Page 27 of Stolen By the Alien Mercenary

I never got to speak to the captain himself, and I wondered if that was on purpose, or if I’d just reached the ship when he wasn’t on the bridge. If he was with his mate or son, he wouldn’t let anyone interrupt him unless the ship was in grave danger. Jaxin agreed to direct the Varakartoom to an orbiting position above the planet, which meant our exit would be easy once we were ready to take it. It wasn’t far for them because I’d picked a rendezvous point nearby but out of range of the orbiting station. Batok wouldn’t notice them until they arrived inside the solar system.

That was who I was really after now, the crimelord himself. The information from the orbiting station made me think he was nearby, and I knew just who to press to get us close. “Come, Harper. I know where we need to go next.” She trotted over, flung her arms around my neck, and grinned. My dual hearts soared at that look, and for a moment, it was very easy to forget all the dangers that still loomed over our heads.

I flung us into the air with a few powerful beats of my wings and was delighted when Harper laughed rather than screamed this time. “I think I’m starting to like this. It’s a bit like a rollercoaster,” she said. It was automatic to reach out through my visor and implant for a search on what the word ‘rollercoaster’ meant. Contraptions meant for entertainment on set tracks. They seemed rather pointless, but maybe humans who could not fly needed that kind of thing.

As I winged us over the desolate, barren planet, I outlined my plan to my mate. She listened attentively, but I could tell she was focused just as much on the damaged world. She had a soft heart, and it tore at her to see the results of Batok’s greed. The storm had brought more damage, and I knew it would not be long before the atmosphere would turn toxic, unable to provide us with the oxygen we needed to breathe.

It took me an hour to fly from our hiding spot, around the mountain with its ominous spire, to the mining camp on the other side. I brought us to the ground for a covert landing, and then we had to walk the rest of the way or we’d be spotted. Harper kept up with a determined frown as we crossed a rough stretch of uneven, rocky terrain and circled to the remains of a forest for a vantage point on the still-working mining camp.

“That’s disgusting,” Harper said with a glare at the belching plumes of smoke coming from the heavy machinery. Batok hadn’t paid for top-tier mining equipment, and these machines were on their last legs, struggling to extract the remaining ores they could squeeze from this nearly empty mine. My drones brought me back all the information I wanted. The layout of the camp was nearly identical to the one we’d left behind. The barracks were in use, but as I tallied the heat signatures, I had to assume that they were running on half strength.

The office where my target was located was occupied. Perfect. He’d squeal all the details on Batok he had, and then he’d pay for making my Harper suffer in his damn vault. “Stay here,” I said to my mate, and I pressed her back against a nearby tree trunk. “I’m going to ensure a way in.”

Most of the time, my skills weren’t utilized to their fullest potential. My crewmates liked using brute force too much, and it took less time. But I knew I could take control of the gates, their security systems, and even the laser cannons mounted at the top of the gate. From there, it wouldn’t take much to sneak the two of us into the compound to take their boss hostage.

I had nearly completed my attack when an alert drew my attention to the data the orbiting station was still feeding me. A ship had arrived above the planet, but from the looks of it, it wasn’t the Varakartoom. No, this was a Star Class Cruiser, and from its name, it could only mean one thing: Batok had arrived. That was going to create a mess when the Varakartoom showed up. Our ship would outgun them; it always did, but this was the opposite of the safe extraction I’d been planning.

Harper was much calmer about it when I told her of this new situation. “We’ll deal with it. Maybe we’ll have that data decrypted by then. We’ll have something to barter with.” From the fire in her eyes, I had to assume that bartering with Batok was not exactly what she’d prefer. “Aramon seemed eager to fight him with us. Your ship could take him out, couldn’t it?”

It could, it was just not usually Asmoded’s policy to majorly piss off an influential crimelord. The criminal element hired us as often as the more morally right. Unless it came to Jalima, the biggest crimelord of the twelve. There was nothing Asmoded wouldn’t do to put an end to that male, but I couldn’t count on such motivations when dealing with Batok.

“They won’t unless they have to. They want Batok to leave us alone, but Asmoded has no beef with him. We’ll have to figure this out on our own if we can first. I’m in, let’s go.” The last of their defenses was down, and it was obvious they were not on the lookout for an attack. With their cameras disabled, we could simply walk to the gate and slip inside.

Harper stayed close to my back, and I covered her with my wings when we entered. There was a lone guard lounging in a chair near the gatehouse, but it took care of him before he could so much as blink. We reached the office of the supervisor without any incidents, and the locked door was no barrier either.

