Aedian: Alien Warrior: A Sci-Fi Alien Invasion Paranormal Romance (2 page)

People were wary, of course, having massive creatures with horns and weapons walking around was frightening, but by the time the first five years had come and gone, most people found that they barely even noticed the Calphesians anymore.

They went about their business and kept to themselves for the most part, mingling with humans only when they had no other choice. Humans didn’t go to their compounds unless it was for the tournaments, which everyone was invited to watch, and Calphesians only frequented those human places they had no other choice but to go to.

For the most part, it was almost like there were two separate societies existing within many major countries, and that’s just how things were.

Of course, there were those who couldn’t relax no matter what outward peace there was. Because they had to wonder if the Calphesians had made it to Earth with the intent of destroying the human race, what was stopping any other races out there from doing the exact same thing?

Chapter 2: Three for Three

The crowd was rowdy already and nothing had even happened yet. The massive man in the middle of the ring was reading from a tablet, talking about the long history of the tournaments held by the Calphesians and how glory and honor would be awarded to the victors.

When he started reading from a list of previous tournament champions, Roxanne Weaver zoned out.

She already didn’t want to be there. All around her was a strange mixture of Calphesians, clearly ready to see some action, and apprehensive humans who were trying to get into the spirit of things. Apprehensive because the smallest Calphesian was a head taller than even a very tall human, but clearly excited because if there was one thing people liked, it was a spectacle.

Roxy sniffed and rolled her eyes. She didn’t understand it, personally. These were the same creatures who had come to their planet and started making demands, started throwing around threats and waving around a dizzying array of weapons until they got what they wanted. There was no doubt that if it hadn’t been for the quick thinking of the people in charge, the death toll would have been higher and things would have turned out worse.

As far as things went, having the aliens on their planet and integrated into their society wasn’t the worst thing in the world.

Ten years after the Calphesians had made their way to Earth, and having them around was the new normal. It was commonplace to be at the mall or the grocery store and see the tall, horned creatures going about their business as well.

For most people, it was easy to do. Having them around affected their lives very little now that the threat of being exterminated was lifted. For those that were called by the Treaty, it was a bit more difficult to go on with business as usual.

As stated in the Treaty, every five years, the three best warriors in the Calphesian clusters in every country where they had a significant population, would have their pick of three women of a marriageable age, picked by a random lottery. It was handled by the government and involved social security numbers and fingerprint scans, so there was no way around it.

This time, Roxanne’s name had been drawn, much to the displeasure of her and her family. She’d been given very little time to prepare, just told that she was one of the selections for this go round and ordered to show up at the tournament.

Her mother had cried, and her father had done his clenched jaw, staring at the wall bit that he did when he was angry and didn’t want to show it. But neither of them had been able to say or do anything to change it, and so now Roxanne was seated in the stands of the massive arena in the middle of the Calphesian compound, about to watch the creatures from another planet decide her fate.

Luckily, she wasn’t alone. Her best friend Samantha had been eager to see this sight for herself and had offered to come with her for moral support, though judging by the way she was leaning forward to watch as the competitors filed in, Roxy was willing to bet that there was more than being supportive on her mind.

Roxanne didn’t understand the fascination with the creatures. They were large and loud and
rude,
and given the choice, she would have stayed away from them. Of course, the whole reason she was there was because she
didn’t
have a choice in the matter.

No one wanted to know what would happen if the humans didn’t hold up their end of the TBW. There were many more humans than there were Calphesians, but they had weapons and technology that no one on Earth had ever seen.

Part of the treaty had allowed scientists and engineers the opportunity to examine some of their tech, which they’d leapt on, taking one of the ships that had been damaged in the first parts of the struggle into some secret lab to play with.

Honestly, Roxanne knew that the strides they could make with whatever they got from the Calphesian tech was worth trading the freedom of three women every half decade. At least in the eyes of the world’s governments, but it didn’t mean she had to like it. She sat there in the uncomfortable seat with her arms folded, brown eyes narrowed in a glare as she watched the Calphesians bring out their strongest.

“This is kind of exciting, isn’t it?” Samantha asked, still leaning forward as the horn blew and the tournament began. The first round was a contest of strength, seeing who could lift the heaviest load straight up above their head.

“It’s barbaric, is what it is,” Roxy replied. “Who cares who can lift a massive rock up over their head? What good does that do anyone?”

Samantha shrugged. “Well, if they value being strong above all else,” she pointed out. “And it’s just the first round. There’s a race and then a shooting competition and then the head to head battle.”

“Oh goody,” Roxy deadpanned. “I can hardly wait.” It was easy for Samantha to get into this. It was a welcome break from the mundanity of her nine to five job and everything that went along with that. She got a day to see something exciting and then she could go right back to her life with nothing much changed.

But Roxanne was not so lucky. After this, she’d be expected to marry one of these creatures, and her life would never be the same again.

“Which one of them do you think is going to pick you?” Samantha wanted to know. She squinted down at the assembled “champions”, preparing to lift large rocks over their heads.

Roxy fervently hoped that they’d drop them on their heads. “Who cares?”

“You should. Don’t you want to get one who’s going to be good to you?”

