Marauder Kain: Scifi Alien Invasion Romance (Mating Wars Book 5) Read online

  But I have to go to Darkstar. Cold. Devoid of light and hope. The exact opposite of her.

  I shove open the inner door of the airlock, and I see the second woman lying flat on the ground, drenched in sweat. Her eyes are closed.

  I remove my helmet, and immediately I’m hit with crushing heat worse than what’s in the floating jungles of Venus. I immediately start dripping with sweat, but I pull out my heat sponge. It’s made of nanoparticles that can absorb incredible amounts of heat into a small, dense sphere.

  I pull the tab on the sponge to activate it.

  I feel no difference in the cabin temperature at first, but after only ten seconds the brunt of the heat has dissipated. Within twenty seconds, I feel a slight chill, so I push the tab back to the sphere in to shut the sponge off.

  The inner door’s handle starts to rotate, and I tug at it impatiently. I pull the door open and see her again.

  Her mouth drops open as she looks at me, and I lick my lips with my tongue.

  She looks down at the other woman, then back up at me.

  I hold up the heat sponge, though I doubt she knows what it is. It’s advanced Marauder technology that isn’t widely available outside the richest human settlements and habitats.

  She narrows her eyes at me, and I gesture for her to remove her helmet.

  She looks at her wrist, which displays the internal temperature. Her eyes widen. She reaches for her helmet, twists at it, pulling it off.

  We look at each other in stunned silence, and suddenly her feminine scent floods my nostrils. My tall ears pull back and wiggle in ecstasy, and I breathe her essence in deeply.

  “We…,” I start to say. “I need water, a towel.”

  She nods in response and starts rummaging through a drawer. She pulls out a towel and holds it under the faucet until it’s soaked through. She hands it to me, and I put it onto the unconscious woman’s forehead.

  “Human bodies are weak,” I say, offhandedly. “They can only survive within the thinnest margins. Not too hot. Not too cold. But she should make it.”

  “Goldilocks,” the woman says.

  “Goldilocks,” I whisper.

  A beautiful name. It must refer to the golden locks of her long hair.

  “Goldilocks,” I say in a louder voice.“I am Kain.”

  “Oh,” she says. “I’m Kara.”

  She gives me a nervous smile, then holds out her hand to me in greeting.

  I remember the proper human greeting and take her hand, rather than her forearm, in mine. It’s soft and warm, just right.

  “Is this one Goldilocks?” I ask, pointing down at the woman with the towel draped across her forehead. “Her hair is black.”

  “No,” Kara says. “Goldilocks...it’s a children’s story. She breaks into someone’s house– it’s owned by three bears, actually– and she eats their food and sleeps in their beds.”

  “Humans have strange stories for children,” I say.

  “There are three different sizes of bears – a mama bear, a papa bear and a baby bear – the one’s stuff is too small, one’s is too big...and the other one’s is just right.”

  “How can a bed be too big?” I ask.

  “Uh,” she says, “I don’t know...I’ve only ever slept on a bed that was too small.”

  “And how can there be too much food?”

  “I’m starving,” she says.

  “How does this story end?” I ask.

  “The bears come home and find all their stuff ransacked, and when they get to their beds, they find Goldilocks asleep. She gets scared, jumps out the window, and runs away. No one ever sees her again.”

  The woman on the ground opens her eyes and murmurs, “Goldilocks zones...that’s what we call the distance from the sun that a planet can be habitable. Earth, Mars, and Venus...are all in the Goldilocks zone…this planet is too cold....”

  “Felicia!” Kara says, dropping down beside her. “You feeling okay?”

  “Yeah,” she says. “I’m going to be all right. Thanks for rescuing us….”

  “Kain,” I say.

  “Kain.”

  “You two are sisters?” I ask, looking down at them. I can see a resemblance.

  “Yeah,” Kara says. “You saved my sister. And me. Thank you.”

  When should I tell them that I do not have any way to get them off this cold place? Or that I am headed to Darkstar, which is even colder? I should tell them the first piece of information now. And I should never tell them the second.

