Star Warrior: A SciFi Alien Romance (2 page)

I was completely on my own unless one of them happened to look in on me, and I couldn’t rely on them to save my bacon either way.

The Livisk was on me and once more I was struck by how handsome he was. I stared into deep blue eyes that seemed to have light dancing within them. I could stare at those eyes for hours and never get tired of it. A very odd thing to be thinking in the middle of combat, but I took comfort from knowing that I wasn’t the first human woman to find myself oddly attracted to the enemy in the heat of battle. Nor would I be the last, most likely, considering how long this war had been going on and how unlikely it was to end any time soon.

The Livisk’s reaction was equally odd, though. He stopped and stared for a moment as though he was under some sort of spell as well. Not the reaction I expected. We weren’t expected to get into hand to hand combat in the Fleet, the unofficial motto was if you were fighting hand to hand you’d already royally screwed up, but we’d had some training which included Livisk combat. They weren’t supposed to give any quarter.

Ever.

Though I was more than happy to take advantage of this one if he was willing to throw me a bone. Goodness knows I could use a little bit of help considering how badly I’d screwed up this encounter. If I survived the reaction from the brass back at the Fleet was not going to be pretty. I’d be lucky if they put me in command of a garbage scow.

Well if this alien was going to give me an opening I was more than happy to take it. I slammed my power armor into the side of his head and he flew to the side. Not that he had very long to fly. The same thing that had been my advantage moments ago when I was doing the old turkey shoot with this handsome alien stranger was now working to my disadvantage. He hit the wall and immediately scrambled up, though he seemed a little woozy on his feet.

I scrambled to my feet as well. It wouldn’t do to lose this fight because I gave him an opening. I’d been stupid enough to take off my helmet, but I wasn’t going to be stupid enough to give him an opening to take advantage of that lack of a helmet, damn it.

“You’ve been captured,” I said. “Give up now.”

“Death before capture,” he said, that same deep voice rolling over me and sending a shiver running through my power armor that had nothing to do with the helpful cooling units that came as part of the standard install with these things. Damn, that voice. That body. That everything.

I needed to remember he was the enemy. I was not going down because I had a schoolgirl academy crush on some alien who was trying to take my ship.

“Give it up and we don’t have to take this any farther,” I said. “I give you back to your ship and we call it a day.”

Of course I had no intention of doing that, but I figured a Livisk might think in Livisk terms. Usually when they made some sort of honorable offer like that they followed through with it. Usually they found ways to get around it as well, like telling someone they’d release them safely to their ship and then blowing that ship out of the sky as soon as their captive was underway, so I didn’t feel too bad about lying to this one.

“You humans have no honor. Why should I believe you?” he spat.

Damn. I guess I couldn’t fault him for knowing humanity too well. So I surged forward before he could react and slammed a fist at his gut.

At least the idea was that I’d surge forward before he could react and slam a fist into his gut. The reality of the move turned out to be a little less than what I’d expected. His hand met mine and he held me there. It was obvious this guy knew his hand to hand combat in a way that I just didn’t. We were supposed to keep up on that sort of thing, but there were so many things that went into running a ship that I was bad about keeping up on my training.

Emergency lights flashed all around us as klaxons went off throughout the ship. I didn’t know what the situation was on the rest of the ship. I didn’t know if we were winning or if I was losing my ship right out from under me as I played with this handsome idiot of an alien who made me want to kiss his face as much as I wanted to slam my augmented fist into it.

“I don’t have time for this,” I growled. With my free hand I reached down to my leg and a Livisk blaster hidden in my armor popped out. I pulled it up and aimed it point blank at the area where I was pretty sure his genitals resided. The experts said it was in more or less the same location as on humanity, but I couldn’t be sure.

The silence of our embrace, my armored fist to his palm, was interrupted by something new. An ominous hum as the weapon charged. He looked down and his eyes went wide.

“How do you feel about losing the favorite part of your anatomy?” I asked with a grin. The general hesitated, then released his grip on my hand and took a step back. He bowed low in what I knew was the Livisk gesture of capitulation. He wouldn’t be any more trouble after doing that. Livisk honor and all that. Get them into a checkmate and they folded like a Martian grifter who just learned you were on to his scheme trying to sell land on the outskirts of Olympus Mons.

“That’s what I thought,” I said. “Now come with me. You’re my prisoner now.”

General Whoever-the-hell-he-was didn’t look happy about it, but he obeyed. That’s all that mattered.

2: Enchanted

Jorav:

Captive. The word rolled around in my mind. It was a curse among my people. I couldn’t believe I’d allowed myself to be taken, and by a human female no less. Not that there was shame in being taken by a female, far from it. Some of our best warriors were females. Only the human females were the smaller and weaker of their species even if that damned power armor she wore did even the score somewhat.

My dishonor was almost complete. Almost. My ship was still out there fighting the good fight judging from the way the deck rocked under us every few moments, my feet automatically adjusting to the task of walking through a ship in the middle of a battle, but there was still so much more that could go wrong here.

My wife was out there on that station. Even more dishonoring, if less terrifying, the empress was out there as well. This was supposed to be a state visit to a new world at the outskirts of our space, and now we were under attack from this human woman who’d bested me in hand to hand combat as surely as I’d bested her in ship to ship combat. I recognized the insignia on her armor. There was no doubt she was the commander.

We stepped up to a couple of human security guards. I expected them to take me into their custody, but to my surprise the human female gestured for me to follow her. The men working under her looked surprised at this, but they also seemed to know better than to question their commander. A sign of a good commander if there ever was one.

