Page 2 of Claimed by the Alien Assassin

The silence afterward is deafening. Not a soul joins in. The fear is a physical thing now, smothering, wrapping around everyone’s throats like a choking vine.

The commander’s—Kernal’s—head swivels toward me. Slowly. Deliberately.

A drone whirs close. Too close. I feel the pulse of its field brushing against my skin like static, the hairs on my arms rising in warning.

I take a step back.

He smiles at me.

It's the smile of a man who sees every person as a pawn, and every dissent as a delicious opportunity to demonstrate consequences.

“A dissenter already?” he asks, voice oozing like sap. “How refreshing.”

The crowd ripples. Some step away from me. Cowards.

“I have a name,” I snap, lifting my chin.

He hums, amused. “Of course you do. And a family, no doubt. Friends. A place here.”

My stomach flips. I know what this is. Psychological warfare dressed as faux-courtesy. Threats polished into diplomacy.

“You think you have power,” I say through gritted teeth, aware now that every eye in the square is on me. “But this colony—these people—we earned this place. You don’t get to walk in and play overlord just because your boots are shinier.”

For a moment, silence again.

Then he laughs.

The sound is monstrous—low and wet and triumphant.

“My dear girl,” he says, “I don’t play at overlord. I am one.”

He turns back to the crowd.

“Let this be your lesson. Integration can be peaceful. Or... painful. Choose wisely.”

I feel the shift then. Not in him—but in them. In the crowd.

They aren’t rushing to join him, but they’re pulling away from me.

Because standing next to the one person yelling at the Vortaxian colonel with a murder squad behind him is dangerous.

I am the spark, and no one wants to be caught in the fire.

I want to scream. I want to cry. But I don’t. I fold my arms tighter and keep my mouth shut—for now.

But I won’t forget this. The way their silence felt like betrayal. The way my name became a warning in someone’s mouth.

And I sure as hell won’t let him win.

Not while I’m still breathing.

The night bleeds red-orange over the rainforest, like the sky itself got wounded and doesn’t know how to stop leaking light. The last rays of the twin suns skim across the treetops, casting long, warped shadows that stretch over the colony like fingers trying to strangle it from above.

And that gods-damned ship is still there.

It hovers silently above us, suspended like an arrogant golden parasite, its underbelly lit with cool, artificial floodlight that throws the colony into two tones: too-bright and too-dark.

The Vortaxian capital ship doesn’t need to fire a single shot.

It just exists , a constant reminder that we’re under the boot of something massive and merciless and smug.

I sit at the edge of the rainforest, legs tucked up under me, spine pressed against the smooth bark of a native duskroot tree.

The bark smells faintly sweet, like burnt sugar and damp moss, and usually that’d calm me—bring me back to center.

But tonight? The scent makes my stomach turn.

Everything I used to love about this place feels twisted, like the ship above us distorted reality just by being here .

The rainforest hums quietly behind me, alive and unaware. Or maybe just uncaring. Bugs chirr and whir in their nighttime symphony, and something lets out a low, lazy call—like a yawn stretched into a song. I used to come here to think, to escape. But tonight, I’m not escaping. I’m stewing.

The memory of the square replays in my head like a faulty vid loop.

Kernal’s smug face. His voice . That sanctimonious smile. “Cherished members,” he said. “Rewarded,” he promised. “Obedience,” he demanded.

And no one stopped him. No one even shouted.

Except me.

I curl my fingers around my compad until the casing creaks. The plastic flexes, protesting, but doesn’t break. Yet.

How is everyone so calm? How is it that I’m the only one who feels like her veins are full of lighter fluid?

I’ve been elbows-deep in broken reclamation units, up to my eyebrows in coolant leaks and burned circuitry, chased off wild drexlings in the middle of diagnostics—and not once have I ever just stood there and let something break.

And this—this is the biggest break of all. Not a pump or a drive coil or a frayed cable. A colony . My colony. My team. My people.

We built this place. I remember hauling rebar through thigh-deep mud, running comms lines with only half a crew because the other half had jungle rot, staying up three nights straight because the filtration system was coughing up sediment like it had the flu. We bled for this land, this dream.

And now we’re just—what? Supposed to hand it over? Smile and bow and call ourselves grateful that the boot came down gentle?

“No,” I whisper, the word sharp enough to cut the thick jungle air.

I don’t want to be brave. I want to be furious. Brave feels like something you pretend to be when you’re already doomed. But fury? Fury burns. It builds. It fixes .

Footsteps crunch softly behind me, and I don’t have to look to know it’s Eli. He’s one of the few who knows where I go when I need to breathe. Only tonight, I’m not breathing so much as smoldering.

“You planning on brooding yourself into spontaneous combustion?” he asks, voice low, not unkind. He crouches next to me, careful to keep space between us.

“If I do, maybe I’ll take the command ship with me,” I mutter.

Eli lets out a slow sigh. “You scared the shit outta people today.”

“Good.”

He doesn’t answer right away. I can hear him rubbing his hands together, dry skin rasping like sandpaper. “We’re not fighters, Josie.”

“I didn’t ask for soldiers. I asked for backbone. ” I twist my head and meet his eyes. “We’ve been here three years. You telling me no one’s got a spine left?”

“It’s not about spine. It’s about survival. You poke the beast, you get eaten.”

“Or you get free. ”

He huffs a breath, not quite a laugh. “You think the IHC’s gonna come riding in to save us?”

“I think,” I say, voice suddenly steady as a cooled weld, “that I’m done waiting for someone else to give me permission to fight back.”

Eli studies me. There’s something in his face—half pity, half awe. Like he knows I’m about to do something reckless and brilliant and absolutely irreversible.

“I should go,” he says finally, standing. “Curfew’s in ten. Patrols’ll be out.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“I know,” he says. “That’s what scares me.”

When he’s gone, I let the silence return.

It wraps around me like armor now. The stars begin to pierce the black sky, pinpricks of light that don’t seem to care about conquest or empire or fear.

Somewhere out there, beyond this gravity well, beyond the reach of Vortaxian hands, is the Alliance. The IHC. Options.

I flick my compad on, and the screen glows dim gold against my grease-smudged fingers.

The nav program is still installed from last week’s atmospheric scan.

I flip through logs. Fuel levels. Emergency beacon codes.

Docking registry tags. The ship I fixed last month, the one they parked in the hangar with a busted nav relay— it’s still there.

I could take it.

I will take it.

Even if I don’t have all the right codes. Even if the shields are glitchy and the transponder pings like a drunken sailor. I can fix that.

I can fix anything.

My jaw tightens as I look back up at the parasite in the sky. That gilded monster. That golden threat. I can see the reflections of the colony’s floodlights dancing along its hull like ghosts. It doesn’t belong here.

I’m not going to roll over.

I’m not going to stay silent.

If no one else will fight, then I will.

Even if I have to do it alone.