Her Alien Alpha (Salvaged Hearts Book 1) Read online

  Her Alien Alpha

  Salvaged Hearts

  Leslie Chase

  Juno Wells

  HER ALIEN ALPHA

  Editing by Sennah Tate

  Copyright 2020 Leslie Chase

  All rights reserved

  This is a work of fiction intended for mature audiences. All names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  1. Carrie

  2. Delkor

  3. Carrie

  4. Delkor

  5. Carrie

  6. Delkor

  7. Carrie

  8. Delkor

  9. Carrie

  10. Delkor

  11. Carrie

  12. Delkor

  13. Carrie

  14. Delkor

  15. Carrie

  16. Delkor

  17. Carrie

  18. Delkor

  19. Carrie

  20. Delkor

  21. Carrie

  22. Delkor

  23. Carrie

  24. Delkor

  25. Carrie

  About Leslie Chase

  Sci Fi Romance by Leslie Chase

  Paranormal Romance by Leslie Chase

  1

  Carrie

  Dreams in hyperspace are always weird, but this was the strangest I’d had. Perhaps because it was the longest flight I’d been on, carrying me far beyond human-settled space.

  Everything was grainy, fuzzy, a little out of focus, like a poorly connected viewscreen. Colors drained almost to black and white, like an ancient movie from before Earth worked out how to make them properly.

  If it was a movie, though, it was a porno. Not that I minded when the view was this fine: the man stood before me was huge, towering, his broad shoulders muscular, his torso sculpted with abs to die for. My eyes traced lower, a shiver running through me as I stared at the heavy, massive cock between his legs. It hardened as I watched, transfixed.

  A low growl brought my eyes up to his face. A rugged, subtly alien face, deep eyes narrowed and watching me. Watching like a hunter watches his prey.

  My breath caught and I turned to flee. Before I’d gone two steps he was on me, too fast to escape, and his powerful hands lifted me. A dexterous tail wrapped around me, pulling at my clothes which melted away into dream stuff at his touch.

  Naked as he was, I shivered again. Neither fear nor cold bothered me; in the dream all I felt was a desperate aching need for this man. And the catch in his breath as he caressed my naked body made me shudder.

  He needs me as much as I need him, I thought as his teeth grazed my neck. Sharp teeth, predator’s teeth, making me squirm and gasp and writhe against him. That mighty, terrifying-but-alluring cock hardened against me, and his tail wrapped around to tease between my legs…

  BZZZZZ

  “No, not now,” I muttered, prying my eyes open. The comm bracelet beside my bed flashed bright and buzzed again.

  I shut my eyes, tried to fall back into the dream, but it faded fast. The alien slipped from my mind with the third buzz of my alarm and I grumbled as I picked it up.

  Great. That’s the closest I’ve come to sex in months, so of course the ship cuts me off. The long drought was, I had to admit, my fault. When I first proposed the ‘no men aboard’ rule we’d all agreed it was a good idea. Now, three months later, a dream was enough to leave me gasping for someone who didn’t even exist.

  Flustered and frustrated, I swiped the comm’s screen and read the message. An alert from the bridge that the carrier ship was approaching our destination. Soon we’d be at Nautilus Station, and the start of our new lives. This wasn’t the time to roll over, get back to sleep, and chase rugged alien lovers.

  Or rather, be chased by one. Chased and caught. I blushed at the thought as I jumped in the tiny shower cubicle. For once I didn’t mind shivering through a short, cold wash — at least it helped clear my mind. That done, I threw on the jumpsuit that served as a simple uniform and left my cabin. Around me the ship creaked and groaned, metal shifting in ways it wasn’t supposed to, and I grimaced. If the hull fails, at least I won’t have to live with my bad decisions.

  The ship groaned again, the deck warping under my feet and throwing me off balance. My shoulder hit the doorframe with a bruising thud and as I grabbed for a handhold, the artificial gravity flickered.

  Any chance of keeping my balance vanished. I hit the deck hard, swallowing a yelp.

  “God damned decades-old Einstein-cursed motherfucker,” I muttered, rolling onto my back. Boots stepped into view while I tried to summon the enthusiasm to stand.

  “Hey, Carrie, that’s no way to speak to the Ladies’ Choice.” Alice’s ever-cheerful voice grated on my nerves. Sometimes she lifted my spirits, but not now. “She’s the only thing between us and hyperspace.”

  “Yeah, but how long for?” I sighed, rubbed my elbow. The standard gravity on the Ladies’ Choice was a little lower than on Earth — enough that I’d been losing my balance even before it malfunctioned. Now I had more bruises than I cared to count.

  Alice laughed as though I’d told a hilarious joke and helped me to my feet. She was a little shorter than my own 5’4”, and her bubbly attitude and blonde hair gave some people the impression she didn’t have much going on upstairs. Those of us who knew her better were more likely to be intimidated by her intelligence.

  The corridor ran the length of our patched-together ship, doors on either side leading to the crew cabins. Behind us, a door led to the empty cargo hold. Ahead, the crew lounge and beyond it the bridge. Alice and I made our way forward, through the empty lounge and into the bridge.

