Marauder Kronos: Scifi Alien Invasion Romance (Mating Wars) (6 page)

Kronos nods. “He’s in there. We need to encircle the elevator for when it comes back up. Just in case.”

“Because that tactic worked out so well for them,” Delphie says.

“We caught them off guard,” Kronos says. “They won’t surprise us.”

We all wait around the elevator. Delphie and Kronos are holding fresh plasma rifles from Malcolm’s ship, and Jerky and I are ready to completely let loose.

“What do you think he’s really up to?” I ask Kronos.

“The peacekeepers are a large organization with hundreds of officers,” Kronos says. “My guess is that he’s just called in backup to come get us. Rather than risk losing his whole squad and ship to fight us right now, he can just track us and take us down with greater numbers. His real goal in coming here was to find us...he can always get us later.”

I bite my lip. Kronos is making it sound like it’s inevitable that Jerky will be taken away from me.

“Do...do you have a plan?” I ask. “For him not getting us later?”

“I’m working on it,” Kronos says. “One step at a time.”

“That’s what he says when he’s got nothing,” Delphie says.

Kronos powers up his plasma rifle and holds it at the door. “Elevator is almost up.”

Delphie powers hers on and takes shaky aim.

The elevator hums loudly as the car approaches, and then the motor shuts off completely. My heart pounds, and I pray that Jerky will know what to do if Malcolm himself is in there. If I have to fight someone else wearing a biosuit, I have no idea what I’ll do.

The elevator beeps, and the doors open to reveal Ramu – his wrists handcuffed behind his back.

He pulls his ears back and glares up at Kronos. “So you’ve got a heart, but only when it comes to the ladies. When it comes to me, you’re all pirate, huh?”

Kronos grins. “Yeah, something like that. You had twenty minutes and still couldn’t get those cuffs off?”

“They’re peacekeeper-issued,” Ramu says. “Marauder-proof.”

I reach out toward the cuffs and realize that I’m reaching with a tendril rather than my hand. It seeps into the keyhole, and I feel dozens of small latches and mechanisms inside. I push and prod at them, and soon the cuffs pop open.

“Oh,” Ramu says, “the cook is useful now?”

Delphie is staring at Ramu with her ears pulled back, but she says nothing.

“See, Delph?” Kronos says. “Told you we’d get him back.”

Her face burns red. “Who said I cared if we got him back? Come on, we need to get all this equipment back on our ship.”

I give Kronos a look, but he shakes his head at me.

“Well,” Ramu says, “I guess no one’s happy to see me.”

He looks up at my web of supplies. “Damn! Nice job, cook!”

“Minna,” I say.

“Want me to carry that shit?”

“It’s heavy,” I say.

“Nothing’s heavy in zero-g,” Ramu says, flexing his arms.

“She means it’s
massive
,” Delphie snaps. “Dumbass. Are your big dumb muscles alone going to stop that huge mass of equipment from crashing into our ship?”

Ramu squints at her. “I was going to get her to stop it….”

“Then why not just have her carry it?” Delphie asks.

“Fine!” Ramu grunts. “You carry it, cook! I was just trying to be a gentleman.”

“God!” Delphie says. “I’ll see you on the ship, Captain!”

She kicks off and heads toward one of the handrails leading to the section of the hangar bay where the
Time’s End
is docked.

“She really say she wanted me back?” Ramu asks once Delphie is out of earshot.

I smile at him. “Don’t push your luck.”

“She did, didn’t she?”

“Be nice to her,” I say.

His ears perk straight up. “
Me?
I’m being perfectly nice, she’s the one hurling insults and being all difficult!”

“She’s still mad about the threesome,” Kronos says.

“I told you!” Ramu shouts. “I didn’t have no threesome!”

“I think it was the intent of having one,” I say. “That’s why she’s mad. You probably want to apologize for that.”

“After she apologizes to me!” Ramu says. “Hey, Cap….”

Ramu points up at Malcolm’s ship. “I know a guy who would pay us a pretty penny for a Peacekeeper ship.”

