Mercenary Alien

MERCENARY ALIEN COSMIC FATES CASS CARLTON Copyright © 2023 by Cass Carlton All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. CONTENTS Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Afterword 1 Test drives were normally Draxon’s favorite part of the job. He got to cruise around the deep darkness of space with a skeleton crew and put his ideas through their paces. Unfortunately, normally wasn’t the right word anymore. It implied that his life was going well, which it wasn’t. Resna had packed her things and moved out six months ago. That had been a giant blow to his ego. His heart? Not as much as he’d anticipated. The signs had been there long before her departure. No amount of looking past the cracking foundation of their relationship was ever going to fix their issues. That he’d seen all of those cracks on day one and still let her convince him that there was a future for them was what hurt his pride. He knew better, yet he’d gone and done it anyway. Why was still the question he was left asking himself. Was it really just because he’d gotten bored? Lonely? Not that it really mattered anymore. She was gone. The relationship was over. There should’ve been nothing left to ponder. But he was Fria which meant he got to relive the best and worst parts of his time with Resna, no matter how much he wanted to keep the past in the past. He’d spent the time between her stormy departure from his life and his current predicament tripping over what she left behind. Every piece of flotsam and jetsam brought it all back in vivid detail. He’d sucked it up for a while, wallowed in it, even. It was the only way to learn the lesson of their time together. If he was forced to face his mistakes, he wouldn’t repeat them, right? Eventually, it just became too much. There was nothing new to learn from the pieces of their life together that remained in his apartment. He should have called in professional help to sweep away the last remnants of her. He should have moved and started fresh. Instead, he’d taken to carrying the flask now nestled in his hip pocket. Thankfully, it was something she’d never once touched. The liquor was the only way he knew to dull down the visions brought on by something as simple as sitting on his couch. That and simply not being home, which was why he’d been spending as much time as possible out on the job. Now, here he was, dealing with the avalanche of trouble brought on by his stubborn refusal to upend his life. Anyone else in his shoes would call it a run of bad luck. He knew better. “Cap, we’ve got a new problem,” Hesta said, breaking into the circle-thinking that had been spiraling through Draxon’s mind since they’d set out. The crew of three was driving him to the brink of insanity. With his luck, they’d give him that last little nudge soon to send him right over the edge. It was their finest accomplishment at this point. Combined, their problem-solving skills only went so far as pointing the finger at Draxon for every issue that raised its ugly head. It wouldn’t be so bad if they’d just stick to things related to the ship. Draxon wasn’t that lucky. Hesta’s constant complaining about what he called the human condition and how Draxon should be unaffected by it, Arn’s grumbling about the test run’s proximity to Tetra’s strange space storms, and Ishtan’s AI-driven need to lecture him on his alcohol consumption made Draxon want to lock them all in the hold until he could pull the ship back into port. “What is it now, Hesta?” Draxon asked. “What do you think it is, Cap?” Draxon considered reaching for the flask but held off for the moment. “Right. I’m still trying to track down where the idiot who handled this wiring spliced the door locks into the environmental controls. I’m sick of getting blasted with hot air every time I walk into a room. We won’t even mention what it’s doing to the control unit. Who hired our expert, anyway?” “You did, sir,” Arn said, and Draxon rolled his eyes. With Arn close to Hesta, that meant that the three of them were probably huddled on the bridge, just waiting their turn to complain. “Without even so much as a handshake,” Arn added under his breath, but loud enough for Draxon to hear. “Which would have prevented a whole lot of problems,” Hesta said, not bothering to hide his aggravation. “Seeing as it would have let you get the full picture instead of whatever the man wrote on his application.” “Moving on.” Draxon didn’t want to have this discussion again. He’d heard the lecture often enough to have it memorized by now. “What’s the new complaint, and how is it my fault?” “Water purification decided to change directions,” Ishtan said. “How long ago?” Draxon asked. He let his bald head rest against the cool metal of the panel he was currently dug into up to his elbows. The ethereal silver-grey of his skin paled as another dark, stress-filled cloud darkened his day. He kept his eyes open, trying to hold the physical world forefront in his mind instead of letting some new vision add to his problems. In the reflection of a display close by, he watched the silver of his irises battle within their outer indigo rings to keep his pupils from shrinking to pinpoints. Images brought on by the contact with the panel tempted his sight inward.