Page 14 of Saved By the Alien Mercenary

I ate in silence, and Brace retreated halfway through the meal. Was this post-sex awkwardness an indication that we were making a mistake? Or were we both just being awkward because we had no clue how to say what we really wanted? I was going to firmly believe it was that, and that if I managed to tell him I wanted him to stay, this would all work out. Showered and dressed, I headed for the bridge not much later and discovered it was empty.

I did not know what the plan was now, but I could at least reach out to ground control to inquire about new cargo and a slot for departure. My fingers were sure as I moved through the familiar protocols, but they went clammy and shaky as soon as the male Rummicaron official spoke. His tone was cool and impersonal, which was no different from usual—and yet... it felt like there was a nastiness to it that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Then he told me the Finix was grounded until further notice, and, with no further explanations, he disconnected me.

Brace’s warm hand on my shoulder startled me, but I leaned into that touch with a grateful sigh. “It must be Jalima’s handiwork,” he said darkly, his free hand flying into the air in a rough slashing motion. “Your ship has done nothing wrong, but he has many officials in his pocket here. He wants to know what happened to his cargo. He wants to know if it was us.” He did not have to explain which “us” he meant—he was talking about the Varakartoom and the captain who ran it.

He’d only just said it when an alarm went off, indicating activity at the starboard airlock. I twisted in my seat, my fingers reaching up to clutch Brace’s hand. I knew my eyes were huge, and my heart began pounding in my chest with fear. That had to be more of Jalima’s men, or at the very least, one of his enforcers sent to intimidate us. Had Brace’s confrontation with those three last night really not been enough? Maybe all three had died—Brace had chased after that last one, after all—and they had no clue what had happened.

“We’ll go see what they want,” Brace said firmly. He reached past my shoulder to flick to the right exterior cameras on the viewscreen. There they were, a group of half a dozen males, all in dark clothing and with bulges under their jackets that indicated weapons. I saw the flash of purple on a Kertinal; at least three were locals, and one could never be mistaken for anything other than a Hoxiam. They’d brought the big guns to match Brace, so they did know who was with me. That meant the last guy had escaped, but I was not surprised. Brace had come back for me so quickly, he’d heard my sounds of pain, and it had drawn him back, even when so enraged that he himself claimed he’d lost control.

Rising to my feet, Brace kept me behind him as we walked through the narrow hallways of my ship. I eyed it with a different perspective now, no longer seeing it as safety and home, but as the old, banged-up clunker that she was. It had already been invaded twice, though the first time had, as it turned out, been by “good” guys, at least to me. Brace didn’t seem to trust the surroundings either, and he was extra cautious the closer we got to the airlock.

With good reason, as it turned out. The airlock was hissing open just as we turned the corner into that hallway. They shouldn’t have been able to do that, because I’d engaged the Finix’s meteor shields. Nobody should have been able to so much as touch the outer hull. The protective measure had failed, proving that whoever was coming through that door had far more resources than the three from last night. Brace hissed in synchrony with the airlock, backing up a step and pressing me into the wall at the corner. “Get your gun,” he warned, but I didn’t have the one he’d given me on me—nor my own—which was very stupid in hindsight.

Widening his stance, Brace formed my own personal shield, filling up the entire hallway with his big body. This felt a bit like last time, only I wasn’t alone facing invaders. The first one out of the airlock was not dressed in sleek black armor, but he did move like a soldier. Ducking low, he rolled into the hallway and came up with his gun aimed our way. It was a big laser pistol, one that would harm even Brace if it hit him square in the chest. In tight confines like these, he could never move fast enough to get out of the way. We were in serious trouble.

The Hoxiam wore a blinking slave collar as he ducked through the airlock behind the first male. Tall and imposing, he had a kind of pudginess to him that I didn’t expect—not when I knew how lean and sleek Brace’s body was beneath his soft, blue pelt. He snarled, opening his mouth so wide that it almost seemed as if his head split in two. Then he hunched forward and roared, allowing me to see straight into his gullet: blackness, dripping saliva, rows of razor-sharp teeth. It seemed insane, but looking into Brace’s maw, which had to be just as big, had not been nearly as disgusting or terrifying. It felt like this male was an entirely different creature, a true monster. Nothing like my extremely huggable protector.

Brace responded to all that aggression with his own roar, which thundered through the narrow hallway in a deep, sonic bass that made my teeth rattle. It was a far more primordial sound than that of the other male—the challenger—and from the way the invading Hoxiam stepped back, it was obvious it struck a chord.

“There’s no need for that,” a voice responded, not from the two already inside my ship. It was one of those deep, sub-harmonic voices that could only belong to a Kertinal male: two layers of low tones blending into a sound that, like Brace’s roar, could shiver through flesh and make you shake in fear. “All we want is our cargo or, if you don’t have it, payment for damages. This is just a simple business transaction.” The voice was direct but cultured, educated, and something tingled at the back of my brain.

