Command E-Book

Alexandra Norton

• Herausgeber: Alexandra Norton
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

He’s a ruthless alien invader. She’s a loyal aide to the woman whose husband he overthrew. They're not supposed to be doing this.

When Alina Argoud finds the brutal alien commander who seized control of her ship bleeding out on her cabinstep, her first instinct is to let him die. After all, Threxin is responsible for nearly ejecting her entire crew into the void. He should be her worst enemy.

And yet she tends to his wounds in the secrecy of her cabin. She presses her hands to his heated skin, feeling the pulse of life—of danger—underneath, knowing full well that when he wakes, he might thank her or he might kill her.

Or, worst of all...  he might claim her.

Command: Secret Alien Romance is a steamy journey into the heart of forbidden love where loyalty is shattered and primal hunger blurs the lines between ally and enemy. A steamy sequel to  Colossal: Dark Romance in Deep Space, this book will leave the reader breathless for more.

Leseprobe

COMMAND

SECRET ALIEN ROMANCE

HEARTS WITH TEETH

BOOK 2

ALEXANDRA NORTON

Copyright © 2023 by Alexandra Norton

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Cover designed by MiblArt.

Edited by LY Publishing Services.

CONTENTS

Preface

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Epilogue

Also by Alexandra Norton

Also by Alexandra Norton

PREFACE

Dear Reader,

If you haven’t already read the first book in this series, Colossal: Dark Romance in Deep Space, I recommend you do that first to gain valuable context about the world and existing characters. Having said that, Command can also be read on its own.

You are about to read a science fiction romance that violently and passionately explores gaps and bridges between species.

This book tackles topics of anxiety, death, violence, instinct, family, and love. Always, always love.

Playlist:

https://alexandranorton.com/command-playlist

Content warnings:

https://alexandranorton.com/content-warnings/

Alexandra

CHAPTER1

ALINA

Alina had been in the laundry room all day, supervising the folding. There wasn’t much to it—the machinery did all the hard work for her—but it was hot. The sandgrinders scrubbing away at batches of clothes were just in the next room, and they may as well have been ovens.

After the sand scrub got most of the grime and dust out of the clothing, each piece would be sprayed with minimal amounts of H2O to freshen whatever was left and run the silicone granules into a central drain for recycling. The fabrics would then be air blasted for drying and, finally, placed into the folding machines.

Alina hauled the stack of folded clothes from the output bin and distributed them between the chute slots that would bring them up to relevant parts on the upper decks.

It was boring, menial work. The kind of work Alina thought she wouldn’t be doing again when she was assigned as a dedicated assistant to Orion Halen’s wife-to-be. She had been excited about the opportunity, even more so when she realized Kaia wasn’t from Colossal. Hers really was an Old Earth fairy tale—a downtrodden commoner getting spotted by a wealthy prince. Like Cinderella in those old animated vids, minus the crappy shoes.

Alina figured Kaia was around her age. She’d pictured them growing close over the course of her service. They could share secrets. She had been assigned a cabin across from Kaia’s own, before Kaia had moved to Orion’s quarters. But she hadn’t even bothered telling Alina she was changing cabins until Alina spent hours trying to find her one day.

At least Alina got to keep her cabin up on the command deck.

She paused, realizing she’d been shoving folded clothes into their chutes a little more aggressively than they deserved. She was meant to have finished her shift half an hour ago, but her replacement hadn’t showed up. The machinery of Colossal’s laundromats waited for no one, so Alina had no choice but to bear it.

The shift disruption was pretty understandable. It was the day, after all. They’d finally be arriving at X1s Galaxy. Alina wasn’t sure what the plan was from there. From what she’d gathered, Orion Halen intended to abandon the mission as soon as his late mother’s override instructions deactivated upon their arrival. Why, Alina didn’t know. They were already here. Might as well scope out the planets for something like Earth, right?

Alina smoothed down the collar of a sweater. She wasn’t really qualified to have an opinion on the matter. She’d caught snippets of conversations in her infrequent errands for Kaia, but not enough to have any understanding of what was going on. Alina thought there was something bad at X1s that Kaia and Orion Halen meant to avoid. Whatever it was, she was glad they were dealing with it. It wasn’t for her to worry about.

Alina glanced at the time in her Neurosync augmented vision. Her replacement, Tristan, was now forty-seven minutes late.

She subcommed the man. Hey, everything okay?

Alina wasn’t expecting such a quick reply from a guy who was skipping out on his shift. She’d figured Tristan got distracted in one of the viewing theaters, probably lost track of time in the commotion.

No. Don’t come up.

Alina barely had time to wonder about the ominous instruction when the floor beneath her feet trembled with a faint vibration that soon escalated into a reverberating shudder. The only time she’d felt such a full-body shake before was after a jump, but that was always preceded by deactivation of gravity and the awkward sensation of her body dispersing into thin air before waking up reconstituted. A good jump mech made the sensation as subdued as possible, but you always felt something. You always knew you jumped.

What’s going on?

I don’t know, Tristan subvocalized. Just stay there.

Alina paced the room, her duties forgotten. The folding machine kept working, spitting out neat bundles of clothes that had begun spilling to the floor as they overflowed.

She looked down at her hands. Her coral-painted fingers were shaking, but she felt nothing—not even the beating of her own heart as another tremble rocked the ship. It culminated in a lurch all around her, this time followed by a deep, pervading rumble that grew deafening in her ears.

Something was hitting them. And it sounded close.

The laundromat was deep in the bowels of Colossal. There wasn’t much between Alina and the empty space outside. A hole could just appear right under her feet—or in the wall. There could be explosions as it opened up and sucked Alina out to nothing.

She couldn’t stay there.

Alina was at the maintenance elevator just as soon as the thought crossed her mind. She punched the buttons, but they wouldn’t work. She wheezed a short, high-pitched whine, rushing for the emergency stairs. It was going to be a long climb.

* * *

“New Commander authenticated…”

Alina faltered and lurched forward on the third flight of stairs. Her grip on the narrow railing barely stopped her from falling face first into the metal grill of a step.

