Marauder Fenrir: Scifi Alien Invasion Romance (Mating Wars) (13 page)

I
drop
to the ground and stabilize my railgun onto the gap where I expect Fiona to enter.

“Fly through,” I say, using all of my focus to keep the terror from my voice, “and I’ll cover you.”

I see her ship shoot through the gap. The orbital has only rotated enough to put me a few hundred meters from where she enters. I’m barely far enough away to not get burned by her engines.

As soon as she clears the gap, she banks away from me, toward the orbital platform on the other side of the gap from me.

And then the torpedo, which has tracked her heat trail, hits the platform beneath her. I see the metal bulge and buckle up in a dome shape, and Fiona pulls up and away from it. The orbital platform has shielded her from the torpedo.

The bulging dome explodes open, and fire and shrapnel blast through, but her ship is clear.

“He’s about to enter,” Fiona’s voice shouts into my earpiece, “Three...two…”

I steady my railgun just past the gap. My biosuit does the calculations for me, telling me where to aim and when to pull the trigger.

The moment the nose of Kaius’s ship enters the gap, I pull the trigger.

In the weak gravity, the recoil from the railgun knocks me off my feet and into the air. I have to form a tendril to pull myself back onto the ground.

I see an explosion on Kaius’s ship, and then I notice that Fiona has turned her ship around to face it.

The machine guns on her ship are firing into his ship, tearing it to shreds. There’s a huge hole where my railgun hit, and air is venting out.

Kaius’s ship turns toward me, and though it’s getting filled with machine gun fire, it still manages to change its course. Straight toward me.

Fiona stops firing.

“Shoot him!” I yell. “Fucking shoot him!”

“I might hit you!” she says. “Shit, Fenrir, run!”

I abandon the railgun and form dozens of tendrils. The tendrils, like spider’s legs, pull me along the ground and scurry me quickly out of the way.

Kaius’s ship slams into the platform just behind me, but there’s not enough momentum to blow a hole through it. It explodes, and the fire tears across the ground. Chunks of shrapnel fly toward me, and my tendrils reach up to bat away the bigger pieces. Smaller chunks of burning debris burn across my shielded skin, and just as I think I’m safe, I see Kaius himself hurtling toward me.

He’s covered in his biosuit and it’s completely teal. He must have ejected from the ship just before impact.

When he’s nearly on top of me, I attack with three sharp tendrils, all firing from different angles.

He shields himself in a hardened sphere, and the tendrils slam into it, but fail to penetrate.

The sphere crashes into the ground, landing just next to me, but it doesn’t dissipate and reveal Kaius.

“Fiona,” I say. “Get out of here, I may need to–.”

“I can’t get out,” she says. “There’s like...twenty Martian gunships surrounding New Wessex now. I’m trying to talk them down...but they won’t let me out.”

The teal sphere slowly becomes transparent, until finally I can see Kaius through it.

“Fenrir,” he says.

I focus my biomass around my fist, forming an incredibly dense bludgeon. I slam it down onto this transparent sphere, but it only dents the sphere by a few centimeters.

“You fucking coward,” I growl.

“You heard your human bitch,” Kaius says. “I’m surrounded by the Martian fleet. I’m not getting out of here alive.”

I shift to bear form, and my biosuit stretches and conforms to my new size. I claw and maul the sphere, but Kaius just laughs.

The sphere can’t hold forever. Even if he uses all his energy to sustain it, I eventually will break it open. I slam it with my claws over and over, and when my arms get sore, I back up and start to ram it with my head.

“I’ll take down as many Martians as I can with me,” Kaius says. “The bomb is set to detonate. There’s no way I can stop it. I wish I had thought to set this orbital to blow up as well, but I only had enough anti-matter left for one good explosion…”

I slam my paw into the sphere, and my claws tear through, but when I try to pull it apart, I can’t get it to tear away.

“The sphere is failing because I’ve routed all remaining energy to one powerful beam. My life support will fail me, and I’ll die, but at least I’ll bring your fucking mate down with me…”

He raises his hand, and it’s glowing purple. He’s pointing straight at Fiona’s ship.

I shift to Marauder form and leap above him. I harden my biosuit and divert all focus to form a shield in front of me.

Kaius’s sphere melts away, and the beam slams into me. I feel immediate acceleration and my vision blurs to a blood red.

