Alien shield, p.1
Alien Shield, page 1
Table of Contents
NOTICES
ALIEN SHIELD
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
TRIGGER WARNING
CHAPTER ONE | Serena
CHAPTER TWO | Serena
CHAPTER THREE | Xyan
CHAPTER FOUR | Xyan
CHAPTER FIVE | Serena
CHAPTER SIX | Serena
CHAPTER SEVEN | Xyan
CHAPTER EIGHT | Serena
CHAPTER NINE | Xyan
CHAPTER TEN | Serena
CHAPTER ELEVEN | Xyan
CHAPTER TWELVE | Serena
CHAPTER THIRTEEN | Xyan
CHAPTER FOURTEEN | Serena
CHAPTER FIFTEEN | Serena
CHAPTER SIXTEEN | Xyan
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN | Serena
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN | Xyan
CHAPTER NINETEEN | Serena
CHAPTER TWENTY | Xyan
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE | Serena
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO | Xyan
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE | Serena
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR | Serena
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE | Xyan
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX | Serena
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN | Xyan
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 Shield Copyright © 2022 Veronica Doran
ALIEN SHIELD
Fated Mates of the Sea Sand Warlords
Book Eight
By Ursa Dax
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks, as always, to every reader, reviewer, and new friend on this journey. And to my husband, RSH, and my parents, who support everything I do.
TRIGGER WARNING
This novel contains mentions of parental loss (off-page), mentions of a fatphobic ex-boyfriend (off-page), graphic violence including gun violence (on-page), surgery (on-page), near-death experiences, and mentions of body image insecurities.
CHAPTER ONE
Serena
I crouched, squinting beneath my sunglasses at the little black spike of a stem poking up through the rocky sand. The first of Jocelyn’s new fallink plants was sprouting. Fallink was the plant that the mated humans who weren’t ready to get pregnant yet relied on for birth control, and ever since Jocelyn had brought some of the plants back from the Death Plains, she’d devoted herself to farming more of them. I’d been helping. With our resident geologist Melanie’s assistance, we’d tried to find an area that would produce the fallink plants as easily and naturally as their more native habitat in the Death Plains.
I nodded with satisfaction, excited for Jocelyn to come back and see this first new sprout. The Death Plains were where Jocelyn was right now – she’d returned there with her mate, the new Gahn Razek, to move his small tribe here to join with all of us at the Cliffs of Uruzai.
I stood, turning from the little plant, looking out over the settlement. I was currently in a little nook in the rock face of the Cliffs of Uruzai, an area where the sand, according to Melanie, would likely be more conducive to the fallink plants’ growth. Behind my back was the jagged bronze-red curtain of stone that made up the Cliffs of Uruzai. Only it wasn’t totally solid – in fact, there were many entrances into the stone. Valleys and tunnels and inclines and predators that made my hair stand up on end to hear about them. I wouldn’t travel too far into those cliffs if I could help it, that was for sure.
Well, there was one good reason someone would want to travel deep into those cliffs – to visit the caves of the sacred Lavrika, the alien dragon spirit or deity or... I wasn’t exactly sure. All I knew was that the great serpentine creature summoned the men native to this planet to give them some kind of vision of their “fated mate”. It still sounded a little woo-woo to me. On Earth, I’d always been scientific and pragmatic. But being here, I couldn’t deny the faint undercurrent of energy that seemed to emanate from these cliffs. I couldn’t deny the way the Lavrika had somehow seemed to magically impart the Sea Sands language to us humans by merely dunking our bodies into its glowing pools. And I couldn’t deny the mystical, almost vicious bond that awakened in the males once they’d been granted the vision of their mates.
Too bad us humans don’t feel it too, I thought, smiling wryly to myself. Those alien men who’d been granted human mates had had to work freaking hard to get their ladies to fall in love with them. It was something I’d observed with keen interest. I couldn’t tell if that was because I was a biologist, and therefore was already primed to be interested in things like mating habits of other species, or if it was because it was just so damn entertaining to watch those proud warriors stumble over themselves trying to woo their women.
Either way, besides the chaos and danger that seemed to erupt here at every turn, the sacred mate bond had provided endless material for me to observe. And even more than that, we now had two human-alien pregnancies! Theresa and Cece were both expecting, and since they were both happy about it, I was too. Absolutely fascinating and pretty damn cool if you asked me.
I leaned back, pressing myself into the shade, the scrape of the stone on my solar protection jacket creating a stiff, scratchy sound. Even in the shade, the stone wall at my back was warm, heat drifting through my jacket, making sweat roll down my back. While I didn’t have any remaining family back home in Newfoundland, one thing I really missed was the more temperate summers. Sure, it got hot some days – but not like this. Not like the unrelenting hammer of heat driven down by the alien sun.
That sun was shining now, just as it did every day. The tents of the four tribes in the settlement were little brown houses under its harsh light. The copper-gold sand glinted, almost metallic in that light, only slightly paler in colour than the bronzed cliffs at my back. I plastered my palms to the rock, tipping my head back slightly, watching everything from beneath my sunglasses and hood.
