Alien Goddess: Kat (Makaen Warriors Book 2) Read online

  “So, we have no other choice, then. Let’s hope this doesn’t lead us to a gingerbread house,” Kat had said, anxious but also a little bit excited from the thrill of not knowing where they’d end up.

  As soon as it became clear that the trail was leading them to Blackway space station, Kat had rapidly grown less excited and more anxious. This was far worse than a witch who wanted to eat them. Blackway space station was a dangerous place to be for…well, anyone. The station was practically lawless. The only two things that counted there were credits and fists. Decent people stayed as far away from Blackway as possible. Her brother had been adamant that they had to go to Blackway, though.

  “No, we should go back to Cassidiri and get some help,” Kat had suggested.

  “We will,” Lirid had replied, “but there’s no harm in docking at the station for a short while and asking some questions first. The more we know, the better. Don’t you think?”

  “I’m not sure this is a good idea,” Kat had answered faintly.

  Lirid had thrown an arm around her shoulders.

  “Kat, Kat, Kat, Kat, Kat,” he had murmured, squeezing her shoulders just a little bit too hard. “You worry far too much. If you’re not careful, all that frowning will give you winkles. Right here.” He had poked a finger between her eyes, which Kat had slapped away, annoyed. Lirid gave her a patronizing smile. “You don’t have to be afraid of the big bad aliens. Mitha and I will protect you. We’ll be in and out in a jiffy. No harm, no foul. Don’t you agree, Mitha?”

  “Well, to tell you the truth, I—”

  “See?” Lirid said, interrupting Mitha. “It’s perfectly safe. Furthermore, Lucas could be down there right now, in need of help. If we wait for backup, it could be too late. So let’s go.”

  Without waiting for a reaction, Lirid had steered his space cruiser toward the space station. Kat had glanced over to Mitha, unsure what to do. He had just shrugged his shoulders. It had been clear to both of them that there was no stopping Lirid, at least not without causing him to throw a tantrum. Kat had sighed. Maybe it wouldn’t be too bad down there.

  After they had docked, they had split up to increase the chance of obtaining useful information about Lucas, agreeing to meet up later in one of Blackway’s taverns. Lirid hadn’t wanted Kat to go by herself, so she had decided to go with Mitha.

  They had questioned every less scary-looking alien they had encountered about Lucas, showing them his hologram. Most of the aliens, especially the males, hadn’t even responded and had just ogled her with lecherous eyes, as if she was a lollipop and they wanted to lick her. It had given her the heebie-jeebies. Fortunately, Mitha had been at her side constantly. Not that it would have mattered if the aliens had decided to attack them. Mitha was tall, but he certainly wasn’t a fighter. No Cassidi male was. They really were lovers. Still, Kat had been happy that she hadn’t been alone.

  After walking for hours without any results, Kat had been ready to throw in the towel. It had been really frustrating. And then, when Kat had thought that this entire exercise would lead to nothing, one of the prostitutes, or working girls as they were called on the station, near the far end of the docking bay had claimed to have seen Lucas about two weeks earlier. That news had made Kat’s heart flutter. Finally, they had confirmation that Lucas had really been here. After they’d paid the working girl all the credits Mitha was carrying on him, she had told them that Lucas had been taken by three Zzjitzzeëns, who had dragged him off to their spaceship. No one had helped him because this stuff happened regularly on Blackway. You either knew how to help yourself or you were easy prey.

  Kat’s stomach had almost churned. Zzjitzzeëns had a reputation for being total bastards. They had absolutely no morals or scruples and did anything for a profit, even kill. Zzjitzzeëns measured lives by the credits a person was worth. If you were useless, so was your life. Kat hadn’t said it out loud, but if Lucas was with those aliens and he was still alive, he was in so much trouble.

  Luckily, they had also been able to find out the Zzjitzzeën ship’s identification code by bribing the station manager with the credits Kat was carrying on her. Mitha had explained that, with the right equipment, the code could be used to track down the ship. With this information, they had met up with her brother in the tavern. He had been waiting at a table near the dirty window. They had informed him about their findings, and he in return had told them that they were totally and utterly screwed.

