Alien Warrior's Bounty Read online

  Alien Warrior's Bounty

  Lizzy Bequin

  Alien Warrior's Bounty

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events reside solely in the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual people, alive or dead, is purely coincidental. All characters are eighteen years of age or older.

  © 2020, Lizzy Bequin. No portion of this work can be reproduced in any way without prior written consent from the author with the exception for a fair use excerpt for review and editorial purposes.

  This title is for adults only. It contains explicit sex acts, adult themes, and material that some folks might find offensive. Please keep out of reach of children.

  lizzybequin.com

  Table of Contents

  Newsletter

  PART ONE: ABDUCTED

  Chapter 1: ROGAR

  Chapter 2: CLARE

  Chapter 3: ROGAR

  Chapter 4: CLARE

  Chapter 5: CLARE

  Chapter 6: ROGAR

  Chapter 7: CLARE

  Chapter 8: ROGAR

  Chapter 9: CLARE

  PART TWO: STRANDED

  Chapter 10: CLARE

  Chapter 11: ROGAR

  Chapter 12: CLARE

  Chapter 13: CLARE

  Chapter 14: CLARE

  Chapter 15: ROGAR

  Chapter 16: CLARE

  Chapter 17: ROGAR

  Chapter 18: CLARE

  Chapter 19: ROGAR

  Chapter 20: CLARE

  Chapter 21: ROGAR

  PART THREE: RESCUED

  Chapter 22: CLARE

  Chapter 23: ROGAR

  Chapter 24: CLARE

  Chapter 25: ROGAR

  Chapter 26: CLARE

  Chapter 27: ROGAR

  Chapter 28: CLARE

  Chapter 29: ROGAR

  Chapter 30: CLARE

  Chapter 31: ROGAR

  Chapter 32: CLARE

  Chapter 33: ROGAR

  Chapter 34: CLARE

  Epilogue: CLARE

  Also by Lizzy B.

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  PART ONE:

  ABDUCTED

  CHAPTER 1: ROGAR

  My contact is late, as usual.

  The spaceport cantina is dark, the air thick with tabaq smoke and the hubbub of conversation. A quartet in the corner is playing Ixian jazz while scantily clad waitresses with teetering trays of bubbling drinks weave in and out of the tables where a whole menagerie of alien rogues are drinking and dealing cards.

  Everyone pauses to stare me down as the creaking saloon doors swing shut behind me. They quickly lose interest, however, turning back to their drinks and their games of chance.

  There’s no sign of Lorka yet. Go figure.

  I feel stray eyes on my back as I cross the room. In the rear of the establishment, behind a low wall of stacked astro-crates that serve as the bar, the tentacled proprietor is lazily wiping dirty glasses with an even dirtier rag. My coin rings on the bar top, and he pours me a shot of Drukari whiskey, which I carry over to a shadowy booth in the corner.

  By the time I’ve sat through six or seven off-key jazz numbers and one mildly amusing bar brawl, my patience has worn thin. I’m just about to get up and leave when an old familiar voice booms from across the room.

  “Rogar, you old son of a slorge!”

  Acquisitor Lorka, a three-foot tall purple-skinned Gavronian, trundles toward me. His curving, silver-capped horns wink in the neon and catch a few greedy eyes along the way. He is dressed in the fine livery of a Guild Acquisitor, and his small frame is swamped by the rich whale-fur collar of his short cape. Despite his short stature and bulging paunch, his movements are nimble. The twinkle in his dark eyes hints that he has a nimble mind to match.

  He gestures toward the bar for a drink and then struggles up into the seat across from me. A white smile appears in the midst of his grizzled black beard streaked with gray at the mustaches.

  Lorka nods at my untouched whiskey. “Since when did you take up drinking, Rogar?”

  “I haven’t. I merely paid the necessary fee for a place to sit. Custom dictated that I should be provided with this glass of toxic fluid. I am under no obligation, however, to consume it.”

