Alien Paladin's Woman: SciFi Alien-Human Military Suspense Romance Page 17

  She didn't need to look behind to know the Fearless was right on her tail. Audrey ran, knowing she would be nothing but an appetizer before the monster turned its hunger to her planet.

  It was time for Verien to fight back.

  18

  Tieran

  Audrey was in danger. That was the only truth Tieran knew in that moment.

  He saw her run and disappear into the station right before the Fearless' jaws snapped shut where she'd stood a second ago. Pelar and Audrey's guards scattered away, jumping out of the path of the rampaging monster.

  Tieran was dashing after them, distantly noting the way the Fearless had torn through the walls and doorframes.

  It was mad, really mad.

  In any other circumstance, on any other day, Tieran would have been glad for that. A furious enemy was a clumsy, mistake-prone opponent. While he didn't relish in winning easily, that was the one fight he would have liked to end quickly. There was too much at stake to let the Fearless run freely.

  And now it was.

  Tieran was momentarily held up by the Jorcossi who had followed the Fearless into the station, but that was enough for the Fearless to lose him. At least following it was easy enough, but every long claw mark on the walls made his heart skip a beat, thinking of what they would do to Audrey if she was caught.

  A comm link opened to him and her beautiful voice made him breathe again.

  "Tieran!" she called. "Tieran!"

  "I'm here," he spoke into the device hurriedly. "Where are you?"

  "Running for my life, where do you think?" she bellowed back, slightly breathless, and in the background, Tieran could hear a distant screech.

  Like some huge creature was moving with such speed it had to dig its long, blade-like claws into the ground to brake. Which was exactly what was happening.

  "I don't think I can outrun it much longer," Audrey said and her voice was as hopeless as Tieran had ever heard it.

  She was clearly out of breath, the long cloak that protected her from Verien's weather bearing her down. And Tieran knew the ugly truth. Even if she were the most accomplished warrior in the galaxy, the Fearless was a creature of boundless power. Eventually, it would catch her.

  Only the rigid walls of the station were keeping it at bay, just like they had on the Brion ship.

  "How far are you from the trap?" he asked.

  "Close," Audrey replied and her voice was almost panicky. "I can feel its breath..."

  "Keep running!" Tieran ordered her and stopped speaking, channeling all of his strength into crossing the distance between them.

  As he followed the Fearless, he didn't miss how clever Audrey had been. Between the two of them, it was unlikely anyone knew the station better. Faced with the legendary creature, she had still had the presence of mind to choose the hardest paths for the Fearless.

  Not the shortest, which he knew was tempting, but the tightest. Rooms that were covered in hard titanium, reinforced time and time again; corridors that were so small Tieran could hear Fearless roar up ahead, labs that were small and blast-proof, and lift decks that were almost carved from iron.

  The only reason it wasn't stuck yet was the fact that ultimately, the Fearless was more powerful. He could already see the beast's huge form up ahead and drew the gun on his hip. Around him, Tieran saw snowflakes dance and the walls were being quickly covered by ice. The Fearless cared nothing for the station's structural integrity. There were a few places where the roof wasn't so thick and the Fearless had made cracks in it with his enormous form.

  Despite remaining largely unaffected, Tieran could feel the temperature dropping fast.

  “Seal the path behind the Fearless! The roof is giving in,” he barked into the link, so the corridors could be sealed shut as well as possible after he'd passed through.

  The trap was right up ahead when he finally caught up. The Fearless heard him, turning with an angry snarl, but he didn't arrive a second too soon. Audrey was still running, but the monster was within an arm's reach of her. She hadn’t been kidding when she said she could feel its breath.

  Tieran didn't even stop. Years, decades of practice had steadied his hand, even when Audrey's life was at stake. He brought up the gun he wore on his belt, rarely used, and fired a volley of shots right at the creature's right eye.

  It was as effective as slapping it in the face with an open hand, but it was a distraction and he didn't need much more. Being careful not to step in the hall the Fearless had stopped in, Tieran could see Audrey slipping away on the other side of the gigantic dock the beast had been led into.

  "Doors shut!" he bellowed into the comm. "Outer doors open!"

  With a thunderous clash, the doors closed, already prepared to move at their greatest speed. It didn't make for anything graceful or formidable, but they hoped the doors wouldn't be needed at all. After all, it wasn't the station Tieran and Audrey had made their bet on.

  It was Verien, the planet that had been so hard on them.

  Beside the enormous door sealing the bay off from the rest of the station, there was a small screen. It was meant for exactly that occasion, with the possible exception of the Fearless.

  The bay they were in now was one of the places that opened to the harsh terrain of Verien, it was where the expeditions to the surface embarked from. And occasionally, something could go wrong.

  It would have been very out of character for the Palians not to come up with an option to check what the bay was like before opening the doors that symbolized life and death on the planet.

  Right now, Tieran knew that across the bay, Audrey was looking at the same screen with a thudding heart.

  In the first moment, it seemed even a creature like the Fearless could be caught by surprise. Seeing both his victims hide behind doors was not unpredictable, but when the bay began to open to the planet without anything in the way...

  The monster understood.