She turned incredulous eyes on her best friend. “
Good
to me? Sam, none of them are going to be good to me. It’s not in their natures. They’re…” she lowered her voice, not wanting to be overheard by any of the Calphesians in the stands with them. “They’re beasts, Samantha. They would have killed us all if Dr. Anderson hadn’t come up with the idea for that treaty. They don’t see us as equals at all, and there’s no way that one of them can be good to me if he doesn’t see me as an equal.”

“But they need us.”

And that much was true. The Calphesians were overwhelmingly male. There were very few females in their number, and their numbers had apparently been dropping for centuries. Stooping to marrying and reproducing with human women was a last resort, and chosen only because it seemed like Calphesian blood was stronger than human blood and any child born between a Calphesian man and a human woman would be mostly Calphesian.

The part of the treaty that gave them access to human women was like a blessing to prolong their race. Honestly, Roxy would prefer to let them die out.

The thing about it was that she was opposed to the whole marrying off of eligible young women, but especially when it came to her. She knew that some women didn’t mind. Some of them found the idea exciting, a thrill to be the wife of a strong warrior, someone different than they could get otherwise.

Roxanne just found the idea loathsome. She’d worked so hard, getting through school and everything, working two jobs every summer so she’d have enough money to pay for books and other necessities, and now she was going to be reduced to being the wife of one of these creatures. Who even knew if he’d let her work or continue to look for a job in her field. He’d probably expect her to cook and clean and pop out his babies and treat her likes some kind of servant.

She hated it, and she didn’t see how anyone could hear about the practice and not find it outdated and cruel.

So while Samantha was leaning in enthusiastically, watching the Calphesians lift heavy boulders over their heads one right after the other, Roxanne was sitting there grinding her teeth.

They all sort of looked the same in a muscle bound kind of way, and it seemed ridiculous that down there, standing on the hard packed earth was the man (and she used the word lightly) that she was meant to marry. None of them looked friendly or particularly intelligent, so that meant there wouldn’t be much conversation between them. She couldn’t think of what they’d talk about anyway.

“So, remember when your people were dead set on killing mine? Good times, right?”

Yeah. Not exactly pleasant conversation for dinner time or whatever. Roxanne had barely ever pictured herself married with children, let alone married to someone who wasn’t even from her planet with children who were half...alien.

The very thought made her shudder.

But the tournament continued, everyone oblivious to the fact that she was sitting there fuming. In spite of her anger, she had to admit that they were all very skilled. No one seemed to be even breaking a sweat when it came to the lifting, and soon a Calphesian with dark hair coiled in several thick braids was lauded as the winner and the competition shifted.

Around the arena had been marked out a sort of makeshift track. The length of it was longer than a football field, and it went around the oval shaped arena in a complete loop. That was for the race.

The tournament would continue with that, the top ten competitors from the lifting contest going on to race against each other. From there it would move into the top six who would enter the shootout and then the top five out of that would enter the battle royale, and the last three to be standing would be the victors.

Those three would get to choose from the women who they wished to be their bride and then there would be a feast.

It was a celebration for the Calphesians, and humans treated it as one, too, even though Roxy had no idea how they could act like it was. It wasn’t like they had gained all that much from the treaty, though as her mother had told her, being able to continue living without being killed or enslaved by the Calphesians wasn’t anything to turn their noses up at.

And she knew her mother was right. If she hadn’t been selected as one of the women to have to marry one of them, she’d probably agree.

“They’re sort of good looking in a weird way,” Samantha murmured, drawing Roxanne’s attention from her fuming to the Calphesians who were running around the track. Their feet, bare and now brown with earth, pounded against the ground as they ran, easily outstripping the pace a human would be able to maintain.

They were all muscular, and ten years of being on Earth had darkened their skin from the pallor they’d arrived with to something resembling a light tan. Apparently their planet was so far from their sun that they hardly ever benefitted from its warmth, but as they had no plans to go back, that didn’t seem to matter much.

They weren’t ugly to look at, that much was true. Their features were too sharp to be human, and the horns certainly didn’t help, but there was a sort of otherworldly beauty about them that couldn’t be ignored.

There was even beauty in their strength if someone wanted to look at it that way. All of their motions looked effortless, like they weren’t even trying that hard, even though when they ran by the section Roxy and Sam were sitting in, she could see that they had all broken a sweat.

“I guess,” Roxy replied, shrugging.

It was a close race, all of them keeping pace with each other easily. They went around the track five times, and by then the winners were clear, crossing the finish line in a cluster.

Their names were called out and the ones who had been disqualified went to one side.

And so it continued on like that. The shooting match was an exciting display of Calphesian tech, one of their few women holding an armful of metal disks about as big around as a dinner plate. She threw one after another into the air and the competitors had to shoot a hole through the middle, the beams of light and energy that came from their guns burning round holes right through the metal.

That narrowed them down further, and soon enough it was time for the battle royale. It was this that Roxanne didn’t really want to see.

She had been twelve years old when the Calphesians had invaded, and she’d been glued to her television set in her grandmother’s house where she and her parents had run to when the call to evacuate the area around the ship had gone out.

The first ship had landed not more than twenty miles from the busy city they lived in, and she’d watched the news feed religiously, waiting to see what had happened.

So she remembered how they had wielded their weapons and used them to cut through the first wave of the army like they were nothing more than ants before them. She remembered staring at the screen when the feed had cut out, playing the scene over and over in her head, the way blasters and blades had sliced through flesh, showing the splatter of blood, until her mother had come and made her go to bed.