  “I have some unsettling information to share,” I say.

  They both look up at me. Their eyes are wide and their mouths are pursed with worry.

  “I mean,” I say, struggling to remember how humans phrase things. They are weak when it comes to accepting the harsh truths of reality. “I have good news...and bad news...so which would you like to hear first?”

  They continue to give me the same worried stares.

  “The good news,” I say. “The heat sponge can be toggled on and off. It will drastically reduce the frequency with which we need to exit the ship and mess with those hoses.”

  “Why would we need to toggle hoses at all if you can get us off…,” Kara starts to say. Then I see her whole body droop down with exhaustion. “Oh. You can’t get us off here, can you?” she asks, guessing the truth.

  “I burned too much fuel to rush my landing. But my engines are still functional. Given enough time, we could harvest the necessary minerals to produce more fuel.”

  “You’re an optimist, too,” Felicia says.

  I raise an eyebrow at her.

  Felicia smiles, looks at me, and then turns to look at Kara. “Good fit.”

  “Shut up, Felicia!” Kara says.

  “I was on the brink of death,” Felicia says, “and that only buys me a few precious minutes without you being mean to me?”

  Kara grits her teeth and huffs.

  I’m fascinated, and turned on. Human females display anger in the most interesting ways.

  I feel my ears poking straight up and catch myself smiling.

  Felicia laughs, while Kara balls up her hands into fists and pretends to busy herself with another towel.

  “It’s already getting cold in here,” Felicia says. “I don’t need another towel.”

  “Fine,” Kara snaps back at her sister. “Take care of yourself then.”

  “You are the older one, Kara?” I ask.

  “Of course,” she says.

  Felicia rolls her eyes.

  “You both feel cold?” I ask.

  Marauders do not have such a small “Goldilocks zone,” and I feel fine. I won’t be able to tell when the humans feel discomfort.

  “Here,” I say, handing the heat sponge to Kara. “If you feel cold, you press this tab in to release the heat,” I explain, gesturing to a tab on the sphere. “If you feel too hot, pull the tab all the way out to suck it back in.”

  I hand the sponge to her, and she nods in understanding and appreciation. “Thanks. I wish we had this thing weeks ago.”

  “You’ve been here, like this, for weeks?” I ask.

  “I heard Marauders eat a lot,” Felicia says. “Do you have–”

  “Ah,” I say. “Yes, I have plenty of food.”

  Their eyes light up.

  “I’d invite you to stay on my ship, but it’s much smaller. It could not fit us comfortably.”

  “Well,” Kara says, “that’s fine...but if you have any food to spare, and if you don’t mind sharing, we’d be so grateful if–”

  “Give us your food!” Felicia says. “We’re fucking starving!”

  Kara scowls at Felicia, but then smiles up at me.

  “If need be,” I say, “I can hibernate to conserve my energy so that I don’t require as much food.”

  “Can you really turn into a bear?” Kara asks me.

  I nod. “That will not help us in this situation, however.”

  “Oh,” Kara says. “I know...I was just curious.”
<
br />   “Where are you two from?” I ask.

  “Nowhere,” they answer in unison.

  “I thought all humans had a place they called home. I thought that only Marauders are truly homeless...hence our name.”

  “Well,” Kara says, “I guess we were technically born on Earth. Our parents were neo-Luddites, and–”

  “What does that mean?” I ask.

  “Luddites, uh,” Felicia says. “They were people who didn’t believe in using technology.”

  “Everything is technology,” I say. “Did they not use wheels? Fire?”

  “There was a threshold,” Kara says. “The original Luddites drew the line somewhere around electricity–”

  “But the Neo-Luddites,” Felicia says, cutting her sister off, “drew the line at thinking machines.”

  “No computers?” I ask.

  “Computers were fine, just not...the ones that duplicated human-like intelligence.”

  I nod in understanding.