Kronos looks up greedily at it.

“We promised,” I say.

Kronos nods. “Sorry, Ramu. We made a deal with Malcolm.”

“So what?” Ramu snaps. “We’re pirates!”

“Malcolm could have kept you,” Kronos says. “But he held to his word and let you go. I’m not double-crossing him after that.”

“We
are
pirates, right?” Ramu asks.

“Come on,” Kronos says. “Let’s get all this shit we stole back to the ship. Is that pirate enough for you, Ramu?”

He mutters something, and we head back to the ship.

* * *

K
ronos accelerates us toward Earth
.

About two years ago, Harmony, the supercomputer that rules Earth, gained access to antimatter. It threatened to blow it up if anyone attacks it, and it prevented almost all traffic to and from Earth. No one gets off, and no one lands.

It lacks the resources to fully patrol its gravity well, however, and it really only gets prickly if peacekeepers or military vessels get near. Pirates found that they can go into a wide orbit around Earth without Harmony reacting.

So Kronos explained that we are going to orbit Earth to try to shake Malcolm and his buddies off our tail – at least until we can figure out what our next step is.

“Kronos,” Delphie shouts from the cargo bay. “We can make the
Time’s End
so much more powerful with some of this stuff!”

“Good,” Kronos shouts back, nodding. “But find
something
that we don’t need and that we can sell. I do need to eventually pay you.”

“And me,” I say, smiling at him.

“I owe you a lot,” he says. “You saved our asses back there.”

“But you’re broke,” I say.

“We’ll probably be able to sell this shit off around Earth orbit,” Kronos says. “I can pay you then.”

“But I want something now,” I say.

He raises an eyebrow at me. “What do you want?”

I bite my lip. “I don’t know...but I liked what I was getting back on New Rotterdam.”

“The
Barbershop’s
special?” Kronos asks. “We lost the to-go box.”

He grins.

“Stop being dense,” I snap. “Not that.”

“Oh,” Kronos says. “The other thing?”

“Yeah,” I say. “The other thing.”

“Let’s go to the captain’s quarters,” he says. “And I’ll see if I have any more of that.”

The ship is still accelerating, so we walk rather than float into his quarters. He grabs my hand as we walk.

“I was worried you regretted it,” Kronos says.

“I was worried you were just...not serious,” I say.

But my distrust of him faded away after I saw what he did. He’s risking everything to keep me safe. He could have turned me in back there and been free rather than a fugitive.

“I’m not always serious,” Kronos says. “But when I am...
I am
.”

I smile. “I like that about you. Though I do wish it were
a little
easier to tell when you were being real.”

“You’ll have to get to know me better,” Kronos says. “That is how you solve that problem.

He shuts the hatch behind us, locking us in his quarters.

“Your room is way bigger than all the others,” I say, looking around.

He has a queen-sized bed, and his room is large enough to hold a desk, a private shower and bathroom, and even an odd, tube-shaped cage that extends from floor to ceiling.

“What’s the cage for?” I ask. “You keep prisoners in here?”

“No,” Kronos says. “You’ll see what that is for later.”

“You’re going to keep
me
in there?”

He laughs. “Just let it stay a mystery.”

“Fine.”

We both look at the bed, and then at each other. The air feels suddenly heavy, and my chest tightens up. We both know why we came in here, but I’m feeling nervous.

“Thanks for keeping me safe,” I say.

“You don’t need to thank me,” he says. “I’m just doing what is right.”

I smile at him. “So if I were some old guy with the same problem, you’d have given up everything to protect me?”

“Hmmm,” he says. “I suppose I would have.”

“Your heart is just too big.”

“You know what they say about guys with big hearts,” he says.

“What’s that?”

“Big feet.”

I laugh. “I’ve
never
heard that saying.”

“It’s an old Marauder saying, because a Marauder’s foot size is directly proportional to their – ”

I put a hand over his mouth. “Don’t say it, please.”

