Rebel Kato (Shifters of the Primus Book 1) (2 page)

W
e entered
the planet’s orbit four hours ago and all crews were given an hour off to watch the approach. I spent my hour with Mira, watching the green planet grow larger and larger in our viewport.

“Do you think this is the one?” asks Mira.

“Could be,” I say, though I don’t feel it. I have to admit, green is a better sign than yellow. That at least means there are plants.

“I think this is it, Lia. I can feel it.”

I give her a quick side hug. “We’re going to make it. Either way. We’ll find some way to get through. We always have.”

She hugs me back, laying her head on my shoulder. “I know you’ll protect me.”

Her words make me feel sick. Sick because I know she means them. She really thinks I can protect her if the entire ship realizes we’re doomed. Five thousand men and women learning that they will starve to death. . . and we’d all be trapped in this box together. I don’t even want to think of what kind of chaos will follow.

Instead, I put my positive thoughts hat on and wish for the best. And I wish that whatever happens, I’ll be able to keep my promise to my sister. I wish that I will be able to keep her safe.

A few minutes later, she falls asleep. She usually works the opposite shift as me, so she’s just coming off a twelve hour run. I throw on my fatigues and grab the special surprises I picked up for Reemer. I know he threatened to have me vented and even threatened to go after my sister, but I also know that if I don’t send a message, he might think he has won. And if he thinks he has us beaten, I don’t even want to know what he’d try.

Que the erectile dysfunction pills. Military grade—whatever that means. It says it on the package, though. A quarter tablet will apparently give the patient a raging hard-on for at least an hour.

I reach the maintenance shaft. That particular morning, my job was to patch up a pipe that was leaking helium two. The gas was harmless, but if it came in contact with another chemical used in our engines, it could become corrosive.

Once I nearly finished patching up the main cause of the leakage except for a small crack farther down the pipe, I took my first break.

I passed Chief Engineer Reemer, who was leaning on a wall beside a young girl. He kept touching her shoulder as he talked, his hand lingering a little too long each time. I manage to avoid his notice as I slip into the auxiliary room where he normally has a cup of coffee brewing. Sure enough, I hear the drip and sizzle of the coffee maker. After making sure no one is watching, I slip two entire pills into the coffee pot. It might be a little bit of an overdose, but a boner never killed anyone. At least I don’t think it has.

Just as I am leaving the room, Reemer passes by me, his hand brushing against my thigh as he passes. I cringe, but say nothing. I know he’s going to get all the sexual arousal he can handle very shortly. I hear the scrape of ceramic on metal as he picks up his coffee and the slurp of him taking a sip.

I hope you wore loose fitting underwear, Reemer.

I’m a few steps from clearing the scene of the crime when a grating sound rings out in the maintenance hall. Reemer rushes past me, coffee in hand. He still manages to brush his free hand against my ass as he passes in the narrow corridor. This time I nearly stick my foot out and trip him by reflex, but resist. It wouldn’t be at satisfying as what I have planned, anyway.

I follow Reemer from the room. The sound gets louder and louder until I have to cover my ears. If it was a pressure buildup or a problem with the hydraulics, it would be coming from below us, but this sound is coming from the outer hull of the ship. Holy shit. That’s about as far from good as it gets. . .

About five different alarms are sounding. Red light flashes from mounted alarm bells on the wall and almost everyone is running away as fast as they can. If there is a hull breech, we’ll be sucked into space before we can so much as blink. Before I can even find a suit or brace myself against the ship venting pressure, a huge section of the hull falls inward with a thud.

A massive, golden man strides through the opening, followed by nine men who are green, purple, or blue.

I realize why I’m not being sucked into space. These men used some kind of ship to burrow through our hull, but it created a seal in the process. Essentially, they built a temporary addition to our pressurized environment.

But my eyes are quickly drawn back to the man—no, not quite a man—who was first through the opening. His ears are pointed and he moves with more confidence and grace than should have been possible for someone so tall. Shit. What is he, seven feet tall? Maybe a little less, but his head nearly brushes the top of the hallway as he walks and his shoulders are so broad that one of his soldiers wouldn’t even fit beside him in here.

Spears? Why are they holding spears. These aliens clearly have spaceships. I wonder if lasers shoot out of the tips or something.

My attention is briefly drawn to a warrior at the back of the group with green skin. He passes beneath the helium two leak and I see his skin immediately bubble and blister. The warrior glances at his shoulder in confusion, but seems to quickly put it from his mind. Strange. The gas has no effect on humans.

