Marauder Kronos: Scifi Alien Invasion Romance (Mating Wars) (2 page)

I
hear arguing coming
from the command room.

I put my hand on the clear plastic. “Hold tight, Jerky.”

It seems like an appropriate name. Jerky likes to eat jerky, and it sounds pretty cute.

I walk carefully toward the command room, though the ship hasn’t been jerking back and forth as much lately. Or maybe I named him Jerky because of the ship’s movements.

“Get the lightsail out!” I hear Alderson shouting.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

“Get out of here, Minnie!”

“Minna.”

“Out!”

I start to feel heavier.

“Their laser is hitting our lightsail,” one of the crew says. “We’re moving faster than them.”

“And now they killed it,” another crewman says. “We’re slowing back down.”

“Get the company on the line,” Alderson says. “Ask them to hit our sail with a beam from Mars.”

A man with a scruffy beard says, “Captain, they aren’t going to spend money now….” He stops talking when he sees that I’m still standing there.

“Out, Minnie!” Alderson shouts.

“Why wouldn’t they spend money?” I ask.

“Bankruptcy!” the bearded man says, throwing up his hands. “You hired the wrong com – ”

Alderson backhands him. “Shut the fuck up! Get yourself together!”

“We’re getting a message from them,” someone says.

“Put it on-screen,” Alderson says.

I stay put, ignoring his order to leave. There’s a huge lump in my throat, and my blood feels on fire from fear and adrenaline. Real pirates.

The screen flashes on, and one of the biggest Marauders I’ve ever seen fills the screen. There’s a seraph standing on each side of him, one is male and the other is female. The male Seraph has a kind of dashing handsomeness about him, and his bulging muscles don’t hurt either.

What
does
hurt is the sight of the giant sword in his hand, and the horrible sound of his shouting voice.

“This is Kronos of the
Time’s End
!” His biceps bulges as he thrusts the sword toward the camera. I can see dried-out blood covering the sword. “Power down your weapons and jettison your cargo, or we will board your ship, drink your blood, and grind your bones to dust!”

The Marauder lets out a horrible, berserk shout, and his muscles bulge out as if he was lifting a car above his head. Every vein on his body pops out as he squeezes the sword and roars his threat.

The female Seraph flashes her teeth and hisses. She’s foaming at the mouth. Her body is sculpted with muscle, and she’s drenched in sweat as if she just got done killing someone.

The screen cuts off.

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” Alderson shouts. “Why can’t I just fucking retire in peace?”

“Wha-wha-what are we going to do?!” someone cries out. “We barely have any weapons!”

If I live through this and ever see my boss again, I will kill her myself for hiring such an incompetent and crumbling security company.

“Did he say he was gonna’...he was gonna’...
grind our bones to dust?
” the bearded man, still with a fresh red mark on his face, asks.

“Sanchez,” Alderson says. “Check my contract. See if I still qualify for pension if we lose the cargo while putting up a fight.”

“What?” I snap.

“Someone get her out of here,” Alderson says. “Lock her in the cargo bay.”

Everyone in the command room is scrambling around, but no one looks like they are preparing to fight.

“We’ll find a way to damage the ship, fire some rounds off into space,” Alderson says. “And we jettison Minnie out with the cargo so she can’t rat us out.”

“It would be safer to kill her,” someone says.

The bearded man grabs me by the wrist. “I agree,” he says. “Just make it look like one of those crazy-ass pirates did it, we can – ”

“No!” Alderson says. “I’m not killing an innocent woman!”

“But you’ll let those insane pirates capture
me
?” I shout.

“At least you’ll have a chance,” Alderson says.

“Whatever clears your conscience,” I spit back at him.

“Take her away,” Alderson says.

The bearded man drags me back toward the cargo bay. I try to fight by shoving and elbowing him, but he just bends my arm back until I scream out in pain.

He shoves me into the cargo bay and says, “Good luck,” and then slams the hatch closed.

I hear a hiss as extra oxygen flows into the vents. Alderson’s doing his best to convince himself I will survive and that he’s not killing me. He doesn’t want to retire with an innocent woman’s death on his hands.

