Alien Warrior's Hunt Read online

  Alien Warrior’s Hunt (Verotan Mates Book 3)

  by C.R Corbin

  Table of contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  More from the Author

  #

  CHAPTER ONE

  He recalled how the world was before all of this. During his childhood. During the days when his people still existed and he had a family instead of his ragtag group of brothers.

  It was beautiful, he had to admit that.

  He looks out into the woods that bore an exceptional resemblance to his homeworld and recalls when his father used to take him out to hunt or when he went out for his mothers to pick fruits by scaling the highest trees and exploring every crevice of this forest. He remembered all of it. And he wanted it back.

  His father used to give him advice on what to do should the downfall of his people come. After all, he was only a boy then and the war was still raging. The machines hadn't become nearly strong enough yet, his father told him that this was an enemy that showed no mercy, no remorse, and that he shouldn't show any back to them. And thus he was trained in nearly every art of warfare and survival that his father desired to teach him in order to mould him into a great warrior. It was simply unfortunate that he didn't become one in time to make a difference. He could still remember the fear on his mother's face as she watched her husband get slaughtered by the machines before she was forced into battle herself and killed. He witnessed it all before escaping with a small contingent of his family that was now with him, ready to reclaim some semblance of pride.

  Of course this was not the same planet, it was simply one that was kept just in case the homeland was ever destroyed. Luron knew that what was lost couldn't be replaced but he knew that he could build a new one, he couldn't replace it but he could move on.

  He could have a family once again.

  When Tacion told him of this plan and called for the brothers to gather he expressed his doubts about the plan. The temple here never lit up with the mating signs, so how was it happening now? Why was it happening now? What had changed with the spirits that called upon him and his brothers to go out into the galaxy and claim their mates? It didn't make much sense to him but gradually he was turned around by his brother's persuasion.

  To find a mate, to find a family of his own.

  Despite how weak it made him seem he desired comfort, he desired companionship, he desired a woman. He had seen her in his dreams at times, she had soft brown hair and the most doting brown eyes he had ever seen. She looked like the physical personification of the forest itself and perhaps that was why she had given him so much comfort.

  Because she reminded him of home.

  And now as he walks down the steps towards his sigil stone he doesn't know what to expect of her. He thought of all the ways that it could go, of the challenge that he would be facing in the form of the machine that ruled over that forest world. Unlike his brothers, the info provided to him regarding this mission was rather scant. All they knew was that the machine was somehow using the planet for lumber or mining and that the humans served it. There wasn't much beyond that, and reports about the machine's power in terms of military were rather scarce.

  So he had to go in blind.

  The spirits had told him what the data could not, he knew where she was, he knew that she was serving as a lumber worker in one of the massive trees there. They had told him that she might not submit so easily to his whims but he was sure that once they came into contact that instincts would take over and she would become willing. She had to, that was the will of the fates.

  His axe was at the ready along with the rest of his equipment as he stepped into the room. Along the walls were carvings of a forest world, of great vines stretching over a massive swath of marsh. There had to be countless amounts of monsters lurking in those waters, not that he was going to be dissuaded of course. He would make it through just fine. And as he touches the stone, a variety of memories begin to flow through him. Rain-soaked days in the forest with his father, the days when he went swimming in the lakes out in Verota. It all came back to him, as if to remind him of the kind of environment that he would be facing. A warm, wet world.

  He begins to feel his arms grow numb and his feet begin to tingle before he feels as though he was being lifted into the air. His body begins to shiver and he gasps as the air leaves his lungs and he is left in the void. He remains amongst the stars, drifting as the light begins to blur and it begins to feel as if he was drifting faster and faster until he opens his eyes and awakens.

  His hands feel moss, the distinct feeling of plant matter reveals itself to him before he sits up and pats himself down. If any of his brothers saw that then they would have laughed at him for being unprepared but he just shook the thought away and stood up. He draws his equipment to ensure that it was all in order before he lets himself listen to the world around him.

  It was teeming with life.

  The hum of insects, the call of wild beasts in the distance and the gentle sounds of the water beneath him. It all hummed to him in a nostalgic tone as he allows himself one simile before he sets out to claim what is his.

  To claim his revenge, and his mate.

  #

  CHAPTER TWO

  Most days were spent like this, slaving away in the lumber mills at the behest of the foremen. She still didn't know why she was even doing this, it was a drain to both her body and her soul.

  But alas, she had to make a living somehow. And as much as her friends liked to say it did, destroying mining droids and sabotaging lumber operations was not the way to do it.

  She had been born into the lumber colony under the Nelson Lumber company. It had been established as a worker settlement as well as a way for the company to gain labor without importing extra bodies. The company had been here for about a hundred years, in fact she inherited this job from her mother who passed recently. Her father's position as a foreman was granted to the massive prick yelling at her right now.