  “So when the Marauders arrived,” Kara says, “I was still a baby, and Felicia wasn’t even born yet. The Empire fell, and Earth decided to put the super-intelligent machine in charge of everything so that no dictator could ever rise up again.”

  “Harmony,” I say, chills shooting down my spine. “Perhaps your parents were wise.”

  “Well,” Kara says, “perhaps, but they were paranoid, and they thought Harmony would spread to Mars and Venus and the habitats–”

  “So we had nowhere to go,” Felicia says. “And we’d occasionally land on Mars to trade, but we could never stay there longer than needed.”

  I hold my tongue. Darkstar made a deal with Harmony, and when Darkstar tried to stab it in the back, it seized enough antimatter to destroy the entire planet. These two must not have heard the news yet, that Harmony is holding the population of Earth hostage– preventing anyone from leaving. A robotic dictator.

  Kara’s parents were right to be paranoid.

  “Our parents died,” Kara says. “But we managed to keep the mining operation going with just the two of us. We almost had enough to buy citizenship on New Copenhagen….”

  “That’s a lot of money,” I say.

  “Well,” Kara says, “we have a lot of platinum.”

  I sit bolt upright. “Platinum? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You’re going to rob us now?” Felicia asks. “Where are you from, by the way?”

  “I’m a Peacekeeper,” I say, grabbing my helmet. “Is the platinum in the cargo hold?”

  “Uh,” Kara says, “are you really going to rob us?”

  “My ship can convert platinum to reaction mass. I can get you two out of here,” I say excitedly.

  To where? Perhaps I can go back to Venus. I’ll lose over two months’ worth of time– not to mention jeopardizing the operation and crippling the peacekeepers’ mission...but I took an oath to protect people. How can I leave these two for dead?

  Or am I being selfish? I look hungrily at Kara, and my cock twitches just thinking about it.

  I take a deep breath, and then my wrist starts beeping.

  “What’s that?” Felicia asks.

  “My ship,” I say, feeling my heart starting to pound. It wouldn’t contact me unless it was being contacted. I’m too far out for any of the peacekeepers to risk contacting me while I’m supposed to be moving undercover.

  “Kain,” the computer says aloud. “You’re being contacted by a ship from Darkstar.”

  Kara and Felicia’s eyes bulge, and I steel myself and focus on controlling my breathing. “How close are they?” I ask.

  “They’ll be on you in twenty minutes.”

  “Fuck!” I shout, and I punch the console so hard that I dent the metal.

  “We can still get away, right?” Kara asks.

  “No,” I say. “Even if we already had the platinum in the reaction chamber, it would take hours to convert it into enough fuel to lift off.”

  Even if I let them take the ship without me to save weight. Even if I stripped out everything but life support and the emergency beacon. Even then they could never lift off.

  “I have another harsh truth–” I start to say, but then I correct myself. “I have good news…and bad new–”

  “Jesus,” Kara says, shoving me. “What’s the bad news?”

  “I am originally from Darkstar–”

  “Fuck!” Felicia shouts in panic, and she, too, shoves me.

  “How can there even be good news after that?”

  “Ironically,” I say, “the good news is that I am originally from Darkstar.”

  “His brain is broken,” Felicia says.

  “No,” I say. “I am originally from Darkstar. I am now a peacekeeper. I’ve defected. But Darkstar doesn’t know this. I was out here to re-establish contact with them– to go undercover.”

  “So…,” Kara says, “please, please tell us that there is actually some good news in here. Think of it from our perspective….”

  A ship of this size will have at least two fully armed warriors. As part of my cover, I was given a barebones ship with no weapons other than a blade. I can try to fight, but they will kill me. I do not fear death, but I fear what would happen to Kara and her sister if I was to die.

  To protect them, I must live.

  I will maintain my cover, and tell the Darkstar ship that I’ve captured two human females. I will have to find a way to protect them– to break them out– once we reach Darkstar.

  But how can I tell them this? It will not sit well with them.

  “Where I grew up,” I start to say.

  “You mean Darkstar?” Felicia interrupts.

  Kara elbows her.

