Alien Knight Teddy Bear Troubles Read online

  Alien Knight Teddy Bear Troubles

  Lumerian Knights, Book 4

  Becca Brayden

  Alien Knight Teddy Bear Troubles

  Copyright © 2021 by BAWB Inc.

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  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electrical, digital or mechanical including but not limited to photocopying, recording, scanning or by any type of data storage and retrieval system without express, written permission from the author.

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  Published by BAWB INC.

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  Brayden, Becca

  Alien Knight Teddy Bear Troubles

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  Cover design copyright 2020 by ebook indie covers

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  Publisher’s Note:

  This book was written for an adult audience. The book may contain explicit sexual content. Sexual activities included in this book are strictly fantasies intended for adults and any activities or risks taken by fictional characters within the story are neither endorsed nor encouraged by the author or publisher.

  Contents

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  Prologue

  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

  Epilogue

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  Also by Becca Brayden

  About the Author

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  Prologue

  “Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! This is Artemis IV,” Major Cassandra Davis shouted into her comms over blaring warning signals, her head plastered to the back of her flight helmet as her small ship spun faster and faster toward the large alien planet. In the seat next to her, her co-pilot slumped, unconscious. Bloody. Helmet cracked.

  “Roger Artemis IV. This is Flight Command.” The deep, southern voice of her commanding officer, General MacGregor, filled her earpiece and a sense of fate washed over her.

  At least they would know what happened. They wouldn’t just disappear out here. She’d trained hard to get here. Sacrificed so much. Given up on the idea of ever marrying or having children of her own, often working longer and harder than others, always trying to prove herself. Be the best. Most nights she crawled into an empty bed too tired for regrets.

  In a cold sweat, tightening her grip, she forced her voice to remain steady as she informed Flight Command, “We are taking heavy fire. I repeat. We are taking heavy fire. We’re hit. We’re hit. Engine one destroyed,” she said grimly as the craft spun out of control, “Descending toward,” she paused, checking her monitors to confirm, “Southern region of Mora Five. Multiple system failures. Will miss target by--” She checked her built-in helmet monitor again. “Eighty clicks. I repeat, we are in emergency descent. Taking heavy fire. Eighty clicks from target.”

  The deep male voice answered. “Roger, Artemis IV. Mora Five, confirmed. What is the status of the package?”

  Cassandra grimaced as the spinning hit her gut like a punch. She had to talk sense into the general, her voice steady even though her heart pounded. “Flight Command, the package remains on board. Permission to initiate self-destruct?”

  “Negative, Artemis IV. Permission denied. Receiving IMRS data. Protect the package.”

  Was he insane? The odds of surviving the next few minutes were slim. And none. If Flight Command didn’t want whatever she was carrying in her cargo hold to fall into the wrong hands--whoever the hell those hands might belong to--it was time to burn this bird to cinder before it was too late.

  She didn’t want to die, but she’d accepted the mission knowing the risks. Earth was screwed, stuck between multiple warring alien races who were all lying or at the very least keeping secrets from their new human ‘allies.’ The recent attack on the Caldorian base had been the last straw and the president had finally given their space forces permission to act.

  Exactly what she was hiding in the back of her ship, she had no idea other than whatever was inside the black box was mission critical for Earth’s defense. In the wrong hands, it could destroy them all. This mission was an all or nothing proposition, and they’d trusted her to get the job done.

  She didn’t need to know the details. The two armed suits in the back were in charge of the package. She and the lieutenant flying in the jump seat had been in charge of the flying.

  And she’d fucked that up. Flown right into some kind of trap on her way back to Earth. The fact that she was still alive--and had managed to take out almost all of the attackers--was a miracle. A goddamn miracle. The enemy was still out there, and her ship was on its last leg. Even one more enemy ship was one too many.

  Heart pounding, she swallowed the bile in the back of her throat and stiffened her spine. She’d been chosen for this mission. Had been honored to take it. She wouldn’t let the package be taken. Deliver or die trying. That was the deal. “General, we’re going down. Let me light her on fire, sir.”

  The silence stretched and she wondered if she’d lost comms. She knew exactly what was happening on the other end of this comm. Army General MacGregor and Navy Admiral Peltier had their heads bent, voices tight and low, discussing the options with the relatively new Space Force General, John T. Falcione, and the new president as a room full of tense faces waited for orders. For options.

  There were none.

  The alarms made it hard to think. She shut them down as her craft spun faster, Mora Five’s gravity spiraling her ship out of control. “You have one, maybe two minutes, General. Give me the order.”

  “Negative, Artemis IV. Receiving IMRS data.”

  She swallowed hard. Deep breaths. In through the nose. Breathe. Just breathe.

  Count to five. Ten. IMRS. They will need the IMRS. Monitor. Record. Tracking system. Don’t pass out. Fight it, Cass. Fight it hard.