A subcomm alert came moments later, instructing everyone to shelter in place and get away from the halls.

Orion Halen was dead.

Kaia. Alina’s thoughts went immediately to her charge—Orion had been the only person she cared about on this whole ship. How the hell was she going to get through this?

But Orion hadn’t had an heir. Who could his replacement—this new commander—possibly be? If Orion were dead, the ship should have no commander at all. And that meant they were dead too. All of them.

And yet the calm voice overhead was insisting, repeatedly, that there was one.

Something had gone horribly wrong.

Alina picked up her pace, pushing her protesting legs well beyond their limits.

Kaia? Are you all right? I’m on my way.

No reply came, but whatever tragedy had befallen Orion would be taking Kaia’s full attention. Besides, ignoring Alina’s comms wasn’t exactly a rare occurrence for Kaia at the best of times. But as Kaia’s official assistant, Alina had access to her location, pulling it up in her NS: the command center.

When she finally climbed the stairs up to the Common Residence Deck, Alina tried the elevators again, and thankfully this one worked. She rubbed down her burning thighs and gulped a few steadying breaths as it took her up to the command deck.

When she got there, the deck was eerily quiet. Silent alarms flashed overhead, flooding the hall with intermittent flares of red and yellow. Every little hair on Alina’s body stood on end as she walked, her skin buzzing with pins and needles.

She saw blood in a passage crossing the main hall. A big smear of it that blended with the red light of an overhead alarm. Orion’s blood? Alina spurred her feet from a brisk walk to a run. All she could do was focus on her charge. Damn it, if Alina would have just insisted harder for Kaia to let her do her job, she’d be there right now instead of clambering through half the ship to get to her. What if, for once, Kaia needed her? What if she was too late?

The door to the command center was already open, and Alina took a sharp running turn inside.

“Mrs. Halena?” she called, expecting the need to shout over a mass of commotion.

The first thing she spotted was Kaia, standing beside the commander’s chair where Orion sat, very alive. “Are you all⁠—”

A massive black arm slammed into her chest, stopping her dead in her tracks and knocking the air from her lungs.

Everything was a blur as Alina was tossed back against a wall, and it took her a few seconds too long to get her bearings and process what her eyes were seeing.

A giant stood before Orion in an exosuit, long legs raising him to the commander’s platform. He wore a black helmet, which was cocked to the side as he stared down at Orion Halen in the seat.

The wall behind her shifted, and Alina finally recognized that it wasn’t a wall. Someone huge was forcing her against their body, an arm clamped tight around her waist. Alina tensed, but didn’t fight as she tried to figure out what the hell she was supposed to do to help Kaia up there.

The suited one standing before Orion spoke. The voice was deep—male—and too quiet for her to make out the words. Kaia’s fists were bunched, her eyes flashing. Orion looked calmer, which was… confusing.

At least he was alive. The notification had been a mistake. Maybe something came loose when the ship was jostled earlier.

Only a moment later, Orion rose from the commander’s seat and stood aside. To Alina’s utter confusion, the giant took his place, which was just ridiculous, not least because he looked way too big for that thing. More than that, Colossal ran on Orion Halen’s blood alone. If this was a coup, whoever staged it was an idiot. For a moment Alina thought she may be dreaming, because this was exactly the kind of thing that made no sense. She wriggled against the solid expanse into which she was pressed in a sort of check of solidity, and the expanse grunted in response.

If it was a dream, it was not letting her go. Alina could only watch as the giant settled in the seat meant for the commander of the colony ship Colossal. Then huge black-gloved hands came up to unclasp the helmet and lift it over his head.

She squinted into the blue backlight emanating from the chin being revealed.

Shamefully, it took a few more seconds after the helmet was fully removed for Alina to register what she was seeing, and that it wasn’t a backlight at all. That was when she finally screamed.

The uhyre turned his monstrous blue-gashed face toward her, making her shrink back into whoever was trapping her. And whoever it was, it dawned now, felt way too big to be… human. She twisted her head back with the hard pit of realization seeding in her stomach, but she couldn’t see past her captor’s suit and helmet. All she could see was that the person… the creature… must’ve been over eight feet tall.

Alina slapped her hands over her mouth to muffle her cry, hoping the uhyre in the commander’s chair would maybe just forget she ever drew his attention. But instead of turning away, the alien gurgled something low and grating in her direction. The thing behind her gurgled back.

CHAPTER2

THREXIN

The reclamation of the ship did not take long. Once they destroyed the enemy’s combat fighters with their own planetary missiles and satellite nukes, it was only a matter of maneuvering around the ship’s mounted projectiles, latching to the hull, and searing a speedy but careful opening in its surface to accommodate a pressurized passage tube.

It took much longer to do so with this ship than it had with Elssian, Threxin acknowledged with some pride. In fact, Clossal as a whole looked much more impressive. It was a massive and practical black beast, with zero effort spent on appearances and all of it on defenses, however useless against his efforts.

Just at that time, his Clossal objected to being underestimated by landing a hit on their transport vessel.

“Shoq,” his brother swore next to him, adjusting to keep the transport steady as the mechanic in the back did his work.

Threxin made for the tail of the craft just in time to watch his men push the seared hull inward. They looked back at him through the transparent sealed tube they had created between the transport vessel and the colony ship.

Threxin secured his helmet. Renza exited the cockpit already prepared. They exchanged raised chins over the heads of the others. Finally Threxin entered the tube and, on the other side, pushed through the barrier of the opening sealed to Clossal’s hull gash.

As expected, the humans had blasted oxygen from the part of the ship Threxin had been targeting. It looked like a storage area, strewn with containers full of shiny packs. Threxin ripped one of them open with gloved fingers while two of his men put a temporary seal back on the hull and two others worked at the door on the other side. Green gel spilled up from the packet, floating in beads around his head. Threxin appreciated the magnetic force holding his boots to the floor in the absence of gravity.

He hoisted his weapon from the harness on his shoulder and approached the door when it looked like the work was nearly finished. His brother stood beside him, followed by twenty other males and three females.

“Kill them all?” Renza checked.

“May as well.”

The door opened on laser fire, and they killed them all.

