Silas: Imperial Warrior (A Sci-Fi Alien Warrior Romance) (10 page)

Of course that was short lived when a scream erupted from the bathroom.

It was interesting how he didn't stop to think. All he did was react, moving faster than he'd moved since he'd come to this planet and actually vaulting over the couch. He pushed open the door to the bedroom, rushing through it without stopping to look at anything before he grabbed the handle of the bathroom door and pushed that open as well.

"What happened?" he demanded.

Katia was there, naked and wide eyed, and she jumped when she saw him standing there. "What are you doing?" she demanded.

"You screamed," Silas said, as if it should be obvious.

"So you come bursting in here!?"

"You screamed," he said again, slower this time, in case she somehow couldn't understand why that might be worrying to him. "What happened?"

"There was a spider," she mumbled, putting her hands over her face. Which...actually didn't do anything to cover her body at all. Silas tried hard not to look.

"A what?"

She pointed at the corner of the shower floor with one hand, and Silas leaned in to see a small insect like creature there. It was black with eight legs, and as he watched, it scuttled further away from the spray of the water.

Imagine, screaming at the sight of something like that. The ones on his planet were much, much more frightening, and he let out a low breath, relieved that there wasn't a bigger problem.

"Is that all?" he asked, leaning in and capturing the spider in his hands. "I thought you were hurt or someone had broken in."

"Well, I'm fine," Katia said, bordering on hysterical. "So you can leave now. Okay. Bye."

Silas chuckled. "My apologies."

"Oh, right. You sound real sorry," she snapped. "Get out!"

"I'm going," he said, and left the bathroom, closing the door behind him. He hadn't meant to, but he'd gotten a very good look at her naked body in there, and he had to let out a messy breath because he very much wanted to touch her skin and see if it was as soft as it looked. He had wondered at the extent of her sun spots, and now he knew that they went all the way down her neck and chest and then even further down. He wondered if her inner thighs were spotted. If they were warm and silken. How they'd feel wrapped around him...

Silas shook himself. This was not what he was here for, and he still had the spider in his hand. Carefully, he set the creature outside and then went back to his waiting.

"I really am sorry I walked in on you," Silas said as Katia drove. "It wasn't intentional."

"'Walked in' is kind of mild for what you actually did," she pointed out. "That was more of a definite 'burst', you know. And it's alright. Maybe knock next time you think I'm being killed."

"I'll see what I can do," he said. "It's not really how I operate, though. In my line of work, hesitation can mean someone dies. I didn't want that to be you."

Glancing at her, he could see that she was trying to appear like she was still being stern, but there was a smile playing in the corners of her mouth. It was a lovely thing, and he wanted to reach out and trace it with his fingers. He didn't, though, instead keeping his hands to himself.

He wasn't here to find someone to touch anyway. He was here to... Well, he wasn't supposed to be here in the first place, but for right now, he had a mission. Finding his ship and whatever was left of it was paramount. Who knew what was happening on Gathra and the surrounding planets while he was here enjoying himself. Silas needed to focus.

That never used to be a problem for him. His job was his life, really. Being a member of HIMA meant giving up other things. It meant that when the Empress needed you, you dropped everything to go do what she bid. It meant that your safety was second to the safety of others and that everything you did was for the good of your people.

He'd always believed that. It had always been the way he lived his life, ever since he'd joined up. Sometimes he had time for drinks or dating, the occasional tumble with a pretty girl, but he'd always known that he wasn't likely to have more than that.

And that was fine.

He'd chosen this life because it was right for him, and he had no regrets.

None at all.

"What's wrong?" Katia asked, and Silas shook himself from his thoughts.

"Nothing. Why would something be wrong?"

"Because I asked you if your job was really that bleak, and you were staring morosely into space for the last thirty seconds?" she said. "Which probably answers my question, I guess."

"It's not bleak," Silas told her. "It's just the way things are. Someone has to make those sacrifices, and I chose to be that person. It's an honor."

"If you say so," she said. "Can we talk about something less depressing?"

Silas nodded. He didn't want to dwell on sad things. "Of course."

"Great. So, the article said that two little boys found the smoking wreck of your ship and then went to find their parents. The parents called the police, of course, but they live in Butler and nothing ever happens quickly in Butler, so I'm willing to bet it's all still out there waiting for you."

A frown furrowed his brow. "The law enforcement won't have done anything? It's been seven days."

Apparently that was funny because Katia laughed. "I'd be surprised if they even took the woman seriously. If it's not a murder or some high profile robbery, then the police in Butler aren't really on the job. Smoking wreckage probably isn't in their job description, and with no one reported missing, they don't really have a reason to care."

And people wondered why humans had such a bad reputation. If things like this were allowed to happen, then it was no wonder. But he supposed he shouldn't be complaining. It worked in his favor, after all, since he wanted it to be undisturbed.

"I can't believe you walked this far with those injuries," Katia said, shaking her head as she took a turn. "It's like ten miles from out here to my house."

Silas shrugged a shoulder. "I didn't have a choice."

"But why didn't you stop at some other place and ask for help? Why my house?" From the way she asked it, it seemed like it was something that had been bothering her for a while. Honestly, Silas didn't have a real answer for her. It hadn't been intentional, he'd been so out of it once he'd pulled himself from the smoking wreck of his ship.

