Alien Invader’s Prey Read online

  Alien Invader’s Prey

  A Dark SciFi Romance

  Calista Skye

  Contents

  Prologue

  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

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  - Althea -

  “Why do they want you?”

  His voice is gravelly and rough. Part of that is the strain of forming English words with his alien mouth and throat. Another part is that he’s a rough kind of man. And part of it has to be the excitement he feels at having me at his mercy like this.

  I’m held in place, so securely I don’t even bother struggling and straining anymore. It’s not ropes that bind me. They are alien straps and strands, smooth and warm, holding me and supporting me with perfect, alien precision. I think they might be alive, even. Every little move I make is echoed in my bonds, neutralizing them and holding me perfectly in place, six feet off the floor.

  I’m naked and spread, bent almost double. My feet are level with my face, held there by the alien tentacles, opening me completely for my tormentor, giving him effortless access to all my most intimate places.

  He’s nine feet tall and metallic blue all over. It’s not even a suit. That’s all him. There are gills on his chest, vibrating with the tension of his gigantic, otherworldly muscles. His eyes sparkle in a myriad of colors, and he’s breathtakingly beautiful. That only makes him more terrifying.

  He’s an alien warrior, all muscle and power and determination. And he’s determined to have me answer his question.

  “Fuck you,” I spit.

  My voice is raspy, too. Because of the fear, of course. I’m genuinely afraid of him. Anyone would be. He has invaded the colony where I live, ignoring the heavily armed defenders. He’s a one-man invasion army.

  He only sustained one injury. And I gave it to him.

  His eyes appear to shoot yellow flames, and I see his strong jaw clench. I’ve never seen a more dangerous sight. Even inside this outrageously alien spaceship, full of alien objects and sensational technology, nothing else matters to me. Only him. He commands my attention just by existing. He demands it.

  And I give it to him. I have no more choice than a rabbit is given by a wolf.

  But I will not give him this.

  He’s naked, too. And I know what will happen now. I’m spread open, and I can smell my own arousal in the air. My sex is swollen and ready for him, betraying me in the most shameful way. I’m glad I can’t see it. I think I must be dripping.

  His sensational alien cock is straining skywards. He will punish me now. With that cock.

  He will have his way with me. Time and time again.

  I know it. I hate it.

  And… I love it.

  I love being his prey.

  1

  - Brox -

  Bleep zooms in front of the main display and hangs there. “That’s the planet?”

  I initiate landing procedures, positioning the ship so the engines can work against the direction of flight, braking it down. “It is.”

  The little point of brilliantly white light that is the tiny drone called Bleep somehow manages to radiate disbelief, just by the way she hovers. “There’s nothing there!”

  “Don’t ask me, Bleep. I don’t pick them,” I growl.

  I’m starting to feel a little bit of doubt, myself. The planet is a good size, but it’s mostly red rocks. A small cluster of light on the night side tells me that it has life. Of course it does. If not, there would be no reason for us or our competitors to come here.

  “Are you sure the Glup are here?” Bleep says, echoing my thoughts.

  I check the various scopes and sensors. “They are. Huge green blip right behind us. They really mean it.”

  “Do they know we’re here?”

  I’m filled with relief and a satisfaction that makes me chuckle. “You bet they do.”

  Bleep retreats a pace. “I wish you wouldn’t laugh inside. It’s not a big ship. The whole thing vibrates. You’ll shake it apart one day. You have a very deep voice, you know.”

  I shrug, wishing I had another warrior to slap on the back in friendly expectation of something good to come. “Warriors don’t restrain themselves in their actions. It’s unmanly.”

  “Organics,” the little drone mutters.

  I pilot the ship to a not very soft landing on the gravel, and the whole thing rocks on the landing gear for a moment. “We’re down.”

  I stand up, hitting my head on the ridiculously low ceiling for the six hundredth time. And for the five hundred and ninety ninth time, I refrain from punching the inanimate material over my head. The dent from the one time I did punch it doesn’t look like it could handle another. Even a warrior can restrain himself sometimes.

  “Tape a cushion up there,” Bleep suggests. “Save you all those bumps on your head. I mean, it’s not like all those hits you take make you any smarter. And there’s not a lot of brains in that big skull of yours to begin with.”

  I look down myself. I’m wearing loose pants, just for the modesty. If this were a real war, I would wear nothing, using the now hidden parts as additional weapons. Every part of me has an offensive function. And in actual combat, any garment would inevitably be ripped to pieces.

  “I’m as smart as I need to be,” I counter, checking the scopes for where the Glup are landing their box-shaped ship. “Smart enough to win this Trophy.”