Threxin was wiping human blood spatter from his visor when red alarms shrieked overhead and oxygen was once again vented with a deafening gush. He ducked out of the way of bodies and equipment that careened toward him.

“Shoq,” he muttered, nodding at his men to take the next door. This was not convenient.

This time Threxin did not waste any time while the others were dispatching another group of humans. He scanned the space for any semblance of a gene reader. Spotting it, he cleared the bodies in its path and unsealed his suit. Shrugging his arm free to expose his hand, Threxin struck his palm to the indentation in the wall. For several ticks he waited, hoping the thing was indeed what he thought it must be.

It was. He smiled at the sensation of faint pricks applied to his palm.

A high-pitched sound chimed overhead and a soothing voice surrounded him with a Human phrase, playing over and over. It took Threxin some time to wrestle his mind into processing the language—Universal—so the repetition was appreciated.

“New Commander authenticated.”

* * *

The human female who had burst into the command center in a panic continued to interrupt matters.

“Quiet her,” Threxin told Renza, who did the job by slamming his knuckles into the side of the female’s tiny head. He pushed her body away as she went limp and crumpled to the floor.

Threxin turned his attention back to the hybrid before him. His kin.

“I note the resemblance,” he mused in Universal. Barely, but it was there. The faint glow behind this male’s eyes, this Orion Halen, matched his own, and the male’s movements betrayed a certain jerky kinship. He was bigger and wider than the other humans too. Not as big as anyone in Threxin’s cohort, of course, even the females. But bigger.

“What do you want?” his human-kin asked.

It took a few ticks for Threxin to catch up with the pace and manner of the human speech and translate the question in his head.

“My ship, of course.”

“Don’t need my permission for that,” Orion Halen leveled him with a dull glare.

Threxin scanned the commander’s seat in which he had settled while he processed the male’s words. He ran the sharp tips of his fingers down the sleek armrests as he searched for the sampler port. When he thought he understood well enough, Threxin huffed a chuckle. “I do not need you for anything.”

He held his wrist over the probable spot. To his satisfaction, the sampler needle extracted itself with a little click and hovered at a point just above Threxin’s right wrist. His apertures tightened as some of the resignation Threxin had sensed in the human’s demeanor was replaced with a blackness he should recognize, but of course never could.

Threxin smiled as he lowered his wrist and the sampler found purchase in his vein. He noted that Orion’s own arm had a small round socket embedded into a nearby spot—he would need to arrange for that.

“Transmit to Elssian,” the uhyre instructed.

Threxin followed the former commander’s gaze over his shoulder toward a pale-faced human shaking down at the control deck.

Something nonverbal passed between them. When the human moved to unsteady action, Threxin growled a warning, and weapons clicked from the door where his cohort stood ready.

“She’s doing what you said,” Orion spoke, slowly this time. “She’s the comms officer. Configures the transmission.”

Threxin studied him, then the “comms officer,” who was frozen in place as she waited. He grunted his assent, to which the officer and Orion Halen exchanged communicative looks again. Threxin looked to the thermaview hull where the feed would be projected and waited.

There was still the small angry female who stood behind his human-kin’s side, and the fury rolling off her made Threxin’s limiter work in overdrive. She was, for some reason, not as fearful as a human should be, but he would deal with that later.

The humans recoiled in unison when the view of Elssian’s command center appeared on the projection, along with the technically living but practically very dead commander of that ship. It had taken some time to find the right configuration of Elssian and Apthian technology to keep Elssian’s human key just alive enough to retain control of the ship. It had been damaged and could no longer leave the galaxy, but remained useful as a mine of human tech and a residential hub for those who were not staying planetside. The ship was depressing, but perhaps not as depressing as living on the surface of Apth.

There was audible shuffling, then a familiar voice as his father came into view. It was strange seeing Koruth through this two-dimensional lens. It exposed his age in a new light—brittle apertures edged by black, the faded glow of old blood inside. His eyes were a pale, sickly pink. Threxin glanced at Renza. Many cycles ago, the old male would have looked just as strong as his true son. Now he was a husk who had no business dictating his descendants’ futures.

“Father,” Threxin said.

“You have done well.”

“I know.”

“Are they subdued?” Koruth’s beady eyes darted around the screen, pausing at various humans.

“Yes.”

“Good. I will begin my transfer.”

Threxin flicked his fingers in a dismissive gesture he wouldn’t have dared make toward his father until now. “No need.”

Koruth blinked, apertures widening, which only diluted the depth of their glow. “It will be a long journey back into range of Haevn. We will⁠—”

The immediacy with which his Clossal responded to his unspoken instruction to close the transmission induced a pang of satisfaction. He could already feel himself melding with his ship—or rather, his ship melding with him.

Threxin turned to the communications officer trembling in her seat. “Project as I say at channel Elssian two-five-two-six. Are you prepared?”

“Y-yes,” she stuttered, then threw a glance at her former commander beside him. “Sir.”

“Agh. Sze. Pre⁠—”

“I’m s… so sorry. I don’t understand.”

“Shoq,” Threxin sighed, twisting his brain to capture the correct words. “Two. Five… Three-nine…”

Threxin ignored the shuffling of his cohort at the door and continued his strained recitation of Elssian’s self-destruct codes. When it was done, he issued his next query to the former commander. “You have quantum radar?”

The sigh of the female beside him was long and exasperated, drawing from Threxin an appraising glance, but only that because Orion Halen intercepted with a quick “Yes.”

“Show me. Show me the Elssian.”

The radar projection was blown up on the hull. Elssian’s marker on the image was flanked by a few other smaller craft scattered in close proximity. In Threxin’s peripheral vision, his human-kin tensed at the sight.

Then, all at once, the projection of Elssian began to separate into several unequal chunks, then dissipate into pixels on the thermaview. As the entangled photons of the radar were beamed out in Elssian’s general direction and collided with the ship, their counterparts in Clossal’s sensors mirrored changes in their state, building a detailed animation of the explosion.

Renza stepped forward. He had removed his helm to reveal crimson apertures stiffened into thread-thin slits. His spikes bloomed brightly atop his head, pulsing at his scalp. “Brother, what did you do?”