In the centre of the settlement was a wide-open area that acted as a sort of central social spot. In the evening, we had our big fire there to cook the day’s kills brought in by the hunters. As it was daytime and no fire was needed, that area was mostly occupied by women – of both the human and alien sort – and children. They were chatting away, some of them cleaning hides, others butchering meat, others weaving peet grass into fine fabric for bandages and Sea Sand-style tunics. Though those tunics seemed just to be for the women and girls – the males only wore dakrival hide loincloths and straps that held their weapons crisscrossed over their chests and backs. A few such scantily clad male warriors stood guard nearby, and through the pockets between the tightly packed tents, I could see yet more guards at the entrance to the settlement, a bodily wall of protection between the tents and the open sands of the desert. Most of the men, though, were out hunting or patrolling or engaging in other duties. There was a lot going on – our arrival had created a massive upheaval, and the resulting alliance of the four Sea Sand tribes had created a gigantic shift in the culture and life here.
Not four. Five.
The fifth tribe was coming back from the Death Plains and would arrive any day now. I kept forgetting, and as I looked at the packed settlement, I wondered how the heck they were going to all fit. But Jocelyn had said they were very few in number. Somehow, we’d make it work. It would be worth a little more crowding for peace among all the tribes.
I pushed off from the cliff wall, once again turning to glance down at the lone little black fallink sprout poking up from the place where its seed had been recently planted. While Jocelyn was gone journeying back to the Death Plains with her mate, I’d promised to keep track of what was going on in her new garden. Not like I had to water the plants or anything, considering that they were native to the desert climes of this planet, but I still wanted to observe what was happening with them. Though my work back home as a professor and biological illustrator had been mainly focused on animal and human biology, I had always been interested in all sorts of biological organisms – including plants.
Beside the plot that had been devoted to growing the fallink plants, a collection of leafy grix plants bloomed. Those, too, had been planted by Jocelyn. Grix were native to this area of the desert, and they grew in plenty, but that required foraging in the cliffs. Having this garden devoted to them made it a lot easier to access them. And considering how handy they’d become for our pregnant friends, having easy access to them was vital.
“Hey, hun.”
I spun around at the greeting, seeing one of those pregnant friends right in front of me. Theresa smiled broadly beneath her hood, her cheeks beautifully plumped up from her pregnancy. She was about fourteen weeks along now, and I could see the slight swell of her stomach beneath her solar protection jacket. I knew this was her first pregnancy, and that women often didn’t show quite as quickly as this back home when it was their first time. But both she and Cece were expanding quickly about the middle, something I’d made mental notes of.
“Hey, how are you?” I asked. I asked it as both a biologist and a friend. As a biologist, I was keenly cataloguing every element of these human-alien pregnancies inside my brain. And as her friend, I just cared.
“Not bad, but I’m looking for some more of that nice grix stuff Jocelyn has for us.”
The grix leaves were something between Earth ginger and mint, and, when mixed with the valok gel we drank daily, they made a soothing concoction that eased nausea. Jocelyn had mixed up a big batch of the stuff for Cece and Theresa before she’d left.
“Shoot, have you run out?” I asked, glancing down at the garden. Luckily, there was lots to be had of the grix plants. But they’d need to be mixed into the valok gel for easy consumption.
“Yep. I’m feeling OK, but Cece’s been drinking it like it’s going out of style. So I came to get some more.”
“You didn’t have to do that. You could have sent Baldor to ask me to do it,” I said kindly. Even though Theresa seemed to be faring much better than Cece thus far in her pregnancy, I knew it couldn’t be easy dealing with the swelling and hormones and everything else in this heat.
“Oh, no, I wouldn’t ask him to do that right now,” Theresa said of her mate. I was about to bristle and tell her that that was exactly the sort of thing a male should be doing for his lovely pregnant mate, when she quickly added, “He’d do it, no question. But he and the other Gahns are preparing for the Death Plains warriors to arrive, and the Bitter Sea warriors are coming back soon, too. And, well, they’re all stressed out and in a tizzy over it.”
“Fair enough,” I said with a slow nod. The politics of this place were bloody and ancient – old enemies and even older wounds that hadn’t quite healed between the tribes. So it made sense that these proud warrior kings weren’t exactly in the best mood now that they were all forced together like this.
Well, they’ll just have to get used to it. In my opinion, it was never too late to teach an old dog new tricks. And that included getting these proud alien warlords to work together. They’d need to if the human ships were going to come back and try to obliterate us all.
Ugh. Let’s not think about that right now.
“Well, if you’ve run out of the drink we’ll just have to make more. Jocelyn and the Death Plains people should be back soon, but I’m sure we can figure it out without her. It’s just like steeping tea or something, right?” I asked, stepping over to the grix plants and crouching down once more.
“Right,” Theresa said. She moved to her knees slowly, then sat beside me. I glanced at her, then tugged the lip of her hood further forward, better shielding her face from the sun.
“Pregnancy makes people more susceptible to UV damage from the sun,” I warned her. She smiled again, leaning forward so that her face was better shaded.
“Thanks. It’s a good thing we have you and Jocelyn and the healers!”
