded any discoveries that could be made. Back home on Earth there wasn't much but conservation research which was fine....but not really for me. I always dreamed of blazing the stars in search of something more, perhaps getting a good amount of fame out of the deal.
Too bad I hated my boss.
Jodie ran the place. As head researcher she was always on our asses about missing vials, readings, that sort of thing. I could constantly hear her yelling into my ear about some sort of minor inconsistency that no one else would give a shit about. Today it was the fact that there was a missing vial of hydrochloric acid out of the 40 already there. How much of a nitpicker can you be? Could you be a worse boss?
The facility was a large concrete structure built on a plateau of Arasin. We were situated on top of this massive cliff, it rarely rains and the sky was usually covered in the red sunlight of the planet. There was life here, however, the grass outside of the building proved that, although it was much different than anything back home. Grass and plant matter here was much more smooth, there were no edges, more like these fluorescent purple tubes that jutted out of the ground and glowed at night. The sky was usually a shade of pink that contrasted sharply with the blackened soil here.
Arasin itself was of particular interest because of its location near a red sun, it was rare to find a habitable planet near a red star so a great deal of Earth's scientists congregated here. We would study the sunlight, the complexity of life here, there were many planets like Arasin on the horizon of humanity's space exploration so there were plenty of positions for people like me that wanted research opportunities.
Unfortunately, that also meant having to put up with people like Jodie.
The entire building was an interconnected web of hallways that spiraled down into the ground for at least 10 floors, on top were 10 more floors all arranged in a boring flat rectangular box, the only other shape that this building possessed was a large dome housing the telescope that was directly outside of the building. I was on my way to the lower 5th floor right now, walking my way down from the 4th when I saw her.
"Laurie!" Rebecca called out and smiled and I reciprocate the gesture. Rebecca was my best friend here, another Earth girl that had arrived straight out of university. I smile at her and wave, her enthusiasm eclipsed mine.
"Hey Rebecca." I said, she stands opposite from me in the middle of the hallway and notes my frizzled appearance.
"Jodie again huh?" she asked and I nodded, stating "Jodie again."
"Don't let it get you down. You want to know what I heard? General Zichman announced that he will be handing out some more promotions this quarter. Fingers crossed you know?" she asked and I nodded, unable to share her radiant joy.
"Uhhh yeah. I don't think we're going to get that considering there's a lot more senior members here...." I muttered and slide my feet against the tile, gazing down at the cold white while she sighs.
"Well in other news.....I heard James was asking about you the other day. Maybe you and him could go to the cafe, i'll put in the good word." she said. James was another researcher from a nearby colony, a nice guy, about my age, the only man worth looking at around here at least. He was a chemist so he worked in a different department than I, a biologist, but still close enough to see regularly.
"I don't think i'm gonna have time this week. Jodie's really making me work down to my bones." I cursed and Rebecca made a whimpering sound in sympathy.
"Well I got to go alright? Cheer up soon! Maybe we can meet at the mess hall today for lunch? What time do you get off?" she asked me and I pressed a finger to my chin as I thought about it for a moment.
"12." I said, the timezones here were all messed up, the entire day cycle of Arasin was about 36 hours long so eventually they just decided use the standard clocks from back home and use artificial lighting to aid our natural biological clocks in adapting to the new sleeping patterns and don't even get me started on the things they had to make us do to get us used to the gravity here. As I say the number I can see her smile stretching.
"Yeah that works. I'll see you then." she said and turned on her heel to walk away.
"Yeah, see ya." I said as she skipped down the hallway. How could one person be so jovial in such a dour place?
I make my way further down into the lower levels, there were some people here and there collecting tools or sitting in their offices but it was mostly eerily quiet. Some of the lights weren't on so there would be these patches of darkness throughout the hallways as I traversed them. I merely soldiered on until I reached a large set of steel doors with a control panel to the side, I nodded to myself.
"Alright so the code is...." I muttered and hovered my finger over the keypad before I felt a vibration run its course through the facility.
#
Janar
“How does it look out there Fi?” I asked aloud while sitting in the cockpit of my craft. The warm glow of the red sun shimmered off the black paneling of my ship as the orange thrusters in the back continued to glow. In front of me were a variety of holographic keys and diagrams, we were closing in on Arasin.