“Father’s plans were for Father.”

“But he wanted⁠—”

“Immortality,” Threxin cut him off. “I want life.”

The clearing of a throat took his attention. When he turned toward the sound, the angry female next to Orion Halen was stepping forward. “You gonna tell us what’s going on or what?”

Orion Halen’s gaze snapped to her, and the way her eyes flashed in his direction once more gave away the existence of a nonverbal messaging passing between them. She clicked her tongue, as though in response to some unseen instruction.

“You are communicating,” Threxin observed. “How?”

Neither said a word, but words were not required.

“Of course. The… subvocalization,” he guessed. “The humans on your Elssian had such things.”

Threxin peered at the sampler still plugged into the flesh of his socketless wrist. A trail of blood seeped beneath the sleeve of his suit. “Ship, disable subvocal communication in all intracranial implants. Disable all communication between human members of the ship.”

His Clossal’s response was immediate: “Neurosync subvocalization disabled. Communication network disabled.”

Threxin turned back to the comms officer. “Open a broad frequency transmission.”

She looked around as if lost for a minute, blinking rapidly. Then the female began keying buttons on her control panel. “Broadcast frequency open.”

“Elssian is gone. All who wish to survive beyond the husks of Apth will report for duty by directing your shuttles to Clossal.”

CHAPTER3

ALINA

Her right cheek was cold, but the left was burning. After those first sensations came the empty black box of her mind. Alina reached for the familiar presence of emotes and comms all around. The line between her Neurosync and everyone else in range was always buzzing, even when everyone was silent. Except now that line did not exist.

Muffled voices grew sharper as Alina racked her brain to figure out where she was and why there was no one there.

When she remembered the nightmare, she nearly laughed at the sick story her brain had come up with now. Good thing Alina was due for her next session with Dr. Pertin later that day.

The voice was Orion Halen’s, and Kaia’s by turn, and someone else’s. Behind her, all Alina could make out were abstract mutters.

She was in the command center, prone on the ground.

Had she passed out? It had happened once before when she was a kid, but fainting wasn’t a normal occurrence for her. Alina grasped for when memories ended and the nightmare began. She’d seen blood in the hall. Was that real? She’d heard Colossal announce a new commander… that had to be the dream, and that was before the blood.

When had she finished her shift?

“Hey. Glowstick.”

Alina managed a grin through the pain in the side of her face that was pressed against the cold floor. Kaia’s snark had this way of being both badass and somehow funny as long as it wasn’t directed at you. Alina instinctively tried to reach out to her charge with the NS, but it was no use—the words for a subvoc wouldn’t even form in her mind, much less transmit. Had she fallen and damaged something? She’d never heard of an NS being broken before.

“Why the hell are you here? What do you want with us?” Kaia’s voice again. Alina squinted toward the command platform.

“Nothing,” a deep, barely discernible gargle responded.

Alina tried to push herself up, but buckled as pain shot through her elbow. It must’ve been a bad fall.

“Nothing?” Kaia again. “You came here and killed dozens of people for nothing?”

Killed people?

Alina willed her eyes to focus, and this time they obeyed a little. She clamped her teeth on her lip to stifle another scream when the uhyre’s shadowy outline came into sharp relief.

Please tell me this is still a nightmare.

“I need you not,” the uhyre rumbled in broken Universal. He swiveled to face the thermaview and paused for several seconds. “Ship, how long will it require to vent the population deck?”

“What?” Alina, Kaia, and Orion blurted out at the same time. A sharp kick to her ribs made her clamp her mouth shut and curl in on herself, tucking her knees against her chin.

They’re behind me, Alina realized.

She fought the violent urge to scramble away in panic. How many of them were there? Alina blinked back a vision of a monster army looming back there. She made herself as small and as quiet as she could on the floor.

Don’t draw attention. That, she now remembered in a rush of recognition, was what had gotten her in a bruised heap on the ground in the first place. And it was a bruised heap—she felt it now as sensation came back to her limbs and her mind recalibrated itself to this new reality.

Indistinguishable murmurs and a sob rose from the other side of the command deck as Colossal complied with the information request and said it would take four minutes and thirty-two seconds to vent the CRD.

“Hey now, wait a minute.” Orion again, dropping into the empty copilot’s seat. Kaia was behind him a second later, gripping at the carbon fiber back of it. “You can’t do that.”

“You were commander, no?” the uhyre questioned. “Are you confused how this works?”

“You can’t just kill seven thousand fucking people,” Orion snarled. “You can’t have come here just to murder a bunch of humans, can you? What do you really want? What’s the endgame here?”

The alien seemed to consider whether to answer. That or look for words. But finally he found them. “I was born for this, human. I will claim my birthright and find a planet for what remains of my people.”

“A New Earth,” Alina whispered under her breath and winced reflexively, expecting another kick in the back.

She flinched as a shadow passed over her. A monster stepped over her curled form. She glimpsed his back now, red spikes running in a single row down his scalp, disappearing into the neckline of his bulky exosuit.

The cyan one, the one in the commander’s seat, turned to him. “With a suitable planet, we will need not Haevn, brother.”

It took Alina a few seconds to denote that he was saying Heaven through a thick accent.

“But our father—” the red alien began, taking obvious effort to contort his words into Universal.

“Your father. Not mine.”

The red one recoiled. “And me, then? Are we not brothers?”

The cyan uhyre lowered his chin, chest rising with a sigh as he replied in rapid-fire Uhyreish before switching back to accented Universal. “Koruth wanted Haevn and control, brother. He killed my parents for the power of their blood once we learned their stories were true. But this is my ship and my cohort now. And I want to live.”

“What kind of planet are you looking for?” Orion Halen cut in.

“Orion…” Kaia’s voice held a warning, but her husband didn’t look at her.

“No need,” the blue one said. “I will use your people’s records after your disposal. Our ideal habitation environment is as your Earth was.”

Kaia’s knuckles blanched with how hard she must have been squeezing the back of Orion’s seat.

