Silver stealth a scifi a.., p.1
Silver Stealth: A SciFi Alien Romance : Warriors of Valose Saga 10, page 1
SILVER STEALTH
Warriors of Valose Saga 10
IONA STROM
Contents
Acknowledgments
Also by Iona Strom
About This Book
Map of Valose
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
Epilogue
Up Next!
Also by Iona Strom
About the Author
Glossary of Valosian Terms
Acknowledgments
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Edits by
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Map of Valose
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Copyright © 2022 Iona Strom & LS Anders
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This romance is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Silver Scout: Warriors of Valose Saga 5
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Silver Spice: Warriors of Valose Saga 7
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Silver Stealth: Warrior of Valose Saga 10
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About This Book
Sakkar
Memories of betrayal flooded my mind with glimpses of a past I didn’t recall living. I had wronged so many, not just my clan but all Valose. I was not worthy to walk among them. Not worthy of the female who had breathed life into my ancillary heart.
It was just as well. My spirit mate cared not for me. Her downcast gaze, always on her feet or the male with whom she had returned. A male from beyond the stars, and a sworn enemy of Valose.
I was determined to redeem myself. To prove that I was worthy of the crown I was bequeathed and return to my rightful place as ruler of Clan Huren. Perhaps, if I was to shed this mantle of disgrace, I would be worthy of her regard.
Layla
I was broken in more ways than one. Shame kept my eyes pinned to the ground. Humiliation over who I had once been haunted me. Captivity had a way of putting things in a new perspective. Now that I had seen myself for what I once was, forgiveness felt beyond my reach.
Then there was the issue of the male who dogged my heels. A regal male for whom I had endangered other girls to reach. My sense of entitlement had blinded me to everything except my own desires. Now that I had been rescued and returned to the ones I had betrayed, how could I ever look them in the eyes, or feel worthy of the male who followed?
Map of Valose
Chapter One
SAKKAR
I anxiously paced, wanting to be a part of the action. Inside the hangar, the techs were running around, readying the energy repeater pods to be loaded onto the sleek, black short-ranged craft I had been taught to fly by the Gretolics while under their mind control.
Learning to pilot the alien vessel had been the only good thing to have come from being used as an instrument in the gray freaks’ scheme to control the city of Huren.
My hopes of regaining the trust of my clan had risen when I had been asked to fly the ship to the crash site and aid the warriors after the battle with the Nuttaki. I’d been trusted with delivering the power sources the warriors had fought to obtain back to Huren.
Then my optimism had taken a hard slap of disappointment when I had not been included in this mission. How could I blame the distrust that still tainted me? My mind was broken, unpredictable in its lucidity. Sometimes, flashes of memories I didn’t recall living would grip me so tightly, I would be paralyzed from their intensity.
Except when I was with her. Layla. The human female who had breathed life into my ancillary heart. She’d awakened me when I never thought it possible. Being in her presence was the only thing that kept the dark memories of my betrayal of my clan leashed. But that wasn’t the only reason I sought out her company whenever I wasn’t volunteering for one mission after another.
Envy played across my scales in a riot of blues and silvers. The warrior, Aggar, was to pilot the craft on a trip around our world, stopping at regular intervals, and with the help of trained warriors, launch and establish the energy repeater pods. Once all the pods were in place, they would link up, evenly distributing the energy source across the span of our world, to solidify the planetary shielding.
From the top of each pod, an invisible beam would shoot into something our Moktian ally, Zaku, had called a stratosphere. The purple male had educated us on the many invisible gas layers surrounding our planet that shielded us from our twin suns’ harmful rays.
The beams shot from the pods would galvanize trace particles found in the air called hydrogen, creating an impenetrable shield around Valose. It would work similarly to the dome over the city of Huren, in that it would keep out any spacecraft trying to land on the planet without clearance.
Just a yeron ago, nothing like this would have been possible, much less imagined by my clan. Even though Huren techs were more advanced than the other two clans combined, we had been far below where we were now.
It had all been thanks to the little gray fuckers who had entrenched themselves within Clan Huren and right under everyone’s noses. It hadn’t been without help. Garrot, the principal advisor to the Royal Council, had been the first of Clan Huren to ally with the Gretolics.
