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- Cori'ax -

“Can it be done?”

The stars filled the sky above them and twinkled in all the colors of the rainbow. Which one of them did she come from? Undoubtedly a very beautiful one, one that was full of life. That red one, perhaps? Or that blue one that flashed so prettily? Or the very clear white one that seemed to change colors many times a second? Yes, probably that one. It was the most striking star he could see.

He'd never thought this way about the stars before. To him, the stars were where he went to wage wars against aliens, to secure Acerex for his people, to take the war to their invaders before they could get a foothold on his planet. That would never change.

“Cori'ax? Can it be done?”

But had it just changed after all? Charlotte ... her voice sounded like perfect glass bells being played brightly by some supernatural being. Her scent was like an Acerex spring, fresh and young and alive and wonderfully exotic. Her skin as soft as the petals of the elereon flower, her eyes with the depth of the sky and the darkness of a mysterious night and the warmth of a blazing sun. Her hair silkier than the finest fabric, her slender fingers cool like a soothing bath in hot weather, her shape so alluring it made something unfold inside him, her wet tightness around him so accepting and wonderful and soft he now found himself aroused at the most inappropriate times.

He crossed his legs to hide the hardness that was growing even then. Thinking of her did that to him. Just thinking. Thinking of an alien.

An alien!

The thought was too large for his brain. And it was too sour in all its sweetness. It turned everything on its head. Why had he done it? Why had he gone with her to her room and then-

His crotch twitched. And then had the best time of his life. Better than fighting. Better than a victory against all odds. Better than being honored by the king. Better than everything else.

He stared into the fire and sighed. And now he longed for her. Longed! For an alien! The outrageousness and insanity of it-

“Cori'ax!”

He snapped back to reality. They were all looking at him. The three serious and old warriors around the fire were clearly awaiting his reply to something.

“Yes?”

Bandi'ex raised his eyebrows. “Can it be done?”

Cori'ax grabbed a dry twig and stoked the fire with it, trying to seem as if he had simply been considering the question. “It can be done. With relative ease.”

“How many men will you need? How much of the explosive?”

“I can do it myself. I need a pilot, that's all. And a fast shuttle. The explosive, a hundred stoneweight. I found the ideal spot to place it, at the junction between two major sections. It's a weak point. The alien craft will break open to space after the ignition. It will not be a spectacular explosion, but it will be effective.”

The other men looked at each other. “Not spectacular?” one of them asked. “No fireball that can be seen from down here?”

Cori'ax shrugged. “It's space. Nothing burns in space. There will be a white flash, and then the ship will disintegrate with little drama. I've seen similar things before. Possibly the structure will be ripped apart along its length, though it's unlikely. But the primary breach itself will be enough. Catastrophic decompression will do the rest. If you want spectacular, you should pick some other method.”

“The spectacle of it is less important,” Bandi'ex said. “The result is the only thing that matters. All the aliens around our homeworld dead or dying. And those few on the planet surface, visiting the various tribes, will not live for long. We have sympathizers in most tribes. We'll get them all eventually. Hunt them down if we have to.”

“Wait,” one of the other men said. “The ship might disintegrate? I understand there are Acerex warriors aboard the Earthling ship at all times. Is there a chance they might die?”

“No,” Cori'ax said. “There is not a chance. It is a certainty that they will. Queen Harper's bodyguards, to mention just some of them. Depending on the time of the action, it's also possible that the king will be aboard the Friendship when it explodes.”

Two of the men looked at each other in horror. “King Vrax'ton might be aboard when the ship is blown open? That is quite unacceptable! Only the aliens are to meet with their demise, not our own king!”

Bandi'ex shrugged. “Why not? He chose an alien for his queen. In my eyes, he abandoned the kingdom and forfeited the crown when he did. I suspect we might be better off without them both. Still, would it be possible to time the attack such that the king is not aboard?”

Cori'ax thought deeply. That alien woman had ruined this, too. Because a cold realization struck him: if she was aboard when the bomb went off, then she would die, too. And that seemed to him very regretful. Or worse. “It might. We'd need to keep track of his comings and goings and then launch our action when he's not there. If we do, there's a good chance the queen won't be there, either. They are hard to pry apart.”

“We can live with the queen surviving,” one of the men said. “The point here is making the statement that the Earth aliens are not welcome at our planet. That statement will be made when hundreds of their people die in their spaceship as it's breaking up. They will know that the Acerex people sees through them as the intruders that they are, even if our king was blinded by their female wiles. Is there then no way to make the ship burn as it is broken into pieces? The symbolism would be highly potent.”

Cori'ax sighed and let the others talk while he leaned back and once more scanned the heavens, as if he was looking for her. She was somewhere up there, in that damned alien ship that circled their holy homeworld.

Charlotte. He longed to say the word aloud and feel her presence and the feel of her name in his mouth. How could an alien name taste so sweet?

Aliens were the enemy, always had been. Cori'ax's own father had been killed by them, his mother dying of a grief-induced illness when her Mahan didn't return from battle against the Nyks. Life for an Acerex warrior was dominated by the need to protect his planet from the endless waves of different aliens that wanted nothing more than to conquer and kill and enslave. It shaped their entire civilization and society. Every man was a warrior, every woman a sister or a mother or a daughter of a warrior.