  “How many wins left until we’ve officially won the whole thing? And, more importantly, the cash prize?” Bleep asks, settling down on the backrest of the chair I just vacated, looking like the small, luminous diamond she isn’t. She knows the answer better than I do. But it’s her way of focusing me on the task at hand.

  I have to think. “We beat the Glup seven times by now. This is the eighth. The Siripp we beat once, the Virion we beat four times. And then there was the— unpleasantness.”

  “The time we lost!” Bleep declares brightly in her ridiculously feminine voice. “Yes, I remember.”

  “The Cyx cheated,” I state darkly. “We clearly touched down and caught the Trophy before they did. Then they claimed the Trophy was another object. And the referee agreed. They must have bribed him. They must.”

  The memory makes the anger bubble in me, but I can’t let it come to a boil. Not in here.

  “Yeah, never trust those robot refs. Hey, we’re still in the lead,” Bleep says. “We just need four more victories. Four more Matches, for more planets that we invade first and take the designated Trophy before our competitor can. And I notice we still have to get the Trophy on this one.”

  She’s right.

  I open the door with a hiss of equalized pressure and peer out.

  It’s all a reddish brown. Jagged rocks, gravel, pebbles, sand. The sky is a dirty yellow. The dry air smells of flint and recently hammered stone. It has a chemical,
artificial quality. The pressure is high enough that I can function at maximum efficiency. There will be enough oxygen that my body can use it just like normal. No need to compensate for airlessness. The gills will go mostly unused.

  It’s very quiet. All I can hear is the wind howling slightly as it blows past our ship’s landing gear.

  I turn around. “What’s the Trophy?”

  Bleep hovers closer. “Receiving it now. Oh, you’ll hate this. One human female.”

  I frown. “A female? Not sentient, surely?”

  “I don’t know how sentient it has to be. One human female. That’s all it says. Probably better if you get a really dumb one. So it can’t outsmart you.”

  “How will I know what a human is?”

  “Checking with the referee… okay, they’re the only bipeds on the planet. Not many of them, apparently. They’re colonists from another planet in this system. Six feet tall. Females are usually shorter. Vaguely standard-panseeded configuration.”

  “Ah.” I look out over the red planet once more. So, the Trophy I have to collect here is of a species that’s loosely similar to the most common sentient shape, as seeded on many planets all over the galaxy eons ago by some mysterious alien species long gone and forgotten. “I never liked these living Trophies.”

  “Told you you’d hate it. So maybe, get it over with? Time waits for no blue warrior.”

  - - -

  I walk across the alien terrain, feeling the hard ground against the soles of my bare feet. I concentrate for a moment and adjust the sensitivity of that skin to just the perfect level, where I can feel each stone without it being unpleasant.

  In the distance, I see what must be a settlement of some kind. Lights that are dimming in the light of the rising star. Round shapes that might indicate some kind of domes to provide the inhabitants with the atmosphere they’re used to. Well, if they’re standard configuration, then the atmosphere outside the domes can’t be that far off what they need. I’m not having to adjust my breathing or filtration at all. Seventy percent nitrogen, eighteen percent oxygen, I estimate. And a smattering of other stuff, judging purely from the flavor of it when I filtrate it through my gills. My guess is that this planet didn’t have an atmosphere until recently.

  I walk with long strides, covering the distance while making a mental note of the location and orientation of all the structures in front of me. I don’t even have to think about it. My training in warfare was very thorough.

  My feet are red with dust already. Which would seem to indicate that there’s some moisture in the air. But not much.

  There’s smoke rising from the domes, and some sharp bangs reach me. As well as the fabric-ripping sound from the energy weapons favored by the Glup. Yes, they have landed already. If they get the human female before I can, then they will win this Match. I landed first, but now I also have to get the Trophy in order to win. Why on Nutg’ir’x did I land this far from the settlement?

  Of course, I know why. It was an intuitive decision. When landing by unknown structures, always land far away, so that you reduce the probability of being hit by anti-spacecraft fire. I’m much more vulnerable when flying that spacecraft than when walking on a planet.

  I run the final one thousand paces. The gravity is pleasantly light, but not too light. I’m making good time.

  I reach the domes. There’s a firefight going on, and I have to stay away from it. The Glup just might be tempted to ‘accidentally’ shoot me if they spot me. They won’t kill me, but one of those weapons on max power will sting pretty bad.

  Some kind of alarm is sounding, an insistent noise that rises and falls. It’s no use, defenders, I think to myself. The Glup have you now.

  There are still defenders, I think. There is still the occasional bang to be heard, much closer.

  Ah yes. I see them now. The defenders are indeed small bipeds, seeking shelter behind various debris while firing at the advancing gang of Glup. Shooting with kinetic weapons, it appears.