  “Some things never change,” he chuckles, shaking his head. “For a second there I thought the bounty-hunting life was finally starting to get to you, Rogar. Anyway, I guess it ain’t very easy to drink when you never take off that helmet, eh?”

  Without asking permission, Lorka drags the shot glass toward himself. He dips his head, sniffing the amber fluid, then knocks it back in one swift gulp. His bearded face contorts and turns a deeper shade of violet as he slams the empty glass down on the table.

  “Oh, she burns,” he rasps, drumming his tiny fist against his hairy chest.

  The fingers of my gauntlet tap impatiently on the table top.

  “Do you have a job for me, Acquisitor?”

  Lorka nods as he recovers himself, his lower lip sucking the residue of whiskey from his mustache. His hand disappears inside the flap of his tunic and brings out a small data slate, barely the size of my palm.

  “I do have a job for you, Rogar,” he says with a mischievous grin. “A most interesting job, indeed.”

  A buxom young waitress arrives and plunks Lorka’s mug of ale down, sloshing a few wayward suds onto the table. Lorka gives her a wink and a coin. He waits until she’s gone before sliding the data slate to me across the table.

  “Who’s the client?” I ask.

  Lorka’s dark eyes dart around the smoky cantina to make sure nobody is listening before he answers in a low voice.

  “Lord Putrude.”

  “Putrude?” I whisper. “Are you sure we can trust him?”

  Lorka frowns and slurps his ale.

  “No,” Lorka shrugs. “Putrude is a shady one, no doubt about it. But he pays well for a job well done.”

  The Bounty Hunter’s Guild may operate outside of galactic law, but that doesn’t mean its members are lawless. We follow a strict Code, never attacking another Guild hunter, and never stealing another’s bounty.

  One day I might be tracking a bail-jumping fugitive that a small planetary law enforcement agency doesn’t have the resources to pursue. The next day my quarry might be someone who made the mistake of crossing one of the wealthy crime syndicates. No matter what, as a Guild bounty hunter, I get things done in a quick and clean fashion.

  The fact that this client, Lord Putrude, has a particularly unsavory reputation doesn’t matter to me. What does matter, however, is his well-known tendency to hire non-Guild bounty hunters from time to time.

  “I thought the Guild had decided to deny Putrude any further services following that clusterfuck on Tarnax-9,” I say, pushing the data slate back across the table. “Look, I’m not interested in dealing with sloppy non-Guild amateurs trying to steal my bounty out from under me, Lorka. If I take an assignment, it’s going to be by the Guild Code, and I’m going to be the only hunter on the job.”

  There’s that damn twinkle in Lorka’s eye. He persists, pressing the data slate back toward me again.

  “Just…take a look, eh?”

  I take the slate back and the glossy screen lights up under my touch. I’m instantly grateful that my face is hidden beneath the tinted visor of my helmet so Lorka can’t see how wide my eyes get.

  My pulse quickens, my breath hitches, and my cock stirs beneath my mail.

  “Who is she?” I mutter. “Scratch that. What is she?”

  Lorka lets out a self-satisfied chuckle over the top of his beer.

  “I knew you’d be interested. Her na
me is Clare McNeill. She’s an Earthling. A human.”

  Fascinating. I’ve never seen a human before, but I have no difficulty identifying this one as a female of her species. The voluptuous swell of her breasts and the lines of her curvaceous hips are a dead giveaway.

  But it’s her face that really gets my attention. Pale blue eyes, the same color as the hottest part of a flame. Smooth, fair skin marked with a fine spray of tiny brown dots across her nose and cheeks. Delicious lips that are plump and rosy with lifeblood. And all of it framed by a wavy mane of long fur the color of hadraxian honey.

  As I scroll through the rest of the pictures in her dossier, however, I notice something odd.

  “Do all Earthling females dress so…erratically?”

  In one picture she is clad in a suit of armor, although the plates and chain mail appear flimsy, and the suit is far too revealing to offer much protection in battle. In another picture, she is wearing a form-fitting body suit of blue and red fabric with a spider-web design on the red parts. In yet another picture, her garb consists of a strappy leather outfit with harlequin patterning, her hair drawn up in colored pigtails and her grinning face smeared with white paint. She is leaning a wooden club across her shoulder.

