Given to the Alien (Science Fiction BBW/Alien Romance) Page 5

  Ator'aq looked at some of the many screens in the room. “We have unfortunately not been able to glean much information from your world, Olivia. Not the best observers, your species. Many vital points about the aliens seem to have passed you by completely.”

  Olivia saw her chance to get some new info for General Wilhelmsen. “Such as what, sir?”

  Ator'aq didn't even glance at her. “Strategic information is expensive, Olivia. How do you intend to pay?”

  “Sir, it was my impression that our two worlds are now allies. Is it not customary for allies to share intel about the enemy? And is that not the most productive course of action?”

  Ator'aq was amused. “Allies? What does your species bring to the table, Olivia? Interstellar spaceships? No. Powerful weapons not based on primitive chemical explosives? No. Experience with warfare in space? No. We Braxians have all that. You have ten thousand space marines. They're completely untested in battle. Their equipment seems... unusable for the purpose. I'll concede that they may be brave and resourceful, and the evidence does point to that. By which I mean you. However, I can't possibly consider Earth an equal ally. What if I tell you everything we know about the Ethereals, and you turn around and tell the Ethereals what we know? I don't mean you personally, Olivia, no dishonor attaches to you. But your army certainly contains cowards and weaklings. All armies do.”

  Olivia stiffened. Was he suggesting... “There are no cowards in the Space Marines, sir,” she said curtly.

  The general's eyes glinted.“I see I have hit upon a sensitive spot for you. Very well, consider my statement to exclude the Space Marines. It makes no difference. Can you truly state that you are not beholden to officers who are not space marines?”

  Of course she could not. General Wilhelmsen was not a marine, and neither was Star Marshal Hoffner or Colonel Garcia. Did this alien already know who she worked for? Well, she couldn't give up here.

  “Sir, then I respectfully suggest that your side at least relay all the intelligence that you deem it beneficial for Earth to have. We will do anything we can to fight and win against the Ethereals. We may have unknown resources, and our will to fight and win is... Well, it's life or death for us, we know that. Anything, sir.”

  It came out as a pretty passionate speech, and the two other Braxians in the room looked at her with what she thought might be respect. Interest, certainly.

  Ator'aq kept studying the equipment. “I'm sure we can spare some slivers of tactical information. And possibly some of a strategic nature. But not right now. I will of course do that through proper channels, and that may not necessarily be you. Or it might.”

  He straightened up with a mischievous look on his face. “You're the liaison officer, Olivia. That means you will be spending some time with us. I'm afraid neither I nor my death commandos can take you seriously as a friend or an ally unless you know how to handle a sword.”

  He showed her his arms. They had thousands of little scars on them, both new and many years old, in addition to the fresh cut he had just gotten from Gar'ox' sword only minutes earlier.

  Olivia couldn't help gasping. His arm was a mess of scar tissue.

  He saw her horror and grinned wolfishly. “With everything it entails.”

  9

  They had converted the hotel restaurant to a training hall. It was just a big room with a smooth floor and improvised obstacles to make their fighting realistic.

  Ator'aq walked over to the wall and picked up an iron rod, three feet long. He tossed it towards her, and she dropped her pad and caught it in both hands. If she hadn't been wearing her exoskeleton, the impact of the heavy bar would have broken both her wrists. It was twice as thick as her thumb.

  “You don't have a blade, and that is probably for the best. Fighting with swords is an art. It requires practice. Swing that iron through the air.”

  Olivia stood there. This was ridiculous. Did he think he was going to teach her to fight with a damn sword?

  “Sir, in the Space Marine Corps we have other and much better weapons. I'm not sure this is a good use of our time.”

  “Tell me, Olivia, what does a liaison officer do?”

  She had read up on that. “Sir, a liaison officer is the point of contact between two different forces. All contact between the two happens through her, to avoid misunderstandings and mistakes in communication.”