  I sniff the air. Definitely a sulfuric note. Surely they’re not using kinetic weapons based on a chemical reaction? They can’t be that primitive.

  I will stay behind cover. Perhaps one of the defenders is a female. If so, I must snatch it before the Glup do, as soon as the fight is over.

  I will wait it out.

  There’s sudden movement to my left, and my head snaps around.

  2

  - Althea -

  “Aliens!” is the last thing I hear before the master alarm starts wailing.

  I jump out of bed, feeling my heart rate jump and my veins filling with the unpleasant substances that the body produces to get ready for a panic.

  I stand still on the cold floor, feeling the fight-or-flight reflex almost kick in, like it usually does when I hear that alarm during a drill. But the panic doesn’t come. Instead, I calmly pull on my jumpsuit and boots.

  Aliens?

  I definitely heard someone yell it outside the living quarters dome. It can’t be true, though. There are no aliens here on Mars. Or anywhere else, as far as we know. Someone must have had a bad dream.

  Tricia, the colony chief, comes out the door opposite mine, her hair in total disarray and her eyes small. “What the hell?”

  “That was my question, too.” My voice is creaky from sleep.

  Still, I have an uneasy feeling as I make my way through the dome to the exit. Some other colonists are there, too, but before we can start talking, we hear sharp bangs that make us jump.

  “Shit,” I say out loud. “One of the Forcies has gone crazy and started shooting.”

  “Oh no!” Jessica says, another colonist, panic in her voice. “What should we do?”

  The Space Force guys are aptly named. They were forced on us by higher authorities when the Mars colonies were first founded. ‘You never know,’ was the argument. ‘If there’s an alien invasion, you’ll be glad you have them.’

  Of course we all knew the real reason: The government of our country wanted to establish an armed presence on Mars as a way of projecting military power not just on Earth, but out into the rest of the solar system as well. Not because of aliens. Just to discourage other Earthlings.

  There are only six Forcies here, though. And they are doing their duty just like we civilians are, all the things that need doing if the colony is to survive and Mars is to be transformed into a livable planet.

  There’s another sound, too. An eerie noise like someone ripping a cotton sheet from end to end. I’ve never heard it before, and that has to be a bad sign.

  When the master alarm is sounding, we’re supposed to stay inside. But that noise…

  There are more bangs from the Forcie guns, followed by the terrible ripping noise. And then there’s screaming and yelling, too.

  “Medic!”

  “I’m hit!”

  “What the hell are those things?!”

  No, this is too much for me. I have to see what’s going on. And I am a trained medic. Like we all are.

  “I’m going out,” I tell the others, trying to keep my voice steady.

  I’m half hoping Tricia will stop me, but the power structure in the colony is muddy, and she knows that I like to do my own thing.

  I open the old airlock and carefully, slowly open the outer door. The procedure is really unnecessary now. The atmosphere of Mars has been almost transformed to the same pressure and the same gases we have on Earth, so we can breathe it just fine. But rules are rules.

  The first thing I see is a dead Forcie. He’s only wearing underwear and his helmet, and he has a wide, crimson stripe across his chest. He’s been cut and burned by something terrible, and his big, heavy-looking gun is lying across his neck.

  Right beside him, our communication dish lies broken, a huge parabolic antenna that gives us uninterrupted communications with Earth. It’s not supposed to be here. It’s supposed to be fifty meters up in the air, securely fastened to the main tower…

  The main tower is gone. Just gone.
r />   The strange sound is much louder, like a thousand gallons of oil sizzling in an immense frying pan, and I have an urge to put my hands to my ears. The bangs are more spread out now, but I can’t see our Forcies. They must be on the other side of the dome.

  I first see the shadow. Then someone steps out from behind the dome, and I duck behind the broken dish before he can see me.

  My stomach clenches, and for a moment my mind goes blank.

  That can’t be a Forcie. They’re all normal size. In fact, nobody as large as that thing there can exist.

  For a moment my brain races through all the reasonable options. It’s a huge balloon. Something the Forcies use. A piece of equipment. A cloud of smoke. A tent. A weird shadow.

  I slowly peer over the dish, hearing my heartbeat like thunder in my ears. My breathing is ragged.

  I only raise my head two inches, enough to see the head of that thing.

  Because it is plainly a head. Metallic blue. With no hair, but tall, black strakes sweeping backwards and ending in sharp points a foot behind this being’s head.

  This alien being.

  This alien.

  The whole world spins around me. My heart sinks in my chest, and I have trouble breathing. I want to cry.

  I sink slowly down again and struggle to breathe the perfectly fine Martian air. It smells like the Fourth of July, like someone set off fireworks.

  I clench my eyes, trying to keep the tears out of them while cold acid fills my stomach.

  What the fuck do I do?