Alien storm, p.1
Alien Storm, page 1
Table of Contents
NOTICES
ALIEN STORM
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
CONTENT WARNINGS
CHAPTER ONE | Stephanie
CHAPTER TWO | Errok
CHAPTER THREE | Stephanie
CHAPTER FOUR | Errok
CHAPTER FIVE | Stephanie
CHAPTER SIX | Errok
CHAPTER SEVEN | Stephanie
CHAPTER EIGHT | Errok
CHAPTER NINE | Stephanie
CHAPTER TEN | Errok
CHAPTER ELEVEN | Stephanie
CHAPTER TWELVE | Stephanie
CHAPTER THIRTEEN | Errok
CHAPTER FOURTEEN | Errok
CHAPTER FIFTEEN | Stephanie
CHAPTER SIXTEEN | Stephanie
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN | Errok
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN | Stephanie
CHAPTER NINETEEN | Errok
CHAPTER TWENTY | Stephanie
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE | Stephanie
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO | Errok
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE | Stephanie
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR | Stephanie
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE | Errok
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX | Stephanie
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN | Errok
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT | Stephanie
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE | Stephanie
CHAPTER THIRTY | Errok
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE | Stephanie
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO | Errok
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE | Stephanie
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR | Errok
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE | Stephanie
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX | Errok
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN | Stephanie
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT | Errok
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE | Stephanie
CHAPTER FORTY | Stephanie
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE | Errok
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO | Stephanie
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE | Stephanie
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR | Errok
NOTICES
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be copied, used, transmitted, or shared via any means without express authorization from the author, except for small passages and quotations used for review and marketing purposes.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and incidents in this novel are fictitious and not to be construed as reality or fact.
Alien Storm Copyright © 2023 Veronica Doran
ALIEN STORM
Fated Mates of the Sea Sand Warlords
Book Thirteen
By Ursa Dax
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you, as always, to all my readers and new friends on this journey. You are the reason I keep writing these stories!
Thank you to my partner and parents for their unending support. It means the entire universe to me.
CONTENT WARNINGS
Parental abandonment (specifically the heroine’s father leaving) and resulting childhood trauma; deaths of parents; illness; BDSM themes with slight (shallow and non-lethal) self-harm, blood, submission, and binding with rope during sexual scenes between a non-human alien hero and a human heroine; injuries, gore, and graphic violence; natural disasters such as storms and rockslides.
CHAPTER ONE
Stephanie
The ship’s screens swirled in front of me, bands of colour lighting up the dark landscapes. Neither this ship nor Valeria’s was connected to the orbiting research vessel’s scanners and systems anymore, but Zoey and Tilly had re-jigged some of the drones for me. Those drones had scattered across the Sea Sands and fed me meteorological data that I analyzed here.
There wasn’t much to look at today. The weather out here had been pretty calm, other than the one sandstorm at the settlement that had happened months ago. The real data that needed analyzing was further out, past the Death Plains, where storms raged often. But I didn’t trust that a drone would make it that far on its own without getting chomped by some alien monster first.
We’d all hoped that the group who’d journeyed out past the Death Plains would return soon with new allies and new info, and that maybe on another trip they could take a drone or other weather monitoring equipment.
But we all fucking knew how that had ended. Gahn Razek and Jocelyn had been the only ones to return two days ago. Varrow’d almost gotten himself killed and was recovering in the Death Plains with Camille and Kohka. Meanwhile, nobody knew what had happened to Priya. Valeria’s shuttle had departed almost immediately afterwards to track down Priya and the four men who’d gone after her. My stomach twisted at the possibilities of what they might find.
Please, please let her be OK.
Praying had never done much for me back on Earth. But it was a habit I couldn’t seem to break.
I sighed harshly, pushing back against the desk in front of me. My wheelie office chair rolled backwards over the shining metal floor. I almost wanted to laugh at the mundaneness of that fact. The boring Earth reality of a boring chair in a boring office.
Except we weren’t on Earth. We were on an alien planet. And this wasn’t a normal office, but one of many, many rooms in the spaceship that had brought us here.
“Is all well?”
I jumped out of my chair, heart hammering at the sudden deep voice that boomed in the metal room. One of the alien warriors who’d escorted me out here, a man named Malachor, leaned into the room from the spot where he’d stationed himself in the hallway.
“Is all well?” he repeated.
No.
“Yes.”
“Alright. I heard a strange sound.”
I turned to the chair and kicked it as hard as I could, working out some of the frustration mounting in my body. Annoyingly, it didn’t fall over like I’d expected it to, instead careening noisily on its wheels until it hit the desk.
“That sound?” I asked, turning back to him.
“Yes,” he confirmed, his copper-coloured sight stars pulsing in large, dark eyes. Suddenly, his thick brows lowered, his high, dark ears twitching from where they poked out from between locks of long black hair. I’d heard some of the other girls say the Sea Sand men’s ears reminded them of cropped Doberman ears. I could see that. But they also reminded me of a horse’s ears.
