Alien Paladin's Woman: SciFi Alien-Human Military Suspense Romance Page 13
“We will fight,” Geroy said in response, a simple truth he believed in fully.
“You will lose.”
Audrey took a breath, knowing what she had to do next. If she tried to leave, the paladins would attack the Fearless and die. It would be a massacre. And if she didn’t leave, they’d be slaughtered just the same.
There was only one way out.
Eyeing the Fearless, she raised her wrist. Before Geroy could stop her, she clicked off the bracelet and immediately, a surge of raw power swept through her, making her silver hair practically stand up.
The Brion grinned, an awkward, wide, dead smile. With the Fearless looking on approvingly, Audrey launched herself at the paladins.
Quickly, it turned from them not harming her, to them fighting for their life. She grabbed the man closest to her and shoved him back, taking two others with him before he slammed into the bulkhead. They left a dent three men wide as they crumpled to the floor.
Next, Audrey yanked a glaive coming at her right out of the hands of the paladin and then spun it back at him, slamming right into his temple. One by one, the paladins fell, crushed by the awesome power the Fearless was ‘loaning’ her. It was like everything she did was in a dream, like she was watching it from the sidelines.
Actually, she was fighting as hard as she could to retain control. The only thing she truly kept out of her mind was Tieran, for fear of losing her will to fight entirely then.
The Fearless wanted the men dead. She wanted them alive. Having them unconscious was a safe bet right down the middle.
When she came face to face with Geroy a moment later, Audrey had a glaive in each hand. She took a step back, feeling her face jerk into a vicious sneer.
“Tell Tieran his opponent is not all it seems,” she hissed, her voice her own, before she threw both the glaives at the man at impossible speed. “The Brion’s a weakness.”
He screamed out as the glaives bit into his shoulders, sending him flying back and pinned against the bulkhead by the blades. He still held onto his glaive.
Panting, Audrey collapsed to her knees and grabbed the bracelet. As if being given permission, she felt the fog lift from her brain and she could clasp it shut once again. When her vision cleared, she cupped a hand over her mouth.
The paladins were all in various states of brokenness. The way she’d pinned Geroy had locked the bridge from the outside. There were droplets of crimson on the floors.
Like using the training she’d received during her life, and what Tieran had shown her, she’d combined what she knew and the power of the Fearless to wipe out a squad of some of the most elite warriors in the galaxy. In the back of her head, she knew that they had to hold steady to their oath of not hurting her, but damn. It was still something.
A true show of what the Fearless could do when it wanted to, if nothing else.
Turning away from the carnage, she paced to the Fearless. She walked as slowly as she could, but the Fearless saw through that trick in a flash.
"Walk, or I will walk for you," it said.
Audrey began to move considerably faster, unable to stop imagining the Fearless dragging her almost broken body through corridors. Though she had the bracelet on her now, she knew that the Brion could easily remove it. The way the Fearless had taken over her before was testament to what he could do with her if he was given the power to do so.
She could hear sounds of battle all around them. Apparently the Fearless hadn't come alone, but Tieran was nowhere to be seen.
"He is dead," the Fearless said, as if reading her thoughts.
Audrey's heart nearly stopped. Panic began to take ahold of her, but she forced her heartbeat slower, reminding herself that the Fearless was an enemy and no information could be trusted.
It tries to scare you. It sensed concern and went for the easy blow. Calm down, calm down. Tieran is fine.
"I sent three splitters," the Fearless said with the voice of the Brion. "He is dead."
"You saying that doesn't make it true," Audrey said defiantly before she remembered who she was snapping at, but her mouth still kept talking. "Are you afraid of him?"
The look the Fearless gave her through the eyes of the warrior made her stumble back, but they didn't stop or slow down. They kept going and going until they reached a fighter that had been used during the initial boarding by the Fearless’ forces. Audrey climbed inside, seeing no point in trying to resist.
Besides, she already had a victory point. As the doors slid shut and Audrey wondered if she'd ever see Tieran again, there was one silver lining in it all.
The connection between them went two ways. The Fearless could exploit her feelings and scare her, but she had caught something too. When she'd mentioned Tieran, there had been a sliver of fear in the monster.
Not the kind of fear normal people felt.
Different, somehow.
She remembered what Tieran had told her about the Fearless. It wasn't death they feared, but Audrey found now that their name wasn't entirely true either. It saw Tieran as a possible threat, someone to stop it from getting what it wanted.
It wasn't terrified of him, but it did avoid the paladin.
It wasn't strong enough to feel safe yet. Even with the lifestone calling to Audrey within it, the Fearless had not yet had the time to become all that it could be.
There was still time.
The stolen Brion ship was dim, dark enough for Audrey to be almost blind. She knew they saw well in the dark, but for her it was a perilous walk.
The Fearless noticed and the hallways lit up immediately. Audrey doubted if it was any courtesy to her. For some reason, the Fearless was being more careful with her well-being than it was with its own.
Then again, she was considerably less durable than it was.