“You won’t find what you’re looking for in our records. You won’t find what I know.” Orion slung his ankle over his knee, elbow propped on the arm and his temple on his fist. He looked so confident… so certain.

The uhyre cocked his head. “What you know?”

“I know where your planet is. And I’ll take you there, but only if you let the humans on Colossal live.”

CHAPTER4

THREXIN

Threxin had considered torturing the information out of Orion Halen. Humans broke easily. The panicked, slobbering group cowering against the wall was a testament to their fragility. But he was not human.

His eyes were human, to be sure, though not entirely. The relative dullness of them, in contrast with his own, reminded Threxin of an immature uhyre. But compared to the eyes of the red-haired female seething behind him, they may as well have been glowing blue.

Exorin practically reeked from her pores. Threxin’s stomach turned at the thought of this creature’s dependence. It was disgusting—and Orion Halen had clearly been promoting it. How many others were there?

Threxin forced himself to get back to business. No—this male would not break readily. Besides, Threxin had time. He had given his kind four ship hours to transport themselves to Clossal if they wished to join him. Now that their leader was dead, they had to choose. They could attempt to survive on the barely habitable triple system of Apth without the support of the Elssian’s technology or facilities orbiting between them. Or they could accept Threxin’s command and follow him to his Clossal. So Threxin would wait. Four hours, and no longer.

“Take the others,” Threxin instructed his cohort in Apthian.

“Dispose of them?” Renza checked.

“Not yet. Just keep them… somewhere.”

His brother did not require management. He would find a place for the creatures. Renza dragged the female he had dispatched before, hauling her off the floor by her collar. She looked differently distraught from the others, her stare traversing time and again to the female at Orion Halen’s side. Threxin briefly wondered if they were related. But as Renza approached him and he got a better look, he saw that was unlikely. The human dangling in his outstretched arm had rock brown hair, deeper coloring, and black eyes that were less round. Her bone structure was different too, more angular than the red one’s mushier facial features.

The red female slapped away Renza’s free hand with a sound that was almost a hiss. Oh, she was frightened. He smelled it.

But not as much as she should be. Something was off about this one. Perhaps she was not sound of mind.

“She stays.” Orion had inserted himself between his female and Renza, who regarded them with indifference. He turned instead to Threxin.

Threxin flicked his fingers dismissively, and Renza released the bristling red one. For now Threxin would watch their interactions. He would deduce just how important she was to Orion Halen, and whether she could be used to force his hand. Renza lifted a shoulder and turned, plopping the brown-haired female in his arm to her feet. She stumbled as he shoved her into a questionable semblance of a line with the rest.

The remainder of the humans were herded from the chamber and out of sight. His cohort was efficient about it. Peyata was a little too harsh with the barrel of her weapon as she jabbed a slobbering male in the spine to make him move faster. He buckled to the floor, but there were no other damages and it was effective in making the others pick up their feet.

When they were alone, Threxin faced the former commander of his Clossal. He appeared occupied with trying to shoo away his addicted female, motioning her off the platform. She was defiant, speaking quickly in hushed tones into the male’s ear.

Her words came too fast to be intelligible, save for the occasional “ours” and “promise.”

Finally Orion Halen had had enough. His hand extended with impressive speed to grab his female’s chin and drag her face toward him. His words were biting, but slow enough for Threxin to make out: “Pipe the fuck down and let me handle this, princess.”

Upon release, he gave her cheek a rough pat. The flint in his gaze softened when he saw the look in hers. Threxin observed as Orion Halen rubbed a thumb across the female’s bottom lip, hooded eyes flicking to her mouth.

“Trust me, Kaia,” he murmured.

Kaia, Threxin made a mental note. Seeing human dramatics play out in person only doubled his skepticism. Threxin doubted anything these creatures could offer him would be worth dealing with their living presence.

The female glanced toward him, the fearful gleam in her weird green eyes drawing him out of his disposal plans. Now she was afraid? Threxin’s apertures twitched.

Orion Halen was watching him through narrowed eyes that almost humorously reminded him of his dead birth father’s mannerisms. He was weary, and maybe it would be good to just sit and listen to the human’s likely futile attempts to bargain with him. What Threxin could really use was a drag of hak. He hoped some of the joiners would find the foresight to bring their stash.

“All right, human.” Threxin leaned back in his seat, rolling his tired shoulders. “Convince me.”

* * *

They had spent three ship hours poring over what evidence Orion Halen had been willing to share.

Threxin was familiar with subspace resonance imaging, of course. The data presented appeared promising enough. But the strange way Orion hesitated as he explained the methodology, as if expecting Threxin to be discouraged, confused him. Was there something wrong with this ship’s subspace wavelength detection equipment?

“I will observe this and think,” Threxin finally said, unconvinced but unprepared to dismiss the offer outright. “If I say, I will consider keeping your humans.”

“And if not?”

“Then you are not worth any effort. You will go now. Remain in your habitat until I provide my answer.” Threxin lifted a chin at one of his cohort guarding the door. “He will escort you.”

Threxin turned back to the thermaview, bringing up the radar projection to check who was coming. In the merciful silence that ensued, Threxin’s thoughts drifted to his brother. He had not told Renza of his plan to kill their—his father. It was the right decision, but he had seen the limiter haze in his brother’s eyes earlier. Renza would see reason eventually. He always did. But he may need time to come to terms with Threxin’s judgment.

Threxin stared at the thermaview as he pondered this. There was less than one ship hour left until his deadline and several markers were already blinking toward his Clossal.

CHAPTER5

ALINA

Everything smelled like sweat and skin, and at first it made Alina feel sick, but after a while she’d begun to get used to it. Besides, Alina smelled like sweat and skin now too. She looked around—she’d seen most of these people before on the command deck, but didn’t know any personally. Most of her friends had been from the CRD or the maintenance and cleaning crew, not officers.

The invaders had chosen to corral them in one of the nearby canteens to await their fate. They huddled in a corner with eight-foot giants loitering about. The uhyre had all removed their helms, and while their monster eyes were bright and hollow and their expressions indecipherable, Alina thought she could see the droop of weariness in their armored shoulders.

She turned to the comms lady, who was sobbing in terrified silence.