Jerky whines at me.

God, they’re going to take Jerky away and kill me. I just know it. The handsome one is probably a sociopath, and I’ll be
lucky
if he just kills me. Hopefully he’ll grind my bones to dust
after
he kills me.

The hiss of oxygen cuts off, and suddenly I feel a big vibration rumble across the cargo bay.

And then I’m weightless. I float up off the ground and I see Jerky float into the air within his cage.

They’ve ejected me. I’m floating through the space between Mars and Earth with limited life support and no propulsion. The only people who know I’m here are bloodthirsty, deranged pirates.

I float helplessly through the air, and it takes several minutes until I’m close enough to the wall to move myself through the cargo bay. I pull myself toward the big crate of jerky, and I grab hold of several bars.

I push off the wall and float toward Jerky’s cage. I toss all of the jerky down into the cage.

“I’m not going to let them just take us,” I say. “We’re going to fight them. Together.”

Jerky hums, but that’s most likely because I threw so much food into his cage. He extends a long limb out and presses it against the wall of the cage. The action moves him toward a piece of jerky, which he devours greedily.

None of the prototypes have gone through human testing yet. I’m going to have to test it myself, and if it doesn’t work, I might not have any bones left in me for the pirates to grind to dust.

“You won’t eat me up from the inside, will you?” I ask Jerky, as he chomps up the last of the food.

He hums at me and shakes back and forth.

“Still hungry?” I ask.

He hums louder.

I’ll feed him as much jerky as I can so that he won’t eat me alive when I suit up.

“
T
hey’ve jettisoned their cargo
, Captain,” Lila says.

I smile widely and twitch my ears back at Ramu and Delphie.

Delphie points at me. “You see? The hissing was scary.”

“Nice work, guys,” I say. “Now we get the cargo without doing any real work.”

“Is this what you mean by pirates with heart?” Delphie asks.

“Yeah, sure,” I say. “We rob only those who are too lazy and inept to defend themselves.”

“That is so noble of you,” Delphie says.

“It’s fine,” I say. “No one got hurt. Everyone wins.”

“Yeah,” Ramu says. “Everyone except whoever paid to receive that cargo.”

“Maybe we can sell it back to them?” I say, grinning. “Then everyone gets what they want, but they just pay a shitload more.”

“Um, Captain,” Lila says.

“What is it?”

“There are two bio-signatures in the cargo bay.”

“What the hell?” I ask. “Two humans in there? Are they trying to fight us still? A Trojan horse?”

“It’s one human,” Lila says, “and one...other thing.”

I see Ramu narrow his eyes. “Want me to get my skull poker? I ain’t doing real fighting with this big dumb sword.”

“Yeah,” I say absently. “Get the skull poker. Lila, what do you think it is?”

“It most closely resembles a biosuit – ”

“Holy shit!” Delphie shouts.

“Fuck!” Ramu says, slamming the weapons locker. “I should have worked on commission instead of on a flat rate!”

A
biosuit
. Not even antimatter would be so valuable. This must be the luckiest first pirate run in the history of space piracy. Or I’m just that good.

“Wait,” I say. “You said it
resembles
a biosuit, Lila. So is it a bioglove, or – ”

“Neither,” Lila says. “I don’t know what it is exactly; it just resembles a biosuit.”

“Are we close enough for wide-spectrum?” I ask. “Give us a look inside.”

The screen flickers, and soon we see a black square filling the screen – the cargo pod – and inside it is a mix of infrared and UV spectrum image of the inside. There’s what looks like a human figure and another small thing, the biosuit.

“Doesn’t look like the human is armed,” Ramu says. “I can poke the skull out real easily – ”

“Look,” Delphie says, pointing. “I think it’s a woman.”

As we get closer, the image becomes sharper, and I can start to see the feminine curves of the human.

“Hmmm,” I say. “Nothing weaker at fighting than a human female. A curious choice for a lone defender. Is there any comms equipment on there?”

“No,” Lila says. “We’ll have to pull it in to talk, or board it.”

“Send me out there,” Ramu says. “You don’t want to pull something like this onto the ship. Too risky.”