Audrey wished she knew what had happened on the Vehement and if Tieran was okay, but then something knocked her right back to her own reality.
She and Tieran had assumed the Brions were dead, but they were far from it. Judging by the looks on the faces of the men Audrey saw, they perhaps wished they were.
The shame of losing to an enemy without honor must have gutted the men.
Tied together in a large room, unarmed, they watched the Fearless approach with open disgust. The large battle spears were piled up in one corner, out of their reach.
Audrey thought it was rather careless to leave them alive, but the Fearless didn't think like she did. First of all, she immediately realized why it was being so careless with its host. It just had them to spare.
What a horrible fate.
Secondly, it wasn't afraid of them. It had overpowered them once, it could do it again.
She had to resist an urge to run and try to free some of them. They weren't a match for the Fearless, but they could have helped, at least. All of them were looking at her with curiosity too, but none spoke.
Just as she was thinking up a plan, a few Jorcossi entered the hall and took up positions around the warriors. Audrey noticed several splitters. It made her skin crawl, as much as it posed another problem.
That made escaping considerably more difficult, of course.
"Come," the Fearless called her. "Don't even think of helping them."
Audrey followed, hating the fact it read her mind so easily, but perhaps it had done her a favor. The Brions were looking at her differently, now that they knew she wasn't an ally of the Fearless but a prisoner like them.
She could barely believe it. All the Brion warriors looked tough and capable, but they were herded together like sheep. If the Fearless was powerful enough to subdue them all, what hope did the rest of the galaxy have?
Then she thought of Tieran and the way he had fought the mech. She knew he could face the monster, but first the paladin commander needed to get to it.
Audrey let the Fearless lead her through long hallways until it reached the bridge. From there, she could see the Vehement.
Thank the gods, it hasn’t been blown up yet.
She needed to buy Tieran some time. Audrey didn't see the Jorcossi ship anywhere, which could only mean one thing since they'd tracked them side by side with the Brion ship for a while now.
It had to be somewhere inside the Brion ship. The unit of Jorcossi she'd seen guarding the prisoners were but a fraction of the enemies really residing on board.
"Very clever," the Fearless said, evidently picking up on that line of thought however distantly.
Being so close together, the bracelet must not have been shielding all of her thoughts as well as she would have liked.
Audrey glared, knowing it did her no good. It was then that she realized the full breath of the Fearless’ plan.
The Fearless wasn't going to destroy the Vehement. It was worse than they had even suspected. The monster truly was calculating the best way to succeed now.
It didn't want to kill Tieran, it wanted to possess him. Brion warriors were fine, but they didn't match the paladin commander. Though it probably didn’t need a host, it certainly saw the benefit in having one, now.
Being able to blend into the surroundings, move around without attracting armies looking to kill it with a single step, was about as valuable as the lifestone stores on Verien.
Combine those two together and the Fearless truly could be unstoppable.
And if it looked in Audrey's head, really looked, it would have seen everything. Her feelings towards him and his for her.
She wasn't a prisoner, she was bait.
The Brion host was smiling the same empty, lifeless smile as the man in the Verien mines. The Fearless turned to her and Audrey got to see the understanding flash in the warrior's eyes before the Fearless emerged.
She would have screamed, but her throat was tied shut. Audrey had to crane her neck to take all of the monstrous beast in.
It was shorter than the snake she'd seen, but it made the Fearless no less threatening. On the contrary, there was something genuinely unsettling about the dark, obsidian form it took.
Its eyes were hollow pits with huge red pupils that made it look like there was a dark flame burning in the beast. It was a towering, draconic creature with long clawed fingers and hind legs like a humongous wolf. The worst was the face, with canine maws and sharp teeth, biting air with nothing else to sink its teeth in.
How can it fit in a person? she thought, swallowing dryly.
"We wait now," the beast snarled, its voice like crackling fire. "The paladin will come. You will show me the way to your mines together."
"No," Audrey said before she could stop herself. "We will not help you. Never."
"No?" the Fearless asked as though it was unused to the word. "Everybody says that. Then everybody dies. I offer you life, female. If I take Verien, I want more. You will help me find it, help me navigate. I possess the stone, but it does not lead me. It leads you. First, you will take me to your ice world. Then, you will take me everywhere else."
So that was the reason she was still drawing breath and why she was free instead of possessed by the monster.
I’m a glorified GPS system.
Audrey stared at the Fearless, hatred giving her courage that had toppled, seeing its true form. It was a small relief to know that it could not track the lifestone stores itself. With the help of the Jorcossi, it could find Verien on its own, most likely, but he couldn’t find any more of it.
And it wanted every bit of it that the galaxy had to offer.
"I will not help you," she said firmly.
The Fearless laughed. It was a horrible sound, making her feel like there was no happiness in the universe all of a sudden. It would more than likely be so once the creature was through with the galaxy.
"You will," the Fearless said. "You will do as I say and perhaps I will not kill your male."
14
Tieran
She was gone.