  “Okay. And what is it that your superiors wish you to communicate to me through you today?”

  She racked her brain. There hadn't really been anything, as far as she understood.

  “There's nothing specific, General. Except that we are very anxious for information about the Ethereals.”

  “See? We have nothing specific to do or talk about. Now take a swing with the bar. Just swing it through the air as if it were a sword.”

  She considered her position. Ator'aq still hadn't put on a shirt, and his spectacular and scarred torso was a sight to behold.

  Well, maybe spending some time with him would be interesting. She couldn't take off her fatigues – not only was it against protocol, she also didn't relish the idea of showing off the exoskel. Apart from that, being in a tee-shirt here wouldn't bother her too much – she had a nice rack to go with her ample hips, and she was proud of it.

  She shrugged and swung the iron bar through the air. The exoskeleton handled it without any problems, and the heavy bar felt light in her hands.

  Ator'aq took an iron bar of his own, playfully flung it rotating twenty feet up into the air and caught it behind his back without looking.

  “That bar is a little heavier than a sword. It's good practice. Now take a swing at me, really try to hit me.”

  “Sir, are you sure this is what we should be doing? When the war comes and I'm deployed, I'll be using long-range weapons and explosives only. I was trained to do that over several years.” She knew she would never have talked to an officer like that when she was a sergeant, but now she was an officer herself, and she knew the Braxians weren't big on protocol anyway.

  “You are being recalcitrant, Olivia. Not a good quality in a liaison officer. She should get along with everyone. Now try to get along with me and knock me out with that iron bar.”

  She sighed. She wasn't getting away from this. Fine. He wanted her to hit him, that's what she would do. And she would remind her that she was a space marine.

  She suddenly jumped towards him, helped by the exoskel, drawing the heavy iron bar back at the same time and aiming for his stomach. She didn't want to kill him.

  He must have been taken by surprise by the speed and height that the exoskel gave her, but when she launched her swing, all it hit was his iron bar with a metallic clang and a force that made her teeth clatter.

  The bar vibrated in her hand, and Ator'aq made an appreciative noise.

  “Good, good. You might well have cut a dirty Ethereal in half with that stroke. If he had been a hundred and fifty years old and blind. But it was a good strike, fine follow-through. Now, try to grip the bar like this...”

  He showed her some basic techniques for handling a sword and fighting with it. He was a good teacher, too, and by the time her hands were so tired they simply couldn't grip around the iron bar anymore, she had a new respect for the way he easily handled his own bar. And the sword didn't seem nearly as ridiculous anymore.

  It was heavy work, and her fatigues were soaked through with sweat by the end. Ator'aq's athletic torso also had a sheen of sweat on it that made it look even more spectacular, and a myriad of big and small veins had popped up on his muscular body.

  “Good first session,” he said and threw her a towel with the text 'International Space City Marriott'. “You have a basic strength. And that is needed for sword fighting. Don't worry, a sword fight usually doesn't last as long as this. It is frequently over in less than a second. After a little more training, you'll be able to cut through ten effeminate Ethereals with one stroke.”

  Olivia flexed her hands. Yep, those would probably be sore an
d pretty much unusable tomorrow. She'd be lucky if she'd able to hold around her toothbrush.

  She put her beret back on and grabbed her pad from the floor. It could easily withstand the fall when she'd dropped it to catch the iron bar.

  Well over an hour had gone by since she'd entered the Braxian barracks. Ator'aq tossed her a bottle of water, also marked 'Marriott Hotels'.

  “Well, Olivia, I have a meeting with your Marshal very soon. You're welcome to come along.”

  Olivia froze for a split second. Damn, a high-level meeting with Hoffner and Ator'aq? And her uniform was soaked with sweat and her hair was in disarray. But it sounded like the kind if thing that she really should attend.

  “What time, sir? Do I have time to shower and change my uniform?”

  “I don't think there's time. It was scheduled to start fifteen minutes ago. I'm sure they're waiting for us.”