I half-smiled, half-grimaced. I would have liked to have had a medical doctor here for these pregnancies, specifically an OBGYN. Sure, technically I was a doctor, but that was in PhD terms, and my job back home had consisted of teaching undergrads and doing biological illustrations for textbooks. We’d had army medics and at least one doctor as staff on the ship from what I’d heard from Chapman, but none of them had survived the zeelk attack when we’d first arrived on this planet. So now it was down to Jocelyn, the Sea Sand healers, and me, to take care of our pregnant friends.
“Well if you’ve completely run out, I’d bet Cece will be wanting more of it today. Let’s get a bunch of stuff and take it to her tent,” I said, grabbing fistfuls of grix leaves and tearing them off their stems before stuffing the leaves into my pockets.
“Sounds good,” Theresa said, doing the same thing. Once we’d both filled our pockets with the grix leaves, the tangy ginger mint smell wafting through the air, I stood. I helped Theresa to her feet, and together we strolled away from the cliff wall and into the settlement.
CHAPTER TWO
Serena
Gahn Buroudei’s tribespeople had made their homes at the far end of the settlement. With the sun beating down on us, we weaved between tents and dodged the stone discs and blunt spears thrown by little Sea Sand boys as they played. I said little, but in reality, the young children here were the size of teens back home. Makes sense considering the genetics... Every Sea Sand male I’d seen here was easily over 7 feet tall, the woman all above 6 feet. Not for the first time, I worried about our narrow human pelvises being able to push half-Sea Sand babies out. But there wasn’t much sense in panicking about that right now. At least when considering a human pregnancy timeline, we were still months away from delivering any babies – assuming everything went as expected. Which, considering the fact that we were on a freaking alien planet, was maybe asking a bit much.
The tent Cece shared with her mate, Gahn Buroudei, was the largest in this area of the settlement, besides Gahn Buroudei’s healers’ tent, that was. The Gahns’ tents, and the large one us unmated human women slept in, reminded me of big billowing wedding tents from back home. But instead of white gauzy fabric, these large, flat-topped structures were constructed with heavy brown dakrival hide, the fabric scraped and cleaned until it was like suede. Two guards stationed at the entrance to Gahn Buroudei’s tent gave us a quick once-over before stepping aside to let us enter.
There wasn’t a way to knock on a soft tent wall, so instead, I pulled the tent flap open by a couple of centimetres.
“Hello?” I called softly into the tent’s gloom
“Yoo-hoo!” Theresa said brightly from behind me.
A grim-sounding groan rumbled from within the darkness of the tent.
“Are you alright?” I asked, pulling the tent flap further and peering inside.
“Ugh. No. Yes. But no,” came Cece’s croaky response.
“We’re coming in,” I said firmly, yanking aside the tent flap and marching into the tent. Theresa followed close behind me. Cece hadn’t given us permission to actually come in here yet but I had to make sure she was doing alright. Her pregnancy wasn’t going as smoothly as Theresa’s.
I stopped walking and blinked forcefully, willing my eyes to adjust to the dim interior of the tent after being outside. I pushed my sunglasses up on top of my head and let my hood fall back, planting my hands on my hips. This tent was very similar to the one Theresa shared with Gahn Baldor – large and open, with bone shelves along the sides. At one end of the tent was a large hide seat – round and low to the floor, stuffed with what I assumed was probably a combination of rocks and grass. A Gahn’s throne. Beside it was a smaller version of that seat, looking hilariously tiny, like a child’s chair, even though it was for the adult Gahnala Cece.
Against the tent wall opposite the bone shelves were dakrival hides on the sand and a human lump among them. Cece was lying on her side, facing the blank brown tent wall, the hides thrown off her body. As Theresa knelt down next to her, brushing Cece’s chestnut strands away from her sweaty neck, I hustled over to the bone shelves. Between valok gel candles and weapons and bone needles I found what I was looking for – fresh valok plants, plump and recently picked. The disc-like succulents provided most of our fluids here, and Jocelyn used the gel inside to create her nausea-combating grix concoction.
Another glance at the shelves and I found a small stone bowl and what looked to be a pestle. Grabbing the valok and the stone bowl and pestle, I hurried back over to the others.
“How are you feeling?” I asked, sitting down heavily, thrown slightly off-balance with so much stuff in my hands. I got into a more comfortable cross-legged position and put all my supplies in front of me on the sand.
Cece’s response, at first, sounded more like the noise a strangled lama would make than a human. My jaw tensed, and I started to worry something was really wrong, when she finally shifted, slowly sitting up and swivelling on her bum to face us.
“Just the usual,” she said, sighing and scraping back tendrils of her hair from her forehead.
“Here,” Theresa said, moving up to her knees and scrambling behind Cece. Behind Cece’s back, her fingers worked gently, undoing the remnants of Cece’s destroyed braid and neatly retying it.
“You sure?” I asked Cece, narrowing my eyes as I took her in. Her blood pressure had been a little bit high and she’d been doing a good job resting because of it. But I was constantly worried that things could go south fast if we weren’t careful.