"I don't know," he replied honestly. "Nowhere else felt right. I walked and I saw lights and vehicles, but they didn't seem safe. I was out of it, but I knew I had to get to a place where I would be safe if I ever wanted to see my planet again."

Katia was quiet for a moment after he spoke, chewing on her lip as she drove. "And you thought you'd be safe with me?"

"Of course." That was easy enough to answer. His intuition rarely let him down when it came to things like that. "I was right, wasn't I?"

She shot him a small smile. "Seems like you were. I'm glad you thought you'd be safe with me. I'm glad you feel safe here. I...I don't know how to explain it, but I'm glad you're here."

They held eye contact while stopped at a light and then the little automated voice announced that their destination was on the right, ruining the moment.

...Which was for the best. Because there weren't supposed to be moments. Silas didn't want to take advantage of Katia at all.

"I remember this," he said, clearing the silence that had fallen between them. "It wasn't this light out when I crashed, and I had other things on my mind at the time, but I remember it."

It was a small thatch of wooded area where he'd come down, and Silas could remember being in the falling speeder, trying to regain some control over it so he wouldn't crush anyone in his landing. He'd aimed away from the road, from where he could see vehicles passing by, going for the trees.

They had scratched his ship and broken as he'd fallen through them, but when he finally crash landed, no one had been around. Silas remembered being in the cockpit for long minutes, injured and dazed, listening to the sound of the speeder's sensors going haywire as the alarm blared.

The AI had announced over and over again that 'There has been a crash' urging him to 'Please immediately exit the craft', and it had taken long moments before he'd been able to clear his head enough to realize what that meant.

Everything had hurt, and he'd had to punch his way out of the wreckage in order to get free. He never wanted to experience that again.

Katia parked the car, and they got out together, him in the lead, and her close behind.

"I've never been out here before," she murmured. "Not to these woods, anyway. I don't think people are supposed to go in them. So of course there were two little boys walking around." She shook her head.

"We'll make this quick," Silas promised. He didn't want to get her into trouble just for helping him. "You can stay with the car, if you want."

"Are you kidding?" she demanded. "I want to see this thing."

Silas grinned and continued to walk. Being able to share something like this with her, even if it was broken and wrecked and maybe stripped in the middle of the woods, excited him. He'd seen so much of her world and what it had to offer that he wanted to show her something of his.

They crunched through fallen leaves and branches, listening to the sounds of the winding road get fainter as they climbed up a small hill.

And there, at the top, was the speeder.

Or what was left of it, anyway.

It didn't look like anyone had been tampering with it, but it was definitely destroyed. The side he'd come down on was crumpled in beyond all recognition, and the glass on the windows was shattered. It was a wonder the fuel tank hadn't exploded, but he supposed he'd leaked out most of his fuel in the warp path. Thank the stars for something, at least.

Silas sighed and stepped closer, trying to figure out how he was going to go about this.

"Wow," Katia breathed from behind him. The speeder was small to him, mostly because it was always a rather cramped fit for someone of his size, but he supposed to her it looked large and exciting, even in this condition. "This brought you to Earth."

"It did," Silas replied, trying to see it through her eyes. Speeders were the smallest and least glamorous of the ships that came in and out of Gathra. They had much bigger ones for travel, and even bigger ones for diplomatic missions and then there were the warships that could hold an entire branch of HIMA and had their own weapons systems. Speeders were hardly impressive, but to a human, it had to be something to see. "It was never meant to, of course. Speeders like this are meant to go fast for short distances. They carry maybe one extra passenger, and they are not designed for comfort."

"So if you had meant to come to Earth, what would you have come in?" Katia asked.

Silas did not say that he wouldn't have meant to come to Earth. He did not say that it had never been one of his plans to come to this planet with its strange customs and strange people and things he didn't understand. That would just hurt her feelings, and he didn't want to do that to her.

"In one of our diplomatic vessels, of course," he said with a smile. "Built to hold an entire legion of us, decked out with the finest comforts. You could have an entire state dinner aboard one of the diplomatic fliers and never feel any turbulence.

Katia grinned. "Sounds very nice. I'm sure you would have been well received in that. Maybe one day I'll get to see one."

"Anything's possible," Silas murmured, even though he didn't really think that was one of the things that was possible.

But he had bigger things to worry about than that, and he began to walk the wreckage, pulling out things that looked like they would be useful, like they would still work.

He had just enough practice with tech that maybe he could put something together that worked. Maybe he could piece together something that would let him get a message out or a signal or something. Anything that would tell his people where he was and let them know he wasn't dead.

Katia watched as he pried the door open and rummaged around in the refuse. There were splintered pieces of all sorts of things, and he tried not to let himself feel like a failure as he hunted. His tablet had to be in there somewhere, and there were pieces of the ship's communications device that he could salvage.

The Fremeri had gotten the better of him this time, but it wouldn't happen again. The next time they showed their faces, he would be taking a note from Hamara and shooting them before they could do anything.

He was determined as he combed over everything, assembling a pile of anything that even remotely looked like it could be useful. Anything that could be hooked up to something else got added, and Silas was breathing hard by the time he was running out of useful things to find.

He jumped when a soft hand touched his back and then turned to see Katia standing there, looking concerned.

"Are you alright?"

Silas nodded. Even if he wasn't he needed to be. He was a Captain of Her Imperial Majesty's Army. He was meant to be in control of himself and his emotions. He was meant to be better than this.

"Silas," Katia said. "It's okay if you're not."