He tries to say it, but I press my hand hard against his mouth, and the heat of his breath hits my palm.

I bring my lips up to the back of my hand, which is still pressed tightly against his mouth.

I pull my hand away and press my lips against his, preventing him from getting the words out.

He pulls me right against him and kisses me back. Neither of us wants to say
anything
anymore.

He shoves me against the wall and proceeds to kiss me deeper.

I grab hold of his body, groping at his bulging muscles rippling under his shirt. I feel warm all over, especially between my legs.

I hear a panicked squeaking sound at the door, and Kronos and I both turn toward it.

“What the…,” he says.

It’s Jerky, he’s formed into a cube on the ground, and he’s sending tendrils up to open the hatch.

“The suit,” Kronos says. “It’s off….”

Jerky starts to turn the hatch.

“Jerky?” I ask. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

It doesn’t have eyes, but it feels like it’s looking at me.

It squeaks loudly and points at Kronos and me with a fresh tendril, then it shakes wildly, as if revolted.

“Oh,” Kronos says. “It...it’s embarrassed.”

I start to laugh. “You want to give us some privacy, huh?”

It moves as if nodding, then turns the latch all the way.

“Keep out of sight of Ramu,” Kronos says. “I don’t think he’d do anything...but just don’t let him see you.”

Jerky pulls the hatch open, reshapes into a sphere, and rolls out of Kronos’s quarters.

I shut the hatch behind it.

“I was worried,” Kronos says.

“What about?”

“I didn’t know how we were going to do this if you couldn’t get the suit off.”

“Oh,” I say, laughing. “I hadn’t thought about it.”

“I guess you just needed a
really
good reason to get it off.”

“And that reason is you?” I ask, skeptically.

“I did get it off, didn’t I?”

I start to push him toward the bed. I doubt I could actually move him – he’s so much taller and heavier and stronger than me – but he lets me shove him, and when he’s right in front of the bed I jump onto him.

We fall onto the bed together, and Kronos tugs at my jumpsuit. Jerky has removed himself from me, but he was underneath my regular clothes.

“You first,” I say, slapping his hands away.

“You’ve already seen me topless,” Kronos says. “When we first met.”

“And you saw me wearing just the biosuit, like that left anything to the imagination?”

“Fair point,” he says. “But you’ve already seen how big my heart is….”

“Take your clothes off,” I order.

“Yes, Captain!” he says, snapping to attention just beside the bed.

I lay down on the fluffy pillow and look up at him. “Delphie would flip if she knew you were calling me captain.”

“Don’t tell her then,” Kronos says, dropping his jumpsuit to the ground.

He’s standing now in just his boxers. His chest and abs are just as delicious as I remembered, and his legs are even more muscular and sculpted than I’d imagined. From the look of it, he’s semi-hard, but I can already tell that he really does have a big heart.

“How big can it get?” I ask.

“Let’s find out,” he says.

I crawl across the bed toward him, and I grasp his cock through his boxers. I squeeze, and I feel it hardening in my hand.

“It’s so warm,” I say.

I pull his boxers down, and it springs up to attention. HIs cock and balls are teal, while the rest of his body is pink. Just like all Seraphim and Marauders. I’ve never seen an alien cock in real life, and I grab hold of his bare skin for the first time.

I cup his balls with one hand, and I squeeze the base of his shaft with the other. He’s rock-hard now, and even bigger than I thought.

I run my hand up and down the length of his dick, stroking him gently and with a light touch.

He groans as I stroke him. He must want me to squeeze him tighter, but I’m taking my time.

“Don’t be impatient,” I whisper, running my thumb across the soft tip of his head.

His eyes roll back in his head, and his ears pull all the way back.

I lean in and lick the tip of his cock. I swirl my tongue in circles around it, and I feel his dick flex and tremble in my hand. It begins to vibrate.

I lean further forward and swallow his whole head into my mouth, wrapping my lips tightly around it. He vibrates faster as I begin to suck.

He lets out a low groan.