I look at him and can see the greed in his eyes. If there is actually a biosuit on there, I can’t send Ramu in alone. Nothing would stop him from just putting the biosuit on and then double-crossing me. Never trust a mercenary.

“No,” I say. “We’ll pull it into our own cargo bay. Reel it in once we’re in range, Lila.”

“Yes, Captain.”

Ramu grunts, but doesn’t press the issue. I’ll have to keep an eye on him.

It’s reckless of me to pull the cargo pod onto my own ship, but at least Lila will have eyes, scanners, and all her other high-tech equipment pointed on the human and the biosuit. The other advantage – which relies on the idea that the human cares about saving her own skin – is that she won’t be able to unleash the full power of the biosuit on us without destroying the ship. The world record for a human wearing a biosuit is somewhere around 40 seconds, but 30 of those seconds are a slow and agonizing death.

“Shit,” Delphie whispers.

I look up and I see the small little cube shape melt down and reform into a sphere.

“Looks a hell of a lot like a biosuit,” Ramu says. “We’re sure she’s human?”

The woman touches the sphere, and it melts into her. From the infrared-UV composite view, she has become one single organism.

“Making logical assumptions,” Delphie says. “That is a totally standard Marauder biosuit, and that human has less than a minute left to live. We can just wait until she’s dead to – ”

“Pull her in faster!” I shout. “We can try to save her.”

“
Save
her?” Ramu scoffs. “What the fuck kind of pirates are you?”

“Pirates with heart,” I say, grinning widely.

I grab the big ceremonial blade just in case I need it, and I push off one of the handholds, floating myself toward my ship’s cargo bay.

“Come on!” I shout back to Delphie and Ramu. “I’ll need backup.”

“We could wait it out,” Ramu says behind me, as we float down the corridor. “Two, three minutes is all we need to be 100 percent sure. If it’s a human, she’ll be dead, and then we just peel the biosuit right off her.”

“No,” I say.

I don’t know why I’m feeling so charitable. I want that fucking suit, there’s no question about that, but if the woman fell for our ‘I want to grind your bones to dust’ ploy, and she felt forced to put on a biosuit – a painful death sentence – then I feel a certain amount of guilt. If we get to her in time, I can help her get the suit off.

“How do we get the suit off her?” Delphie says. “If she’s still alive, I mean.”

“Biosuits prefer Marauders,” Ramu says. “Just give it an alternative.”

That greedy fucker. I notice he said “Marauders.” If both Ramu and I go for the suit at once, will it prefer his full-blooded Marauder genes over my Seraph ones?

“Cargo pod is on board,” Lila’s voice echoes through the corridor. “Sealing airlocks.”

“Start to equalize the pressure from her pod into the ship,” I order.

I can see the airlock now; it’s only about 20 meters away.

“Yes, Captain,” Lila says. “If there is a biological threat on the pod, then – ”

“I know,” I say, cutting her off.

Marauder and Seraphim genes are good at fighting off infections that eat humans alive. It’s the most minor of the risks I’m taking right now.

“Pressure equalized,” Lila says.

“Pop it!” I shout.

The airlock is right in front of us now, and I see the hatch wheel spin as Lila obeys my order. Then the airlock pops open.

I expect to see a suffering woman or a corpse, but instead I see only a radiant angel.

The most beautiful woman I’ve ever set eyes on, with raven-black hair floating down along her shoulders and pale green eyes staring up at me. There’s fear in those eyes, but also fierce determination. She’s floating in front of us, her body straight, and the biosuit wrapped around her is bright orange and skin-tight.
Really
skin-tight. I nearly let go my sword as I stare at her glorious body.

If it were a Marauder biosuit, she’d be keeled over in pain and suffering by now, but instead she looks perfectly healthy. What the fuck is going on?

She raises a hand toward us, and I hear Ramu let out a fierce battle cry, but I don’t think he’s doing it for show this time.

Fuck. The
skull poker!

“Ramu! No!” I shout, but it’s too late.