“Well, it looks like he’s getting ready to close in on Arasin too, he’s not quite there yet so we have a bit of a head start.” she said to me, her robotic voice was filtered and distorted, elect
ronic clicks interrupting the cadence of her sing songy tone.
“Do we have a landing position?” I asked her.
“We do, we do, N214B544. The base shouldn’t be more than a kraso away.” she said, and I nodded to myself, leaning into the throttle as we inched closer and closer to the planet. I looked at the photo that I snatched from my boss, Khor. I was only supposed to aid in the invasion. The reason I was sent solo was to retrieve some scientist, whereas Khor gave himself the honor of going for the Earth girl in the photo.
Khor was to put in no uncertain terms, a warlord. A king of a small habitable moon called Oso quite a few star systems away from here. The people of Oso lived in large grasslands with patches of water here and there, Khor ruled them with an iron fist. He killed the rest of the lords on Oso and set his sights on marauding nearby colonies for money, women, glory, or any combination of the three. All of the galaxy’s various interstellar empires had a special hatred for the man, but they never did manage to catch him. As an Oson he was intimidatingly tall for any species standards, even mine. He carried a large cleaver with him and possessed muscles that not even a professional Oson athlete could dream of having. A body built for combat, a mind built for cruelty, you can likely extrapolate the results.
From the various bouts of research that his company did, we had profiles on every single one of the workers there. From those records he found her, a potential human mate, quite valuable as they were still a relatively new species on the galactic scene. I managed to get her photo which I was glancing over once again, light blond hair, green eyes, a bit on the curvier side than most human women. She went by the name ‘Lauren Redcliff’, she would be working at the biological facility.
And I was going to steal her from him.
“You sure you want to go through with this? I don’t even think you could take Khor’s entire force.” asked Fi. I steer the ship closer and closer, my eyes glazing over as I contemplated it, the amount of adversity that I would be facing.
“Yeah pretty sure that last mission sealed it.” I muttered, glancing at my blue knuckles, my long fingers clutching the throttle and my tussle of black hair brushing my forehead.
We were on an expedition to capture him another colony near the outer rim of a nearby star system. It was on a rather small planet, a cold and desolate place but one that could support life in a minor manner. It was inhabited by my people....the Jorathian. A race of tall blue humanoids that usually dwelled in the towering, lush jungles of Jorath but made their occasional claim on the outer planets. Athletic, hardy, adaptable, and the best climbers in the entire galaxy, my species usually stayed at home and merely trained themselves for the next hunt or for defense, it was one of the reasons that I had left in fact.
Khor didn’t care about my history however. He arrived on that planet and....well did what he always did. I really did think it took him doing that to a colony of my people that really disgusted me in such a manner, their purple blood pooling on the snow as he slaughtered the parents in front of the children, as he tortured them and did....much worse. That broke me but I remained coherent until my moments alone in my quarters. I got drunk off the tiny vial of Jorathian alcohol I always had and gradually....my enmity of Khor grew and with it...a plan to overthrow him.
I was to take this woman to an outpost not far from here, an abandoned mining colony on the distant planet of Jasa. There I would wait for him, there was a great deal of explosives there that I could rig to blow once he landed. I had researched the land already, each of the mining corridors were connected by shafts running throughout a large portion of the planet, unfortunately for the miners the most plentiful substance on the planet was Opaq, a powerful explosive dust that would explode when exposed to any substance with a pH higher than 9. Most of the compounds used in the mining process were basic in contrast to acidic so companies had to adapt to the strange outpost if they ever hoped to get the ample supply of gold that lurked underneath the surface of that yellow planet. Eventually they just gave up and the place was blacklisted but....I found the records and decided that’s where I would hide her, in one of the mine shafts.
After that I would rig the pumps to shoot in a large amount of a basic compound to trigger the reaction. The bases would then be scattered into the air of the mineshaft and effectively create a chain reaction that would cave in a great deal of the planet’s crust and basically render that small area of surface a living hell. Most of his soldiers would be killed....of that I was most certain.
“How do you know he’ll even go for her? He could just find another mate.” asked Fi and I laughed, I had gone over it with her many times before but she was still stuck in a state of disbelief, she didn’t understand that for Osons mating was a rare occurrence.
