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  Sk’lar

  Conquered World: Book Thirteen

  Elin Wyn

  Contents

  Phryne

  Sk’lar

  Phryne

  Sk’lar

  Phryne

  Sk’lar

  Phryne

  Sk’lar

  Phryne

  Sk’lar

  Phryne

  Sk’lar

  Phryne

  Sk’lar

  Phryne

  Sk’lar

  Phryne

  Sk’lar

  Phryne

  Sk’lar

  Phryne

  Sk’lar

  Phryne

  Sk’lar

  Phryne

  Sk’lar

  Phryne

  Sk’lar

  Phryne

  Sk’lar

  Epilogue: Phryne

  Letter from Elin

  Jalok: Sneak Peek

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  Don’t Miss the Star Breed!

  About the Author

  Phryne

  The blaring alarm startled me so badly that I jumped. Scalding hot coffee splashed over the steel rim of my cup and onto the array of datapads on my desk.

  “Shit,” I muttered more out of frustration rather than fear. I’d woken up hours before my alarm was set to go off. I’d been doing that ever since our sky split open and genocidal bug aliens started pouring into our world.

  That was over a year ago, yet I still couldn’t manage to remember to turn off my alarm.

  I grabbed a cloth and dabbed coffee off the surface of the datapads. I’d spent the better part of two hours reading over various reports from the city of Nyheim and nearly every surrounding settlement.

  A little over a week ago, General Rouhr and Councilwoman Vidia – my boss- decided to make an ally of the giant tentacle-y plant-thing that had held us hostage not too long ago.

  It turned out to be sentient enough to hold a conversation, which was a huge surprise to me. However, I hadn’t had the opportunity to converse with it myself.

  Honestly, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to.

  A week ago, I was brainstorming ideas on how to kill the damn thing. Vidia and Rouhr might’ve been able to switch gears and take their tea with the thing, but I wasn’t ready to do that. After all, the plant-thing was smart enough to use advanced military tactics.

  I should start calling it by its name, I supposed. The Puppet Master. Not sure who came up with that. It was clever when the thing was our enemy. It seemed a little rude now that the creature was our ally, but politeness wasn’t one of my strong suits. I was too direct for that kind of thing.

  I get results.

  Sometimes I have to be kind of a dick to get those results, but I didn’t lose any sleep over it.

  The reports I’d been reading mostly consisted of various groups bitching about General Rouhr and Vidia’s decision to accept the Puppet Master as an ally.

  I could understand their hesitation. The average citizen wasn’t privy to the details exchanged between their leader and the Puppet Master in that hole in the desert.

  I, however, was privy to those details. In fact, I’d had that conversation, and all others following, carefully transcribed and sent to me. That was what was on one of the many datapads strewn across my workspace.

  Once the spilled coffee was wiped up, I got up to get ready for my day. I’d gotten a fair amount of work done, but nowhere near as much as I’d wanted to have done by now.

  Vidia often said that was one of my downfalls. I could do ten times the work of everyone else and still think I hadn’t done enough.

  I walked to my bathroom. My apartment complex was right next to the central government building in Nyheim. It came complimentary with the job.

  Damn good thing it did, too. My home was destroyed during the Xathi invasion.

  I knew that didn’t make me special.

  Plenty of other people lost so much more than just their home. In fact, my apartment was so nice in comparison to all of the emergency housing that I often felt guilty.

  Whole families were crammed into an apartment the size of a shoebox. Here I was, in my studio with my bathroom that bordered on luxurious in comparison to others.

  Three people could fit in my shower. I consistently had hot water, a luxury many often went without.

  As guilty as I felt for having things so many didn’t, I knew I’d earned these rewards. Even before aliens invaded my world, I had worked hard, harder than anyone. It took years for me to get where I was now.

  My first job after leaving the orphanage where I spent my childhood was as an assistant to the security department in Fraga.

  Now I was the security department.

  Everything went through me, at least where the humans were concerned. I didn’t have authority over General Rouhr’s aliens. That was something that irked me but was simultaneously a relief.

  Over the past few months, I’d gotten plenty of opportunities to work with the Skotan, K’ver, and Valorni soldiers. They were far more advanced than any human soldier could ever hope to be. They had better weapons and first-rate training.

  However, even the mildest of our alien allies had an element of unpredictability that would not be fun to try to control. I didn’t envy General Rouhr when it came to that aspect of his job. No wonder he always looked somewhat disgruntled.

  As I scrubbed my hair and skin with a bar of standard-issue soap that smelled like wax, I went over what I had to get done today.

  Vidia wanted to do a press conference of some kind soon. I didn’t think it was a good idea, not yet.

  Things were still too volatile among the people. As of right now, the aliens were tolerated by their respective communities. Some people welcomed them with open arms. Some people were practically frothing at the mouth to expel all aliens from the planet.