  So, it would appear the Earthling has some skill with melee weapons.

  “Who knows?” Lorka belches. “I don’t know much about humans, to tell you the truth. But apparently they really enjoy taking pictures of themselves. All of those images were retrieved from a Terran website called Instagram.”

  I’m barely listening to him. The picture I’m looking at now shows her from behind. Her long, plaited hair hangs down her back as she casts a sultry look over the top of her sunglasses. She’s dressed in a tight-fitting turquoise tank top and a pair of brown shorts that are so skimpy the bottom curve of her ass smirks out from under the hem. She’s wielding a pair of large black pistols.

  Interesting. Ranged weapons as well as melee. This one could be dangerous.

  I remind myself that despite her beauty, this little Earthling has a bounty on her head. She’s just another job, nothing more. Besides, in my line of work, I can’t afford any emotional entanglements.

  “What does Putrude have against her?” I ask.

  Lorka shakes his head and tugs at his beard.

  “Nothing. Putrude has nothing against her. This is an unusual bounty, Rogar. In fact, it’s not a bounty at all in the official sense.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Lorka leans forward and stretches a stubby arm across the table to tap the data slate where Clare is still looking at me over her perfect, bare shoulder dotted with freckles.

  “Putrude wants her for his bride. And he’s willing to pay a handsome reward for whoever can bring her to him.”

  Handsome is not a word I ever expected to hear in the same sentence as Lord Putrude’s name. But there’s something else in Lorka’s phrasing that bugs me even more.

  “Whoever can bring her to him?” I growl beneath my helmet. “So there are other hunters after this bounty.”

  Lorka gulps, his eyes getting a little wider.

  “That’s not what I meant,” he stammers in a hushed voice. “Lord Putrude requested your services specifically. He is very insistent that his bride be delivered as swiftly as possible and with the utmost care. But you need to understand, this is not an official Guild job, Rogar.”

  I snort.

  “No kidding. Hell, this is practically kidnapping.”

  Lorka motions to keep it down. He glances about the cantina nervously.

  “Look,” he says, “Let’s not argue semantics here, all right? You’re a bounty hunter, Rogar. You retrieve people for a fee. That’s what you do, and you’re exceedingly good at it. Maybe the best in the galaxy…”

  The little prick is buttering me up, but he’s also correct. Minus the “maybe” part, that is.

  “Anyway, what difference does it make why Lord Putrude wants her?” he asks. “You know the Code dictates that the Guild will not reject a client because of their reasons for wanting a bounty captured.”

  “True. But the Code also states that a member may turn down any job at their own discretion.”

  I slide the slate back toward him.

  “I’ve got a feeling about this one, Lorka. A bad feeling. Get somebody else to do it.”

  Lorka sighs. He pushes the slate back toward me once more, slow and insistent this time.

  “You didn’t look at the fee…”

  I’m on the verge of getting up and walking out. But that little smirk crinkling the edges of his beard has got me curious.

  I decide to humor him, and I settle back into my seat.

  My finger scrolls down the rest of the dossier with all of her vital stats, her location, and other information about the job. At the very bottom is the fee.

  Once again, I’m thankful that my visor hides my bulging eyes. I struggle to keep my voice steady.

  “I’ll do it.”

  Lorka’s smile grows a little wider.

  “I thought so,” he says, before finishing his beer. “I thought so.”

  CHAPTER 2: CLARE

  “Oh my God, is that Jason Momoa?”

  I follow the line of Amber’s finger to where she is gesturing across the bustling convention center lobby until I see the guy she’s talking about.

  “Amber, somehow I don’t think Jason Momoa would be waiting in line with everyone else.”

  I turn my attention to the next person in line, a middle-aged man in a steampunk outfit with a ridiculously oversized top hat, aviator goggles, and an elaborately patterned cloak. After I boop his admission badge with my scanner, I give him a smile and a nod to let him know that he’s free to enter the convention hall.

