Mated: A Sci-Fi Alien Invasion Romance (Garrison Earth Book 3) Read online

  Mated

  Garrison Earth

  V. K. Ludwig

  Ink Heart Publishing

  Copyright © 2020 by V. K. Ludwig

  www.vkludwig.com

  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.

  * * *

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, events, locations, or any other element is entirely coincidental.

  * * *

  Warning: This book contains explicit sexual content, violent scenes, and topics that some readers may find disturbing.

  Contents

  She's too much risk to be alive, but too precious to be killed.

  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

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Her body belongs to everyone, but her soul is mine.

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

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  She's too much risk to be alive, but too precious to be killed.

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  One

  Balgiz

  * * *

  “Captain.”

  The female secretary greeted me with a nod the moment I stepped into the CAT headquarters, the special unit responsible to counter the abduction of Earth women.

  The smell of scented candles immediately drove a headache into my skull.

  She hoisted herself from the hover chair, her swollen stomach brushing against interactive holograms. One after another, she sent them to the ground with a static hiss.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, voice thin, stroking the child underneath her chest with one hand as she grabbed for the holograms on the ground with the other.

  The grunt at the back of my throat stopped her. “Don’t bother.”

  I stepped around and squatted down, placing the holograms back onto the desk. No matter how hard I tried not to, my pupils flicked to her belly fat with child, a tick drumming at the corner of my left eye.

  “That youngling of yours needs to come out,” I said, my voice harsh enough not even my beard managed to muffle the tension. “Those holograms are fragile technology, you know. Just because we received more funding doesn’t mean we can start tossing them around.”

  She forced a smile onto her face. “He’ll come any day now. My mate and I went to the holographic imaging yesterday, and the healer said —”

  I snorted, got up, and walked away.

  How was I supposed to run this department if the Empire kept assigning pregnant females? Sure, Earth women wanted to work. But why by the heat of Heliar did they always end up in my unit?

  “You’re an ass,” Pertho said, leaning in the door to my office, sporting that ridiculous haircut humans called high and tight.

  I didn’t bother responding.

  He wasn’t the one leading this investigation surrounded by compromised workers. The moment I got used to my new secretary, she left to squeeze out a hybrid. And in her place sat a new one, blasting my ears with excuses about why she, too, had to visit the cleaning chamber five times an argos. It simply wasn’t efficient.

  “How solid are those new reports?” I threw myself into my chair and raked dark strands back, then shoved through mounds of files and holographic notes on my desk in search of some space to rest my feet.

  Pertho let out a huff and closed the office door, arms crossed in front of his chest. “They’re very sensitive, Balgiz.”

  “The reports?”

  “Pregnant females.”

  By the Three Suns… as if I gave a shit about the mental unsoundness of women with child while a crime ring abducted five of them each lunar cycle.

  Pertho sat down on the chair across from me, long legs stretched out, arms still crossed over his chest. “This is the third time this week you’ve made her cry.”

  I grunted and shifted my weight sideways so I could get a glimpse through the window. Behind her desk, human females huddled together to pat my assistant’s shoulder. And as if that wasn’t silly enough already, they threw me hard glances.

  “I’m doing my fucking job here,” I said. “Doesn’t our unit have the highest success rate for raids?”

  “Yes, but —”

  “What’s your damn problem then?”

  “Assimilation,” he said, rubbing a hand over his forehead. “Balgiz, you can’t run this unit like before. We’ve got humans working with us.”

  “Don’t you dare tell me I’m treating them differently, because I’m taking this Workplace Equality Act very seriously.”

  He let out an exasperated sigh. “Perhaps too seriously. You know what I think?”

  “Don’t care.”

  He flung his head back, curses rising toward the ceiling. “You hate seeing what you can’t have. And I get it. I really do. But that doesn’t justify being an ass half the time.”

  “Are you done?”

  He shook his head and got up, activating the holograms on the lead board at the wall beside us.

  Finally.

  “A Jal’zar merchant reported traces of illegal activities after they unloaded his ship at the cargo dock of sector seven,” he said.

  “Traces?”

  “Excrements, urine, and the less obvious DNA such as hair and skin flakes.”

  I worked my bulk out of the chair and stepped over to the board. “Please tell me it matches his DNA.”

  A smirk worked itself onto his features. “Sure does. The lab sent over the results an argos ago. There’s no doubt scholar Fehan skipped planets, only to smuggle himself to Earth.”