  Chapter 2

  “Yes, we know what happened to Lucas, but that doesn’t matter, because we’re stuck here!” Kat tried not to freak out, but considering the dangerous situation they were in, it was hard. So very hard. “What are we going to do?”

  Mitha glared out the tavern’s window and cursed. “I don’t want to make this situation worse than it already is, but I believe the working girl that gave us the information about Lucas just pointed us out to an alien that most likely has very bad intentions.”

  Kat and Lirid turned their heads simultaneously to look through the dirty window. On the far side of the square stood a slender green alien with four eyes, no nose, cauliflower ears and several scars running down his face, peering at the tavern mischievously. He was ugly. Kat shivered. She definitely didn’t want to be his lollipop, or lick his for that matter. The working girl pointed to the tavern and the green alien nodded, a nasty grin on his face.

  “Maybe it’s not us he’s interested in,” Kat put forward timidly. After all, there were more people and blobs in the tavern.

  “Look around. We’re the only ones worth something, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence the working girl we spoke to is here. She followed us and sold us out,” Mitha said with a serious expression. “Maybe the working girl told him about the credits we paid her and the alien thinks we have more and he’s planning to rob us. Or he wants to sell us to a slave trader. Whatever it may be, if we don’t want to end up the same way as Lucas, we need to leave this space station as soon as possible.”

  “How? We don’t have a ship. Or credits. We can’t pay anyone to take us home, or to protect us.” Kat felt the freak-out surface. The three of them stared at each other.

  “Well, if we don’t have credits to buy our ticket home, we could sneak aboard one of the departing ships,” Lirid suggested after a while. “If they don’t know we’re on board, they can’t refuse to take us. Problem solved.”

  “Are you nuts?” Kat squealed as softly as she could, suppressing the feeling to scream every word in her brother’s ear to get through to him. “Most of the aliens here are pirates and criminals. Do you know what they do to stowaways? They shoot them out of an airlock! If the stowaways are lucky.”

  “If we stay here, bad things are certainly going to happen to us,” her brother replied, pointing to the square. “We have no choice.”

  Mitha rubbed his chin in thought. “It certainly will be dangerous. No one likes uninvited guests on their ship. Well, in theory we could sneak aboard when the loading of the goods is in process. The cargo doors will be open then. The difficult part is not getting caught while we sneak inside.” He snapped his fingers. “Earlier, the station manager gave me access to the departure schedules. That’s how we found the name and code of the Zzjitzzeën ship that took Lucas. I can check if there are any ships leaving soon.” Mitha tapped frantically on his datapad.

  Kat sighed. Could things get any worse? Immediately, she mentally kicked herself for thinking it, because yes, of course they could, as she experienced a moment later when the door of the tavern opened.

  “Oh, fudge!” Kat quickly pulled the hood of her cloak over her head and hid her face.

  “What’s wrong?” her brother asked.

  Under her cloak, Kat pointed to the tavern’s entrance. “Makaen!” she murmured, not moving her lips.

  Her brother turned his head to the entrance. Two huge Makaen walked in, scanned the tavern with their glowing eyes and stepped toward a free table in the corner. They dropped down onto the chairs, which creak
ed under their weight.

  “Don’t look at them!” Kat slapped her brother’s hand.

  Lirid looked back at Kat. “They’re Makaen. So what?”

  “So what? So what?” Kat hissed. “They’re Makaen and I’m half-human. Do I need to explain more?”

  “Um…yes, please,” Lirid answered. “I have really no idea why you’re freaking out.”

  Kat sighed. “Until recently, humans and Makaen were at war with each other. Makaen hate humans. A lot.”

  “Yes, I know that, but there’s peace now.”

  Kat huffed. Now it was her turn to give her brother the you-are-so-stupid stare.

  “Oh yes, and signing a peace treaty made all the hate and animosity Makaen felt for humans just poof away like magic. It doesn’t work that way.” The last sentence she said in a low voice, mimicking her brother, who had said the same words to her earlier. Okay, maybe that was a little childish, but frankly, she couldn’t care less. They were surrounded by mean ugly aliens who wanted to harm them big-time, and she was so close to a nervous breakdown.

