Silas: Imperial Warrior (A Sci-Fi Alien Warrior Romance) (6 page)

She was humming to herself as she walked, shoes clicking on the pavement while she dreamed of the roast beef sandwich she was going to get. Toasted, probably, with swiss and cheddar. And some of those spicy pickles the shop had.

Maybe on the way home she’d stop for a milkshake and have that with whatever she ended up microwaving for dinner.

Katia was deep in thought, but that didn’t stop her from noticing when something bright and fiery streaked across the sky.

It was still light outside, but the sun was setting, and for a moment, she wasn’t sure what she was seeing. Katia lifted a hand to shade her eyes and she squinted hard up at the sky, watching as, yes, something that smoked and burned crossed the sky and then disappeared.

She stood there for a moment, just watching for any sign of what might have happened, and then there was a crash in the distance. Something had definitely just fallen or had been shot down out of the air.

“I hope everyone’s alright,” she murmured to herself and then kept walking.

There wasn’t anything for her to do about it, after all. It wasn’t her problem to solve, and she didn’t even know where the...whatever it was had ended up. She had enough to do without going to hunt down some kind of crash site.

And so she put it out of her mind and found a smile for the young man working the counter at the sandwich shop, putting in her order.

Of course, things that streak and burn across the sky aren’t really ‘out of sight, out of mind’ kinds of things. Katia went back to work, finished her shift, filled Ava in on what was happening, and then made her way out to her car, yawning and stretching as she prepared to head home. The next day was her day off, but she usually ended up coming in for a bit anyway, just to make sure things were running smoothly.

Ava teased her all the time about it, calling her a ‘helicopter parent’ when it came to the inn. Katia didn’t think she could be blamed for wanting to make sure her business succeeded.

Either way, she was glad for the chance to sleep in on Saturday, and she drove home, her phone plugged into the sound system of her car, letting her sing along to some of her favorite songs.

So she was in high spirits when she made it back to her place, still humming along under her breath as she stepped up to her door and moved to unlock it. The house was small, but much better than the apartment she’d rented right out of college, and it was perfect for just her. One day she wanted to move to a bigger place, but this was exactly what she needed for now while the inn was still establishing itself.

“One day,” she said aloud to herself.

“Help,” someone answered.

Katia wasn’t proud of the way she screamed, but when you thought you were alone in the darkness and then suddenly
someone started talking to you
, she was pretty sure that was the appropriate response.

Either way, it was what she did, and when someone huge and hulking stepped out of the shadows on the side of her house, she dropped her keys on the porch and backed up, hands shaking.

She lived in a small neighborhood, a safe one, but there was always the chance that something like this could happen, and she usually kept pepper spray on her for reasons like this, but for the moment she couldn’t do much of anything other than stand there and watch this...intruder approach.

As he got closer, the light from the street lights hit his face, and she saw that he was bruised and bloody in places.

A fight with someone else?

Was he running away from something or someone?

She opened her mouth to scream again, but he held his hands up. His voice was deep when he spoke, but his words weren’t in English. They were thick and stumbling, and she didn’t understand any of it.

“I...I’m sorry?” Katia said, even though she knew it made more sense for her to run, to get inside her house or get to somewhere else that would be safe.

But the man came closer, and it was apparent that there was a look of fear in his eyes. He was hurt and he looked dazed and confused, and something in Katia wouldn’t let her scream or lash out at him. Instead, she took a step forward.

“Are you alright?”

The man was huge. Taller than her by nearly two feet, thick with muscle. His skin was...huh. It seemed to shine with a strange light, almost a silvery cast to it, and she blinked, confused.

He held up his hands higher, brow furrowed.

“Alright,” he pronounced, saying the word slowly, almost like he was turning it over in his mouth, trying to get a feel for it. “Alright.”

“I don’t think you are,” Katia said slowly. “You look hurt.”

“Hurt,” he said, touching his fingers to the sticky wounds on his face and then looking down at himself. “Yes. Help.”

Maybe he had a concussion. Maybe he was slowly bleeding to death. Although, he was up and mobile, so it couldn’t be that bad, could it? She knew the right thing to do would be to call the police.

They could get him to a hospital or wherever it was he needed to go, and then she wouldn’t have to involve herself with this.

But…

But.

He looked so lost and confused. And he was
bleeding
, and the thought of going into her house and just leaving him there to bleed and be hurt alone made her stomach churn with bad feeling.

If her mother or her friends were there, they would be yelling at her to leave this man alone and take her butt into the house. It wasn’t her problem, and getting involved was dumb, but. Well, her mind was already made up.

Apparently.

“Hold on,” she said gently. “Can you do that?”

The man seemed to consider and then nodded.

Katia dipped down and picked up her keys from the porch where she’d dropped them. It was a wonder that none of her neighbors had come out to see what she was screaming about, and she shook her head at the thought of people so wrapped up in their own lives that they couldn’t check in on someone who might be in danger.

She fit the key into the lock on the door and then let them both in. With fingers that still shook slightly, she turned the lights on in the living room and then gaped when she turned to look at her unexpected guest.

He looked even larger in her tiny house, his head nearly reaching to the ceiling. He seemed to take up more space than should have been possible, though she noted he was holding his arm at an angle that caused the blood to run down his arm and soak into his shirt, rather than dripping it all over her floor.

Katia could appreciate that.