W
hen I reach
out and touch Jerky, he melts and surges across my hand, up my arm and shoulder, and I even feel part of him press through my skin and into my spine. That sends an uncomfortable cold chill up and down my body, and my brain starts to feel like I ate a huge tub of ice cream in 30 seconds or less. I shudder as Jerky stretches across every centimeter of my body and begins to harden. Jerky, or the suit – I don’t know how to think of him now – begins to turn a bright orange as he hardens around me.

“How’d you know my favorite color?” I ask him, but he’s no longer just chirping and vibrating, he’s in my head. He’s part of me.

I can’t hear him, but I know what he’s thinking, and it’s something like,
‘I will protect you, but I need more jerky. Much more.’

We’re floating in zero-g, and I’ve already felt the shudder and vibrations of my cargo pod being locked into the pirate ship.

And now the airlock is hissing.

I eye the crate of jerky. I feel the hunger flaring up in my stomach. The bonding process must have used up a lot of calories.

I start to float toward the crate. Jerky is hungry, and he’s propelling us together toward the food. I can’t say I object.

I pull out a stick, tear off the wrapper, and start to eat. I eat as fast as I can, but my human biology is no match for how fast Jerky was able to eat before, and even before I can finish the first stick of jerky, I see the wheel on the hatch begin to turn.

I fight Jerky for control, and I imagine myself propelling back toward the door. When I think it, it simply happens. The suit is somehow able to expend energy to propel me around in zero-g.

I’m facing the hatch now head-first, as if it were below me and I was going to swim through it like a hoop. I reorient myself as if I was going to walk through it. I have no idea which kind of orientation is ideal for fighting off three deranged, alien pirates, but something about having my head pointed toward those three with their big blades doesn’t sit well with me.

The hatch begins to open, and I steel myself.

It pops open quite suddenly, and the three pirates are floating just on the other side.

The big Marauder is on my left, and he’s no longer holding the big sword, but rather a small little blade.

The Seraph woman is looking at me wide-eyed, and all hint of malice is gone from her face. She’s gone from a vicious cat to a curious one.

And the handsome Seraph? He’s
staring
at me, his eyes wide and his mouth hanging open. He’s still holding that giant blade, but he’s barely gripping it. His ears perk up like a dog seeing its owner come home after a long day at work, and I see his tongue run across his lips as his eyes run up and down my body.

And he’s still shirtless, and in person he’s not just handsome, but breathtaking. He no longer looks like he wants to grind my bones to dust...he looks like he wants
me
to grind
his
bone.

I begin to raise a hand. Maybe I can just wave ‘hi’ to them and defuse the whole situation –

The big Marauder kicks one of the handholds on the wall, propelling himself toward me. He lets out a terrifying roar that echoes and reverberates through the corridor and into my cargo pod. I feel that roar vibrate through my bones, and it pierces down into my heart. Fear overtakes me and adrenaline surges through me as the giant mass of alien muscle barrels toward me like a runaway truck.

I point my hand at him, and then Jerky takes over.

Orange melted biomass shoots out of my hand in thick strands – tendrils, as Marauders call them – and they slam into the horrifying alien pirate.

“Ramu, no!” the Seraph shouts.

I get the feeling that the two Seraphim don’t really mean me any harm. The big Marauder definitely wants to kill me, but I’m not a killer.

“Go easy on him, Jerky.”

The tendrils wrap around the Marauder’s ankles and wrists and begin to harden, which stops his forward movement. He’s held floating in mid-air just in front of me.

His muscles bulge as he fights against the tendrils, and I will them to stay solid, to –

My stomach churns, and the most ravenous hunger I’ve ever experienced completely overtakes me.

I lose focus on everything but my stomach, and the tendrils soften and fall away.

The big alien is floating dead-center in the corridor now, and he has to reach for another handhold to come at me again, but I’m already floating back toward the crate of jerky. I’m not eating to power up the suit this time, I’m eating to survive.

“Ramu!” the female Seraph shouts, and I see her grabbing him from the corner of my eye as I reach for more jerky.

“She’s not going to hurt us,” the male Seraph, Captain Kronos, says.

I bite into a stick of jerky, shoving the whole thing into my mouth so that I can start to unwrap the next one as I chew the first.