  Oh crap. Big brass hated to wait and really expected everyone to be on time.

  Well, she was a space marine. She could handle it.

  Ator'aq pulled on a tee-shirt and an alien-looking fabric jacket, making him look more like a pirate than a general.

  They left the room and walked past the MPs and into the military part of the station. Everyone they met stared at Ator'aq and then at Olivia, and it felt pretty nice to be walking beside him. He didn't say anything, just smiled at the people they met. And they smiled at him, too, especially the women. Everyone probably knew precisely who he was by now.

  10

  Ator'aq didn't want to have an ordinary meeting in a conference room. He calmly stated that he wanted to see some of the scenery on Earth up close, and suggested that they take a shuttle down to the surface and go for a walk. His idea of scenery was a mountain, and his idea of a walk was more like a climb. General Wilhelmsen had suggested the Gaustatoppen peak in Norway, which had a path to the top and which she promised would give a spectacular view. And Europe happened to be in daylight.

  Ator'aq had provided a shuttle for the trip, because Earth shuttles were far too delicate and could only land on designated runways. Atarox' shuttle was more of a military gunship that bristled with things that looked like weaponry. Hoffner and Wilhelmsen had asked Atarox many questions about it, not least how it worked, but Atarox had only said “this is so far beyond you that I can't ever begin to answer.”

  And that was that. The trip down to the surface only took twenty minutes, and Olivia could see that Hoffner and Wilhelmsen were astounded by that more than most things.

  They landed at the foot of the path and left the Braxian pilot with the shuttle, then began walking up the stony and difficult path to the top.

  It wasn't too strenuous, but Ator'aq walked fast, and the thin air meant that none of the Earthlings felt a need to talk much.

  When they neared the top, Star Marshal Hoffner could contain his impatience no longer.

  “General, what can you tell us about the Ethereals?”

  Ator'aq briefly stopped and looked out at the view, which he had often done on the way up. “Oh, I'm sure there are many things I could tell you. And there are some things that you'll have to find out on your own. As I've already told our charming liaison officer, intel is not free. But I will tell you some things that you probably should know.”

  He kept walking, and the others had to scramble to keep up and hear what he said.

  “The first thing is that no one knows where they come from. They tend to come out of the blue and contact primitive civilizations like yours, and then they entertain themselves while siphoning off resources from the planet, instigating unrest and kidnapping people. At some point the primitive civilization becomes aware of what's going on, and what usually happens then is that many different factions – you would call them countries and corporations – try to buy favor from the Ethereals by offering them anything they want, in exchange for the aliens helping the factions defeat their real or imagined enemies.”

  He stopped again, admiring the view, and Olivia saw the point. The scenery was pretty spectacular.

  The Braxian continued.

  “In your case, the whole planet got together and asked the aliens not to come anymore. After only two years, too. I've never seen that happen before. Most planets don't catch on to what's really going on. What happens then is that the civilization self-destructs and falls several rungs on the developmental ladder. At that point, the Ethereals get bored and tend to infect the planet with some virus or disease that kills everyone. Or they bomb every square foot of it with sophisticated weapons, killing all life. And I mean all. That's their main objective, as far as I can tell. They want to be alone in the universe. They want to own it all.”

  “But don't they realize,” Hoffner wheezed, “surely they understand that it can't be possible to eradicate all life?”

  “Don't ask me to explain their logic. They live long lives. They may be immortal unless killed. This is how they think and how they behave. They get some entertainment from destroying civilizations that can't defend themselves, and they avoid more advanced planets. It seems they want to handle the low-hanging fruit first.”

  “Is that what happened to your planet, General? The Ethereals tried to destroy it?”

  “My planet, Brax, was not subjected to the Ethereals. Not directly.”

  “How did you start fighting them?”