  Vidia wasn’t overly concerned with those people. She believed the anti-alien factions to be very small and spread out.

  However, based on reports I’d been reading over the last two days, I had reason to suspect the anti-alien mindset was more widespread than Vidia thought.

  Then there was the matter of the Puppet Master. How was I supposed to work something like that creature into my security protocols? It’s not like I could fingerprint it and have it scanned into the systems. Naturally, the Puppet Master’s strengths would be in the defense department. Or as a spy. It still amazed me that something so big had stayed hidden for so long.

  My water pressure flickered, jarring me out of my thoughts. I’d been in the shower for too long. I was going to fall behind if I didn’t pick up the pace.

  I stepped out of the shower, dried off, and pulled on my work clothes for the day. Technically, I didn’t have a uniform, but I wore the same dark, close-fitting pants and the same tactical shirt in different colors most days.

  Today, I chose a thunder-cloud-gray shirt.

  Before I left my apartment, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror.

  My chin length red hair was still wet. Hopefully, it would dry nicely. I didn’t spend hours primping in front of a mirror, but that didn’t mean I wanted to look like a ragamuffin.

  Lack of sleep had made my complexion look a little wan as of late, but only I would notice something like that about myself. Light bounced off my sharp cheekbones, making me look more angular than I really was.

  I always thought my blue eyes were a little too big for my face, but that came in handy when I wanted to shoot someone down with a withering stare.

  Overall, I looked fine enough for work.

  The walk to the central building was quick. I hadn’t made it to the elevators before two human males stepped up to me.

  “Good morning, ma’am,” the first said.

/>   “Is there anything we should know for the briefing today?” the second asked.

  I gave them a blank look.

  “Are you trainees?” I asked.

  “No,” the first said slowly. The second tried to subtly roll his eyes, but I caught the movement. “I’m Tona. This is Skit.”

  They said it like their names should mean something to me.

  “We’ve met several times.”

  “I meet people every day,” I replied.

  “General Rouhr assigned us to your team yesterday because of our work with the hybrid outbreak?” The other one, Skit, prompted.

  “Oh.” A tight smile spread across my lips. “I remember now. I wouldn’t have thought I’d forget the two guards injected into my squad without my approval or even my permission.”

  My squad was hand selected to my specifications. It had taken the better part of a year to assemble my elite team. I was very selective. The interview process was extremely thorough.

  “With all due respect, ma’am, we’re more than just a pair of frontier guards. We wouldn’t be here if General Rouhr didn’t think we deserved it,” Tona said.

  “Be that as it may,” I pressed, “General Rouhr isn’t your boss. You’re on my squad now, which makes me your boss. The only thing that matters now is that you do your job to my standards, not General Rouhr’s. Are we understood?”

  Tona and Skit saluted to show their understanding.

  “Good boys.”

  I moved past them and entered the elevator. The doors closed before the two of them could step onto the car. I relished the final moments of silence before my work day truly began. There was a briefing in a few hours.

  I still had a few details I wanted to smooth over.

  I was planning on bringing up the anti-alien factions. New construction projects were popping up all over the settled land. Each project would need its own security detail.

  We’d already learned that anti-alien radicals had no issue disrupting construction projects.

  That little nugget of logic was lost on me.

  Why target efforts that would make life better for fellow humans?

  Some of General Rouhr’s best soldiers were scheduled to be in the briefing today. Some of them spent a lot of time in the field lately.

  Perhaps they would offer insight into the behavior of the anti-alien groups. Assuming any of the radicals were ballsy enough to openly harass a group of General Rouhr’s soldiers, that is.

  The anti-alien radicals we’d interacted with thus far were that ballsy, but also very stupid. It stood to reason that future factions would be less foolhardy, especially since we were cracking down with punishments.

  Whatever the case, this briefing was sure to be an interesting one.

  Sk’lar

  The cargo ship’s engines hummed merrily as we gained altitude in the clear blue sky. From my position in the cockpit of the atmosphere-bound ship, I could see the uneven skyline of Amarita spread out in the distance on the shores of the crawling sea.

  “Approaching Amarita proper on vector 201x.”

  I turned to regard the corporal piloting our craft. He was a K’ver, just as I was. Jet black skin rippled with muscle in his toned forearms, emblazoned with hair-thin silver circuitry. Since he was low in rank, he only had the most basic implants.

  As a ranking officer, I had many more. For example, an implant near the back of my brain increased the flow of neurons between my nervous and muscular systems, meaning I could stand steady, even when our craft encountered the stiff wind blowing off the coast.

  “Minor turbulence, sir. Compensating.”

  “Hold her steady, Corporal. The last thing we need is to crash on top of a human dwelling and stir up more xenophobia.”

  “Yes, sir.” The corporal’s hands flashed over the controls, and soon the chassis stopped shaking. He glanced at me, black eyes inscrutable. “Sir, if I may ask a question?”