He tightened his grip on his spear, turning to face whatever sound he’d heard in the hallway outside. I hurried up to the doorway, trying to see around his bulk.
Zoey was jogging down the hallway, huffing and puffing. Her giant blue lizardman mate, Kor, easily kept pace at her side, towering over her. Malachor lowered his spear at the sight of them.
“Let me carry you, mate,” Kor growled, his brilliant blue sight stars focused entirely on Zoey as he walked.
“No!” Zoey panted. “I need to exercise. My mom had gestational diabetes and I-” She stopped speaking to breathe heavily, her pace slowing somewhat. “I – putain – I need to keep in shape.”
Kor, bless the giant lizard monster, looked utterly bewildered at the tiny, beloved woman beside him.
Might as well shorten the distance a little.
Their conversation had carried easily through the long, tube-like tunnel of the hallway. But they were still a good ways away. She was probably hauling her newly pregnant self down the hallway to talk to me about something, so I started walking briskly to meet her.
“Steph!” she called, or rather wheezed, picking up speed when she saw me approaching.
“Do not push yourself,” Kor murmured with concern, his huge scaly hand coming down to rest on Zoey’s lower back as she finally stopped.
She bent over, placing her hands on her knees to catch her breath for a moment. I watched Kor’s hand stroke gently up and down her back, being careful that his claws didn’t come anywhere close to snagging the fabric of her grey tank top.
“Is everything OK?” I asked, feeling worry knit my brows together.
Zoey nodded, her long braids bouncing as she straightened. I couldn’t help but let my gaze dip to the small swell of her abdomen. She pushed her glasses up her nose, fixing me with her deep brown eyes.
“Just saw it on the scanner. The shuttle’s coming back.”
“Holy shit,” I breathed. My heart galloped in my chest. Burning pins rushed into my fingers, making them numb with anxiety. I flexed and relaxed my hands, fighting to keep my stress levels in check.
“Do you think... Is that a good thing?” I asked. The two of us started walking quickly down the hall together, followed closely by Kor and Malachor.
“Don’t know,” Zoey said.
The shuttle had only just left the settlement recently.
Which meant they’d found something quickly.
Something good...
Or something very, very bad.
Zoey and I didn’t need to speak to confirm where we were going – we both walked with purpose towards the cargo bay, the closest exit onto the sands. We picked through the shelves and boxes of the cargo bay until our boots hit the sand. She shrugged into the jacket that had up until a moment ago been tied by its sleeves around her hips.
“If we hurry, we should meet them at the settlement when they land. They’re still way out,” Zoey said, putting on her jacket. I nodded quickly, doing up my own jacket’s zipper.
“Please tell me you do not plan to run the entire distance across the open sands, too,” Kor said, helpless worry choking his growling voice.
“No way,” Zoey said, grinning up at the underside of Kor’s scaly snout. “That’s what I have you for, isn’t it? I did my cardio and now I am done.”
“Malachor?” I asked, spinning
Luckily, Malachor was on the ball. He turned to the open sands, calling out a high, loud yipping sound. A few moments later, his irkdu crashed into view, circling around the silvery dome of our desert-bound ship.
The irkdu were massive creatures with dusty greyish purple hide, long reptilian snouts, and too many eyes to count. Too many legs, too, the various skittering appendages turning the whale-sized creature into something very centipede-like. A lot of the girls were more than a little freaked out by the things.
Not me.
My heart fluttered as it got closer, the setting sun gleaming on the soft leather of the saddle upon its back. It wasn’t as pretty or as elegant as a horse. But it was the closest thing I had.
Malachor had learned on our ride out here not to bother offering to help me up into the saddle. The irkdu may have been bigger than a horse back home, but my muscle memory and my own strength were more than enough to get me up on its back. Plus, I’d fashioned stirrups for the saddle I used. My boot slipped into the stirrup and I pushed upwards. For the briefest moment, I could imagine I was home. Well, not exactly my home, but the closest thing to home I had – the ranch I’d worked at back in Alberta. My eyes closed as I executed the mounting movement I’d done so many times before, my chest calming, my breathing steady as I got up onto the back of Daisy or Rocket or Coal.
But it wasn’t Daisy’s dappled coat or Coal’s shining black back that met my eyes when I finally opened them.
It was the dry, dusty purple of the irkdu.
I gritted my jaw against a wave of grief. None of us human girls had people to miss – at least, not living ones – on Earth. But I’d had the horses. And they’d been just as important to me as any human member of my family could be.
Swallowing against a thick, sore throat, I patted the irkdu’s back, just in front of my saddle. It snuffled, casting its many eyes back to look at me.
It wasn’t the same.
But it helped.
Once Malachor was up on the irkdu and Zoey was safe and secure on Kor’s back, we took off. The sun sank lower and lower. The stars and asteroids fought against the stain of the night, splashing down silver over the darkening sands as we raced back to the settlement. It wasn’t long until the deep whirring of Valeria’s shuttle could be heard above and behind us. As the settlement came into view, the sound of the shuttle’s engines overtook us, flying over and past us, though we couldn’t see it with its cloaking tech. Luckily, Valeria and Zoey had reprogrammed the big ship’s scanners to see the shuttle even when cloaked. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have known it was coming back until we heard the engines overhead.