“She’s reloading!” I hear Ramu shouting. “We gotta’ kill her now! Let me go, Delphie!”

“Are you going to hurt us?” Kronos asks.

“No,” I try to say through a mouth-full of jerky.

“What do you want?” Delphie asks.

“Food!” I say, swallowing and pointing down at the crate.

I see Ramu’s foot press into Delphie’s stomach, and he pushes her off and down the corridor. And then he’s flying toward me again, but Kronos launches himself after Ramu. Ramu kicked off Delphie, and Kronos kicked off a solid handrail – Kronos is moving faster.

I hold my hand up in hopes of stopping Ramu, but Jerky seems deactivated. He’s out of food.

Kronos catches hold of Ramu’s foot, and then Kronos hooks his own foot against the outer rim of the airlock. Ramu stops dead just in front of me, but he throws the blade right at me.

“No!” Kronos shouts, and the giant sword flies forward. Are they fighting to see who gets to kill me?

I stare in dumb and useless disbelief as the tiny blade floats point first toward my face. Fear paralyzes me, and my first instinct is for Jerky to propel me away...but he’s not responding to my commands. By the time I think to use my own legs and kick off the ground, the blade is right on me.

But Kronos’s sword hits it at the last minute, knocking the small blade off-course and into a rapid spin. Both weapons clatter uselessly, many dozens of meters behind me at the end of the cargo bay.

The two men are grunting now and punching each other.

Delphie floats forward and rams into both of them. They try to ignore her and punch each other, but she grabs Ramu by the hair and pulls, hissing.

“Shit!” Ramu grunts. “Ahhh! Stop, Delphie!”

“You taught me to fight dirty, you big dumb bastard!” she screams.

She swings her foot, and she connects solidly right into Ramu’s balls.

He lets out a horrendous and pained wail, like a bear caught in a trap...and then stung by hundreds of bees.

Finally Kronos grabs the handrail and shoves Ramu, sending him floating down the corridor.

Kronos looks at me and grins.

I’m still too scared to smile, so I just look at him with a dumb expression.

“Strip off the suit,” he says, his voice suddenly serious.

“We just met,” I say.

He points at me, and his ears flick back and forth. “You gotta’ get it off!”

Oh, the biosuit. Jerky. Not my clothes.

“It will eat you alive from the inside!” He’s already floating toward me, his arms outstretched.

He slams into me and wraps his arms around me. The impact sends us into a spin, almost like a dance, as we both float through the cargo bay. He’s holding me tight – no, he’s pulling at my skin.

I try to grab him back to get him off me, but he’s shirtless so my hands just grope his huge back muscles. They slip and slide off his sweat, and his masculine scent fills my nostrils like a powerful aphrodisiac. I try to ignore that stupid and totally inappropriate desire, but it’s got my heart thumping and my cheeks flushing hot.

My hands slip off his back and settle onto his huge, strong arms.

He hits the wall back first, then clutches a handrail, which stabilizes us against the wall.

In the distance, I see Delphie giggling and stroking Ramu’s hair. Ramu doesn’t look happy, but he’s no longer trying to kill me.

“I can’t get it off!” Kronos says.

I imagine that I met him in a bar, and that we hit it off with some heavy flirting. I then imagine he took me back to his place, and that he wants me so badly that he’s fighting furiously to unclasp my bra, but failing.

“Shit, why can’t I get it off?” he shouts.

I start to laugh.

“It’s going to eat you alive from the inside!” he says, voice dead serious.

He’s running his hands along my back, and even though the biosuit is covering my clothes, I can
feel
his hands as if they were touching my bare skin. He has strong hands that are well-calloused, and they are so damn warm and nice against my skin. He was pinching gently at first, but now he’s almost tearing at my skin, and it starts to hurt.

“It’s deactivated,” I say. “There’s no danger.”

He meets eyes with me then, and his green eyes express true concern and confusion.

“Biosuits eat humans alive,” he says. “It shouldn’t be possible for it to go dormant.”

I look at him with a level expression. Should I tell him what I know? That this isn’t a regular biosuit. Just because he’s hot and kind-of-sort-of saved my life –
after
kidnapping me – should I trust him? He’s still a fucking pirate who attacked me.