As soon as the bridge reported that the fighter had taken off, Tieran knew that Audrey was on it. He cursed himself for not realizing the Fearless' objective sooner. It had been the right thing to do to try and kill the Fearless before it ever reached her, but the fact he'd let the beast slip changed it.
Now it seemed foolish to have left her alone.
Audrey’s message was relayed to Tieran the moment Geroy was cut down from the bulkhead. It was cryptic, roiling around in the back of Tieran’s mind as he led the preparations to retaliate against the Fearless.
What are you trying to tell me, little one? he wondered, bile rising in his throat at the thought of Audrey being alone with the vile creature.
Tieran wasted no time. He had only one task now, for the sake of them all. He gave strict orders to board the Brion ship in response. If that vessel fired its gun at them, all hope would be lost. They had to disable the ship and kill the Fearless.
That was easier said than done.
The Fearless hadn't come alone. The Jorcossi were so many they blocked up entire hallways, making it impossible for Tieran to move without cutting his way through a mass of bodies. His glaive was bloody and so was he, fighting his way to the splitters to take the damnable bastards down before they created more.
Other paladins joined him, but it was clear that the Jorcossi were under orders to tie him down specifically.
Palians didn't perceive battle like other species did. There was no part of them that enjoyed killing. The closest they came to feeling good about ending lives was stopping an evil creature like the Fearless, making the task of destroying the Jorcossi entirely joyless.
Tieran slashed his blade left and right, feeling no remorse. The Jorcossi had been given plenty of chances to join the Union, to become better, but they had not.
The reason he almost felt sorry for them, the reason he took care to deliver quick, merciful kills, was that they were afraid. The Fearless, whether it was really a Jorcossi or if it had somehow replicated the ability, was coercing them into following its orders.
And unlike Palians, Jorcossi had never been particularly ready to put their necks on the line for others.
In fact, Tieran doubted it had been any question at all. If a being like the Fearless showed up and demanded their allegiance, he was sure there hadn't been a moment of consideration.
Right now, that meant they were in his way.
Tieran aimed his blows at the splitters, but they kept behind the lines, flooding the halls of his ship with their vile spawn. The paladins were responding, though. They surrounded the bigger enemies, pushing them back step by step, cutting down their guards and splitting them open like their name demanded.
It seemed like a lifetime had passed when Tieran finally stood without an enemy charging him. The floors of the ship were packed with bodies and the sight disgusted him. The walls were red as well, the handprints of falling soldiers as they slid down.
All of it would have to be burned, along with his fallen brothers.
He knew it would only be worse if he didn't stop the Fearless.
Taking a unit of his best paladins, Tieran made his way to where the Fearless had taken Audrey. The Vehement was left under strict commands to abandon the ship in smaller craft the second they were fired upon.
Like that, there was a chance that at least some of them made it to safety.
It was the best they could do for the time being.
As he stepped off the shuttle, Tieran knew he had no particular reason to believe Audrey was even still alive. The Fearless, after all, were known for never showing mercy.
But he couldn't convince himself of that, refused to even try. If anything bad had happened to her, he would never forgive himself. His first command was to send a couple of paladins to disable the ship's guns to make sure their own ship was safe.
Then they pushed forward int
o the ship, finding it unpleasantly dark as Brion ships were. Everyone was on guard since the bridge had confirmed the Jorcossi ship was now inside the bigger and faster one.
It meant there was potentially a whole Jorcossi horde waiting for them around the corner and Tieran didn't want to get rushed again.
He came around a corner, only to witness a sight he had never thought he'd see. A whole Brion crew, tied up in a large hall.
"Jorcossi!" one of them bellowed as soon as Tieran stepped into the room.
He dodged the splitter that was coming for him, groaning in frustration to see another wave of them coming out of the hidden nooks in the walls.
"Free the prisoners!" he roared to his paladins, meeting the first wave head-on.
His paladins rushed to the Brions, fighting off the Jorcossi guards while they did so. It left them an easy prey, but Tieran and the others formed a protective circle around them as they did so.
A few of his men went to throw the battle spears to the prisoners and the Brions joined the melee. It was good to have them at his back, but it didn't bring Tieran any closer to finding Audrey.
To think that the Fearless had possessed her was the worst to bear, because there was no way to save her then.
Tieran pushed on, suddenly hearing screams behind him. He spun around, glaive at the ready.
A Brion captain was standing in the middle of his dead brothers, clearly slain by his own spear, the blood still dribbling out of his abdomen. He was smiling, keeping his eyes on Tieran alone.
It was not the same warrior that the vids had caught on the Vehement. Tieran had been shown feeds as he mounted the counterattack of the Brion leading Audrey onto the fighter. The Fearless must have discarded the previous host like so much wasted space.
"I was right to choose you," he said. "You are the one to get me more."
The Brion warrior had to be a great fighter to achieve such a position within a species where promotion meant killing your predecessor. But the speed with which it attacked, the spear meeting the glaive in air, was nothing short of supernatural.