Page 1 of Claimed by the Alien Assassin

JOSIE

T he midday sun is warm on my shoulders, a big, soft hand pressing me down into the soil like it’s trying to lull me into a nap I don’t have time for.

Sweat beads at my temple, slipping past the edge of my welding visor and crawling like a lazy beetle along my cheek.

The faint scent of heated polymers and jungle moss mingles in the air, thick and heady, clinging to the inside of my lungs like syrup.

There’s a soft clink as my hydrospanner slips against the pump’s valve collar.

“Son of a slag-eating—” I mutter under my breath, biting down on the curse before I can teach the birds any new vocabulary.

Not that they’re listening. The avian fauna out here doesn’t care about my struggle.

Somewhere behind me, one of the native dewfinches trills like it’s auditioning for opera, and I resist the urge to hurl the wrench at it.

The pump gurgles back at me like it’s in on the joke.

The colony’s a mile back, snug on the lip of the rainforest, where prefab modules huddle like gossiping old ladies and our four ion cannons point skyward like they might mean something.

Out here, where I’ve got nothing but my tools and the slap-happy sun, it’s easy to forget how precarious everything is.

I shove the wrench back into position and throw my shoulder into it.

The bolt gives with a groan that feels personal.

“There you go, sweetheart,” I whisper to the pump like it’s a particularly stubborn lover, brushing grease from its flank with an affectionate pat.

And then it happens.

The sun vanishes.

Not like a cloud-rolled kind of gone, but snuffed out.

Erased. A shadow bigger than anything has any right to be rolls across the earth, swallowing my warmth whole.

The birds fall silent. The insects stop their buzzsaw dance.

My skin prickles with a wave of static, and the hair on the back of my neck stands like it’s getting ready to run.

I lift my head slowly, every nerve in my body already screaming what I haven’t let myself think.

No. No no no.

I know that silhouette. Even from this distance, even from underneath the foliage of a Drexari summerbloom tree, I know the cruel, jagged lines of a Vortaxian capital ship.

It's not just a ship. It's the kind of ship they send when they're not interested in negotiations.

The kind that smells like domination and the echo of crushed planets.

I yank my visor off and stagger backward, my boot catching on a root. My ass hits the dirt, but I barely notice. My breath stutters. I can feel my pulse in my throat, in my fingertips. The ship descends like a god descending from judgment, casting a rolling shadow all the way to the colony.

I’m running before I know I’ve moved. Tools clatter to the ground. My boots slam against the soil with every heartbeat. The jungle blurs past—bright green, sweat-slick trunks and sharp-leaved shrubs grabbing at me like they want to keep me from what’s coming. Or warn me away.

The Vortaxians don’t come for diplomacy.

They come for surrender. Or worse.

When I break through the final line of trees, the colony stretches before me in stunned stillness.

The children aren’t playing. The miners aren’t cursing over faulty drills.

The guards near the ion turret—bless their calloused hands and sad little security grid—stand frozen, their weapons trembling.

I follow their gaze.

The ship has landed.

Or hovered, really. The ground beneath it vibrates, even from a hundred yards out. A ramp descends with the grace of something that doesn’t think it’ll ever need to hurry. A squadron of black-armored soldiers marches down in perfect formation, their boots pounding the dirt with synchronized menace.

And at their center, waddling like a tyrant in a parade, is Colonel Kernal.

The man is—no, the thing is—round and glistening in his decorative armor, the color of dried blood.

His face is a sneer stretched over jowls, his tusks polished, his eyes glinting with self-satisfaction.

I’d read the briefings. I’d seen the reports.

But nothing does justice to the man’s aura of smug authority.

He stops in the middle of the town square and lifts a gauntleted hand.

“Citizens of Drexar Seven,” he booms, his voice amplified through a personal drone hovering behind him, “rejoice! You have been selected for elevation. From this moment forth, you are proud citizens of the Vortaxian Empire.”

Gasps ripple through the crowd like a stone tossed into still water. A woman near me clutches her child. Someone drops a crate of supplies with a clatter that echoes off the prefab walls.

“No,” I whisper. “No, no, no.”

Kernal continues, gesturing like he’s doing us all a favor. “Your colony, your resources, and your humble lives shall now serve a greater purpose. Obedience will be rewarded. Resistance will not be tolerated.”

My fingers itch for a wrench. A detonator. Anything.