They only found a true mate that was suitable to provide them the best offspring a couple of times in their lives. He had his bedmates for sure but as for having a woman that could provide him the best offspring possible....he only had one at home. That’s why this was so important, from the records he could see that her DNA samples listed her as a perfect match, besides Osons can usually tell who they want based on sight only and she....well he was infatuated with her right from the get go.
“Once an Oson finds their mate, it’s very hard to dissuade them Fi. Just trust me on this one.” I muttered, leaning back into the cold leather chair and sighing.
“Yeah but if you steal her and it only pisses him off but doesn’t make him take the bait....that would be one hell of a hole to get yourself into.” she said and I nodded.
“Indeed it would.” I mutter.
Fi was an artificial intelligence that I installed on the mainframe of the ship’s computer a while ago. An old merchant gave her to me during one of my missions, a small chip that was embedded in the motherboard near the top of the cockpit. Apparently her previous owner had perished in an explosion and the chip was retrieved from the wreckage. I had always wanted an AI, they made things easier by managing the landings, the trajectories of flights, that sort of thing. Plus they were great company as I didn’t have anyone else on this ship. My usual crew rode separate from me and were more loyal to Oson than I, thus I was usually sent on covert operations or retrieval missions that took one man.
“Well if you do get her you won’t have a lot of time to spare. You’ll need to get to the extraction point immediately, counter says that he’s going to be there a few moments after you arrive so get ready.” said Fi and I nodded as the purple planet came into focus.
#
Lauren
I had been told to run into any nearby room and lock the doors. Apparently there was an assault on the outpost, a variety of ships that were closing in on us and firing. I could feel the shockwaves rippling through the building as I clutched the desk in front of me. I was going to hide in the storage room but the thought of being somewhere with a large amount of vials full of acid while shockwaves were shaking every corner of the building didn't really appeal to me. I was just hiding in some office space now, underneath a desk with my head in my hands, shaking and quivering in fear as the intercom gave me updates.
"They have entered the facility!" I heard a voice yell over the intercom. I could already imagine the fire fight, bolts of plasma being hurled at the intruders, explosions, chaos. My thoughts then shifted to Rebecca and I prayed that she was alright, that she was going to be fine....
But perhaps I should have worried about my safety even more.
I wondered who could be doing this. Was it the Jorathians? Doubt it, they usually stayed close to their home planet and, while warriors, were not the kind to attack anybody unprovoked. Was it the Kasorians? They were mostly business men, war wasn't their strong suit. Neborans? Likely not, probably too busy sticking their tentacles in books, besides they seemed to be the most welcoming once we made our presence known.
So who was it? Some sort of local warlord that just wanted some riches or to get his murder fix? I shuddered at the thought o
f being caught by such a man.
The messages that the intercom relayed were haunting. Gradually more of our forces perished, more and more messages of intruders descending and infecting more levels of the base were relayed. They took the entire upper half before making their way down, we were much more fortified down here so that made sense. I could feel the shockwaves growing more and more intense, they must have been on the second lower floor when I heard it.
"Hey! Stay back! Stay back!" I heard directly outside before a loud thud sounded off, I shuttered and looked around for any weaponry I could find. The office was only about 10 feet by 10 feet, a small area but perhaps there was a pair of scissors, maybe even a spare laser pistol that I could use. If not to kill the intruder then to kill myself, I would not be taken prisoner, stories of the warlords in this area that arose as gossip in the mess hall were quite....off putting.
It was a wonder how such a force managed to overcome the military installation here. It was a wonder that with the 200 soldiers and the defense equipment stationed here we couldn't stop however this was. They must have been fearsome, experienced, or much more technologically advanced than anybody i've ever encountered before. When we began establishing colonies here the other species didn't really give a warning as to what to expect....in fact I think we even established this one without consulting anyone at all.
Now we were likely paying the price for it.
"Grrrr." I heard directly outside of my door as something fiddled with the control panel directly outside. I didn't manage to find any real weaponry with exception to a small knife in the drawer. I clutched it tightly and hugged my knees beneath the desk before I heard the door finally snap open.
"......" I heard breathing but little else as a long shadow glazed over the back of the room and heavy footsteps sounded off.
I sigh gently and hold the knife closer and closer with my right hand, slipping my left hand over my mouth and quivering as I feel the presence loom over the desk. I could see the shadow, a powerful, imposing figure that would take me, enslave me, do so much worse.
