Page 11 of Max
“I might have some bread from the other day,” she murmured as they stopped by the hen house. “Hold this.” Falyn handed him the tablet, opening the outer door to the hens’ nests. Since she didn’t have her egg basket, she pulled up her tunic for a pouch, collecting the eggs into it.
One month earlier
“Fuck!” Colton Price growled, slapping the console of the stolen flyer. There was no way he could get the Mesaarkan flyer back. He hadn’t counted on Neely coming to Stalker’s defense when he tried to steal back the last of the three Mesaarkan flyers.
Then he had to laugh. She’d burst out the front door stark naked and stunned him with her blaster when he was about to kill her mate. He didn’t understand why she hadn’t killed him.
Maybe because they had once been allies of sorts. He’d done her a favor shooting down her flyer, though even he didn’t know it at the time. It landed her right in the lap of her genetic cyborg mate.
Colton had gone there to steal the Mesaarkan flyer, not kill anyone. He had only been armed just in case… Stalker surprised him, and he was a better fighter and stronger. But Stalker tripped, ironically, over the piece of machinery he’d thrown at Colton.
One stab of the Mesaarkan radial knife disabled Stalker. Colton regained consciousness before Neely returned with the nanites to treat her mate. He let his emotions steer him to the wrong choice.
He was going to kill Stalker to punish Neely for getting in his way, and he wasted time searching for the knife she had taken inside. Colton could have stolen the flyer in the time he wasted on intent to kill Stalker.
When Neely came back, her blaster was set to kill. The look in her eyes told him she would kill him as she said it. Stalker’s gasp gave him the seconds he needed to get away. Devlin White’s luxury flyer would get him where he needed to go. Maybe Thrix could have it retrofitted with weapons.
With the Enclave cyborgs moving in, Colton didn’t know how long they could operate in the San Francisco area. The cyborgs they were sending would start rooting out the gangers and bosses. Van’Rel Thrix would have to move or be discovered and deported.
As a Mesaarkan, Thrix could not be sent to prison even for human trafficking. According to the treaty, they could only expel and banish him from Earth. The Federation agreed to that stipulation because employees from an Earth conglomerate started the war. They massacred Mesaarkan settlers on a planet they wanted for mining rights. They would send Colton to the prison planet if they caught him, or he could end up dead.
He was positive Devlin White had sent his wife Tessa to Thrix with the gutter rats he pulled from the ruins. Those people lived like animals, the sludge of humanity. At least, that’s what Colton told himself to justify his betrayal.
He became a Federation Agent, hoping to find Tessa or avenge her if she was dead. White was never going to tell him what he’d done. Killing the bastard felt so good that he wished he could do it again and watch the light fade from his eyes as he twisted the knife.
For all he knew, Thrix could have Tessa stashed somewhere with his personal stock. He’d asked the Mesaarkan, but that lizard claimed he couldn’t tell them apart. Colton didn’t believe that.
He had wasted so much time looking for her in the East when White had probably sent Tessa out West with one of his shipments to the Mesaarkan connection.
Colton was done with that game. The Federation didn’t need him to find the traffickers. Their thousands of manufactured cyborgs could do it. Now that he’d gone rogue, they would come for him, too.
Van’Rel Thrix went through the reports on his virtual AI screen on the desk in front of him. Things weren’t going so well since they moved cyborgs into his region. He’d had free reign here for about ten years. Now the cyborgs were dismantling his whole operation in the Los Angeles region. The humans collected for auction were all liberated. Gods curse them!
He hated humans. They were vile creatures, but they served him in this business. They were all males. He only found pleasure in using the females for his recreational activities.
He always enjoyed that first encounter when a new female saw him without his human disguise. He was, in fact, handsome by Mesaarkan standards. Mesaarkans were bi-pedal humanoids in varied shades from light tan to black and covered in scales.
While humans called them lizards, their heads and facial features were somewhat human-like. Their eyes were more prominent in their skulls, and their brow line was ridged. Unlike actual lizards, they had lips and nostrils, but their noses were much flatter.
Van’Rel was tall, green, and muscular with a long prehensile tail and a carnal appetite for human females. He had a room in his dwelling; he called his recreation room—the alien equivalent of a BDSM dungeon.
He used it to train the females for service to their Mesaarkan masters before shipping them out. First, he made them scream in pain, then he made them scream in pleasure. He so enjoyed his job. But there was one female who he was claiming for himself.
He was finishing the reports when his assistant knocked softly on his door.
“Enter.” Van’Rel shut down his computer interface.
“Colton Price is here to see you.”
“Did he say why?”
“He’s looking for his female. He thinks Devlin White sent her here with one of his shipments,” his assistant said.
“Send him in. I’ll talk to him. In the meantime, would you set Connie up in the rec room? Then report back to me.”
“As you wish, sir.” The Mesaarkan servant left the room, and momentarily Colton strode into the office.
“Good day, Thrix. I need to see your harem. White might have shipped my mate to you in one of the groups he sent before I got back on Earth. I’ve been to every harem and brothel run by the eastern Overlords, and none of them had her.”