  “But you’re also half-Cassidi,” Mitha murmured distracted, persistently tapping his datapad. “They don’t hate Cassidi. As a matter of fact, I believe they are very fond of Cassidi women.”

  Kat inhaled deeply. “You two look like Cassidi, I don’t.”

  Her brother and Mitha both had the distinct silver-gray skin color, long blue hair and bright yellow eyes of a Cassidi male. Kat, on the other hand, only had the flaming red hair and the deep blue, almost violet eyes most Cassidi females had. But she wasn’t tall and slender and she didn’t have the light blue skin color or green lips of a Cassidi female. Overall, she looked more human than Cassidi. In comparison to the colorful Cassidi women, she looked rather plain.

  Most likely, the Makaen would only see the human side of her. Makaen were a dangerous race; Kat knew that all too well. Especially for humans. A peace treaty between the two species hadn’t wiped away the memory of the war.

  The war between Earth and Makaen had started a little over ten years ago, when an Earth vessel had fought a small Makaen cruiser with pilgrims on board. The conflict had been about a rocky planet the Makaen had claimed belonged to them and had religious value. The humans had other ideas about its ownership, though, and had wanted to mine the planet’s minerals. Some of the pilgrims had died during the battle that had followed, and the Makaen had been furious. Unfortunately, at the time of the attack, the humans hadn’t known how vastly superior the Makaen were in every aspect. The cruiser had only been a small ship, unlike their ginormous battleships. Furthermore, Makaen were fierce warriors and natural predators. When it came to confrontations, whether it was face-to-face or with ships in space, humans lost. That was a fact. Over the past ten years, Makaen battleships had blown to smithereens almost every Earth vessel they had encountered and that hadn’t surrendered.

  The war had been the reason her father had been reluctant to let her go to Earth. He had finally given in when he’d realized how much Kat had wanted to go. She had to promise him, though, that she would run to the nearest Cassidirian embassy for evacuation if there were any signs of the Makaen planning to attack Earth. Kat had found her father’s reaction somewhat excessive, but his anxiety had nonetheless rubbed off on her a bit. And hearing all the news on Earth of Makaen destroying Earth vessels and how deadly they were had done the rest to thump the fear of Makaen into her. When, three years later, the captain of an Earth vessel that was going in the direction of Cassidiri had offered to take Kat back, her father had bluntly refused. He didn’t want his daughter on board an Earth vessel if there was even a small chance the Makaen would cross their path. Where humans were concerned, Makaen tended to shoot first and then shoot some more. So her father had picked her up with a Cassidirian vessel, and frankly, Kat had been relieved. Her human half didn’t feel safe around Makaen.

  And now, occupying the same space as the boogeymen from her nightmares, Kat wished for the very first time in her life that she looked more like a Cassidi.

  “If you don’t like Makaen, then you’re really going to hate what I’m going to tell you now,” Mitha murmured, drawing Kat away from her thoughts.

  Kat’s eyes narrowed. “Because?”

  “The only ship that’s leaving within the next rotation is a Makaen freighter.”

  “No, no, no and no. We are not going to sneak onto a Makaen ship. No, no, no, no. Did I make myself clear?”

  This was where Kat drew the line. She would rather take her chances on this station than be trapped on a Makaen ship in the middle of space.

  “Whatever we’re going to do,” Mitha said, staring out the window, “we need to decide now. That bad-intention alien has just met several of his not-so-friendly-looking friends, and I think they’re waiting for us to come out.”

  In the square, a group of about six ugly green aliens stood huddled together, eyeing the tavern mischievously.

  Kat took in a deep breath once more and exhaled slowly in an attempt to calm her nerves. Again, it didn’t help.

  “Can we make it till the next rotation?” she asked hoarsely. “Lie low until the next ship departs?”

  “Truthfully,” Mitha replied, gazing directly into her eyes, “I don’t know. Perhaps if we find a place to hide, but I don’t know Blackway that well. Maybe nowhere is safe. Also, we can’t trust anyone. Without credits I doubt anyone is willing to help us.”