I look back to their golden-skinned leader. My eyes slide down from his thick, black hair to his high cheekbones and chiseled jaw. I take in his long, muscular neck and broad, powerful chest. There’s a definite air of something feline about him, but in the predatory, prowling way a lion or a panther is feline. It’s a sense of coiled muscles, ready to strike with absolute precision and deadliness, but also of grace and speed.

And then there are the leather pants. . . They are so tight that I can see the outline of his. . . Huge . .Wow. I feel myself blushing and realize he is standing directly in front of me. When I see his green eyes flecked with gold, my knees nearly buckle. My mind is firing on all cylinders, both terrified and undeniably drawn to this brutal male.

T
he creature
before me is like none I have ever seen. Her skin is pale and milky as the stars. Her body is all curves and softness. And best of all, her eyes are trained straight at my cock. Her cheeks flush red when she sees me looking down at her.

I feel something in my chest when our eyes meet. It is similar to the feeling of euphoria when I defeat a worthy foe, but somehow different. Where victory in battle brings closure and peace, this feeling makes me feel. . . Hungry. I want more of it. I want
her.
Within me, the panther paces impatiently, urging me to strip her and feel the fullness of her soft, star-kissed skin.

Maybe I have finally found a female worthy to bring to my clan.
Maybe.
There is no denying that I want to take her, to bring her to climax and watch her squirm beneath me. But there is a softness to her. The same qualities that make me want to throw her down to the leaves and ravage her also make me question her worthiness. If I select an unfit breed to replace the females my breed lost, I would bring weakness to our children and our line. Unacceptable.

Without taking my eyes from her, I speak over my shoulder. “Barkus, give me an equalizer.”

I feel movement behind me. I hear his feet, quiet though he is, shifting across the metal grating. He hands me a small earpiece that I plug into my ear. I hand one to the woman in front of me and motion for her to do the same. The devices will rapidly learn any foreign language and program it directly into the user’s brain.

The red still hasn’t retreated from her cheeks but she catches my meaning immediately. Her blush means she hungers for me as well. But her quick reaction means she is not blinded by her hunger. Good.

“I am Kato,” I say.

Her eyebrows pull together. At first, she just watches me but I see something in her eyes that speaks of intelligence, of thoughts churning. She says something slowly, watching me for a reaction.

“Continue to speak and the equalizer will learn your language,” I say, though I know it will not yet understand most of what I say.

She pauses a moment and again seems to figure out my meaning. I feel the hunger return. The need to take her and claim her. But I must be careful. I will not risk the future of my people on a whim or a feeling. She continues speaking with a flippant carelessness, giving the equalizer more and more words to work with.

A small, round man waddles toward me from behind the woman. I look down at the man. The sight of one so weak and lazy disgusts me. He looks as if he has never trained his muscles, never tested the limits of his body. How could this woman of starlight belong to a species that produced such disgusting males?

“La la la, saying random words,” I hear her say.

I grin and she pauses, the red returning to her cheeks. The equalizer finishes assimilating her language-—at least enough of it—for us to speak

“Did you understand that?” she asks.

“Yes,” I say. “What is your name, female?”

The woman puts a hand on her hips. “You don’t just call a woman ‘female’, even if you are—” she makes an up and down gesture with her hands, apparently not finding the appropriate word.

“What is your name, woman?” I ask.

She sighs but I see the hint of a smile at the corner of her mouth. “My name is Liandra.”

“Liandra,” I say, testing the sound. “I am Kato. Prince of the Umani Clan. You will take me to your master.”

“Master?” she asks.

By her tone I can sense that I have said something wrong again. It will not do for this female to continue questioning me in front of my warriors. I will have to correct the behavior if I take her back to my chambers.

The round man finally reaches us. He holds a comically small goblet filled with a dark liquid. It appears to be the sap of a Loris tree but doesn’t look thick enough.

He reaches the woman and pulls at her shoulder. “Insubordinate bitch. Did anyone give you permission—”

I surge forward, plucking the goblet from his hand so I don’t perform the sacrilege of spilling the sap of a Loris tree, if that is what it holds. Then I backhand him across his fleshy face for coming too close to Liandra.. He spins once before crashing into the nearest wall. His head kicks back with the impact. He slides to the floor.

The woman covers her mouth for a moment. I feel disappointment. Is she so weak that she fears to see this violence? Have I once again displeased her?

But then I hear a sound and see her shoulders shaking. She is laughing. Good. Very good.