And yet no one moves. No one screams. No one fights. I can feel the collective weight of their fear pressing the breath from their lungs. Even the militia, trained for exactly this, just… watch.

I take a step forward.

A hand catches my arm. It’s Eli, the colony’s quartermaster. His eyes are wide, his voice low. “Josie, don’t. Please. Don’t make this worse.”

I shake him off. “It’s already worse.”

He grabs me again, harder. “You’ll get us killed.”

“They’re going to kill us anyway.”

“No. They want us compliant, not destroyed.”

“Same thing,” I snap.

But still, I don’t move. Not yet. I need a plan. I need a ship.

And most of all, I need someone who doesn’t scare easy.

Because if no one else will fight—then I will.

Even if I have to do it alone.

It takes exactly six minutes and seventeen seconds for the colony to fall apart.

I count them. Each breath shallow and stuttering. Each heartbeat a drumbeat behind my ribs.

One: The Vortaxian ship finishes its descent, displacing air so violently that the cloud cover shifts like curtains being drawn.

The golden sheen of the hull gleams under Drexar Seven’s twin suns, a breathtaking mockery of grace and beauty, as if it's not here to subjugate but to bless.

The reflective surface throws distorted sunlight across the colony, warping shadows into twisting snakes that crawl up the prefab walls.

Two: Their commander plants his foot on colony soil like it’s his birthright.

His gait is the strut of a man who’s never known consequences, a walking monument to hubris.

He smiles—a vile, oily thing that stretches wide beneath polished tusks.

Sweat trickles down my spine in time with his descending soldiers.

Their armor hums, black and gold plates shifting with mechanical precision.

These aren't brutes—they’re calculated terror dressed in ceremonial threat display.

Three through six: Panic. Murmurs ignite like static on old radios.

I see a mother pull her toddler back from the main square, her eyes wide and unfocused.

The baker from quadrant three drops his morning rations onto the plastcrete and doesn’t notice the crunch beneath his boots.

The militia tries to organize—a handful of underpaid, overcaffeinated volunteers fumbling with sidearms that were obsolete five decades ago.

I hear one of them yell, “Form up!” but no one does. We’re too scattered. Too stunned.

I shove my way past them, the back of my shirt soaked with sweat, the air already tainted with something acrid—burnt ozone, or maybe just my rising bile. Someone grabs my elbow, but I shrug them off. I don’t want comfort. I want a plan. I want a reason to punch something, someone, anyone.

The square is packed with bodies now. We weren’t ready for this.

No drills. No prep. Because nobody believed it would actually happen.

The idea of the Vortaxians showing up was always a boogeyman tale, a political tool to keep us cooperative.

We thought we were too remote to matter. Too small to conquer.

We were wrong.

The Vortaxian commander lifts a hand, and the booming silence is shattered by his voice, broadcast from that floating drone that hovers just behind his shoulder. “People of Snowblossom Colony, rejoice!”

I nearly gag. His tone is syrupy, full of counterfeit warmth. I want to bottle it just to smash the container later.

“You are now cherished members of the glorious Vortaxian Empire.” He stretches his arms wide, like he's welcoming us into a family barbecue instead of a hostile annexation.

“Your contributions to galactic prosperity shall be honored. Your continued compliance shall be rewarded. Your resistance, while understandable, will be... discouraged.”

He says it like he’s offering us tea and cake.

Around me, the air thickens with fear. I can smell it—salt and musk and the sharp tang of adrenaline.

A man to my left is hyperventilating. A woman ahead of me mutters prayers under her breath, words spilling out in a rhythm only her ancestors understand.

The crowd tightens, like we can make ourselves smaller and less noticeable if we just press together hard enough.

The commander gestures behind him. A holo-projector flares to life, casting the image of an idealized colony under Vortaxian rule—gleaming spires, families smiling under artificial sunlight, children laughing as drones deliver food rations.

I know propaganda when I see it.

“We offer you advancement. Protection. Integration,” he says. “All you must do is obey.”

He lets that word sit there, fat and final.

And then he gives us his name.

“I am Colonel Kernal, and from this day forward, you are my responsibility.”

I bark a laugh.

I can’t help it—it just bursts out of me. “ Kernal? Like a popcorn kernel?” I say, louder than I mean to, still grinning like I’ve lost my grip on reality.