More than his size, though, was the fact that his skin did indeed have a silvery sheen to it. And under it, his skin was...blue. Either he had hypothermia in the middle of autumn, or… Or something very strange was happening here.

Maybe both, honestly.

His hair was a normal color. Brown and cut short, and his eyes were a piercing blue, a bit darker than the shade of his skin. As they both stood there in her living room, he blinked and looked around, clearly trying to get his bearings.

“Where is this?” he asked, voice raspy.

“Uh. Mansfield?” Katia said. “Just on the outskirts of it, at least.”

“But what planet?” the man insisted.

Katia’s eyes widened. “What do you mean what planet? It’s Earth.”

“Earth,” he said, and a look of distress flashed across his face. “I am not supposed to be here.”

And then, right there in the middle of her living room floor, he collapsed.

Chapter Three: The Hunt

Flying was amazing.

It had been so long since Silas had been able to strap himself into a little speeder and break records for the fastest time streaking through the darkness of space. As he’d predicted, his new rank kept him at his desk quite a bit. He sent others out into the field, out into the vastness of space, and then waited for them to report back. Sometimes he tried to live vicariously through them, but it wasn’t the same.

There was nothing that compared to the way this felt. Just him and his shuttle and the stars whizzing by as he chased down bad guys who would be brought to justice.

Maybe once he caught them and had them tethered to his speeder, he’d take the long way back to Gathra. Who knew when the next time he’d be able to get in one of these would be, after all. The paperwork for this would take him weeks to complete, he was sure. So a little joy ride didn’t seem out of the question.

But first he had to catch the Fremeri.

For a race of creatures that was supposed to have been extinct for longer than Silas had been alive, they were distressingly well outfitted. Their shuttle was old, but definitely not old enough to have been made before they supposedly vanished and died off. Either someone had made them a new one, they’d somehow made it themselves, or it was stolen.

One of those options seemed the most likely, that they’d stolen it from someone and were using it now to cause chaos, but the real question was why.

As he chased down the Fremeri shuttle, he punched in the number for Cress’ personal tablet into the speeders comm system. The chiming noise that indicated it was connecting rang out cheerfully in the speeder for a bit before it was connected.

“Captain?”

“Cress,” Silas said. “Report.”

“Well. You’re not gonna like what I have to say,” he said. “In fact, could you tell the Empress so I don’t have to? Last thing I need is her yelling at me. Again.”

“The last time was completely your fault, and you know it,” Silas remarked. “
Report
, Cress.”

Cress sighed. “Fine. They all got away.”

“What do you mean they all got away?” he demanded. “What about the one Hamara shot twice?”

“Dead.”

“
What?”

If Hamara had shot the Fremeri again after he’d
explicitly
told her to stand down—

“Some kind of poison, we think,” Cress was saying. “She pulled something out of her tunic, and then...yeah. Convulsions, some hissing, some really gross foaming at the mouth, and then she was dead.”

Silas swore harshly. Cress was right. The Empress was going to be furious with them for that. “I’ll just have to bring back these to get information from instead,” he said.

“There’s more, Silas,” Cress said.

Cress didn’t always use his title, mostly to make fun of it, but when they were on a mission like this, the use of Silas’ first name caught his attention, even as it opened a pit of dread in his stomach. “What is it?”

“We...we found that boy. The one they drained. He...well. He’s completely drained. We collected his...body to take to the clinic and see what Perse can make of it, but. It was horrible. And he wasn’t the only one.”

“How do you know that?”

“When we were leaving the area where the boy was, we heard a woman crying, so we went to investigate. She was holding her daughter's body. And it was in the same condition.”

Silas swore again. “What are they doing this for?” he demanded. “Is it sustenance? Are they...
feeding
off of people?”

“Couldn’t say, Captain. If we manage to pull some of them in for questioning, then maybe we can figure it out. Whatever it is, it doesn’t look good.”

“You can say that again,” Silas sighed. “Alright, thanks for the update, Cress. I’ll bring these back, and we’ll see what we can do from there. And
yes,
” he cut in before Cress could say anything else. “I’ll be the one to contact the Empress. She’ll be expecting to hear it from me, anyway. But do me a favor and make sure none of the others manage to kill themselves before we get answers out of them, alright?”

“You got it, Captain.”

Silas disconnected and continued to fly. He put on a burst of speed, teeth grated. Now he was even more determined to make sure that this scum didn’t get away. They had things to answer for.

All he needed to do was get close enough to hail them and then tether them, and—

And that was a huge fleet of ships.

There, in front of him, were no less than ten ships, all decked out in aging but functional weaponry. And all of it was pointed right at him. The ship he had been chasing joined the fleet, and all at once, they opened fire on him.

Jets of light streaked out of their cannons and guns, and Silas swore as he threw the switch to activate the shields on his speeder. This kind of ship wasn’t made to withstand that much fire, though, and it wasn’t long before the barrier began to weaken.

He needed to get out of there.

If his ship went down, then he was going down with it, and that would spell the end of him more than likely. He couldn’t even say where he was just yet, and he needed to make it back to Gathra to let them know that this was bigger than they knew.

But if he just let them get away, how would they find out their plans?

He was torn, and his barrier was weakening by the second. Silas had to do something, or it wouldn’t matter what he had seen because he’d likely be dead.

As the barrier around his ship shimmered and then died, Silas put on a burst of speed and wheeled the speeder around, racing away from their fire.