The promise of a crown had been too enticing an offer for his full cooperation. The Royal Council member hadn’t hesitated to betray Clan Huren with a promise to rule over it and had recruited Rayyar, a once trusted personal guard, as his eyes and ears to keep tabs on me and Jakkar.
Then he’d dragged Hexxus, Huren’s brightest tech, into it with the promise of new technology, devices, and gadgets beyond his wildest dreams.
Unlike Garrot and Rayyar, Hexxus had been duped into thinking the aliens were only temporarily on Valose to repair their spacecraft. Hexxus believed that, in exchange for technology that had been presented as a means to better the lives of Clan Huren, the Gretolics only asked for nutrillium to recharge their main engine thrusters.
Hexxus had been told to keep the alien’s presence secret from the masses to not cause panic. Little did the tech know what Garrot and the Gretolics had in store for Clan Huren and Valose.
Hexxus had meant no harm, and once he had discovered a storage room full of caged Valosian males the aliens had planned to take off-world, it had been too late. He’d risked himself by pretending to aid the aliens, yet all the while the tech had been thwarting the Gretolic’s efforts to recharge their main engine thrusters.
Meanwhile, I’d continued to fight the Gretolic’s mind control, and the aliens had finally given up on me as a useful puppet. They had tried to force me to pilot the short-ranged craft on a second trip to a trading port on a nearby planet to obtain more of the ingredients needed to make stasis, the injectable fluid used to keep combative Huren males in a state of unconsciousness. That had been the last time I had shaken off the cerebral restraints which resulted in me being locked away with the others in a storage room off the hangar.
They needed the stasis to keep the city under control since there were more of us and not enough of them to keep us all under their hypnotic influence. They had needed my face to get permission to land because Gretolics had been banned from the port.
Only a few Valosians had truly allied with the Gretolics. Those traitors were now either dead or spending time on the prison level below the palace.
It was because of me Hexxus’s charade had come to an end. He’d said they moved the group of us from the storage room next to the hangar to the one below the palace. He’d been caught following and had seen more
Injected with the very thing I had been used as a puppet to obtain, I had been tossed in a cage and was scheduled to be taken off-world and traded on a vile planet called Tirius. Had Hexxus not found and hidden me away, I would have been among the unfortunate males stolen from Valose.
Guilt was a knot I carried with me always. The faces of my stolen clansmen were images that never ceased to flash through my mind.
Would the lost warriors of Valose ever find their way home?
I shuddered to think what my fate would have been if not for the bravery of the Huren tech who was currently rushing around like his mane was on fire to complete the last diagnostic check of the pods before they were loaded onto the craft.
In my desire to prove I was worthy of my clan, I had ceased wallowing in self-pity and had decided to make myself useful. So far, I’d begun training with the warriors and spending time with the techs to learn what I could to help in the fight against the alien invaders who thought to take control of my world.
I may not have been chosen to fly the craft for this mission, but maybe I could be of use in another way.
I left my place on the sidelines and jogged over to catch up with Hexxus. “Can I be of help?”
“Oh, my Sia,” Hexxus spared me a frazzled glance. “I can always use an extra pair of hands, but this work is beneath your station.”
“I have no station, Hexxus.” Not since I had been declared unfit to rule. “What I do have is an extra pair of hands.”
Hexxus paused in his work to take me in. The swirl of his silver gaze skating on the edge of crazy.
“You need not call me Sia,” I said, and looked pointedly at the device he held. “I am no longer your ruler, but I do know how to calibrate the energy stabilizer on the pod if you have an extra standardizer.”
“Yet, you are no less the male you were born to be.” Hexxus bowed his head and handed me the standardizer he held and pulled another from the pocket of his kiltus. “It was not your fault what happened.”
“Nor was it yours.”
Hexxus’s eyes cleared from their usual haze and brightened with unshed tears as he fought back the slight tremble of his lower lip. I blinked hard, having a difficult time maintaining eye contact. The emotions which played across the tech’s features were as raw as my own.
“Let’s get to work.” I cleared the hard lump in my throat. “Aggar will need these pods loaded onto the craft soon if they mean to launch before the suns-fall.”
Hexxus bobbed his chin and got back to work. I followed in his frenzied wake, helping with final checks of the energy stabilizers on the remaining pods. I tapped on the little screen of the standardizer I held in my hand to equalize the parameters of the stabilizer and took notice of the callouses from my warrior training that had hardened the tips of my fingers.