T
here’s
a blue-green explosion down on the orbital platform, and suddenly I see Fenrir accelerating through the hollow space inside the habitat.

“Fenrir!”

Mere moments after the initial blast, Fenrir whooshes right past my ship, and he flies straight through one of the gaps between orbital platforms.

“What was that?” the Martian admiral asks me. “Are the aliens firing on us?”

“No…” I say. “That
is
the alien.
My
alien, and you have to save him!”

“What about the hostile–?”

I look at my screen that has a magnified view of Kaius. He’s floating lifelessly through the vacuum.

“He’s dead! Now save Fenrir!”

“He’s long gone,” the Admiral says. “He’s moving too fast, none of our ships could catch up to him...even if we wanted to. He’ll be well past Uranus in just days, though I’m guessing his life support will fail before then.”

“Fiona,” Fenrir’s voice cuts in. “I don’t think I can keep my promise…”

“No!” I shout. “There must be a way. Can’t you use your biomass to slow down? We can find a way for you to slingshot back toward us…we could–.”

“The tank’s running on fumes,” Fenrir says. “I’ll be out of air in an hour or so...I could slow myself down by a tiny bit, but then I’d be out of air right away…”

“You promised,” I say, my lip trembling. Warm tears pool in my eyes, and they float out into the cockpit.

“Part of me will always live on in you, Fiona,” his voice says, crackling, “I–.”

“Comm link lost,” a robotic voice says. “Try getting closer–.”

I rip the earpiece out and throw it across the cockpit.

“
I
love you
,” I say.

“Comm link lost, try getting closer.”

I laugh. If only it were that easy. If I could just reach out and touch her hand, and she could pull me right back to her side.

Absorbing Kaius’s blast consumed almost all my biofuel, but all that energy still had to go somewhere, and it accelerated me like a bullet. Faster than any human ship can travel.

I watch as Mars slowly shrinks from my view. The orbitals are just small pinpricks of light, and I know that somewhere among them, Fiona is there.

I wait for an explosion, for Kaius’s bomb to destroy the elevator. I hold out hope that it somehow won’t detonate, that he was bluffing, or that it’s a dud.

At least I protected Fiona, and at least I got to say goodbye.

I know that at least Cygnus will do what he can to watch over her, and to protect humanity.

“And what about Aegus?” I mutter. “That fucker is so mysterious that he ends up being totally useless. We sure could have used his help somewhere during all of this–.”

“I was just about to help you,” a voice cuts in. It’s not coming from the earpiece, but from the biosuit itself. “But if I’m useless, maybe–.”

“Aegus?” I say in disbelief.

“Lucky for you I was coming from Jupiter. I’m sending you my location.”

A map overlays onto my vision, and I see my projected trajectory. It looks like I’ll get whipped around Jupiter, and then accelerate even faster out into interstellar space. Aegus is close, but not close enough.

“I’ve got a small pod stocked with antimatter,” Aegus says. “I’m going to blast it toward you...you’ll have one chance to catch it. Here goes!”

The map shows the pod, a little green dot, shoot out from Aegus. It will be on me in two minutes.

“So,” I say, killing time, “why’d you wait so fucking long to come help? Not even your brother knew where you were.”

“I’m always looking at the bigger picture,” Aegus says. “And I
did
help.”

“Could have fooled me,” I say. “Millions are going to die on Mars.”

“No,” Aegus says. “I had a team on the elevator. They moved the bomb. Look over your shoulder.”

I look back toward Mars, and I see a pinprick of white form and expand outward.

“Boom!” Aegus says. “Far enough from everything. No one got hurt. It would have all been perfect if you hadn’t gotten shot and made me waste valuable anti-matter. Do you know how hard it was to get all this skimmed with human technology, it took me–.”

“Shut up!” I interrupt. “I need to focus!”

The pod is thirty seconds away, and I realize I’m slightly off-course from intercepting it.

I burn the rest of my biomass to make a minor adjustment. Warnings start to flash that I’m out of air, and I can feel the deep cold of vacuum begin to warp around me.

I reserved just enough fuel to form a wide net, and when the pod is just seconds away, I deploy it.

The teal net shoots out beside me, and only at the last second do I see the pod with my own eyes. It rockets past me like a bullet, and my net stretches tight.

The net strains as it stretches into a thin filament behind me, barely clutching the pod, and just before it tears, I jam a tendril into the pod to suck the anti-matter up out it.