“Hey,” Alina muttered. “It’ll be all right. Commander Hal…” Alina swallowed, glancing at the aliens. “Mr. Halen is striking a deal. You heard him.”

The woman looked uncomforted. “My kids. They would’ve been in school. Do you think they’re home?” She pivoted her wide eyes to Alina, as though expecting her to know somehow.

“I’m sure the kids are fine,” Alina chanced a squeeze of the woman’s shoulder as her eyes swept the invaders again.

They looked like they shouldn’t be real. She’d seen vids, of course, from Old Earth. She knew that uhyre existed… But only now, seeing them in the flesh, did she really understand. Their size, the glowing cracks in their skins, all of different hues. Alina wondered how they lived among humans for a whole thirty years back on Old Earth.

How did humanity ever look at these creatures and think, Hmm, yeah, let’s share our planet with these guys? Of course, once addiction to their exorin took hold, it wasn’t much of a choice.

“My daughter stayed home sick yesterday. I don’t even know if she’s eaten,” a man joined the conversation in a hushed voice.

So go do something about it.

Alina chastised herself for the biting thought. This was not a “do something” situation. This was a “your worst nightmares have just come true” situation, and no one could be blamed for being afraid.

She sucked in a breath and held it, giving herself a few seconds to sit with the comforting stretch in her lungs. Then she stepped forward to the edge of the clustered human throng.

“Excuse me.” She found the glowing red male in the group, drawn to the one who’d hit her before out of some fucked up sense of familiarity. Her temple throbbed in sync with the reminder. “Excuse me,” she tried louder, taking another step.

Rustling of bodies behind her met the clanking of weapons in front as glowing eyes turned her way.

The red one cocked his head. He looked over one shoulder, then the other.

“Yes, I mean you… Sir?”

“Back, human,” he snarled in guttural Universal as she approached, hoisting up the barrel of his weapon to stop Alina in her tracks. She had managed maybe three steps across the canteen and was now planted between her people and their captors.

“These people,” Alina gestured to the officers behind her, “they have families. Children who are waiting for them.”

I hope.

She saw no recognition on the uhyre’s face and chose to interpret that as a promising sign that he was not aware of his men killing any kids lately.

“Let them go home,” Alina pressed. “To take care of their… offspring?”

Maybe the uhyre didn’t know what ‘children’ meant?

The red one tilted his head the other way. “Get back,” he repeated.

“You don’t understand,” Alina’s protest withered when he jerked his chin to what seemed to be a female uhyre by his side. At least Alina thought it was a female… She was marginally more slender in build, and the spikes lining her scalp were slightly shorter. The maybe-female cleared the distance between them so fast that Alina didn’t even have time to register the fist swinging toward her until it connected with her already tender rib cage.

The hit sent her sprawling backward into the people huddled in that damn corner. The people who drew back instead of forward, clearing the hard floor for collision with her spine. Pain blanched her vision, cascading down her vertebrae.

It was only after Alina lay with her spine on fire and her breath knocked out of her that human hands found her, dragging her back.

“I know you mean well.” A man’s face appeared above her. “But shut the fuck up, will you? You’re gonna get us all killed.”

Tears pricked at the backs of Alina’s eyes and she blinked fast, staring at her feet as she rose achingly to a stand, hunched against the wall. She’d only been trying to help. Instead, she fucked up and got reprimanded not just by the invaders, but by her own people. Alina stared straight ahead, grateful that the tears at the edges of her eyes dried up before they spilled.

She didn’t know how long they loitered in that cluster, waiting for deliverance, or death, or something. The mutterings of the surrounding officers were faraway whispers in her ears, and more than once Alina was tempted to try to speak up for them once more, but what if they were right and she got them all killed?

She had been brooding on this and similar thoughts in ever-tightening circles, her mind flailing itself and replaying all the embarrassing shit that she’d just done in the span of a few hours. Running into the command center like she was actually needed. Yelling for Kaia only to end up disregarded and trapped under an alien’s arm like a bug. Getting knocked out because she couldn’t keep her mouth shut. And then foolishly thinking she could convince the monsters who just occupied their ship to let them all go to bed.

Idiot.

It all replayed in her head so insistently that at first Alina didn’t even hear the commotion all around her when the cyan uhyre, the supposed new commander, entered the canteen.

CHAPTER6

THREXIN

It had been many long ticks, or hours, if he were to go by the precisely differentiated human measurements. Threxin had not yet deduced time spans of the ship and was unsure if they were into the subsequent day or not, but it almost did not matter. The point was, by the time Threxin entered the eating area, he was exhausted.

Renza pushed himself off the wall and raised a casual chin as he entered.

“Disposal?” Renza picked a talon between his teeth, eyeballing the humans, who had begun mustering themselves from the floors and walls a few paces away.

“Not yet,” Threxin sighed. How he’d love to have several thousand fewer humans to deal with. If they were all as difficult as Orion Halen and his female had been, he may yet kill them anyway. But for now, he was still thinking. “Trouble?”

“No,” Renza tilted his head to the negative. “That female who barged in before caused commotion again, but Silarra took care of it.”

It took some time for Threxin to pick out said female in the throng, considering they all looked, for the most part, the same. But he remembered getting a closer look at her in the command center and had some vague aesthetic properties in mind.

“You,” Threxin called to her. “To me.”

He realized a few ticks too late that he did not issue his command in Universal, yet the human nudged herself upright and shuffled forward, anyway. Humans seemed perceptive to vocal tone.

To his surprise, she spoke first. “These people have children that are waiting.”

Behind her, someone groaned.

“Children?” Threxin glanced at Renza.

“Offspring,” his brother grunted in Apthian.

“Yes.” The female brushed a tuft of shorter hair from her eyes, only for it to fall right back in her vision. Did it not grow properly there, to conceal her line of sight like that? “They’re hungry and alone. Hell, all…” she quieted a little when she appeared to realize her own volume, “all of these people are hungry and alone.”

This self-sacrificial tone grated on Threxin’s nerves, but not enough to kick in his limiter. She spoke for the others as if she herself were not as hungry or tired as the rest of them.