I rubbed my fingertips together, unused to the feel of the roughened texture. My palms were the same. A layer of coarseness had replaced the smooth scales across my aristocratic hands.
My chest expanded with pride over what I had accomplished thus far. My sire had groomed me to fight with words, the politician to my warrior twin brother, Jakkar, who had ruled Huren by the tip of Valosian steel. I’d never identified with his aggressive behavior until now. I had preferred a lavish lifestyle with my every whim catered to with a dutiful bow.
Now that I had a taste of physical power with the hilt of a sharp sword planted firmly in hand, the decadence of my former life no longer held the same appeal. Vengeance for what had been done to me and my clan had become my obsession. With Valosian steel, I would avenge my world, and one suns-rise, maybe I would win back the trust of my kinsmen.
Finished with the last of the calibrations, I helped the scarred warrior, Draggar, muscle the last of the pods onto the ship. I’d bulked up since my warrior training had begun. My once lithe frame had grown heavy with muscle.
“My thanks, Sakkar.” Draggar clapped me on the shoulder as he would any other warrior.
“Whatever I can do to help.”
Draggar amicably grunted and moved off to intercept Jakkar as he stepped into the hangar. I found no disrespect with the seasoned warrior’s conduct. As one of his apprentices, I had insisted on being treated the same as any other fledgling warrior in training. It felt good to be a part of something rather than lord above it.
Jakkar had never been like me. He’d always stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the warrior class. There was merit in how he’d always ruled. Lead by example rather than lead seated from a cushioned throne.
From the distance, my brother’s eyes met mine. Identical twins, our mannerisms were what had set us apart. Where Jakkar exuded the fierceness of a male not to cross, I had been the regal figurehead the clan had felt obliged to bow before.
Not anymore. Not for me, anyway. However, Jakkar had retained the veneration of his followers and had gained more when he had been voted in as the ruler over all three clans. He’d even had warriors volunteer for exile just to follow him out the gates of Huren and into the wilds of the jungle.
My teeth clacked together with a hard cringe. My gaze faltered. I had given the order to have him banished. My own brother. Everything I had been manipulated to do under the control of the Gretolics had heaped shame upon my name. The injustice I had done to my own flesh and blood had been an unforgivable offense. Yet Jakkar hadn’t blamed me for any of the wrongs done. He might have forgiven me, but I hadn’t forgiven myself.
I had been a pawn in Garrot and the Gretolic’s plans. I’d fought the cerebral manipulation and in rare bouts of lucidity, I had even tried to warn Jakkar of beings beyond the stars with the ability of mind control. He’d only laughed and had accepted the plasma gun I’d hidden in the pocket of my kiltus during a moment of clarity on one of my forced journeys to another world.
Looking back, I’d come across as crazy as Hexxus. I couldn’t blame my brother for thinking me absurd. Half the time, I hadn’t known what had been real and what had been a dream. Only now did I realize that they were one and the same.
Jakkar tilted his head at me in question. I straightened my spine and gave him a brisk nod of reassurance. I was far from rehabilitated. Now that his spirit mate and nursling were free of the clean room and out of danger of contracting the germ, the male looked less troubled, but he still had the whole of Valose riding on his shoulders. He didn’t need the burden of me weighing him down.
Satisfied that all was well, Jakkar went about his business. Now that all the pods were aboard the craft, it was time to begin the launch.
A fresh wave of jealousy splashed over me as Aggar marched up the craft’s ramp with purpose. I couldn’t hide my feelings when my scales flushed with envy. I glanced around to see how many had witnessed my affliction. It was humbling, to say the least, to begrudge a male who at one time, I had thought to be beneath my station.
Born to the crown, I had never been denied anything. It was an oddly unpleasant feeling to be told no, something I had never encountered before.
There was no refuting that royal blood pumped through my veins. Yet, I had stepped down as Sia of Clan Huren, not solely because Jakkar had deemed me unfit to rule. I had agreed it was the best thing for my clan until my mind healed fully. It was the least I could do after I had wronged so many.
Vallon and Tekkon boarded the craft on Aggar’s heels. Two Trisess warriors followed close behind. I wasn’t sure of their names. With all three clans living inside the city, Huren was as unfamiliar as the many faces I had yet to learn.