  The forward display showed hyperspace, a roiling red-black nothing that my eyes refused to focus on. It was awe-inspiring, strangely beautiful, and looking at it for too long made people hallucinate. I pulled my gaze away.

  Bella sat at her station, running a diagnostic on the drive. The Ladies’ Choice might be a cheap fourth-hand ship I’d found in a junkyard, but we could count on Bella to take good care of her.

  “We’re ready for realspace, boss,” she said without taking her eyes off the control panel. “The port-upper thruster’s choking and I want to check it out again when we’re in port, but she’ll fly.”

  Tall, slim, with long dark hair, Bella looked nothing like the stereotype of an engineer, but her skills spoke for themselves. If she said the ship would be fine, I trusted her.

  Michaela sat down beside me with a thump. How she’d gotten onto the bridge without me noticing was just another in a long line of mysteries about our security expert, and I guessed that the noise she made sitting down was only her being polite.

  It still made me jump, and she smirked as she buckled herself in and powered up the guns. Well, mining lasers, but they were the closest things to weapons we had.

  “Still think we ought to have more firepower,” she complained. “There’s no law out here, we have to protect ourselves.”

  “This was the best we could afford,” I replied, same as I had the last dozen times she’d brought the subject up. “Once we’ve got some cash we can buy something better.”

  Michaela pulled a face but didn’t object. There was no help for it, after all — we’d come too far to turn back.

  I ran a quick diagnostic from the captain’s chair. Everything looked normal, which would be more reassuring if the Ladies’ Choice’s ‘normal’ were better. There were still air leaks, gravity fluctuations, and sensor failures, but at least nothing new
had broken.

  The final two crew members hurried in, last to arrive as always. Lily and Jen strapped themselves into their seats, Lily taking the helm. The six of us were rarely on the bridge together but no one wanted to miss this show.

  Ahead, the roiling red-black emptiness parted, letting us see stars for the first time in weeks. The carrier ship dove through the gap and in moments, with a great groan of twisting metal, we’d left hyperspace. Unfamiliar constellations hung around us, but none of us had eyes for them. Nautilus Station captured our attention.

  It had once been an amazing achievement, and even now it was beyond anything built by humans. I’d seen pictures, holograms, but none of them did it justice.

  As ornate as any structure I’d ever seen, the station curled in on itself in a twisting mass of glass and stone. Gigantic arches and windows, gargoyles twice the size of the Ladies’ Choice loomed out into space. The origin of the name was obvious — if a nautilus shell fucked a gothic cathedral, this would be their baby.

  The backdrop only made the view more spectacular. It hung in a high orbit around a burning planet, tumbling around the junk field that littered the orbital bands. Nothing of value left there, of course. Scavengers had picked the bones of those satellites and spaceships clean decades ago. But the view was beautiful and awe-inspiring.

  I stared at the flaming orb, dialing up my glasses opacity to let me see through the glare. Continents were visible, darkened as the atmosphere burned above them, surrounded by literal seas of flames.

  When the Empire goes to war, they do not fuck around.

  “Impressive,” Michaela said, gazing out at the planet. “Some civil war, huh? I wonder if we can find whatever did that.”

  “God I hope not.” I shuddered at the thought. “It’d make us rich, but whoever bought it might use it.”

  “I guess,” Michaela shrugged, unconvinced. “So what’s the planet called, anyway?”

  “They call it Inferno these days,” I told her, frowning. “Didn’t you read any of the briefing notes?”

  “Too busy reading about threats to care about a planet we’ll never set foot on.” She waved off the criticism. “There are a lot of things out here we need to worry about. What did the Empire call it, though? Before it caught fire, I mean?”

  “Kilesh Vehn’d,” I told her, ignoring Alice’s wince at my pronunciation. “It means Flower of the Empire, I think. They went for showy names.”

  The Vehn had ruled space around them for a dozen centuries, so much more powerful than their neighbors that they’d long ago stopped bothering to differentiate themselves. They were the Empire, and everyone else wasn’t — what more would anyone need to know?

  “Boss? We’re heading in to dock,” Lily told me, guiding our ship towards an opening in the shell.

  I pulled my mind back from the Empire and turned to the navigation display. The broken wreckage of the Vehn orbital fortress loomed over us. Unlike the rest of the junk, lights flickered from some of its windows. Far more remained in darkness, giving it the melancholy appearance of a dying creature.

  This was the scavenger base from which scores of crews competed for the scraps of Vehn technology and resources.

  For the next year at least, this was our home.

  A forcefield held in an atmosphere but let the Ladies’ Choice pass right through it. No one in the huge hangar beyond even spared us a glance. Other salvage vessels were parked haphazardly among ancient wrecks, and amidst it all stood a bustling market.

  “Put us down there,” I said, pointing to a spot in the corner behind some wrecks, as far from everyone else as possible. Until we’d made some connections, better to stay away from potential threats.