O
nce I manage
to stop laughing and Reemer picks himself up from the floor, I lead Kato and his men to the ship’s bridge, which I have never actually been inside. A bruised Reemer trails behind us. Despite the huge warrior nearly knocking his head off, Reemer still seems to be clinging to the belief that he is hot shit. Maybe he figures since it was just me and some lowly maintenance workers who saw him get backhanded, it didn’t matter.

But I had a bigger issue. I know he already drank at least half of that coffee and if the instructions were correct, that meant I was about to be nowhere
near
clear of the crime scene. Shit. If Reemer pops a woody in front of the admiral, he’ll follow through on his threat. He’ll know it was me and I’ll be right there for him to point the finger. I feel a sinking in my gut as I realize what a stupid risk I took. But I’ll find some way to get my sister out of it. I’ll own up to it all so Reemer can’t drag her into it.

Just when I think my situation can’t get any worse, Kato looks at Reemer’s mug curiously and then downs it in a single gulp. Shit! Shit shit shit. There was the slight chance of Reemer’s hard on being so small that no one would even notice. But Mr. Gold Muscles on the other hand was going to be another story.

I looked at his tight leather pants and the outline something very long and thick was making against his thigh. I ran some quick mental calculations to determine how much bigger his cock could possibly get if it was that long flaccid. No matter how I ran the numbers, I got the same result. Liandra equals screwed. Royally.

I wished I would be screwed by
that.
Oh man. Bad horny Lia! My life and my sister’s life are on the line and slut-mode is engaging? I try to stifle my growing excitement. After all, this guy—thing, alien, I don’t know. This
male
is definitely not the kind of male you bring home to mom. Though part of me screams to find a way to stay at his side, another screams just as loud to stay as far away as possible. This male is danger. He practically drips with the promise of violence. It’s like the air around him shimmers with it.

Still, for a smart girl I can be pretty stupid. And the temptation to ride the wave of his danger and violence pulls at me like something primal. Maybe while I’m at it, I’ll ride his—enough of that, horny Lia. I squeeze my eyes shut and force my mind away from him, at least for a little while.

When we near the bridge, I notice Reemer is sweating heavily and walking even more like one of the penguins I’ve seen on history vids. Not good. There is no way around it. It’s about to be hard-on city and I’m going to be torn between not laughing at Reemer and not staring at Kato.

The admiral spots us as soon as we enter the room. He’s a tall man and I would’ve normally thought him muscular if I hadn’t just spent the last five minutes ogling a living statue. Kato and his warriors move forward, approaching the admiral. A soldier raises a weapon in alarm but Kato snatches it from him and bends it in his powerful hands, not even breaking stride. Metal shrieks and bullets tinkle harmlessly to the floor as the gun snaps in two.

The admiral swallows hard. “Welcome,” he says.

Kato looks down at the man for several seconds before replying. “You lead this species?”

The admiral nods, breaking eye contact.

Kato laughs contemptuously through his nose.

At that moment, I see it. A small tent-like shape at the front of Reemer’s fatigues. He’s pushing his ass backwards to try hiding it but it’s not working. Officers are starting to notice and I see even the admiral’s eyebrows furrow when he notices. All eyes are on Chief Engineer Reemer. His legs are crossed girlishly and he looks like he’s holding his breath. Sweat beads across his face.

For two long seconds nothing happens. Then with a sound like thunder, one of Kato’s warriors lets out a booming laugh. The admiral puts a hand to his forehead and looks up, as if silently asking for help.

Reemer, true to his form, puffs up indignantly instead of fleeing. “She did this to me!” he shouts, pointing a chubby finger directly at my face.

I burst out laughing for half a moment before managing to control myself. Mostly. A few more hiccups of laughter escape through my nose. I try to calm down. Let’s not make this worse, Lia. You’ve done enough damage for one day. For one year, even.

His face grows more red. “See? See how insubordinate she is? Sir, let me discipline her.”

The admiral seems torn on what to do but waves his hand, eager to be done with the problem. “Quickly,” he says, looking apologetically toward the golden male.

Reemer motions for a soldier to hand him one of their batons. He raises a chubby arm. I flinch and raise my arms. Something bright flashes in front of my eyes and Reemer’s arm falls to his side. Except it falls a little farther and thuds against the ground, spattering blood. He clutches at the stump where it used to be attached to his body.

Kato holds a spear that’s twice as tall as me and its tip is coated in dark red blood. He wipes the blood on Reemer’s pant leg and then uses the butt end of the spear to knock Reemer’s legs from under him. Reemer falls to the ground with a thump, his head hitting first against the solid metal floor. He doesn’t move.

One of the human soldiers looks like he’s about to raise his rifle but thinks better of it.