Page 4 of Seized by the Alien Space Warrior (Alien Romance #8)

Chapter Four

A ekon shot three Trudd before they’d had a chance to take more than two steps towards him while trying to keep the shock of seeing Zavis at bay. The writhing hatred reared up from that place deep inside of him. The rage. The anger. The despair. It was what kept him keep going. Gave him purpose. Let him wake up to the burden of a brand new day without Onda.

“Aekon! Watch out!” Idren yelled.

Drek . His mind had wandered. More Trudd rushed at him. They were fast despite their ungainly appearance. The beings making up the audience dove between seats or scrambling onto the stage after the Ixod. The Ixod grabbed the human females and scattered. Zavis stole the dark-haired female still caught in the grip of their dead companion before he bolted and disappeared off stage.

“Get them!” Aekon yelled.

Kil and Idren fired at will. The blue streaks from their blasters lit up the auditorium in flashes of strobing colour. Aekon slapped his wrist comm, sending the signal that would alert Treega they’d found more human females, but any help they needed now wouldn’t get here until it was far too late.

“We have to get the females before we lose them forever. There’s probably a back exit off stage they’ve used. Take the Reptiles down, but keep at least one of them alive,” Aekon shouted to Kil and Idren. They separated as they entered the auditorium. Kil took the left-hand outer aisle; Idren fought along the right aisle while Aekon strode down the centre.

“And the rest of the males from the audience?’ Idren called as he butted the end of his blaster into a male’s skull.

“Aim to wound only.” Aekon would happily kill all males here but they needed all of the information they could get. Every being here traded in flesh whether that was to buy or sell. The Mercenary Division, MD for short, would be interested in ‘interviewing’ them.

Kil whooped as he ran into the battle, the crazy drekker . His blaster fire hit a Reptile in the dead centre of his chest, leaving a blackened burning hole.

Kil sent Aekon an exaggerated grimace. “Oops, slipped. Guess we won’t be questioning that one!”

A Reptile charged at Aekon, weapons drawn. Aekon fired both blasters into the being. The Reptile flew backwards, green blood splattering over the carpet. That felt good.

“I thought you said to keep one alive,” Idren said.

“There’s plenty more hiding under the stage.” Aekon shot off a blast to singe a hole into the shadows beneath the stage structure. A Reptile toppled into the light, a hole smoking in its head where its eye used to be. “Right behind that one.”

A blaster streak seared Aekon’s bicep. A green Neide ducked behind a chair, its tentacles writhing in agitation on its head. Neides were normally a moral species and Aekon wondered what this one was doing here.

He sent a bolt through the back of the chair. There was a thump and a muffled groan. That being wasn’t going anywhere. At least he’d contained the being for questioning later.

Now though, the Neide was the least of his concerns. The longer they took getting to the stage, the harder it would be track the Ixod and the females.

The expression on the dark-headed female’s face played on his mind. Her terror would only become worse the longer she was in the Ixod’s hands. Especially a being such as Zavis, who’d used the Reptiles as a diversion, having taken off with the human females while they’d been fighting. They would try to get off station as fast as possible now they had the females. Ploughing through the audience like this was taking too long. Change of plan.

“The Ixod will head to the port with the females, but we still need to contain leads here,” Aekon said.

Thankfully, the port was manned by allies. The Aiqolds at the gate could seal the one and only portal on and off the station, and contain Zavis—if Aekon got there in time to ask them.

The entire operation of departing and landing on Grion89 was controlled by the ten tentacled beings working in the control tower above the powerful gates. The Aiqold were the only beings capable of dividing their minds into half and using each side as a separate whole functioning brain. They could compute vast amounts of information in an instant and were aided by the fact that each tentacle had its own mini-brain located in the tip.

Kil nodded. “Go then, brother. We’ve got this.”

“Quite happily,” Idren said, blasting another Reptile out of existence.

“Be safe, brothers,” Aekon said.

Idren fired at a being, but his blaster had run out of power. With a wild grin on his face, his brother in arms drew out a blade from a hidden recess along his thigh and dove towards one of the three remaining Reptiles.

“Get them!” Kil shouted to Aekon as he charged behind Idren.

Without wasting another click, Aekon bolted back up the aisle, fled through the darkened alley, and into the crowded causeway. Beings walked shoulder to shoulder, making it impossible to run. Aekon withdrew his blaster and fired a shot into the air. Beings screamed and either dropped to the ground or scattered into the closest doorway. A couple sauntered away, too used to the violence on Grion89. Apart from the couple, the blast was effective and cleared the street, enough that Aekon glimpsed the glimmering lights of crafts deporting and zooming off into the night sky.

He couldn’t name the urge that made him pick up his speed, or the sense of impending doom that made his vision focussed and clear. All he knew was that if he didn’t stop Zavis now, the Ixod and human females would be gone forever.

Unbidden, that particular memory flooded his mind. That day. That horrible day he wished he could go back in time and erase came back again and again and again. It didn’t matter when or where or what he was doing. The memory of the last moments of Onda’s life rammed into his head whenever it pleased.

Onda’s beloved face twisted in fear, her beautiful eyes opening wide, her lips parting in a silent scream. Black blood filtered all other colour from the vision, her life’s blood pouring from her body as she was impaled by Zavis’s sword. Aekon’s nodes glowed black when Onda was murdered. That was the last time they’d illuminated. They’d died alongside his bond-mate, like his heart. He’d failed then. He had a lot to make up for now.

