Alien Paladin's Woman: SciFi Alien-Human Military Suspense Romance (3 page)

"Yes, Miss Price," the man said reluctantly. "You lead by example. They were very impressed with you on Ulor. No one thought a woman could run a mining world."

Yeah. And I did. So why do I still have to have this conversation?

"Exactly," Audrey said coldly. "That's the reason. So it would be a pretty poor time to stop what I'm doing now, wouldn't it?"

Before Franco could offer another excuse or reason she didn't want to hear, Audrey marched out of the door with Pelar rushing after her.

As she headed for the dining area to take a good, hearty meal, Audrey felt her resolve growing. It was a well-kept truth that she actually liked the doubters, in a way. Men like Franco kept her going even when it was tough.

It didn't matter to Audrey whether they doubted her abilities as a woman or, even worse, thought that high-ranking people were simply more precious than those working beneath them… they pushed her on.

The memory of the cold floors faded away, leaving only plans and details of the thirty-first level down below.

As Pelar brought her a bowl of steaming soup and a big, juicy plate of the closest thing they had to bacon, Audrey saw the Palian guard that Commander Tieran had assigned to her. The Palian, a long rifle strapped upon his back, was entirely impressive. Audrey couldn’t believe that there were more men like him sneaking around
her
station without detection.

So I guess
some
of them come out in public if need be,
she thought with a roll of her eyes.
Just not the great Commander himself.

“What is your name?” she asked, quirking a brow at the mountain of a man.

The only reason she trusted that he was a Palian was… well, because Pelar told her he was. And because he didn’t seem to run on anything but logic. Okay, logic and some really hearty meals.

“Aznim, Miss Price.”

“Pleased to meet you, Aznim.”

The man just nodded. He waited patiently by their side as Audrey and Pelar finished their breakfast, evidently not wishing for any more wasted words.

She snuck a few more glances at him, with Aznim standing impassively. He wore a slate gray kind of armor that seemed to breathe around him. A closer look told her that it was made of nanobot technology, the little robots so tiny that they were impossible to see with the naked eye. They formed the exact shell around him that was needed at the time.

For now, the armor looked like a simple gray jumpsuit, a stark contrast to the gleaming glaive he carried as a weapon, and the well-kept pistol on his hip. Audrey had no doubt that if danger suddenly appeared out of thin air, this man would be the first to meet it.

It made her wonder what his Commander would be like, if the guard alone was already this awe-inspiring.

"Alright," Audrey said after finishing her meal, getting up. "Let's see if we get to stay on this lovely planet for one more year."

The miners around her, preparing for the midday shift, laughed appreciatively. Audrey liked them, as coarse as they sometimes were. Instead of "don't go", they relayed the latest news from the depths, telling her which passages to take to stay safe and travel faster.

Audrey left Pelar in charge of the station and headed to the elevator that would take them down the first ten floors. After that, she and her guard would descend on foot and by smaller transport where possible.

The Palian guard and Audrey got in and the elevator took them down. The first third of their trip went smoothly and quickly.

Audrey wrapped her fur cloak more tightly around her shoulders when the doors slid open and admitted them into the mines. Beside her, the Palian barely even shivered. There was no sign that the cold affected him at all.

She hadn't even taken one step when one of the miners rushed towards her. Audrey couldn't tell whether his expression was one of joy or fear or both.

"Governor," he panted, pointing far below them where she could see a glow that had definitely not been there before. "You need to see something!"

T
hey had told
him Verien was cold.

As with most things in his life, Tieran accepted it as a fact and went back to focusing on more important things.

He
felt
the punishing temperature, of course, but wasn't bothered by it. Palians were naturally resilient to all forms of weakness, they'd taken great pains in the past to assure that.

Regular Palians fared better than the Terrans, but the extremity of the planet was enough to even make
them
go out of their way to be warm.

Tieran and his paladins… they took it for the nuisance it was and nothing more. The fact that the planet was freezing was inconvenient, but ultimately irrelevant to the Palian elite warriors.

To them, Verien was
important
.

He was walking through the corridors of the station, sparing a pondering thought on why it remained unnamed. The governor of the planet, Audrey Price, was a Terran. As such, she approached many things differently, adding to the beauty of galactic versatility.

The woman had decreed that until Verien was properly introduced into the Galactic Union and received its place there, the station would simply be a building and nothing more. She didn't want them getting too attached to the place in case they were reassigned and naming things made people connect emotionally.

Tieran thought it was wise of her, but it did make communication difficult sometimes. Off-worlders didn't seem to grasp how few of them there were on the planet. They assumed there were more stations, but there was only one, situated on the south side of the mountain range – also unnamed – that shielded them from the worst of the weather.

He heard Pelar's footsteps a few seconds before the girl rounded the corner and nearly jumped, seeing him standing so still he barely breathed.

"Commander," she whispered. "Please don't do that."

"I'll make sure to announce my presence next time," he promised, motioning for her to come with him. "Report."