The shuttle decloaked, shimmering into view ahead of us, blotting out the stars and asteroids. It didn’t land on the sands, instead heading up to a large stone ledge in the Cliffs of Uruzai. The shuttle was small enough that when it landed it didn’t usually create enough of a shock to call zeelk up out of the sands. But this close to the settlement, every precaution was taken to avoid a zeelk attack. The shuttle disappeared from view as it descended somewhere in the dark mass of cliffs ahead of us.
In front of the cliffs, on the sand, was a band of tents, bending outward from a carved-out, sheltered part of the cliffs that comprised the settlement. The human women and families stayed closer to the shelter of the cliffs. These tents out here belonged to unmated warriors, many of whom were now leaving their tents and sprinting for the evening fire at the settlement. I knew it wasn’t the usual draw of dinner at the fire calling them with such haste, but the return of the ship.
We felt that haste, too. We sped forward until we’d passed the outer tents and had entered into the broad, stony arms of the cliffs. I dismounted the second Malachor commanded the irkdu to stop. Zoey was a little slower, but even so, the two of us, followed by Kor and Malachor, reached the evening fire just as the group from the shuttle approached from a crack in the cliffs.
I crowded into a bubble of human women.
“Anyone know what’s happening?” I asked.
Fiona, who stood beside me, shook her head vigorously, her long brown hair swirling around her shoulders and brushing the tattooed lengths of her arms.
“Not a clue,” she muttered in English, her Irish accent coming through much more obviously than it did when she spoke the language of the Sea Sands.
Please let it be good news, I thought silently as the shuttle group came to a stop at the fire. My eyes searched their faces frantically, skimming over Chapman, Gahn Fallo, Gahn Taliok, Grim, Valeria, Tok, and three of the warriors from the original Death Plains mission.
But Oxriel was missing...
And so, I realized with a hard lurch in my guts, was Priya.
CHAPTER TWO
Errok
“What in the cursed peaks is that?”
I stood, frowning into the fire-spattered darkness of foreign peaks. Togo and I had crossed the swallowing sands of what I now knew to be called the Death Plains. We’d stopped to rest and eat in the mountain range that separated the Death Plains from the Sea Sands. Though, in my opinion, these peaks were pathetic excuses for mountains. They paled, both in colour and grandeur, compared to the great clawing peaks of the Deep Sky.
But it was not the puny fangs of rock around me that had caught my attention. But rather movement among them.
Togo, my braxilk, who up until that moment had been resting beside our fire, now rose up onto his many legs, tossing his head uneasily.
We had built our fire against a small, stony sheltered area. Its light licked up the stone - normally white and grey under the sun, now shades of black, silver, and orange in the night. The firelight flickered, brightening our area and deepening the shadows that surrounded us.
Whatever was moving was getting closer. I could see the shifting of greyish limbs in the darkness where the firelight did not reach.
“Whatever it is, it is no match for a Deep Sky Gahn and his mount,” I said with easy confidence. I slipped my bow off of my chest, up over my head, and nocked an arrow, aiming it at the shifting mass in the distance. Tension rammed through my body, my arm bulging.
I let the arrow fly.
A shockingly quick tendril snapped out of the darkness, catching the arrow and snapping it.
Suddenly, more tendrils of flesh spilled from the shadowy area of the valley, coming straight for us.
Hmm... Maybe not.
“Let’s go!” I roared at Togo, leaping up onto his back.
Maybe I was not a match for this thing on the ground.
But from the air?
No matter where I was – the lands of my birth or among the rock of these putrid Death Plains – the air was my domain.
Togo took off as soon as my legs tightened across his back. With a caw, his mighty wings beat, propelling him upward alongside the strength of his leaping legs. I twisted upon him as we ascended, aiming another arrow downward.
For a breathless moment, perhaps the first moment of my life, I had no idea where to aim my arrow. The thing below us was a mass of writhing, whirling muscle and flesh. Too many tendrils to count both seemed to circle inwards and also reach upwards for us. And the entire wriggly ball was moving. Scaling the peak nearest to us, several long tendrils snapping into the air to reach for us. I snarled when the tip of one came close to latching onto Togo’s foot.
Quick as the wind, we dipped and whirled. Togo’s wings sliced through the night air, his feathers shining like blades under the stars and moons. I decided that exact aim was less important than actually hitting this thing, and I loosed arrow after arrow downwards. More than one was snapped in the many arms of the beast, but I called out in triumph when it shrieked. Some of the arms or legs or tails or whatever they were shuddered, revealing the thing’s main component. The head. Or the body? It seemed to be all one big ugly piece, flat and grey, surrounded by the wriggly bits.
With that bit of its centre exposed, Togo and I swooped down. We flew directly over it but moved too quickly to be caught. Two arrows, one after the other, sank dead-centre in the thing’s flat body. A third arrow entered one of its many eyes. But still, the thing moved. Still, it climbed. Still, it reached for us.