My mate kept her hand on my back as I strode inside like I owned the place, a laser pistol in my hand to dissuade the bastard from resisting. “Ovran,” I barked at the Xurtal male napping behind his desk. He was a big, bulky guy with red skin and swirling gold marks on his bare arms. It was a point of pride for any Xurtal male to display them to the best effect, but this male was grubby and his gold markings tarnished. Not a male who took pride in much of anything.

He jerked upright with bleary eyes and a confused expression that quickly sharpened into something cunning and mean. “Yes, I’m Ovran,” he said, and he rose to his considerable height and stuck out his hand as if this was a business meeting. “Who are you, and what do you want?”

I ignored his outstretched fingers and the fading red at his fingertips; those were a sure sign of his unhealthy habits. “Not your friend,” I told him, “But you are going to tell me everything you know about Batok. And then you’re going to tell me why you thought letting a girl starve in a vault was fine.” Leaving Harper near the door, I stepped around the desk and slammed a palm down on the viewscreens. It engaged their security features, locking his office, and shutting down all communications at the camp. I monitored the frequencies carefully with my drones so there would be no surprises.

Ovran glanced down at the pistol and bared his teeth, not yet suitably impressed, but he would be. When he lifted his eyes to mine, that cunning look was back. It was no surprise when he snapped out a hand to try to take the pistol from me, all the while loudly denying that he worked for a crimelord. He didn’t realize who he was dealing with either, but he’d find that out, too.

As soon as he made his move, I flowed with him. My wings snapped out for balance, my free hand collided with his arm, and the hand with the gun moved back while squeezing the trigger. The male shouted in pain, first as my blow reverberated up his arm and made the limb go numb, then when the laser fire struck him in a glancing blow along his neck. A carefully aimed shot that mimicked exactly how I’d been injured a few days ago.

He slapped his hand over the bloody burn with an outraged shout. A shout that morphed into rage a moment later and he launched himself at me as if his previous encounter hadn’t just taught him what a bad idea that was. Harper yelped, but the struggle lasted no more than two seconds before I had the bastard pinned to his desk. With his arms twisted behind his back, he had nowhere to go, and I made sure to put more than a little pressure on those stressed joints. He deserved every ounce of pain for what he’d allowed Harper to suffer.

After that, it was the work of a moment to make him squeal.

Chapter 20

Harper

I wanted to get Batok off my ass as much as Nick did, but I still didn’t think it was a good idea to infiltrate one of his camps. Seeing the supervisor who had opened and closed the vault I’d been in too many times to count was also a shock. I knew that’s who we were there to see, but seeing his face was not the same as remembering. It instantly brought me back to that time, to the slow starving and the thirst, to see him coming and going with a grin.

That guy had been the worst; he had taken pleasure in seeing me there each time. I didn’t know what he would have done if he had to deal with a rotting corpse for months on end, but he’d seemed hellbent on my death being quick rather than slow.

Then Nick put him in his place with some lightning-fast karate moves and the towering red alien went from frightening to pitiful in a few heartbeats. All I’d seen was his hulking shape when we entered this room, the glare in his eyes, the sneer on his lips. Now I noticed other things.

Nick controlled him viciously by his wrenched arms and had no trouble keeping the alien against the desk. He was big but a little overweight, and it was obvious that he’d relied on his size to protect him far too much. He didn’t look so intimidating now or like he held all the power.

Only a little more pain and he started talking rapid-fire about all kinds of things. I knew Nick would remember all of it, but I still thumbed on the camera on my tablet to record it all. This wasn’t really information that would help us figure out what the hell was on those implants, but it was certainly all kinds of intel on Batok’s operations. Surely, someone in this quadrant of the galaxy could use that stuff to take him down for us?

Then he said the magic words. “Check my security protocols! Those will give you access to his data logs!” The large red alien would have gestured with his hands if they weren’t pinned against his shoulder blades in a very unnatural position by Nick. Instead, he jerked his chin at the viewscreen next to him and then hissed when that caused him pain from the wound on his neck.

Nick ditched him with a knockout blow onto the floor so fast that things were a blur to my eyes. My mate was already hunched over the computer, and casually yanking on Ovran’s hand to use it to unlock the system. I adored the casual toss when he was down, with zero regard for the alien’s well-being, just like he’d had none for me.

“Does that help?” I asked him, daring to shuffle a little closer so I could lean over the desk and see the screen for myself. I made sure to keep my distance from the big, sprawled-out body. I didn’t need him to snatch me if he was pretending to be passed out, I didn’t need to be close to him at all.