  "Put your back into it Anna!" he shouts, "You better prove yourself. I don't' care who your parents were."

  "Yes sir." She says through gritted teeth.

  Her hands slide another block of wood into the furnace and she looks over towards the clock, the hands seemed frozen in time as she groaned when she realized that she had another two hours here before she could go home.

  But then again, she was going to be back here in twelve hours anyway so it really didn't matter how much rest she got in total.

  Every day was pretty much the same, wake up on this humid, hot, muggy world and maybe relax for about half an hour before going to the lumber camps. As she was a woman, she usually assigned her to organize the lumber piles. Not the most interesting nor physically demanding work in the world but she was happy to have a job. Today however, was not her lucky day, decidedly. They had assigned her to fill in for one of the men in reducing the size of the massive logs by chopping them down into a more manageable size using the machines.

  It didn't help that the men were linked to oogle her while she did it, god it felt like she
was a piece of meat and at times she feared for her own safety.

  Alas it was pretty much the only male attention she got. It was mostly from creeps and weirdos which only exacerbated her anxiety about it all. With this curvaceous body there wasn't much that she could do to attract any decent man, at least in her eyes. She was simply built like this, with bigger bones and a bigger frame than most women. She disliked it when she was younger but she had grown used to it, her rather undemanding work (usually at least) meant that her weight didn't decrease by much.

  It didn't matter, she didn't really feel like fostering a family here anyways.

  Her parents had always struck her as rather unhappy people especially regarding the lives that they were born into. Her father always scorned his father for signing the contract to come here, not knowing that it would lock his family into indentured servitude. At this rate she was lucky if her grandchildren would be able to escape this. She didn't understand what her grandfather was thinking at the time but at times she tried to see it his way. After all, life in the galaxy was rather uncertain and if there was a guarantee of stability it was seized without much thought.

  The thought still weighed heavily on her mind by the time her break came.

  "Total dick right?" Maria asks her.

  Anna snorts, "Yeah what the hell is his problem? It's like he wants us to quit.....not like we can though."

  "Don't start talking like that around here, you know what they'll do." Maria states.

  Anna nods.

  "Anyways, you coming tonight?" Maria asks.

  "To the raid?"

  "Yeah, unless you're too tired."

  Anna groans as she imagines how sore her feet would be tomorrow. She didn't want to let her friends down since this was an operation that they had been planning for a while. She was part of an environmentalist movement here that focused on sabotaging lumber and mining operations. It was something that had been instilled in her by her mother who was also deeply involved in the community. Anna hated this job anyway so she didn't see much harm in going, especially when they had remained anonymous even after all they had done over the years.

  But she was so damn tired. And she didn't want to miss a day of work tomorrow as that meant punishment. She had never endured it of course but from the looks of the workers that came back from it, she was sure that it was something that she would rather avoid.

  They looked dead inside after missing a day. And the way they walked was unsettling, when she talked to them they often wouldn't even respond or look at her. It was as if these people had been replaced with empty husks, shells of the individuals that they once were.

  It was a fate that she wouldn't wish on anyone.

  "So are you coming or not?" asked Maria.

  The decision was debated heavily in her mind again. She could go but she would have to put up with being tired tomorrow. Alas, it was a price that she was willing to pay if it meant that she could spite the colony. Anna nods and agrees to meet Maria behind the living quarters at sundown after work.

  She could feel her back aching already along with hearing the lectures that would inevitably come from the foremen when they realized that she was dead tired tomorrow and that her work was compromised.

  If only she had looked out the window at that moment to see the massive green figure looking back at her. His purple eyes obscured by the leaves as his claws dug into the wood, she would have known that her life was about to change, dramatically.

  #

  CHAPTER THREE

  The people here lived in squalor conditions. By the time they walked out of those massive stations where the trees were loaded they looked dead tired. At least to his eyes.

  Perhaps he was a bit spoiled since the only real work he had done was mercenary work for a large portion of his life and he had never known hard physical labor that was constant such as this. Of course, there was something else weighing on his mind at the moment and that was the woman through the window.

  It had taken him several days to arrive at this lumber station. He had to swing through the canopies of trees and sleep in hollowed out trunks for several days. The spirits had told him that she was here, she lived in these camps and worked as a low skilled worker. From the looks of it she was tired and worn out from work just like the rest of them....he had to help her.

  But how would he? There were too many people to simply sneak her out of there and despite what he wanted to believe he knew that she wouldn't come to him so easily without a proper introduction first.