I get about half of it in before the pod tears and rips away, but it’s enough.

The low air warnings shut off, and I feel heat coming back in. I burn the fuel and initiate counter thrust, which begins to slow me down relative to Aegus’s position.

I watch on the map as Aegus draws closer to me.

“Nice catch,” he says. “Looks like my useless ass was be able to save you after all.”

W
hen I land on Mars
, I’m greeted by new and old friends alike.

Fiona rushes to Fenrir, and he lifts her into the air and spins around and around. He squeezes her so tight it seems almost as if he’ll never let her go.

My brother Cygnus, his wife Aura, and my niece Sara greet me next.

“Uncle Aegus!” she shouts, leaping into me.

I catch her and hug her back. “You’re so big now,” I say to myself in disbelief.

“See! I told you Uncle Fenrir, I’m not little anymore!”

“Fenrir’s not really your uncle,” Cygnus says, smiling.

“He will be,” Sara says, jumping out of my arms. “After he marries Aunt Fiona!”

Fenrir looks at me with wide eyes, but I nod to him.

“Fiona,” Fenrir says, voice confident. “I will ask you something now. Understand the way I am going to do this is not how a human man would do so…but it’s the only way I know how.”

Fiona looks at me, and then at Cygnus, confusion overtaking her face.

I smile at her, hoping it will reassure her.

Suddenly Fenrir grabs her and lifts her up above his head, holding her to the sky.

“I raise this female above myself!” Fenrir shouts to the gathering crowd.

Sara starts to laugh, and Aura gives Cygnus a knowing look.

“I acknowledge her strength and power, and her ability to protect and nurture our future offspring!”

Aura laughs now too, but there’s tears in her eyes.

I feel a tightness in my own chest, and a burning emptiness in my gut. This is not something I can have, at least not while the Marauder fleet still threatens humanity.

“And now, for the—” Fenrir cuts off, looking confused.

“Improvise it!” Cygnus shouts.

Fenrir furrows his brows, and his ears pull back. He’s still holding Fiona above his head, and she’s beaming with a wide smile, but I can tell she’s slightly nervous that Fenrir will totally botch this.

“Normally,” Fenrir says, “I would now speak this female’s Mother Name for this first time! As a promise for future children and her future role as a mother. But
this
female already has a name. Fiona. I’ve called her many things, but mother or not, she has earned this name already! I proudly call her Fiona.”

Fenrir puts Fiona down on her feet and draws a blade, pointing it into his own chest, just above his heart.

I see her eyes widen and she takes a step forward, but Fenrir holds her back. “This too is Marauder tradition. I ask this female—Fiona—to marry me and have children with me. If she should reject me, my shame debt will be so great that I will fall on my own blade, and this female should live on without me--free of all shame debt—to find her true life mate. Do you—“

“Jesus, Fenrir,” Fiona says, laughing, “Put down the blade, of course I want to marry you, you idiot—“

He throws the blade down and grabs her, and they hug and kiss each other to thunderous applause.

* * *

A
fter the wedding
, and before Fenrir and Fiona’s honeymoon on New Copenhagen, I finally let Cygnus—and now Fenrir—into my full plans.

“It sounds to me like we already won! This plan is brilliant, except for the part about you leaving for Venus, Aegus, I disagree with this.”

Fenrir shakes his head. “I agree with the Great Brother. We owe shame debt to humanity for this invasion, and it sounds like your plan has fully absolved us of this debt. The civil war is not our fault.”

I sigh. “I’m making this sacrifice willingly. My plan is
not
foolproof—“

“Then don’t leave us two fools to stay back here and see it through!” Fenrir says. “Help us carry it out, and settle down…”

“I can’t,” Aegus says. “You both know I’m right. Even if everything goes perfectly, two or three ships from the enemy faction could still make it into the solar system. And assuming the friendly ships can arrive early as planned, what happens when they arrive and see civil war? How many Marauders will still believe that humanity is the end of our journey when they arrive and see them killing each other?”

Fenrir and Cygnus look at each other with lowered ears.

“You’ll do your part,” I say, “By loving your wives and children. Show humanity that we can help to heal them, that we bring hope with us, and not war.”

“And what about your mate?” Fenrir says. “You think you don’t deserve one, after all this?”

“Maybe I’ll find her on Venus,” I say.