  “Which makes sense, considering the current turmoil. There’s no better hiding than at the core of chaos.”

  Pertho gave me a wary eye. “He’ll be hard to track down with all the unrest.”

  “It’ll save budget. Whatever we won’t have to spend on deploying troops to Cultum or some random planet out there, we can spend on paying out informants.”

  We both spun around at some excited claps.

  On the other side of the glass surrounding my office, the entire damn unit assembled at the center of the floor. They all stared at a hologram a Vetusian threw into the room. His mate was with child. Good for him.

  “Just let him have that moment.”

  I ignored Pertho, ripped the door open, and barreled down the aisle. “What’s going on
here?”

  Everyone turned around and stared at me wide-eyed, while some immediately scrambled back to their workstations.

  “My mate is expecting a baby,” the Vetusian officer said with a grin so wide I fucking wanted to punch it. “Two, actually.”

  Fucking prick.

  Others couldn’t even have one, and the Three Suns blessed him with two? At once?

  “Congratulations,” I said, my chest constricting at those blobs of cells hovering between us. “The risk of your mate being a victim of abduction has now officially increased by sixty-four percent because even the underground scum has figured out by now that pregnant females bring in more credits.” I went into full-blown asshole mode, keeping that reputation of mine in shape, and stepped up to him, crossing my thick arms in front of my chest. “How about you get back to your workstation, and help prevent it? Because that’s your damn job.”

  The hologram disappeared at the same speed his head dipped down. “Yes, Captain.”

  Officers of my unit scurried back behind their interactive screens, those plants between them serving no purpose, but Earth females had insisted on their cruciality.

  Behind my back, those very females failed to muffle the words jerk and asshole. Just to piss them off, I turned and waved my hand, shooing them back to their desks. At least until their water broke. Or they went into false labor. Or had to pee.

  I strode down the narrow hallway and into the break room. Another human innovation sucking efficiency right out of this unit, but at least it had coffee. Something I’d acquired a taste for.

  It turned bitter on my tongue the moment Pertho leaned in the doorframe. Again.

  I lifted an eyebrow. “Let me guess… I made someone cry?”

  He pushed himself off the frame and grabbed for one of the mugs above this thing called coffee maker. “Are you still going to meet up with that human female?”

  “Why are you asking?”

  “I just thought that it might do you good,” he said, pouring the black brew into his mug. “Get your mind off the case.”

  “My mind’s never off the case.”

  Pertho smacked his tongue, his eyes flicking my way before he reconsidered and stared out the window instead. “Some females need several lunar cycles to accept our seed. If that’s the case with her, you will get to spend a whole lot of time together.”

  “Six suns each lunar cycle?” My snort blew over the surface of my steaming coffee. “Where are you going with this?”

  “Just saying.” And he did so with a limp shrug. “You might like her. She might like you back.”

  “You know full well I’ve got a match. It’s a breeding contract and nothing more, and I’d like to keep it that way. No need to confuse it for something it isn’t.”

  “Betsy is a dying female,” he said, his words making dread slither through me. “Your loyalty to her might be honorable and all, but it’s also fucking stupid.”

  “You know what’s fucking stupid?” I asked, pivoting back toward the office before that tick on my left eyelid would return. “Believing that another female wouldn’t be anything else but a pitiful substitute. I’d rather be alone than waste my time on the wrong female.”

  Two

  Balgiz

  * * *

  Two Earth hours later, I hit the accelerator hard and sped off the parking lot in front of the CAT building, the fusion panels vibrating underneath my bike. Thirty clicks of air space were reserved for hover vehicles, but I ran the tires over the newly constructed streets instead.

  Aside from the pedestrians coming off their shifts to the left and right, the stone underneath me was empty — just how I liked it. My reality didn’t rotate with the tiny limbs of a child for everyone to clap at, but instead, lay right in the dirt underneath the traction.

  A family wasn’t something the Three Suns would grant me. All I had was a mission, and I fully intended to bust this crime ring. Distractions weren’t an option, especially not if they came in the form of self-pity.

  I followed along the row of buildings, pretending I didn’t see all those couples, interracial or otherwise, enjoying a meal together. What I couldn’t ignore were those stomachs growing Vetusian seed. Wasn’t there a single human female not pregnant? It was like a damn plague.