  Ator'aq walked silently for a while, and Olivia almost thought he had forgotten the question. Then she realized that he simply wanted to decide what to tell them, and in his own time.

  “Now, the Ethereals are hiding out by the largest planet in your solar system. They are hiding from me. Let me be clear about that. If I hadn't come here right after they destroyed your charming little moon colony, none of you would be alive. That little spectacle on that moon was just a preamble. The Ethereals would have killed everyone. Everyone.”

  He went silent again, and they walked on. This was a steep part of the slope, and they had to jump from boulder to boulder.

  “I have hunted the Ethereals for years, rendering thousands of them harmless. There are still a few hundred left of them, we believe. They know I will kill them. They also know that I'm not immortal. They have decided to not travel further right now. That gives me a good chance to get at them. I have never seen them hide like this. I think I know the reason for that.”

  “General, how do you intend to counter the threat from the Ethereals?” Hoffner tried to disguise that he was short of breath, but it was not a successful attempt.

  “Oh, I intend to kill them.”

  “Very well, but what will be your strategy? If you don't know how many of them there are, and by your own admission you have only ever neutralized a few thousand, it seems unlikely that you will succeed.”

  “My strategy is my own. I came here offering my help. I do mean that. I think there is a good chance that I can prevent the Ethereals from ever harming anyone again. Some of your help in return might be useful, or it might not.”

  “General, I certainly don't intend to make this resemble an interrogation, but we are very curious about many things. For instance, the size of your forces. Your spaceship is several miles long and must have room for hundreds of thousands of troops. Or millions.”

  The alien general stopped once more and turned around, taking in the view. They were close to the top now. “We're eleven.”

  “Eleven million?” The Star Marshal caught up with him and took a deep breath. “Now that is a force to reckon with!”

  “We are eleven men.”

  Everyone was silent for several seconds as the Space Force officers dealt with their shock. Ator'aq smiled contentedly and raised his eyebrows at Olivia, as if he'd just revealed that he was Batman.

  “General... eleven men?!” Hoffner spluttered. “That's all? But we gave you the whole tourist section... And that enormous ship you came in... We thought you were many more!”

  “Eleven Braxian death commandos, including myself, is a force far beyond cold numbers,” Ator'a
q said with obvious pride. “The honor in us is immeasurable. Our skills are incomparable. Our bravery second to none. Our swords are sharp. We are the best fighting force in the universe. And you are lucky to be our allies, more or less. Having seen your technology, I'm almost tempted to call you my clients, but I have seen that your space marines possess some measure of bravery and skill as well. So 'allies' it is.”

  Wilhelmsen was smooth, as always. She was wearing a thick and long coat against the cold, a very feminine purple, but still the silvers stars dangled from her ears. “I must confess to being a little surprised, General. While I'm sure your honor is beyond reproach and your swords are the sharpest in the Solar system, it was my impression that you had a force that was somewhat... larger.”

  “If so, you didn't get that from me.” Ator'aq walked on.

  “Granted, but... We simply assumed that a spaceship that big would contain thousands of highly trained soldiers of all kinds. Space marines, smaller spaceships, gunners, intelligence divisions, supply people... I'm sure you can understand our confusion.”

  Ator'aq nodded reasonably. “I know primitive species are often confused.”

  Hoffner had not quite overcome his surprise. “How exactly do you expect to fight the Ethereals with eleven men? Wielding swords? We have met the Ethereals, General. They are ruthless and powerful. Cruel. Their technology seems beyond anything we've ever seen and anything you have showed us. Are you in fact a fighting force? Is it in fact true that you have encountered the Ethereals before? Eleven men? That's not an army, that's barely even a platoon! It's a... a gang!”

  “I can hardly answer for actual warfare in space not adhering to your preconceived notion of what it might be,” Ator'aq said. “My forces are quite adequate. Everything I have said is true, and if you wish to keep your head on your shoulders beyond this meeting, I suggest you not repeat any insinuation that this is not the case.”