The Kertinal stepped out of the airlock as if he hadn’t a care in the world, completely certain that he was safe. His sleeveless body armor was top of the line and left his black, muscular arms exposed. Amethyst eyes peered at us from beneath a shock of purple and black hair, horns curling from his proud forehead. The bioluminescent lines on his body glowed like purple lightning in jagged streaks across that deep-black skin, which I knew was smooth yet tough as nails.

My belly swooped, then my baby kicked and shifted, as if he were responding to this new presence. As if he knew, as well as I did, that his father had just stepped aboard the Finix. I gasped—I couldn’t help it—the surprise was too much for me. Brace shifted in front of me, blocking any chance the others could see me, but I was certain that De’tor knew anyway. “Hoxiam, tell me where my cargo is,” he demanded coolly, “or pay for it. Least you can do after all the trouble you caused me.” Me, he said, as if it were personal. This left no doubt that the male I’d so impulsively slept with months ago was part of Jalima’s empire of crime. I’d really picked a winner. How could I have been that stupid?

There were a million justifications for picking him out of that bar on the Yengar Spacestation in a fit of loneliness. He had seemed cultured and smart; thus, he wasn’t a crook. He still seemed like a straight arrow when he told Brace all would be well as long as he handed over the Kanfray or paid the exorbitant amount it was worth. I’d never had that much money, the Finix was worth only a fraction of it. There was no way we could pay them off for this perceived debt. I cursed Kip and Chawz’s greed, but that didn’t make this any better.

Brace only snarled at De’tor, wordlessly rejecting the male’s very unlikely offer. It did not seem like anything was changing, as if we were in a standoff, tension wrought and dangerous. Yet I felt Brace’s body press back against mine. Ever so slowly, he was backing up. So the plan was to run, but how? That gun aimed at my guy’s chest was sure to go off if Brace so much as twitched wrong. They did not want Brace, though I’d learned only yesterday that he was worth a hell of a lot himself on the slave market. They didn’t want me either, did they?

Peering under Brace’s arm, I saw the way De’tor’s expression grew tighter, and I realized that yes, maybe they did want us. A Hoxiam and a pregnant, breedable human, of course they wanted to capture and sell us to recoup their losses. They knew we didn’t have the money to pay them back for the Kanfray. How could we? If I had five million credits lying around, I wouldn’t be flying this junker of a ship for marginal profits.

What happened next went so fast, I barely had time to breathe. Blinking was enough to have missed the first part, and then everything became a dizzying, crazy blur. There was a roaring noise, my baby kicked and twitched in response, and my body was suddenly up in the air. No, not in the air, I was yanked into Brace’s arms, and then he was running with me down the Finix’s hallways. He’d hunched his shoulders down around me, his head ducked low so that he fit as best he could through the tight spaces. We were at the portside airlock before I’d realized what had happened. It did not open fast enough, there were footsteps right on our heels, and I heard the whiz of laser fire, which was followed by the smell of burning hair. Brace used one clawed paw to yank the metal door open, clear of its hinges, and then we were through. There was another door, but it was as if the metal was butter to his paws, wrenching apart despite being made of several inches of thick, space-proof alloy.

Cold air slapped me in the face when Brace leaped outside with me in his arms. I could hear shouting, saw dockworkers at the next berthed ship looking up in surprise, and then heard another blast of laserfire. Brace landed on the tarmac with a jolt, then took off running so fast that the ground blurred. I felt all jumbled and seasick, cradled low against his chest in one arm, and then it got worse. He shifted forward and used one hand to help run. His speed picked up, but my body was now almost perpendicular to the ground, and it did not like that.

I clutched at the fur on his shoulders, one arm thrown tightly around his neck. If I tried my best, I could peer over his shoulder, back the way we’d come, and see the Finix in the distance. Males were coming after us, including that other bulky Hoxiam. He was running on all fours like a bear, galloping after us with a speed that would surely catch up to us if we didn’t shake him. If I squinted, I could see the figures of the others, but they were tiny against the Finix’s large shape and were growing smaller as the distance widened.

Then I saw a flash of light, followed by a thundering boom. An explosion rocked us, even from this far away. It sent Brace tumbling, and the world spun and twirled as he rolled with me. Not once did I strike the ground, but even hitting Brace knocked the air from my lungs. I was fighting for breath, and fighting back tears of pain and shock, when Brace righted himself and leaped back to his feet.

He never paused, never looked back, but the angry roar told me he knew exactly what had happened. It was a fitting expression of the pain I felt in my chest.