I found this creature walking before me singularly fascinating. Who was this woman to singlehandedly take me down in single combat? Who was this woman to do so well for herself when we attacked her ship? Who was this woman who was so exotic and intoxicating in only the way a human woman could be with her slightly tan skin and the way her skin refused to sparkle like a woman of my species?

More than anything I’d caught her scent and it was amazing. I found myself breathing deeper, risking the otherwise fetid stench of a human vessel, for a chance to inhale more of her scent. I found myself stirring down below in the “favorite piece of anatomy” that she’d threatened just moments ago.

This one was crafty and dangerous. Of that there was no doubt in my mind. She was one who would bear watching. I found myself drawn to her in a way I’d never been drawn to a human female before in my life, and I’d had plenty of opportunities to avail myself of human female companionship on some of the offworld pleasure houses where captive humans of low intelligence value were sometimes put to work.

“Where are you taking me?” I asked.

She hit a button and we stepped into a room where it was just the two of us. There was a massive transparent window on one side of the room that afforded me a view of my battered ship, the station beyond it, and the planet down below where the station was supposed to be delivering terraforming supplies. Those supplies, the dawn of a new world, was the reason the empress was out here. The reason my wife, part of her retinue, was out there on that station that was utterly defenseless.

“Tell me what you’re doing out here,” she said. “You Livisk don’t send a full battlecruiser out for something as simple as protecting a station on one of your illegal worlds. There’s something else going on here.

I bristled at the suggestion that this was an illegal colony world. How dare she!

“This world is fully within the territory of the Livisk Ascendency. I protest that you would insult my honor by insinuating that I would defend taking a world that didn’t belong to us!”

“Yeah, well you can forget about all the honor and stuff. We’re at war, remember? That means your people are inclined to take what you want, which has always been the case. It also means we’re inclined to blast you out of the sky if you try to do another interstellar land grab, which is what I intend to do.”

The deck rocked underneath me as the ship was hit with another blast from my ship. The humans must have figured out some way to get their weapons running again. My crew new better than to fire on a ship when there was a boarding party trying to take it.

I let out a low growl. “I suppose that’s true, but I can’t allow you to take that station, much less destroy it.”

I coiled myself and prepared to do battle. It went against everything that I believed. I’d be committing the ultimate sin in the eyes of my people. I’d been captured. I’d given this captivating human my surrender and now I would be violating it. It was true that after I was finished with her there would be no one but myself to remember that dishonorable betrayal, but that would be enough.

Still, when my wife and niece were placed on the balance against my honor I knew what would win every time. Our motto might be death before dishonor, but I knew there were some things that would lead me gladly down the path to that dishonor.

Only before I could strike at the human the deck rocked under us once more. This time it was accompanied by a blinding flash a moment later and the sound of metal rending filled my ears. When I looked up again I had difficulty hearing. The sound had overwhelmed my hearing.

There was also a hissing filling the room. I looked over to that terrifying sound. It was unmistakable. It was a sound that filled every spacefarer with even the smallest bit of sense with absolute terror. The sound of a bulkhead that had been torn open. Except in this case it appeared that it was that strange transparent material that had been torn open.

It was an extravagance that should have never been placed on a ship like this, and now the humans were paying the price for that extravagance.

I cast about for my human opponent. She was lying on a heap of twisted metal, unconscious. I knew I should take this opportunity to make my escape, but I couldn’t help myself. I was still captivated by that human’s beauty. I was still very much under her spell. It was wrong. I was bonded to my own wife even if the bond was fuzzy over this distance and the only thing I could feel was the terror hidden under a steely resolve, but I had to check on the human.

I told myself it was simply because she was a worthy opponent. That I couldn’t very well leave her to die. I almost believed that excuse too.

She was breathing when I looked at her. A bit of very heavy metal bulkhead had fallen on her, but it seemed the power armor she wore had done most of the work of saving her from being crushed under it. It was a good thing it hadn’t hit her just a little higher where her head was exposed. That was sloppy, taking off an important piece of her armor like that.

Unfortunately knowing that she was breathing was as far as I could take things. I wasn’t a healer. I certainly didn’t know anything about human anatomy. Besides, I had to escape this ship. This captain shouldn’t have told me that they intended to destroy the station and the budding colony on this world.

That meant I would have to destroy her ship and everyone on it. Herself included. No time for the honor of taking a ship deck by deck and winning glory for the empire. To save my wife and the emperor’s wife I would wipe this ship from the skies.

Odd that I would feel reluctance at doing that when it meant destroying the human. She had fought well, but she had to die.

I looked around the room. I didn’t have my communicator with me. I’d lost it somewhere in the fighting which hadn’t been a problem when I was with a group of my soldiers, but it was certainly a problem now. I also didn’t have my sword. I looked down to the human. She still had one of those special weapons designed to actually do some damage when they hit us. It had been quite the pain when humans finally realized their old energy weapons didn’t work.

Reluctantly I picked it up and hefted the weapon. It felt light, but I suppose it would have been quite heavy for a human. Though maybe not when they were in power armor. I blasted the door to the room when it became obvious they weren’t going to open automatically like they had when we walked in.

I stopped and spared one last glance for the human woman before I stepped out into the hall and blasted the two soldiers who’d taken my men from behind. From there it was easy enough to grab a new sword and a communicator off of the fallen corpses of my comrades. I said a quick prayer to the spirits of the fallen emperors to speed my men to the other side, then opened a line to all the men on the human ship as well as coordinating with the weapons officer on my own.