  “We also had a children’s story,” I continue.

  “Oh, God,” Felicia says. “It’s so bad he’s going to tell us a children’s story.” She rolls her eyes.

  “Many millenia ago,” I say, “our ancestors landed in a star system with an enchanting alien race. At this time, Marauders had red skin, but these aliens had skin blue as your clearest seas–”

  “And so your ancestors had sex with them, and your skin turned purple?” Felicia asks. “Great story.”

  “Yes,” I say, “that happened, but it’s not the story I was going to tell you. These blue-skinned aliens kept certain animals as pets. The blue-skins thought these were the most adorable animals in the world, much like you humans think of dogs.”

  “I’m a cat person,” Kara says.

  “Or cats,” I say. “These animals lived in the blue-skins’ homes, and had evolved to do so, just like dogs or cats. However, there was another type of animal. It was vicious and consumed blue-skin flesh–”

  “It ate them?”

  “No,” I say, “just their skin. It ripped their skin off and ate it.”

  “This is a children’s story?” Kara says, scrunching up her face in disgust.

  “Marauder children, yes,” I say. “What do you think this vicious animal looked like?”

  “I don’t know,” Kara says. “Did it have gross skin?”

  “Sharp teeth, snarling,” Felicia adds.

  “No,” I say. “It looked just like their adorable pets. Exactly like them.”

  Both of the women give me a queasy look.

  “It would pretend to be this animal until a blue-skin family had bonded with it and accepted it– loved it. And then, in the middle of the night, it would attack and eat their skin.”

  “Wonderful,” Kara says.

  “So what did the blue-skins do?” Felicia asks.

  “They killed every last animal. Every last pet. This was before they had technology such as blood sampling or knowledge of DNA, so they had to kill all of their beloved pets just to eradicate the skin eaters.”

  “Okay…,” Kara says. “What part of this is supposed to make us feel better?”

  “When Darkstar takes us,” I say, “they will think I am like the blue-skins’ pet. That I am obedient to them. But I am not. I will kill every last one o
f them– flay their skin– if they touch you.”

  5 Kara

  “Wait here,” Kain says. “I will procure rations from my ship. You’ll want to eat well before they take you hostage.”

  He rips the inner door open, shuts it behind him, and tightens the seal.

  Felicia looks at me with a wide-eyed expression.

  “Don’t say it,” I say.

  “He’s kind of hot–”

  “God!” I shout. “I told you to not say it!”

  “He’s clearly not interested in me,” Felicia says. “But I think you have a real shot–”

  “Felicia. We’re about to be taken prisoner on Darkstar. I’m happy if I have a real shot at ever seeing the sun again. “

  “Those cheekbones, though,” Felicia says. “And it’s hard to tell with his armor, but he looks...strong.”

  “I guess he’s hot in an ‘I AM GOING TO FLAY THEIR SKIN!’ kind of way,” I smirk, rolling my eyes.

  I won’t admit it to my sister– and she knows I won’t admit it– but Kain is hot, and considering how awful our current situation is that we’re in, his offer to protect me is quite moving. Minus the skin flaying, that is.

  “At least he’s going to get us food,” I say.

  “See,” Felicia says, grinning. “He wants to provide for you.”

  I bite my lip to stop myself from smiling.

  “Is this really any better?” I ask. “Before Kain found us, we were most certainly going to starve to death. It would have been painful, but if he turns out to be all talk, can you even imagine what those other Marauders will do to us?”

  Felicia leans back in the pilot’s seat. “I suppose we could have just not plugged the heat in. We could have just slowly frozen to death. That wouldn’t have been so bad.”

  “So what’s our plan?” I ask.

  “Uh, does it even matter?”

  I look out the window and see Kain already exiting his ship, carrying a big crate.

  “Of course it matters!” I snap. “We need to know everything we can about Darkstar. The more we know, the more likely we can get rescued.”

  Felicia forces a confused smile at me.

  “What?” I ask. “Were you just planning to sit on your ass and see if he’d rescue us?”