  His hands cinch into the tree as he looks around at the structure of the camp. There was a massive wall surrounding the living quarters, it looked to be made out of wood as well. He sniffed the air and deduced that the women must have dwelled mostly in the corner that was on the left of the camp from his reference point. Perhaps he could wait until dusk to sneak her out. However long that may take him of course.

  He could also simply sabotage the camp....or use the opportunity to gather more information.

  Luron readies his hacking device and dives into the water, he had identified the main office building as the cabin that was situated directly adjacent to the lumber mill. He could tell from the men that were walking into it and out of it. They were dressed differently than the rest, they didn't have the same tired gait that a lot of the workers did and they certainly didn't seem as miserable.

  And that was where he would begin to gather his intel.

  Not much was known about her, the goddess of life. It was said that she was much larger than some of the others while some said she was nearly invisible to the naked eye. He couldn't really reconcile those two portrayals so Luron paid it no mind. Nakiel had often theorized that she was a cloud of nanomachines but Luron thought he pondered their enemies far too much.

  All Luron needed to know was how to kill them.

  He dives through the water and holds his breath before sinking deeper. He was trying to find a gap in the fence, a section where he could squeeze through. He eventually found one and dashed through, the gap was tight but he was able to make it past the fence without much trouble. Luron had thought that there would have been greater security measures put in place to keep the mill secure. However, this was a lumber mill and humans couldn't dive as deep as he, as such the gap under the fence wasn't taken into consideration.

  And besides, one worker probably won't be valued that much.

  There was something amiss, however. Why was this entire operation run by humans? He would have figured that there was something else to it, that the machines would be behind it somehow. That Vaito would have her vines in the operation to some degree. However, from what he has seen, there was nothing to indicate that anything was amiss regarding the operation. Everything seemed rather....normal, as if this was a simple human colony, albeit a rather depressing and dour one. The spirits had told him that she was here, however, and they were never wrong. He just had to find the flaw in this, he just had to look a bit harder.

  He refocuses his attention onto the cabin and surfaces up from the swamp. There was this tiny ring of water around the entire base that he was now in, he could choose his entry point and, as such, he swam to position himself close to the cabin before surfacing. He rolls under the building and watches as a group of workers pass before he places his hand on the floor of the cabin and attempts to sense any abnormalities.

  There was a distinct flow of electrical currents to one point and that was where he would have to attach his device. He needed to attach it to some point in the network and wireless hacking wasn't an option due to his lack of expertise in the area.

  And then he hears it.

  "I'm gonna get changed and then I'll meet up with you alright?" his mate asks.

  The other girl shifts her feet. "Alright, don't be late though Anna."

  So that was her name...Anna.

  He watches as she disappears into a crowd of workers. The sun was going down and he would have to act quickly if he wanted to meet up with her. He see
s a small mechanical hatch at the bottom of the cabin and inserts his device there, there was fiber wiring here, it would have to suffice despite his desire to attach the device to something a bit more secure.

  For now he would wait for her.

  He had only caught a glimpse of her before, her hair was black, curly and soft, it flowed to her shoulders beautifully and her rare smile glimmered like the waves of Verota. He wanted to see her, to touch her, to hear her and to claim her. Spirits he was getting harder and harder just thinking about it but he would have to bide his time.

  He would have to save her from this decrepit fate first.

  ....

  As the hot water runs over her she thinks over her day and all that has happened, the mundanity of it all and the hopelessness of the constant work that she did.

  It was destroying this planet, she knew that.

  Over the last few years, the team that she ran with had uncovered some rather harrowing data. The lumber here was taken only to service a greater power that lurked somewhere on this planet, deep in the marshes apparently. She had never seen it herself and from what she understood the power was rather.....terrifying. It was not something that she wanted to even challenge but she felt as if it was her duty, a tradition passed down to her by her mother.

  And yet she still worked here instead of running away and joining one of those colonies deep in the marshes that were apparently dedicated to ending this, to destroying the machine and the Nelson lumber company along with the mining companies that also functioned here.

  She was stuck, she didn't know how to survive and yet the work that she did was also morally reprehensible to her. She couldn't live with her work and yet she couldn't live without it. Some days she cursed her fate whilst on other days she merely resigned herself to it and simply let it pass her mind without much thought. Today was one of those days where she would have to reconcile with it, however. Maria had already told her that she was leaving, she was just waiting for the right moment to take as many supplies as possible before escaping. The camp was pretty heavily fortified but there were points that they could use. Gaps in the fence and tunnels that were dug by her friends when they wanted to go on excursions outside. Today's objective was to sabotage the lumber vehicles, a pretty mundane task but it was all they could do with the manpower that they had. The Nelson company attempted to investigate it several times but they usually came up short. Mostly due to the fact that investigating one destroyed vehicle every few months was kind of a waste of cash since they could simply order one for cheaper than it would cost than to actually look into it.