The matter of his whereabouts was the source of much controversy. All of the station's inhabitants knew of him, which was a rarity. Most of them – namely the Terrans, sworn to secrecy about the existence of the paladins – thought Tieran and his men had special quarters that they never left.

That was false.

Tieran lived in the station much like everyone else, while his paladins took shifts on the surface and the ship both. Their rooms were kept apart from the rest, but they didn't hide anywhere. The paladins simply stayed out of the way, moving into another room when someone came closer, and keeping elusive.

The only contact he had with the rest of the station was through Pelar, who had the ungrateful task of being assistant to both him and the governor.

She seemed worried.

"Bad news?" he asked.

Her expression confirmed that.

"Say it as it is," he said calmly, his deep voice forceful, but reassuring. "Nothing good comes from being unprepared. If we know what we're dealing with, the worst we can do is prepare. If we know nothing, we don't even have that."

Pelar nodded. It was a common truth among Palians. They had kept the peace in the galaxy for centuries, following that simple principle. Everything was less scary when you looked it straight in the eye.

"We are nearing the end of the excavation," Pelar said. "Miss Price has gone down to the mines to observe the work herself and make sure the supply lines run smoothly."

The Terran governor amused Tieran. She was a Union official, but still insisted on doing everything herself. It appealed to him, in a way.

Tieran knew she wasn't that fond of him, however, on the account that he avoided her as he did with all of Terrans, keeping the paladins the mystery they'd always been. He couldn’t blame Audrey Price for holding that against him. He would have felt much the same way had he been in her position.

"That is the opposite of bad news," Tieran pointed out, leading her into a large hall that no one but the young Palian female and the paladins had ever visited.

It was a fighting pit, for the most part at least. Wholly mechanical, the simulations of the many horrors dwelling the galaxy were genuine enough to cut very real blood. Tieran liked to keep up to date with anything and anyone he might have to fight one day.

Palians believed in peace, that was true. But they weren't naïve about it. More often than not, the people seeking to disturb the Union and everything they'd built didn't listen to reason, and so Palians could not rely only on that.

"Yes," Pelar was saying as he prepared to brush up on his brawling, choosing Torons for the exercise.

The big, hairy, beastlike species was one of those Tieran genuinely liked. They looked terrifying, but Torons were similar to his kind in many ways. If Verien proved to be worth the Union's time, there would be many coming to work in the mines.

Tieran
liked
them, but much as everything else, he took it with pragmatism. Torons weren't dangerous by default, but they had not been social for very long. Sometimes the feral core flared up and they rampaged. With their huge bodies and immense strength, they could do great damage. Tieran was going to make sure he was ready to face one, if the situation demanded it.

"Commander, the mines aren't the problem, I think."

"The mines are why we are here," Tieran replied, removing his gray, silver-etched armor. "If the calculations are correct, we have a good chance of finding the mineral here. Image what it would do the galaxy, to have almost unlimited energy in our hands."

As he removed the intricate breastplate, being careful not to damage the wires that connected it to his nervous system, he noticed Pelar staring. The young female didn't even seem aware that she was doing that.

Tieran didn't mind. He was a born warrior and her reaction was natural. After a long moment of staring at his sculpted physique, Pelar shook herself out of her daze.

"Say the mineral is there," she said, returning to the matter at hand. "What if it were to end up in the wrong hands? Used as a weapon against the Union."

"That is why I'm here. I will not let it happen."

"Sir—"

"Do you doubt me?" he asked, turning to face her.

Pelar's expression was stubborn, just like it had been the moment before Tieran had asked her to be assigned to Verien. She had a fighting spirit he liked, an absolute refusal to back down, even before him.

"No," she said firmly. "I wouldn't dare, Commander, if not for—"

Tieran had been walking towards a towering robotic Toron, but he stopped and so did the creature. It froze in its furious charge, knifelike claws raised in the air, its program paused.

Pride was an emotion the Palians mostly left for other species. Tieran didn't like boasting, but he knew his worth.

The fact that the peace-loving Palians even had a warrior position had come as a big surprise to the Galactic Union, but they'd accepted it easily enough. Most of them had armies too, so why not? They assumed the position was ceremonial and Palians encouraged that false rumor.

Truth was, Tieran knew he was one of the best fighters in the galaxy.

For Pelar to have doubts about his capabilities, something really bad had to have happened.

"
Speak
," he ordered. "This better not be urgent, little one."

"I came to you as soon as I heard," she said quietly, sighing then. "A new Fearless has arisen. It has been sighted. It comes and goes, but keeps returning to systems close to this one, within a week’s travel. It's obvious it is waiting for something. It might be the same thing we're looking for."

A Fearless
.

The emotion that took ahold of Tieran wasn't fear, although it would have been appropriate. It was cold, piercing, deadly calm with a purposeful edge.

He walked back to where Pelar was waiting by the console that controlled the AIs, mechs and robots that the paladins trained with. Tieran dismissed the Toron and called up another opponent. Several of them, in fact.

He set the controls to spawn up another one as soon as the previous one fell. Then he donned his armor again. Fighting Fearless was hard enough, equipped with the best gear in the galaxy. Without it, he would have been simply dead.