Threxin failed to see the urgency. Soon enough the offsprings’ lonely hunger may not matter, if he decided to dispose of the humans.

“How many habitats on this deck?” Threxin changed the subject to more important matters.

“Habitats… You mean cabins? Five hundred on the command deck.” The female looked immediately to the uhyre behind him, eyes counting, deducing his meaning. She was shrewder than Threxin liked. “Of which about ninety are free, I think,” she hastened to add.

So there were more than four hundred humans on his command deck.

“I require two hundred cabins for my cohort.”

“Two hundred?” The human’s face fell, but she recovered quickly. “You’ll… There’s a little room down at the Common Residence Deck. Some of us can move there.”

“All of you will move. Except those required to operate this deck.”

He would not permit so many humans to remain in the same space as his cohort. Humans were weak, but he did not like their numbers. Besides, if he chose to reject Orion Halen’s proposal, it would be easier to vent them if they were congregated in one location.

“They’re all required,” the female frowned. “That’s why they got cabin assignments up at the command deck in the first place. Handling all the shifts for each position, it’s⁠—”

“Lengthen the shifts,” Threxin interrupted. “Only fifty of those most critical to operations remain. You will tell me who they are.”

“Fifty? Wait, me?” The female balked, her head jerking back toward her people, who were looking various degrees of displeased. “I… I don’t know that. I’m just Kaia’s assistant. You should ask Orion, or…”

She glanced again at the group, but clamped her mouth shut, turning back to stare straight ahead, which landed her gaze just under Threxin’s chest.

Threxin’s limiter kicked in then to bring him down before he could finish clenching his fist. Nearly two hundred uhyre had arrived to follow him from the remnants of Apth. They were waiting, uprooted, in this foreign ship’s docks to be assigned their living quarters. It would be far easier to simply count off the cabins they needed and kill their occupants, or herd them down to the lower deck. He was giving this pest, who was so concerned with the lives of her human cohort, more choice than any of them deserved. And here she was—complaining about it.

The frustration lasted not even a tick, but the female had noticed it with that unnerving shrewdness, staring at his hand where it had twitched. Threxin wondered if all her clueless floundering was an act.

He grasped her by the throat and lifted her into the air, glancing over her shoulder at the others. Her gasp was cut off as his fist tightened around the fragile windpipe, her pulse pounding frantic protests into his palm. “You will tell me who of your kind behind you can provide a list of essential humans. There is someone.”

Her bony fingers found purchase in his wrist. She did not even try to fight—she simply dug useless blunt fingertips into his skin, attempting to relieve the pressure on her throat with impressive futility.

“I’ll do it,” a familiar voice made Threxin look behind him. The red-headed female approached, trailed by Orion Halen and Pteron behind them. “I’ll get you a list.”

“Kaia,” the useless one managed to squeak. Threxin released his hold and let her stumble back, wheezing and rubbing her red-marked throat.

He had sent for them ticks ago.

“What took you so long?” Threxin asked Pteron in Apthian.

“Got lost,” he grumbled.

Threxin sighed, raking his talons down the side of his neck.

“Let the people here go back to their cabins for now,” Kaia said. “It’ll take time to get your list anyway. It’s zero three hundred hours on Colossal. I’ll have it for you by zero six hundred.”

Threxin’s spikes bristled and he smoothed them atop his scalp, his apertures thinning. He noted how she pronounced the name of his ship. More C-oh-loh-ssal than C-lossal.

“I say.” He did not like the vigilant look in Kaia’s eye—one mirrored almost precisely by Orion behind her.

Turning back to Renza, Threxin switched to Apthian. “Track them. Especially the red bitch and this one. Her assistant, apparently. Make sure they try nothing.” He looked back at the females, switching back to Universal. “And if they do, kill them.”

Renza tilted his chin in assent as his cohort began the work of ushering the humans once more. Threxin had to think. A decision had to be made, and soon.

Threxin

* * *

He had gotten his list, and Renza had already herded the humans who were not on it down to the ship’s common deck. No one complained save for one silly pest asking where they were to live once they got down there.

That was not Threxin’s concern—Orion Halen could decide such trivial matters, considering he was the reason for the dilemma in the first place.

Threxin finally had a few ship hours to himself and spent them in his new cabin across from the commander’s quarters, which Orion Halen and his female still occupied. The commander’s cabins were needlessly large. Threxin did not know how the two humans cohabiting there felt comfortable with all the empty space. Threxin preferred to sleep somewhere he could touch all the walls and have no redundant entries or exits. His new suite was not that, but at least it wasn’t as huge and disquieting.

He took an inhale of the hak some of his arrivals had brought. Microscopic crystals rasped pleasantly against the walls of his windpipe as he drew them into his lungs. The texture of it scratched something in the brain, igniting flickers of satisfaction that rolled through the body.

In part, Threxin chose this cabin because it would be prudent to remain close to the former commander. The humans did not appear idiotic enough to mutiny, but Threxin had no illusions that Orion Halen would give up his seat quietly either, and his red-haired female verged on open hostility.

And yet it meant the morning after his arrival, after rolling up the rest of his hak and exiting his quarters, Threxin would encounter the humans’ insubordination as the first marker of his day, cutting his solitude short.

“I said my wife needs to eat,” he heard Orion Halen snarling at the guard in the hallway, then saw him jerk his shoulder as Pteron cinched the human’s arm more firmly. “Back the fuck away and come along if you want.”

Pteron calmly yanked the disheveled male back when Orion Halen tried once again to sidestep him. His human-kin wore low-slung fabric pants and no top. He had no apertures on his body—not even faint ones. The skin taut over the planes of his hard muscle was almost infantile in its appearance, though even newborn uhyre had thinner patches of skin already visible a few days after birth. Soon enough the membranes would rip, exposing the first glow of their fresh inner essence.

When the human continued to be difficult, Pteron drew back a fist. Orion spotted the movement fast enough to remind Threxin that he wasn’t entirely human. He ducked the blow and swung an uppercut into Pteron’s chin, landing it with a thump that sent the guard stumbling a couple of steps back. Pteron was sometimes a little sloppy. He recovered immediately, of course. Orion grabbed the barrel of Pteron’s weapon arcing toward his chest mid-swing, and that was when Threxin decided it was time to intervene.