It had worked.

And then King Vrax'ton had let aliens straight into the throne room when he married the alien female Harper. Cori'ax had been stunned for days before he felt the rage rise in him, slowly and coldly, especially after the older warrior Bandi'ex had talked to him about it and convinced him of the terrible wrongness of it. The king had betrayed his people and laid Acerex open for alien invasion.

Certainly the Earthlings feigned innocence and seemed harmless when seen from up close. But aliens always wanted to conquer. Of the almost forty species Acerex had fought against, all forty had attacked first and two of them had even won. Before rebellions had driven them back after long invasions and occupations.

Certainly the Earthlings could be no different. Certainly they just wanted to control Acerex, like every other alien species did. Certainly seducing the king, by the Spirits only knew which devious methods, was part of their plan to conquer from above. To slowly and quietly seep into the Acerex society from the very top and become part of it before they would assert control.

Some tribes had started using Earth technology and trinkets. The newly born Princess Anabe'lia was half Earthling. And even Chief Ravex'ton of the renowned Ytter tribe had married another Earthling female, who was also carrying a half breed. The rot was already well underway.

“They waste no time,” he said under his breath.

A shooting star crossed the sky and disappeared below the horizon. The summer night was balmy, and the fire sent a pleasant heat to his face, but still he shuddered. If anything happened to her ...

Charlotte. Was this what King Vrax'ton had experienced? Was this the same emotion that had tricked him into accepting Harper as his Mahan? Was this it?

No, of course not. Charlotte was not Cori'ax's Mahan. He had long since come to peace with the idea that he would never find his fated mate. Most people didn't, after all, with so few females there were on the planet. He would live out his days alone, and those days would not be long. He would die in service to the Acerex people, fighting aliens. That was his fate. His fate did not contain a mate. And that was fine. No woman could want a hulking, inelegant and ugly male like him for her mate, with burns on his head and a gift for upsetting any situation he entered.

No, she was not his Mahan. She was just an exotic woman who had tickled his fancy for a moment, and it had been a long time since he'd had a woman in his bed. Surely that was all there was to his strange reaction the first time he laid eyes on her and it felt as if the blood was draining from his face. A passing fancy, nothing more. He could safely continue with his plan to rid the Acerex homeworld of the Earthling menace before it was too late.

He would just have to get that alien woman out of his mind.

“Then we are agreed?” Bandi'ex summed up. “Cori'ax, you will arrange and coordinate the action itself and find a suitable pilot. I will supply the explosives and the shuttle. Kro'ax will keep a close eye on the king's movements and Uli'an will keep up communications with the many sympathizers we have in the tribes.”

They all agreed, and the three other men quietly rose and went to their guest tents that the Pyrius tribe had given them for the night. Every tribe was honored to host the legendary Bandi'ex.

Cori'ax was alone and leaned back against a tree trunk. It creaked with the strain of his weight as he again gazed up at the night sky. Yes, he had to get that alien female out of his mind.

He wriggled against the tree, trying to get comfortable against the rough bark. A doubt had set in. Could a species capable of that kind of warmth really be evil? When he went to the Friendship to check out the possibilities of blowing it up, he didn't at all feel that he was among enemies.

On the contrary. All the Earthlings had been friendly and accommodating in a way that didn't seem forced or fake. Their ship was a wonder of Earthling technology and decadence, no doubt about it. But that was in keeping with the aliens themselves. They liked their comfort and their relaxation and their games.

And they were clearly open to more, including very physical contact with Acerex warriors. Even Queen Harper's closest friends. If they were in fact sneaky invaders, then surely Queen Harper was at the center of it. She was the fulcrum around whom it all had to turn, the venomous ten-legged sereve in the center of its web. But she had been sitting out in the open, chatting with her friends and greeting the passing Acerex warriors with what seemed like genuine warmth. Could that really be faked?

And Charlotte herself ... so soft, so open, so feminine, so direct and so entirely given over to her moment of ecstasy. And then so innocent afterwards, so relaxed and even sleeping in his arms without a care in the world. Could that be faked?

The stars twinkled, but none of them seemed right. They didn't move, like her spaceship would move against the blackness of space.

In a flash he realized that he was now looking for her among the stars. A sudden rage filled him and he punched the ground beside him several times, making the embers of the dying fire jump.

“Damnation!”

He had to concentrate on the task at hand, protecting Acerex from the alien invasion! But he found his thoughts taken over by her, his easy and always clear determination weakened.

No warrior could afford to feel doubt about the rightness of his task and the eventual success of his mission. But now, a part of him didn't want the mission to succeed if there was even the slightest danger that she would come to harm. Indeed the thought itself sent barbs of an unknown anxiety right to his heart.

His jaw dropped in horrified realization. Him, Cori'ax, afraid? For someone else? Worried about the welfare of an alien?!

He clasped his forehead in disbelief. That damned witch! What had she done to him?