Pelar screamed in horror when the first one crawled out from under the flooring. It was as black as night, so big it almost hit its head on the ceiling of the hall. Burning eyes narrowed down on Tieran and Pelar from his flat face, hundreds of teeth peeking out from its distorted mouth.

It stood on two hind legs but Tieran knew it was ready to pounce on him.

"You better leave," Tieran said, not looking at her. "They are dangerous even when they're fake."

She didn't need to be told twice. He could hear her running for the doors as fast as she could, whimpering, when the mech-Fearless roared after her, making the walls shake. Tieran wondered if that was heard even through the theoretically soundproof walls of the pit.

He adjusted the settings of his armor while the Fearless – one of them, at least – turned to him. Tieran knew no such luxury would be granted to him in a true battle with one. The Fearless were unbelievably fast and powerful creatures. No mech could ever really imitate them perfectly, but it was the best he could do.

His gray armor adjusted. Made of thousands of miniscule pieces that fit together perfectly, it formed the shape Tieran considered best against the Fearless. The normally very plain-looking armor turned into something that resembled a form-fitting cloth around his body, with layers upon layers of nanobots resting on top of each other.

The thin, easily breakable appearance was misleading, but Tieran had no idea if it could actually withstand the attack of a Fearless.

He only had enough time to pull his short glaive free before the Fearless came at him, the creature's pounding footsteps making the ground shake beneath Tieran’s feet.

Tieran jumped out of the way, knocking the glaive to its full length. The handle became almost as tall as he was, with the gleaming blade at the top of it becoming longer as well. Like the armor and Tieran himself, the weapon changed to confront the enemy in the most effective way.

And right on time too, because the Fearless opened its terrific mouth to swallow him whole. Tieran stared the mech down, standing his ground when the creature roared with his five rows of razor-sharp teeth, each as long as Tieran’s blade. He waited, his stance changing in preparation of taking the blow that was to come.

The Fearless bit down, its jaws spreading thrice as wide as they had been before, to allow it to bite Tieran in two.

He jumped at once, right into the creature's gaping maw. Tieran jammed the glaive into the beast's mouth, the blade impaled between the second and third row of teeth. His powerful muscles flexed, aided by his armor, but still the Fearless pressed its jaws together. It was programmed not to react to anything that would indicate pain.

Fearless didn't know pain. No compassion either. They had so little of it that they didn't even have any self-preservation to speak of.

A normal living thing would have tried to shake Tieran off, to pry him away, but the towering black monstrosity only bit down harder. It was still roaring, the volume of its voice so loud it made Tieran shake in the vibrations of the sound waves.

He dodged the beast's clawed hands, finally coming to rip him out of its mouth. With nowhere else to go, Tieran pressed himself deeper between its jaws. His elevated heartbeat told him that his body understood the danger he was in, but Tieran had no doubts about the course he had chosen.

Both his hands were wrapped around the glaive's handle, pushing the weapon deeper into where the creature's brain was. That was the only way to shut the mech-Fearless down.

The Fearless knew it too. Its jaws slammed down on him so suddenly that Tieran barely had time to react before he was almost squished. He could feel his ribs crack under the tremendous pressure. Around him, the Fearless was
chewing
, trying to chomp him into pieces.

His armor was giving him wild, beeping signals. It was the control room, asking him if he wanted to stop the mech. Tieran ignored it, pushing the glaive deeper with all the stubbornness he was known for.

If he couldn't handle a cheap copy of the real enemy, he had no hope in the field.

Something broke in his shoulder as the Fearless now tried to crush him between his teeth. They were scraping at his armor and tearing layers of nanobots away. Tieran knew he had a minute, maybe less, before the Fearless chewed his unbreakable armor off and spat his mangled corpse out right along with it.

He rested one boot against one of the bigger fangs and put all his strength and will behind the glaive. The Fearless' roar almost deafened him. The teeth cut through his armor now as the beast chewed wildly, clawing at its own mouth with its massive claws to get him out.

None of that was the imagination of the Palian engineers. All of the Fearless' fighting techniques were taken from a real creature that had once lived. A Brion general called Braen had finally killed it, doing something similar to what Tieran was attempting.

It was rare for Brions to share any of their tactics, but the Fearless was special. Every species in the Galactic Union was ready to provide all the information they possessed. It was the only chance they had to even out the battles with the monsters.

Tieran noticed the change in the mech just in time to save his life. He had to be nearing the brain section, because the Fearless suddenly stilled and went for its last weapon, evidently realizing that even maiming itself wasn't going to help.

Instead of roaring, which had made Tieran's
bones
shake, it screeched. The high-pitched sound was tearing through his head, making even moving seem like cutting himself with a thousand blades. He had managed to alert his armor in time and the nanobots rushed to cover and protect his face. Still, Tieran tasted blood, and it was his.

With a roar of his own, he jammed the glaive into the mech's brain. The sensors recognized the killing blow and the Fearless slumped to the ground. Breathing heavily, Tieran had to exercise all of his strength to push himself out from between its jaws.