“Enough.” Threxin hauled Orion against the wall. He raised his chin at Pteron, who licked a black fang absently, gun pointed at the human’s chest.

To make the mess worse, that was when Orion’s toy female appeared in the doorway, looking like she was ready to jump into a fight herself. Threxin turned to her with mild amusement, and Orion did the same with unshielded fury in his eyes. He was not pleased with his plaything, who crouched in a fighting pose with her fists bobbing before her face.

Threxin had never witnessed exorin addiction, of course, only heard stories. He supposed it made sense, though. It clouded a human’s judgment, making her reckless and stupid in her haze of need. He wondered how often Orion Halen was satiating her.

“We got a problem?” Kaia snapped, but her voice was as unstable as her hands.

Threxin turned back to Orion. “Your female is defective, no?”

“Say that again, crackly motherfucker,” she snapped, though the threat was followed by a reflexive flinch when Threxin glanced at her. She must have sensed something in the split-second before his limiter kicked in. Threxin wondered if she was this perceptive because she had to be under Orion Halen’s command. His kin, after all, had no limiter to temper him.

“Fuck, Kaia.” Orion Halen ran a hand down his face, then shoved her behind himself. “She’s just passionate.”

Threxin grunted.

“My decision is made,” he turned to the male. “You will direct me to the planet you claim to have found. If it is suitable, my cohort will settle it.”

“And you leave the people on this ship alive.”

“I say.” Threxin inclined his chin with some reluctance. He peered at the shuffling of feet behind Orion. The female did not look pleased. Threxin leaned forward, pinning the former commander with a glare. “But if you betray me. Take me to a human hive. Attempt harm to me or my cohort. Direct me to an empty husk no better than Apth. Anything, anything other than the planet I will be happy to settle my cohort on, I will dispose of your people. Then I will dispose of your toy female. Then I will dispose of every living human in your world. And after you have witnessed all this, I will dispose of you. Do you recognize?”

“Yes,” Orion Halen ground out through a clenched jaw. His eyes slid to his female, and Threxin knew he need not have bothered threatening Orion’s people, nor even Orion himself. All he had to do was threaten her.

“The humans are your responsibility,” Threxin added, straightening. “I do not deal with pests.”

* * *

Of course, Threxin did not intend to keep the humans around if he could help it. He suspected Orion Halen knew that. That day, Threxin set one of his cohort to interrogate the pests, both here and down in their mass residential decks, about any knowledge of this planet Orion had promised him. There had been a minor stampede down in the residential deck when five of his cohort arrived to perform this questioning. Seven humans had perished.

After all that was under control and the bodies disposed of, humans claimed ignorance of Orion even having a destination in mind after Apth, much less where it was.

“Tell them to be a little more careful,” Threxin told Renza when he had reported the ordeal.

Renza lifted his chin, but gave him a look of resigned helplessness. “They are so fragile.”

“Try,” Threxin sighed, slumping back into his seat in the command center.

His eyes roamed the shellshocked workers on shift that morning. They were indeed extremely breakable.

“Renza,” Threxin called after him as his brother turned to leave. He paused, head lolling to the side. “The ship’s records say Orion Halen has a sire whose death has not been recorded. I suspect if anyone has more information, it will be him.”

Renza’s apertures twitched in acknowledgment. “I will find him.”

CHAPTER7

ALINA

Alina decided she had to get back to work two days after the invasion.

Invasion.

It was a big word that should have felt weightier when it came to her mind, but Alina found it difficult to feel the gravity of the situation. Part of her thought it still couldn’t be real… Uhyre were the stuff of legends and nightmares. Scary stories their parents told them in the dark. It was hard to process that this was happening. Colossal, her home, was the greatest and best-armed colony ship in existence. The thought that it could not only be breached but by actual monsters seemed too far removed from reality to internalize.

Alina had spent the entire day prior cooped up in her cabin, bundled defensively in her mother’s old rainbow quilt. She binged Old Earth sitcoms while waiting for a knock on the door to escort her down to the CRD. The chime never came, which for Alina was a sign that Kaia either forgot about her or still wanted her services after all.

It was the one glimmer of light in this entire situation. The glimmer only lasted a moment as Alina remembered she still had no idea what Threxin’s decision on their fate would be. Had he decided? When would they know? When the aliens came to take them away for slaughter?

But for now Kaia had chosen to keep her around, so Alina was determined to keep her head down and do her job to the best of her ability. That started with bringing Kaia her breakfast for their morning triage.

Alina came face to face with an uhyre guard patrolling her hallway just as her cabin door hissed open. The sudden proximity of the armed and armored monster made her breath hitch and her spine go rigid.

“I… I need to get to work,” she said as the uhyre glared at her—she couldn’t quite tell this one’s gender.

The glowing yellow skin slits running along its face and neck, disappearing into the neckline of its bulky armor, narrowed.

“I’m assistant to Kaia Halena, the com… Orion Halen’s wife,” she pressed. “I’ve got to bring her breakfast. She needs me.”

A stretch, but what else was she supposed to say?

“You are her food fetcher?” the uhyre gurgled.

“Well, that’s just one of the things I do for her. It’s more of a triage,” Alina huffed. Or it would be, if Kaia ever let her do anything else. She hadn’t really done much for Kaia since first getting her acclimatized to colony life. She’d tried, of course, but Kaia… Well, Kaia was Kaia.

The uhyre let out a little snort that Alina didn’t like, but it stepped aside. There was something chilling about the way the alien motioned her past with its gun so casually. “Go fetch then, human.”

Alina tried to just be happy with being allowed to do her job and see Kaia, forcing down the defensiveness at her work being minimized like that by one of the invaders. It didn’t matter.

The inability to check where Kaia was or communicate with her made Alina feel blind. The invader would probably have taken the commander’s quarters for himself and relegated Kaia and Orion elsewhere… But where? The only way to find them was to look, but how far would the uhyre let her get?