  “Okay,” Kat pondered out loud, “so the choice is between being trapped on a Makaen ship with the very substantial chance of getting caught and thrown out of an airlock or staying on Blackway a bit longer with the very substantial chance of getting caught and sold as slaves. Those options suck.”

  “I believe we have better odds going on the Makaen ship,” Lirid stated. “At least we’ll be away from this place. And I prefer dealing with one alien species at a time.”

  “Okay, just for the sake of argument, what’s the plan should we make it onto the ship unseen?” Kat asked her brother.

  Lirid furrowed his brow and pouted his lips in thought.

  “We sneak in, hide between the goods in the cargo hold, wait until the ship docks at another space station or planet and sneak out again. From there we can plan our next move. If we’re lucky, we’ll find a more respectable captain to take us home, maybe even someone from Cassidiri.”

  “That’s a big if, Lirid. Here’s another one: what if we get caught?”

  “Well, Kat, then we offer the crew a lot of credits to take us to Cassidiri.”

  “Credits we don’t have,” she added.

  “Well, yeah, not right now. But on arrival we will,” her brother replied. “They just have to wait for the payment.”

  “And what if they don’t want to wait?”

  Lirid squeezed his sister’s cold hand. “I’m a pretty good negotiator. I’ll get us home. Promise.”

  Kat didn’t share her brother’s confidence. His plan had more holes in it than a piece of Swiss cheese that had been used for target practice in a Swiss cheese shooting competition. The biggest one was the fact that Lirid was anything but a good negotiator. He tended to say stupid things in the most delicate and awkward situations, making everyone feel even more awkward. And the most annoying thing was that he himself didn’t even realize that he had put his foot in it. He could be so thick sometimes, that big numbskull.

  “Why don’t we just ask someone here to take us and pay them when we arrive on Cassidiri?” Kat suggested.

  Mitha shook his head fiercely. “No, that’s a bad idea. No one here would let strangers on his ship without payment in advance. Furthermore, if anyone on this space station finds out we’re without a ship, that we don’t have any means to leave this station, and that we don’t have credits to buy support, we’ll be easy prey for anyone who doesn’t have scruples about selling us to a slave trader. And I assume that there are a lot of them here. Plus, news travels fast. In that case, the aliens outside will be the least of our problems.”

/>   “Mitha’s right. But when we’re already on a ship far away from this space station, they won’t have a choice. They’ll have to take us home,” Lirid stated.

  “Or throw us out of the nearest airlock,” Kat murmured.

  “Don’t think so negative,” her brother scolded. “I’ll promise you everything will be fine.”

  Holding her head low, Kat glared over to the Makaen at the table in the back. With their claws, horns, ridges and slit-shaped black pupils, they reminded her of how demons were portrayed on Earth. They were drinking ale and laughing out loud. Her stomach tightened. That sound alone made her feel sick. Her gut feeling told her this was a bad idea. No, this was the worst idea since the creation of bad ideas. It was the ultimate god all bad ideas prayed to for inspiration to become uber-bad.

  “I don’t know…” Kat hesitated.

  “Come on, sis. I’ll never let anything happen to you. You know that.”

  Kat closed her eyes, praying for an epiphany, but her mind drew a blank. She didn’t want to stay on this station a second longer than necessary. They had to help Lucas, and that wasn’t possible from here. They needed to get back to Cassidiri as fast as possible, but the thought of being trapped on a ship in the middle of space with aliens who could slit her throat with their razor-sharp claws made her stomach churn. Kat wished she could just call her father and ask him to pick them up. Unfortunately, sending a message from this backstreet space station was all but impossible, Mitha had explained earlier. Not only because of the sheer distance between the station and the nearest communication array, but also because the station used communication jammers to hinder any potential notifications to law enforcers about illegal shipments.

  Kat really didn’t want to do it, but she couldn’t come up with an alternative. Moments slid past until she finally sighed in resignation.

  “Okay. Let’s see if we even succeed in getting from here to the Makaen ship. The first hurdle is getting out of here without the scary aliens outside getting us.”