“It’s not a regular biosuit,” I say. “I’m safe.”

Idiot. I shouldn’t have said that. Any information is too much, but when I see the relief wash across his rugged face, I feel much happier than I should. And when he smiles, oh God, when he smiles I feel something much worse and much stupider course all through my body.

“I see,” he says.

“So you can let go of me now,” I say.

He looks down in surprise at his hands. One is still pressed tightly and warm against my back, and the other is wrapped gently around my arm.

He lets go.

“Is he going to kill me?” I ask, pointing down the corridor toward Ramu.

“No,” Kronos says. “I’m the captain of this ship. No one disobeys my orders.”

“Then how come he still charged me and tried to kill me right after you said, ‘Ramu, no!’”

His face scrunches up, and his ears pull back. “That’s...that was...he’ll be reprimanded for that.”

“So, um,” I say, “what
is
going to happen to me?”

“We can dump you off next time we dock somewhere,” Kronos says.

So he’s not going to kill me. That’s a start.

“I need to get to Venus,” I say.

Kronos laughs.

“What’s so funny?”

“What you
need
doesn’t factor in here. I’m the captain, we go where I want us to go.”

“But I’m broke,” I say. “Everything I owned was on that ship, with those assholes who ran away and left me for dead.”

“Can you cook?” Kronos asks.

“Cook...what?”

“Food. Can you make food?”

“Of course, but what does that have to do with anything?”

“Delphie thinks she can cook, but she can’t. And Ramu is a mercenary, so he sure as hell won’t. I could pay you if you cook well.”

“Why can’t you cook?” I ask.

“I’m the captain. How do you think it would affect morale to see the captain slaving away in the kitchen?”

I sigh. “So...if I cook for you guys until we make it to the next planet or station, you’ll give me some money and drop me off?”

“This is a pirate ship, not a charity,” Kronos says. “We’ll be docking somewhere in like...a few days to sell off your biosuit. You can’t expect a huge paycheck for a few days’ worth of – ”

“Wait! You can’t take my biosuit!”

Kronos scrunches up his face at me. “Of course I can. I’m a pirate.”

“But...it’s
my
biosuit.”

“Yes,” Kronos says. “And I’m a pirate. My job is to forcefully steal things from people. I’m sure you understand.”

“No.
You
need to understand. This biosuit is special, it’s….”

“Special?” Kronos says. “To me that just means
valuable.
”

“You’re an asshole,” I snap.

“An asshole would have ripped that suit off you and killed you. I’ve offered you a job on the ship and free transport to safety. That’s why I’m a pirate with heart.”

“A pirate...with heart? You actually call yourself that?”

He grins at me. “Now take the biosuit off. I don’t want you getting attached.”

“I don’t know how,” I say.

He glares at me. “Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not lying,” I say. “This is the first time I’ve worn it.”

He narrows his eyes and says, “Truth or not, you’ll need to figure out how to get it off.”

“And why’s that?”

“Because,” he says. “Remember how Ramu came at you?”

I shudder.

“Yeah,” Kronos says. “You know why he came at you like that? He wants your suit. He’s a mercenary, and he’s greedy.”

“Greedier than you?”

Kronos puts a hand on his chest, and sucks air in through his teeth. “Come on, that hurts. I have heart, remember?”

I roll my eyes at him.

“Ramu will have zero interest in you once that suit is off,” Kronos says. “But so long as it’s all tight against your skin like that, you’ll want to sleep with one eye open.”

He looks down at my body, his eyes lingering.

“I thought you were captain,” I say. “And that your crew does nothing without your order.”

“Well,” Kronos says, “I want you to get that suit off so I can sell it, so let’s just say I’m not going to order Ramu one way or another. Consider him a force of nature. Test him at your own risk.”

“You’ll protect me,” I say, locking eyes with him.

“Don’t count on it,” he says.

“I saw already,” I say, pretending to have more confidence than I feel, “You won’t let him lay a finger on me.”

He steels his face against me, trying not to show any emotion. After a long pause, he simply says, “I’ll show you to the kitchen.”