  Tieran watched with cold interest at the way the creature screeched in the terrible weather. There was no shelter in the bay, not even anything to jam the doors with. The doors slid open swiftly and without pause, inviting the deadly temperature of Verien in.

  The readings showed it came with a bite. Outside, the day was cold even for Verien.

  The Fearless began to freeze right before their eyes and suddenly Tieran was very glad that Audrey was still wearing her long cloak. It wouldn't protect her in case of direct contact with the surface, but it provided protection inside the station and the mines.

  The temperature was bound to drop around them from the damage the Fearless had already done, regardless of what happened next. On top of that, the bay doors would be automatically opened later when the sensors deemed it safe again. ‘Safe’ however did not equate to ‘warm’.

  He watched, conflicted. There was an interesting pain to watching the enemy literally freeze to the spot in the bay, like it wasn't an honorable way to go. Tieran was all too aware that the Fearless would have gladly thrown him into worse situations and not cared in the slightest, but he was a Palian.

  That was not how he thought.

  "Is it working?" he could hear Audrey's tentative voice ask over the comm link.

  "It seems to be," he said. "I don't think even the Fearless can fake that."

  On the screen, the whole bay was being covered in ice and snow, blowing in on the wings of the powerful storm raging outside. Everything turned light blue, and then started twisting into paler and paler shades until reaching a pristine whiteness.

  They had chosen a good day, it seemed. Verien was being particularly vengeful and Tieran couldn't have been happier about that.

  The monster's obsidian crust was slowly but surely being covered in frost, but Tieran wasn't going to open the doors until he was certain there was no more movement. He listened patiently for any signs of a furious roar or anything signaling that the monster was even still conscious.

  Above all, Tieran wasn't going to risk the unlikely chance that Verien had kil
led the enemy for him.

  "Commander?" another voice sounded from the comm link. "The bay can't maintain the weather much longer. It was never meant to be held open for so long. If we don't close the doors soon, they might not move at all."

  Techies like the ones that helped seal up the station were still manning the command centers, tasked with making this trap work. They must have tracked the Fearless’ path as best as they could on the cameras mounted in the corridors, each getting torn from the walls as the beast trampled through, and were now watching the readouts from the bay.

  "How much time would you say we have?" Tieran asked solemnly.

  "A few minutes, maybe."

  "Very well," he said. "Close the bay off before the critical point, but give me as much time as you can."

  He switched channels to Audrey again.

  "We need to shut off the bay soon," he said. "The station itself might be compromised unless we don't. What are you feeling? Is it reaching out to you, the Fearless?"

  There was a long pause from Audrey. Tieran was beginning to think she hadn't heard him and was about to repeat himself when she spoke up.

  "We are good. I don't know what to think. Ever since we trapped it inside, the life force I feel from it has gotten consistently smaller, like it's shutting down. I took the bracelet off for a second, even, but it's the same."

  "Isn't that good?" Tieran asked.

  "It is. Too good. Like, very fucking conveniently good."

  "Do you think it might be trying to trick us? Still?" Tieran pressed on, although he had already accounted for that possibility.

  Palians always did, because they had a few tricks up their sleeves as well.

  "Maybe. Tieran, all I'm saying is that I think it's growing stronger over time. I don’t mean right now, in the cold, but since we came up against it last. Before, it already played with my mind. It made me see things that were not there. It could be doing it again. I can only tell you what I sense from it. I can't swear it's the truth."

  That was fair. Tieran expected nothing more from her. Considering the circumstances and the enemy they were facing, anything she was doing at all was a small miracle in itself. He wanted to make sure she knew that.

  "I know," he said. "Even if it is somehow faking this, knowing that it can is already an advantage. Have faith, Audrey."

  There was no response from her as in the bay, the doors to the surface of Verien started to close. Tieran noticed they did it much more slowly and jaggedly than before, creaking and groaning with every inch.

  After it was all over, the bay had to be melted and put to order, but right now, he was counting seconds until warmth would flood the narrow bay.

  Sealed off from the planet, there was no helping that the heating process began at once. Even Tieran, who didn't know cold the way Terrans did, couldn't immediately jump into the bay to finish the job. He had to wait, but every moment gave the Fearless a chance to break free.

  The doors before him remained shut until the readings on the panel next to the door slowly changed. Tieran made sure his armor was adjusted to the Fearless' particular fighting methods and that the heating was pushed to the maximum.

  The glaive was already in his hand, ready.

  From her brief encounters with the monster, Audrey had emerged with several amazing ideas on how to hinder the Fearless and using the cold against it had been one of them. Now it was his time to use the opportunity she'd given him to kill the Fearless.

  And yet there was something in her warning that rang true.

  The Fearless were ultimately made of flesh and bone like every other living being in the galaxy, but one had never gone down that easily. This one, still having a sliver of the lifestone within it, had to be the strongest one yet.

  Tieran didn't believe in luck. It helped, sure, but he didn't know any great warrior who relied on it.

  Do not let it use anything against you, he told himself, bracing for entry.

  Finally, the readings reached a tolerable level. The doors before him slid open and so did the ones on the other end, revealing Audrey, drawing in a shocked breath.