  Lily nodded and landed the Ladies’ Choice into the space I’d indicated, shutting the engines down while I winced at the sight of the wrecks. Rusted hulls littered the deck, some Vehn vessels stripped down to skeletons, others…

  Those belonged to people like us, coming to make their fortune and running out of money. I tried not to stare, but that wasn’t easy. I’d wonder what happened to the crews, but I don’t think I want to know.

  The ships were old enough to worry me. If salvage had run low enough to leave scavengers in that kind of trouble years ago, how much was left for us to find?

  “Don’t worry boss,” Jen said behind me. “We’re smarter than those guys. I mean look, one of them brought a Trium Hulls ship for salvage work.”

  That got a smile from me, and she was right. Triums were high performance, high maintenance, and small. Utterly unsuited to this life. No wonder it had worn out.

  “Okay, I’m going out. Time to meet our banker.”

  “Take a blaster, dammit,” Michaela called, throwing me a holstered pistol. “And I still say I should go with you.”

  “I’m safe,” I assured her, snapping the holster to my belt nonetheless. “I’ve got the Admiral Carstairs’ contract, that’ll show anyone who asks that we’re under Drall Syndicate’s protection. We need you here guarding the ship and ready react to trouble. The rest of you, go get a price for refueling, see what’s selling well in the market, and say hello to our new neighbors.”

  It wasn’t ideal, and as the ramp lowered I wished I could spare someone to accompany me. We just didn’t have enough crew, and the salvage contract would have to be enough protection to see me through. Captain Cordway, the man who’d sold me the contract in the first place, had sworn that the big gangs would protect their clients.

  Not giving myself a chance to second guess my plan, I set out into the market. Behind me I heard Alice’s cheerful voice call out a greeting in a language that sounded like a bird gargling marbles to our nearest neighbors. The red-furred beings responded with amazed happiness and I grinned. Yes, meeting the other crews was a good job for her.

  Crossing the deck, I tried to get a feel for the station. A small but bustling market full of aliens traded in all kinds of Vehn salvage, dozens of languages shouted back and forth. Crews worked on their ships, patching and repairing them with mis-matched parts. There were too many species to count, but not a single other human face.

  I smiled. Yep, we were well away from the Terran Oligarchy’s influence. We’d made it. Now we had to stay free — and that meant making our stay official.

  The gangs who ran the station, or claimed to at least, set themselves up against the inner wall of the hangar. While the aliens in the market didn’t pay any attention to me, the gangsters watched me approach with interest. No doubt each of the gangs wanted the Ladies’ Choice as a client.

  A few representatives came forward to meet me, glaring at each other. I hoped my arrival wouldn’t spark a fight, suddenly glad that I’d taken the pistol. Not that it would help much, but it was better than going unarmed.

  We expected this, I reminded myself as I headed towards them. Cordway had warned us: the gangs on Nautilus Station controlled the export of salvaged valuables, so making any real money meant working with one. Like any gold rush, the people getting rich weren’t the people doing the work. It was the ones who handled supply, the ones who sold the tools and who shipped out the goods…

  Still, sometimes the workers made out okay too. Better than okay if they struck it lucky. And from the way the various gangs glared at each other, I doubted anyone’s position here was safe.

  The first alien to approach me was a Chrichri — tall, four-armed, and covered in black chitin. I didn’t know much about them other than their reputation as fearless mercenaries. According to what I’d heard, they valued their hive-ships but not their individual lives.

  Complex paintwork covered the Chrichri’s insect-like body in patterns and I was certain that Alice would read all kinds of information from it if she were here. What hive it was from, its rank, its business, perhaps more. To me, it was just an abstract design, as meaningless as the clicks and buzzes that came from its thorax. I shook my head, holding up my comm and showing it the hologram contract I’d bought. Before I negotiated with anyone els
e, I had an account to close out.

  With an irritated buzz, the Chrichri pointed a door painted with a sunburst symbol. A box attached to its thorax translated its clicking language. “There, Drall Syndicate. Bad deal — come to us, get better. Here, take look.”

  It flicked a hologram of its own to me, prices and interest rates flashing as I glanced at it. No time to take it all in now, but I filed it for later and nodded to the Chrichri with fresh respect.

  Its command of English was a welcome surprise. Some of Earth’s languages had travelled far, and Cordway told me that English wasn’t uncommon out here, but I’d expected to have to rely on my comm bracelet’s translator for most things. Or Alice, who picked up fresh languages for the fun of it.

  “Thank you,” I said carefully to the Chrichri. “I’ll bear that in mind.”

  At least it had been polite and pointed me in the right direction. That bought him a place at the head of the queue once I’d dealt with the Drall Syndicate.

  I pushed open the door it pointed to and stepped into a darkened room. My eyes took seconds to adjust to the deep shadows, but the occupants didn’t mind the dark. The two huge, bulky aliens sat behind a counter, their backs to me and paying me no attention.

  They were Drall. Their long muzzles and green leathery skin made them look like alligators walking on two legs. If alligators wore armored spacesuits and carried far too many weapons for one man, anyway.

  “What is it?” one asked, laughing a nasty, gurgling laugh. He used tradespeak, thank god — my comm translated well enough that I followed it, even if I wasn’t fluent.