Aekon bolted through the port gates. Beyond the entrance, craft littered most of the available spaces between huge swaths of pathways on which beings bustled from their craft towards the gates and then into the city. Several craft ascended from various locations across the enormous port, rising straight upwards until they reached the height of acceleration where the sonic boom brought on by the power needed to break the gravitational field of Grion89 wouldn’t crush the buildings below.

Aekon strode towards the entrance door to the tower that housed the working Aiqolds. A distant angry shout sounded above the cacophony of the various crafts followed by the unmistakable snarl of an Ixod.

They were already here. Drek . There wasn’t enough time to speak to the Aiqolds.

Aekon took off towards the Ixod, pushing past beings that seemed to jump in his way. He darted around one craft, and neatly rolled under another. Up ahead, he caught sight of Zavis’s tall head and a glimpse of limp, pale flesh before the Ixod disappeared into shadows.

Heart thumping in his chest, Aekon sprinted towards them, his blaster locked in his hand. A massive Ixod craft rose, hovering into the air before breaking the port code and initiating their exit procedure too close to the ground.

The sonic boom crushed the tops of the craft below. The airwaves, solid as rock, slammed into his body. He flew off his feet and crashed onto his back, sliding across the polished surface of the pathway.

White light blinked across his vision and his lungs strained against his tight chest before his muscles released and he dragged precious oxygen into his body. He rolled over, feeling as though the gravitational pull of the station had doubled, and staggered to his feet from his hands and knees.

Several Aiqold ships rose and took off towards the Ixod craft, but already the Ixod were no more than a shining dot in the sky. Aekon set his wrist comm to latch onto their signal. He sprinted to the Zephyr, his team’s small space craft. He had to catch the Ixod before they entered the GeoPass wormhole. From the wormhole, the Ixod could access any section of the ten Quadrants and tracking through the dense ion particles was impossible.

Aekon hit the command on his wrist comm to open the hatch of the Zephyr and punched a code to start the engines. He bolted up the ramp, dashed through the narrow corridor, into the cabin, and crashed into the pilot chair. Closing the hatch, he pushed the vertical shifter and the craft rose like a bolt of light into the sky. He also wasn’t following procedure and was no doubt ruffling more than a few of the Aiqolds’ tentacles.

No matter, once any craft broke the jurisdiction of the outer station, the Aiqolds’ craft would retreat. They weren’t sturdy enough to stand the pressure of space, while the Zephyr was reinforced military grade metal infused with Drisian crystal, the hardest substance known in the ten Quadrants. The three of them had modified it enough so that it was as fast as blaster fire, and nearly undetectable once the shields were initiated.

Aekon slammed them on and charged the thrusters. The engines hummed as energy built up in the power coil before he was pushed back in his seat as his craft shot forward. His fingers tightened around the controller as a trickle of perspiration ran down his spine.

He activated his comms. “Idren, Kil, have you secured the venue?”

“Ten clicks ago. All beings inside are currently subdued,” Idren said between panting.

Background noises filtered through. The sounds of the marketplace. The outside marketplace.

“Are you running?”

“Chasing, to be more accurate. Where are you?” Kil said.

There was a grunt and the sound of something heavy clattering to the ground.

“The Ixod left the station with the human females. I’ve taken the Zephyr, deported Grion89, and I’m following the Ixod ship now,” Aekon said.

“Not all of the human females,” Idren said.

Aekon’s blood ran cold, his grip tightening on the controller. “What do you mean not all of the human females?”

“They split up. The Norvegicus offered information upon further…questioning. The Ixod were not all from the same horde. One horde took a female each,” Kil said.

Aekon cursed under his breath. For years he had tried to track Zavis’ horde and came up empty handed. One horde was impossible to track, let alone three of them. It was rare that hordes worked together, but in the face of something as precious as human females, he’d seen males do unexpected things.

“Then we need to track them. I’ll follow this horde. Idren, Kil, try your best,” Aekon said.

“Of course, brother,” Idren said.

A massive crash sounded through the comms and Kil’s signal went silent.

“Kil. Report,” Aekon barked.

Nothing. Aekon tightened his grip on the Zephyr’s controls, ready to turn back.

“Go, Aekon,” Idren said as though sensing his thoughts.

“Idren, I…” Aekon was so close to the Ixod craft but he wouldn’t leave his brothers.

“I said go, brother. Bring back that female. I’ll see what mess Kil has gotten himself into,” Idren said. “We’ll reconvene once you’re back.”

Aekon didn’t like this, but both his brothers were warriors who could handle themselves. “May the goddess be on your side.”

“You too, brother. Bring her back safe,” Idren said.

“I will.”

Aekon commed off and aimed the nose of the Zephyr at the landing port of the Ixod craft, activating the reflectors. The shields would make the Zephyr undetectable to scans, but the reflectors would make it almost invisible to the naked eye. It wasn’t entirely perfect, but it would give him the edge he would need, given what he was about to do.

Guilt pressed heavily on his chest. He hadn’t told Idren or Kil every reason he took this risk, because what he was doing wasn’t exactly altruistic.

Not at all.

He had dreamed of coming face to face with Zavis every night in his nightmares. Imagined what he would do if he ever had the opportunity, none of it pleasant. He couldn’t let Zavis slip through his fingers. Not this time. Not ever again.

Despite the pair of terrified blue eyes that seared his mind, it was the chance at revenge that made him grit his teeth and fly right into the landing port of his enemy’s ship.

He wasn’t just a Mercenary Division Warrior right now.

This was personal.