  “But it looks just like him,” Amber swoons as she distractedly scans another attendee’s badge and motions him inside.

  I look out across the crowd again.

  It is a beautiful July day, and the hot San Diego sun is flooding through the curving glass vault of the convention center’s spacious lobby and lighting up the rows of fans impatiently waiting to get into Comicon. They are chattering noisily, filling the massive space with the white noise of their combined voices and a persistent fog of B.O.

  About half of the attendees are dressed in everyday attire, but the rest are done up in all kinds of crazy costumes—aliens, superheroes, cartoon characters, you name it. The shirtless guy that has caught Amber’s eye is near the back of the line, just inside the big glass entranceway to the lobby. He’s definitely not the real McCoy—or the real Momoa, I suppose—but he could totally be his stunt double.

  “I mean, he’s got the beard and the long hair, I’ll give him that,” I admit.

  “And the pecs,” Amber adds, “and the pointy eyebrows.”

  Today, Amber just happens to be dressed like a certain dragon-loving queen, complete with a sexy, fur-lined gown, a scaly red cloak, and a long, wavy, platinum blond wig. She stands on her tiptoes in her leather boots, trying to get a better look at her new crush. She’s so distracted that it takes her five tries before she properly scans the badge of the next convention attendee standing in line.

  It was my idea that Amber and I should volunteer to work together at Comicon this year. I figured it would be a good way to save a little money since volunteers get free admission badges. Once our shift is over, we can wander around the convention with everyone else.

  Our costumes, however, were all Amber’s doing.

  Somewhat ironically, Amber’s outfit is really tame compared to mine. At a quick glance, anyone who didn’t know any better would assume that I’m the wild one, which is totally not the case.

  I’m still trying to figure out how the hell I let her talk me into wearing my Princess Leia costume to this event—you know, the slave bikini with the metal bra and long flowing loincloth. God, I’ve never felt so exposed in my life.

  Don’t get me wrong, I love getting all dressed up in cool costumes, but usually it’s
in the safety of my apartment or occasionally with a small gathering of friends. I post a lot of pics online, but that’s nothing like being surrounded by a bunch of sweaty, horny guys. It doesn’t help matters that Amber somehow talked me into wearing the skimpiest outfit in my whole cosplay wardrobe.

  I think it started as her plan for me to meet some cute guys. In other words, a way for me finally to pop my cherry. She didn’t say that exactly, but the subtext was pretty clear.

  Amber is the only person who knows that embarrassing little tidbit about me—three years at college and I’m still carrying a valid V-card.

  Lucky for me, Amber is a solid friend. Despite her shortcomings—and they are many—she knows how to keep a secret.

  She’s also determined to do everything in her power to rectify my embarrassing situation.

  “You’ll look cute,” Amber had insisted as she helped me get ready this morning, her fingers pulling my hair back into a braid so tight it made my scalp sting. “You’ll be the star of the show, babe. The guys will be drooling all over you.”

  Yeah, well, she was right about that last part. The guys in the admission line are all staring at me slacked jawed as I scan their badges. The problem is that none of them are exactly Prince Charming.

  A few of them are here with girlfriends or wives who elbow them angrily and give me the stink eye as they pass.

  Amber, meanwhile, is still eyeing her bearded obsession over the heads of the crowd, and she seems to be dangerously close to melting like an ice cream cone in summer.

  “Clare,” she asks dreamily. “Do you know what the Turing test is?”

  My scanner gun boops as I scan the badges of more attendees queued up at my side of the entrance.

  “Yeah sure,” I answer. “It’s like a test to see if a computer is really intelligent or not. Basically, Alan Turing proposed that if someone talks to a chatbot, and they can’t tell that it’s a machine they’re talking to, then we have to say that it really is an intelligent entity. Why do you ask? Are you checking to make sure I’m still a nerd?

  At this point, Amber is too distracted to peel her eyes away from her man for even one second to use her scanner, so she’s just letting people in without even checking their badges. She shakes her head.