  In the distance, the streets turned from neat squares to curves winding around forests, and up those hillsides toward the west. Even with the evening settling onto Earth, the planet was beautiful beyond measure, those last rays of the single sun still warming my back.

  The ride to Oak Valley was only a short trip from the headquarters. One reason why I had chosen this location, was because it allowed me to drive out there every couple of suns like that good mate I’d intended to be. Back then, I was all pumped-up for Garrison Earth — until it punched the air right out of my lungs.

  Nestled inside a clearing of trees, the building’s large, illuminated windows led the way. I parked my bike in the same spot I always did and made my way toward the entrance, tugging on my uniform to make myself look put together.

  “Captain Balgiz,” one of the female care droids said with a standard smile. “Isn’t it a bit late for a visit?”

  “Got carried away at work. Is she asleep?”

  She waved her hand toward one of the main rooms. “Miss Betsy is with her companion.”

  Droids cared little for niceties, but that didn’t keep me from dipping my head before I stepped away. Inside the main room, a mix of tea and cookies masked the underlying smell of bodies reaching the end of their life cycles. Not dirty, just… old.

  Depleted.

  Elderly humans sat in chairs or walked about, each of them accompanied by their personal companion. Nothing but care droids, their personality chips top of the line technology. Not only could they detect and distinguish between forty different moods, but mimic human behavior with such accuracy, someone had to look hard to identify them as machines.

  “Captain,” an old human male called out.

  Supported by palathium and flosteel, his brain-wired exoskeleton allowed his brittle legs to stroll over to me.

  I offered him that salute that always put a gleam in his eyes. “Sergeant Major Chen. How’s life at the front?”

  “Food’s still crappy,” he grumbled, a chest that thrust out speaking of former strength and glory. “That synthesized shit’s got no taste to it. I keep telling them those biscuits need more butter. But will anybody listen?”

  “I’ll talk to them,” I said with a wink and strolled across the room.

  I found Betsy in her favorite flower-print armchair playing her usual game of chess with her companion droid. Her color-drained hair stood cropped close to her scalp, the specks of age shining through from underneath.

  “How are you feeling today, Betsy?” I asked.

  She gazed up from brown eyes that had seen a lifetime, magnified by those glasses she wore. “Well, fine, thank you for asking. Do I know you, young man?”

  I dismissed her droid with a flick of my eyes and lowered myself into the armchair across. “It’s me, Balgiz. Remember?”

  She cocked her head and narrowed her eyes, a slow, hesitant nod bringing a smile onto her pale lips. “Oh, yes, of course. What was I thinking? How was work, Ben?”

  Today I was Ben.

  Next time, I might be someone else to her.

  “We’re making progress,” I said and leaned over, taking her hands into mine. “Are they treating you well? How’s the food?”

  “Oh, the food’s just fine, but the music is so loud at night. How is anybody able to sleep like that?”

  “Music?”

  “Yes, yes. Those young people just go blasting their music. I might be old, but I’m not deaf.”

  I gave a nod in agreement, knowing full well there was neither music nor young people around here. Aside from me. “I’ll talk to them. Music too loud. Biscuits not buttery enough. Want me to finish that game of chess with you?”

  She slowly pulled her hands
back and glanced down at the checkered board as if she’d forgotten it was there. And she most likely had. But whatever memories her Alzheimer’s blocked, how to win a game of chess wasn’t one of them.

  Granted, I was a beginner. A human male from my unit had explained it to me since it was Betsy’s favorite. But the moment she picked up her queen, I knew I’d be on the losing side once more.

  “Where’s Dan?” she asked, glancing around for her husband.

  My fist clenched around the game piece, and I let out a deep sigh. Telling her that Dan never mattered because I was her fated one wasn’t an option. It only confused her. Tried it once. Didn’t go well.

  “Dan died fifteen Earth years ago of colon cancer, Betsy.”

  “Oh.”

  That was all she said, her shoulders slumping before she picked up another game piece, the loss of her husband already forgotten again. At least in that regard, her disease might be considered a blessing.

  “Did he eat the string beans?” she asked. “Because he doesn’t like string beans. I told them he doesn’t like them, but the people here keep serving them anyway.” Her shaky hand tossed the knight onto the board, sudden outbursts of anger normal with her disease, or so I was told. “Why is it always so dark here? These trees they… take all the sunlight away.”