  The cold was enough to knock air out of even his powerful lungs, but it wasn't inhuman.

  Tieran took off running. Even with the Fearless still as a statue, Tieran was convinced it was not over yet. Every second that passed made it increasingly likely that the Fearless would wake very, very angry.

  19

  Audrey

  The cold in the bay was nothing like she'd ever experienced before.

  The sudden shock of the temperature was so terrible that for a long moment, Audrey wasn't able to make her limbs move. The wave of coldness that washed over her showed the governor vividly what kind of a pampered life she'd been able to live on Verien after all.

  She was reminded of the morning when Pelar had forgotten to turn on the floor heating. That had been one moment of slight discomfort.

  Now Audrey was finally faced with what Verien was really like, and she still hadn't experienced the true wrath of it.

  Nothing like this, she thought, wrapping the cloak around her tighter.

  At the other end of the bay, she could see Tieran already moving to the Fearless. She and her paladin guards who'd finally caught up with her entered the bay carefully too, having been forced to take the long path to her, with Pelar on their trail. Audrey and her assistant stayed behind the rows of the warriors and guards who surrounded the monster.

  As Tieran came closer, the glaive bared in his hands, Audrey could feel her heartbeat go through the roof.

  This is it. This can all be over right now.

  Telling herself that didn't help one bit, however. She simply couldn't shake the feeling that something was terribly, inexplicably wrong.

  It was too easy, that's what it was. And if dealing with the Fearless and the Jorcossi had taught her anything, it was that too easy was never a good sign. It just didn’t work that way.

  She wanted to call out to Tieran, let him know he needed to be careful, but decided against it. The paladin knew that himself, for one. And she didn't want to embarrass him, for the other. Finally, she wasn’t even sure she could produce any sounds with the way her throat seemed to be iced over.

  So she shrunk back.

  “Pelar, stay with me.”

  The Palian girl already knew what she needed from her. At the first sign of trouble, she would have to close the bracelet around Audrey's arm.

  It was a dangerous ploy, because despite everything, the Fearless wasn't dead yet. Audrey could hear its vicious heart beating somewhere. Until then, it was bound to fight with all the recklessness of a cornered animal.

  She watched as Tieran stopped in front of the creature, appearing to take a moment to decide which way was the best to kill it.

  "Keep watch," Audrey told Pelar, smiling uneasily. "I'm going in."

  She didn't want to take the bracelet off, especially so close to the monster, but if Tieran was going to go and punch his blade right into the Fearless' heart, she needed to keep watch. She figured the risk was worth it and besides, the enemy was practically frozen. It had to have some effect on it, after all.

  The only way she could really help Tieran was if she could see what the Fearless was planning and warn him in time. For that, she needed to take the bracelet off and focus on the beast before her, drowning out the call of the lifestone stores beneath her feet.

  Audrey realized her mistake a second too late.

  Her fingers hadn't even left the clasp of the bracelet when the dark red eyes of the Fearless snapped open.

  The bay came to life along with her.

  Everyone was looking at her, because the Fearless was. The monster was shaking now, trying to throw the layer of ice off itself. Every glaive, every gun, every last weapon in the bay was trained at it.

  The guns were already firing, but they only helped to reduce the ice.

  “Stop!” Tieran roared.

  The warriors heeded the command, lowering the
ir guns and just waiting at the ready.

  Audrey was gasping for air, her hand still hovering, shaking over her wrist.

  The Fearless was in her head, laughing.

  She had never felt anything like that, the way the monster completely overwhelmed her like she was nothing. It was almost like she was holding the lifestone again, taken to pieces as though she didn't exist, but different.

  The Fearless enjoyed the fact that she was very much alive and tormented.

  Pelar was trying to pull her hand away, covering the clasp of the bracelet, but Audrey felt like it was her that was frozen in place now. She didn't move, or budge, and there was such strength in her now that Pelar couldn’t force the bracelet shut either if Audrey didn’t allow it.

  “Audrey, please!” Pelar gasped.

  She gritted her teeth in fury, feeling the Fearless wreak havoc in her brain. It shuffled through her memories and feelings, looking for weaknesses. She hated it, absolutely despised the fact that the enemy managed to use her against Tieran, because the commander of the paladins had discussed everything with her.

  She couldn't keep the Fearless away. It was too powerful. It was going to break through.

  It had been hopeless all along.

  It’s over.

  That last thought knocked her back to her senses for a moment. She realized that the misery she felt wasn't hers, wasn't her at all. It wasn't like her to abandon all hope before the loss was clear.

  She fought it, with everything that she had, and for a second, it felt to Audrey like she was inching closer to slamming the bracelet shut. Somewhere, the lifestone of the mountain shone, but her mind was made blind to it for the first time since she'd emerged from the mines.

  Distantly, Audrey could hear Tieran and the others fighting the Fearless. It had shaken itself free and the dark black form was once again a free target, but it was also rampaging again. Men fell to the claws and the jaws like they were nothing but puppets in its way.

  She sensed Tieran close by. It was the only light she felt, only certainty she could hold on to. The commander of the paladins was one of those who weren't falling to the enemy, was giving back as good as he got.