  “Data received. Protect the package. Seventy-two hours. That’s an order.”

  “Roger, flight command. Protect the package. Seventy-two hours. Artemis IV out.” Shit. Now she had to try to land this flying inferno and then hide on a hostile alien world until help arrived. She wasn’t an astronaut. She was a fighter pilot, trained specifically for this mission on a hybrid ship that could outmaneuver anything else made by humans in space. She had never set foot on the moon, let alone another planet in a different star system. And Mora Five? Habitable, barely.

  She’d studied Mora Five as part of the mission. It was the crown jewel of space slums. Smugglers, thieves and spies out here. No police. No oversight. The whole planet was thick with assassins and crime lords--at least based on the information their very alien contact had provided prior to the start of the mission. Which was why this backward planet had been chosen as the drop point. And why the two literal Men in Black had gone out to make the pick-up while she and Charlie, her co-pilot, had waited onboard.

  Fighting the G-forces pinning her to her seat, she used the built-in flight command screens in her helmet to do what she could. This was a hybrid spaceship, after all. Not a true fighter jet or slow moving bomber. Maybe, just maybe, she could get herself and the remains of her small crew onto the ground alive.

  Vomit rose in her throat. She choked it back do
wn. Not. Happening.

  She had a job to do, and she was going to see it through. Too much was at stake. Like the survival of every man, woman and child on planet Earth.

  “All right, you bad ass piece of alien technology, show me what you can really do.”

  Cass did what she’d been told never to do. She disengaged the flight stabilizers and took manual control of the spacecraft, pushing the machine to do what no human made craft was designed to do.

  The spinning stopped. Her craft hovered. And there, in her weapons lock, the enemy craft was caught by surprise.

  “Vilitos scum. Let’s light ‘em up, Charlie.”

  Lieutenant Charles Stephens couldn’t respond, but talking to him helped keep her focused. Besides, he would have enjoyed watching the last attack ship burn almost as much as she did.

  Almost.

  Chapter One

  Dark One’s Harvest Ship - Holding Cell

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  Cassandra sat cross-legged on the cold metal floor, one of at least a hundred captives crammed into the dark, windowless pit as she hummed an old nursery rhyme to Ion, the tiny child dozing so trustingly in her lap, her fingers gently stroking through his hair. If only he could sleep for more than a few minutes and get some real rest. Unfortunately, every time she lulled him into sleep, the poor darling was plagued with nightmares, tossing and turning, crying out for his mother. Or his Uncle Taegie.

  Three days had passed since their capture on Mora Five. She’d barely made it out of the wreckage of her ship when the Vilitos and some sort of grotesque black creatures had descended from the sky in a massive alien vessel. They were hunting for her ship, she was sure. For the package.

  Communication systems were beyond repair in her ship. When the seventy-two hour rescue window passed, she knew the truth. She was on her own. She’d done everything she could to lead them away, protected the package even though she, too, had been injured in the crash that killed most of her crew and decimated her ship. She’d buried the package, but not before looking inside the outer box and removing what appeared to be a data chip, just in case the enemy found the buried treasure. They’d have either the data chip or the package. Not both.

  She’d spent a week just trying to survive. Avoid capture. Eventually they’d run out of rations. Charlie was hanging on by a thread. She’d lost one of the suits, but Smith, as he’d instructed her to call him, was still alive and refused to leave the package behind. She needed more food and medical supplies. So she’d made her way toward the lights of the small alien outpost. She’d been careful. Took only what she needed. Stayed in the shadows.

  When the Vilitos couldn’t find what they wanted, they started a sweep of the entire area, killing anyone who resisted. That’s when she spotted the young boy, Ion, no more than three or four years old, sobbing over a fallen soldier; an alien warrior, with markings like the Caldorians she’d seen stationed on Earth. At the time she’d assumed the warrior was the boy’s father, as they had similar markings. He'd been trying to give the larger man water from a small flask.

  Without hesitation, she’d left the safety of her hiding place in order to pull both the man and his child to safety. The Vilitos were everywhere, had swarmed the market, but she just couldn’t leave him to die. She could tell by the severity of the warrior’s injuries that he wasn’t going to survive much longer, but Ion had insisted she try to help the dying man. So she’d done what she could, forced a few drops of the water down his throat. He’d roused from his unconscious state just long enough to beg her to take Ion to safety, shove a dagger into her hands, his flask of water that she’d learned later from Ion was called maju water and had amazing healing properties, and a small pouch.

  Waiting to move again until nightfall, she and Ion had painstakingly, one inch at a time, crawled their way up into the hills where she’d hoped the trees would provide better cover.