  “I believe you just did, Corporal, but go ahead.”

  “Yes, sir. Hasn’t the anti-alien sentiment mostly run its course by now? I mean, after the whole mind-wiping fiasco?”

  “You keep a close eye on current events, I see.” I nodded in approval. “Yes, their movement has definitely taken a hit, and many humans have rejected them. However, if there’s one thing that my admittedly shallow perusal of human history tells me, many of their species don’t behave rationally. There was one orange-skinned fellow in the early twenty-first century who—“

  A light flashed on the console, and the Corporal quickly scanned a read out.

  “Report?”

  “Sir, sensors are picking up some sort of structures near the Vengeance crater. It looks like the start of a settlement or colony.”

  I pressed my lips together, considering options. I walked over to sit down at one of the monitoring stations.

  “Patch in the feed to my screen, Corporal.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The monitor flashed briefly, then depicted a series of crudely constructed buildings surrounded by a perimeter fence. I held my chin in my hand as I took in the sight of some salvaged atmospheric transports which had been modified with weaponry.

  The compound seemed to be abuzz with activity, and I quickly lost count of how many bodies were milling about in the throng.

  “Corporal, get me an estimate on the number of life signs within that compound.”

  “Yes, sir.” His fingers whizzed across the console, making adjustments even as he continued to keep our flight steady. “It appears that I can’t give you an accurate estimate. The compound has jamming technology. I can only scan those life forms outside of its walls.”

  I already knew the answer before I asked my next question, but I had to verify my intuition.

  “What’s the racial breakdown of the life forms you can scan, Corporal?”

  He fiddled with the console for a bit, then turned his head around to regard me with a grim expression.

  “All human, sir.”

  “I see.” Silently observing the compound as I pondered what our next move should be, I felt a certain trepidation building within me. These were the kinds of decisions I was supposed to make as a Team Commander.

  But I couldn’t help but feel like I was out of my element. I knew I was a capable soldier, and my implants put me in the league of the other species. I couldn’t arm-wrestle a Valorni, perhaps, but I would bet on myself in a fist fight, none the less.

  However, I had limited experience with command positions. In many ways, I wondered if I wasn’t appointed the head of Team Three just because of convenience, and not because I was the best candidate for the job.

  Here I stood, for good or ill, and the corporal was waiting for me to make a decision. We should just finish the supply run, but the compound hadn’t been on any briefings that had been disclosed to me. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to garner new information on what could be a potential threat to peace.

  “Take us down, Corporal.”

  “Sir?” He couldn’t quite hide a note of fear in his tone. I couldn’t blame him. The last thing I wanted to do was land in a nest of hostile humans.

  The potential gains outweighed the risks, though.

  “You have your orders.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  “But try to bring us down near the southern gate. Most of their vehicles and munitions seem to be concentrated to the northeast. If they want to get…testy…we’ll be in a good position to retreat.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The corporal took us into a shallow dive into the blasted, melted-rock crater where the Vengeance once stood. Now there was nothing left but scraps and a crater where that mighty vessel had rested, and if that was not a warning to be cautious, I didn’t know what was.

  We dipped down below the level of the compound. Multicolored strata flashed past the viewport as we skimmed just beneath the lip of the crater.

  I doubted they had any weaponry trained on the crater itself, but apprehensi
on still threatened to overwhelm me. At any moment, our unshielded, peaceful vessel might be perforated by fire from hostile humans.

  I knew I shouldn’t make assumptions. Just because this was an unregistered settlement of purely humans didn’t automatically make them hostile.

  But I had learned as a warrior that it was not just your brain that you must rely on, but your instinct. The humans called it ‘going with your gut’, which was about as silly a notion as I could imagine, but now, in the moment, I believed I was beginning to understand its meaning.

  The corporal nosed the ship up and we flashed above the crater’s edge. It was obvious that our arrival had not gone unnoticed. A large group of humans were clustered about the southern gate, and even from this distance, they didn’t seem all that friendly.

  “I guess this is the Welcome Wagon.”

  “Sir?” The corporal’s brow wrinkled in confusion.

  “It’s a human expression. I was being sarcastic. I think we’d best prepare for antagonism from these creatures.”

  “Agreed.”

  The corporal set our craft down about thirty yards away from the gate. Our landing pylons had barely extended onto the grassy turf when the gate opened and the mob of humanity came spilling out.

  They weren’t charging our position, but they walked with a menacing purpose that made me second-guess my decision to investigate.

  “Keep her hot and ready to lift off,” I clapped my hand on his shoulder. My old CO used to do that, and oddly, it helped calm my nerves.

  “Yes, sir.”

  My boots clanked off the metal deck plating as I went down into the cargo bay. Because this was a peaceful supply run, I didn’t have the entirety of Team Three with me. However, protocol insisted that I bring at least three along, even on an ostensibly peaceful mission.