  Ion had been so brave, so strong, never complaining, yet clutching a strange looking teddy bear in a tiny death grip. He’d captured her heart. No matter how hard she tried, he refused to let go of the grungy thing, clinging to the bear like it was his only friend in the whole universe, dragging it through mud and water, over rocks and around thorny bushes. She could relate. Only for her, it had been a fluffy bunny when she was his age.

  They’d lasted two more days eating berries and sipping from the maju water before a drone spotted them. In the blink of an eye they’d been whisked aboard the enemy ship, herded like cattle toward hell only knew what. She barely had time to hide the data chip in one of the grates on the floor. They’d passed one every fifty feet or so. The slats were just narrow enough that she estimated the data chip could be wedged in between slats but tight enough that it would stay where she put it and not drop through the other side. Fourth grate down the long corridor, third slat. She burned the position into her mind, glanced around for any other markers that would help her get back there. Nothing. If she’d known at the time that the creatures weren’t going to search them, didn’t care what they wore or what type of bags, tools, or weapons they had with them, she would have held onto the data chip. Too late, she realized her mistake.

  She’d spent the next three days trying to figure out how to escape and retrieve the data chip. I’ve checked every nook and cranny. There are no visible doors. The guards come in every few hours and take someone out. We can hear the screams for hours. Some of the others tried to trick and bribe them. Now they’re dead, too, and there aren’t many of us left. Nothing gets past them. Nothing, dammit. Nothing.

  She and Ion had been put in the same dark pit with many of the prisoners from Mora Five. There were two holes where people could take care of personal business, and once a day they were subjected to some kind of solar bath. She knew that’s what it was because after each one, her long blonde hair shined like she’d just washed it, and the stench of a hundred bodies kept in close quarters magically disappeared.

  They’d also been given food synthesizers to manufacture meals, but other than that, no one had come to check on them. She hadn’t expected the enemy to care about the children crying or people, some humanoid and others not, desperately pleading for their lives or making empty threats, trying to bargain their way out of the dark cell, but as the days passed and no one came to check on them, and none of the large black creatures showed up, Cassandra’s dread increased exponentially. It was as if they were cattle, to be fed and watered before the slaughter.

  She had no idea where they were going or how long it would take, but at least for the time being, they were alive. She could only hope Stephens, her co-pilot, was still holding on, the package she’d hidden still secure until someone from Earth could find it. God, please let it be secure.

  Ion wiggled in her lap, his eyes opening sleepily. “Cassie?” he whispered?

  “Mm-hmm?” she responded, realizing too late that she’d been so deep in thought that she’d stopped humming the lullaby.

  “Promise you won’t leave me?”

  Cassandra’s heart hurt, it squeezed so hard. “I promise I won’t leave you if I can help it.”

  “No matter what?”

  “No matter what. Promise,” she reassured him, cuddling him close as he wrapped his tiny arms and legs around her.

  “I won’t leave you, either. And a promise is a promise.”

  “That’s right, tough guy,” she said, smiling weakly in the dark, her heart breaking into a million tiny pieces. They were all going to die there, no matter how many times the little boy insisted ‘Uncle Taegie’ was coming to rescue them. She knew better. No one knew where they were. No one was coming.

  Commander Taeger Norasair jumped through space, arriving at the tip of the seven man formation, one hand flat on the hard, obsidian floor of the enemy ship’s upper corridor, one knee bent beneath him, the opposite leg stretched out behind, poised for a sprint. Heavily armed and ready for battle. Cloaked. Silent.

  His team had transported from their ship to a long, black corridor perhaps ten
paces wide. Black floor. Black walls. Black ceiling. As black as deep space. The ship was simple. Efficient. A three-layer construct that needed few guards.

  “Once their sensors pick up any trace of us, they’ll be on us in seconds and block our transport out. No way out but through. Stay low,” Taeger ordered through his comm system. One glance at the readout inside his visor confirmed what he already knew; he was with six brave Lumerian Knights. They’d all volunteered for this mission even though they knew the odds of success were almost nil. A suicide mission. But they had to try.

  They’d been in countless battles over the centuries. Nothing compared to this one; they’d transported onto a Dark Ones’ harvesting ship, the interdimensional servants of the A’Nua Na-KI, to rescue a child. Just one. The last surviving heir to the Fourth House of Lumeria. Ion Lumoi.

  Taeger had taken point, the other members of the rescue team fanned out behind him. Momentarily thankful for the ship’s artificial gravity, he knew it was not meant for comfort or safety. Rather, it was to keep the prisoners in prime condition during transport. Compliant. Damage free. Fresh.

  They’d watched the Dark Ones devour world after world, while those who could help had been ordered by the Intergalactic Council to stay out of the way. Taeger and his men were Lumerian Knights, their world once bound by the same Council. Lumeria was gone now. Destroyed. Survivors were hunted. He and his men had been on their own all this time. Survived the destruction. They made their own rules now.