Alien Plunderer's Prize

Chapter 1

Zoey

The sky is an electric blue as I fall. My gaze fills with the expanse, until a strip of land enters the top of my vision. I grin, and pull my raider up, completing the loop. As the craft levels, I let out a yip of delight.

Damn, I love flying. 

Literally three weeks ago, the Kraaj, our oppressors for so long on Luvon, began actively recruiting human resistance fighters to help them stand up to the AI entity known as Legion that the IHC dropped on our planet. 

It’s been a wild three weeks, taking enemies and having them fight next to each other. Creating new organizations out of thin air all in the name of survival. 

But the end result has been that I’ve been able to openly fly again. And not just for the human resistance but for the new air force the muckety mucks have put together. 

The crazier the moves, the better. As it turns out, this assignment is giving me plenty of opportunity to mess around. Because you know what else I love? 

Solo missions. No one to tell me “you should focus.”

When I’m in the air, I am.

I was a little disappointed to find so few droids in the area I’d been sent to. Lucky for me, I’m good at making my own fun. I made a deal with myself — every shot has to come after a tricky maneuver. 

Which means with that loop, I’ve just given myself the chance to blow up another droid. I zero in on one skittering through the streets of the abandoned town below and squeeze the trigger. Little bastard goes up like a torch.

I ponder what to do next as I make another pass over the empty streets. When I catch a glimpse of shiny metal behind the wall of a ruined building, I get an idea. An idea that’ll be a blast.

I bring my raider down, down, down, so I’m skimming the cracked surface of the roads. I make a couple of hairpin turns, yelling with exhilaration. After rounding one last corner, I see my prey. Laughing like mad, I fire my guns and send it to robot hell.  

I’ve already lost count of how many of Legion’s droids I’ve destroyed, but that doesn’t make each new one any less satisfying. If a fucking AI thinks it can bring down not just the Kraaj, but humanity, too, it can use that super brain to damn well think again. 

As I swoop back into the sky, my sensors pick up a new signal. I wheel my bird around, seeing one of the suckers I think of as cauldron droids. They’re big round bellies on crooked legs, and I think they’re hilarious. 

This one opens up its domed head and lobs a bomb at me. I cackle and dodge it easily. The droid sends a speedy follow up, with a spray of blaster fire from one of its side guns. I duck that with no problem, too, but it required a slightly more complicated maneuver.

Now we’re having a good time. 

I decide to cyclone down and bomb this fucker out of existence. The cyclone is one of the favorite moves I’ve ever invented to take on droids. The narrowing concentric circles confuse their electric cogs and gears for some reason. More importantly, it’s really fun to do. 

I launch my raider into the sky, getting some vertical distance from the cauldron droid. Once I’m at an altitude I like, I begin to spiral down. I draw nearer and nearer to my target, howling like a wild thing. I hover my finger over the button that will release a string of explosive charges right on the droid’s head. 

Closer… just a little closer…

All of a sudden, another raider cuts in next to me. Before I’ve even registered that fact, it’s shooting a barrage of red bolts from its blasters. The droid combusts right away, the bombs it carries detonating and destroying it from the inside.

I pull out of my dive and grit my teeth. That raider stole my kill! 

I mean, I guess droids aren’t really alive in the first place, but that doesn’t make it any less shitty! Most of my squadron know better, hell, most of the air force would. Who the hell was that?

Khel. 

As the other fighter zooms away, I see the telltale claw marks burned into the side. The idiot Kraaj probably thinks they look cool, but all his dumb decoration tells me is whose ass I have to kick.

I tear after the other raider, shooting apart one remaining droid as I go. That asshole has been trying to one-up me ever since the human-Kraaj air force was founded. First squadron assembled; he’s giving me shit. This isn’t the first insulting stunt he’s pulled.

Is it any wonder I hate his alien ass?

By the time I’m back at base, I’ve been seething for so long, I feel like I could rip the arms off a gunner droid. The trip home didn’t calm me down; if anything, it made me even more furious. No one disrespects me and gets away with it.

I land, not long after I see Khel’s raider dock and burst into the hangar. 

“You!” I bark, striding up to the silver-skinned meathead. The Kraaj has a good two feet on me, but I’m going to give him a piece of my mind no matter what. Even his stupid red tattoos don’t intimidate me.

Khel turns as I storm up to him, the movements of his huge frame slow and lazy. He smirks. 

“Got a problem, Cassidy?”

“That’s Captain Cassidy to you, buddy,” I say, rapping him on the chest. I can’t say it does much, given the bastard is made of solid muscle, but at least I’ve demonstrated what kind of conversation this is going to be.

One where I rip him a new one.

“Aw, what’s got you so upset, ‘Captain Cassidy’?” Khel manages to say my name like it’s a big joke, like I’m a little kid demanding her parents pretend she’s a fight pilot. There’s no way for him to know I did just that, but it stings anyway.

“Give it a rest, Khel,” I snap. “I’m twice the pilot you are. Why did you take my kill back there?”

“Your kill?” He raises an infuriating eyebrow. “Wow. Has no one taken the time to explain to you that droids are mechanical? As in, they don’t —”

“Answer the question, jerk,” I stand, arms crossed, skewering him with the biggest glare I can muster.

“You seemed out of your depth,” he shrugs.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I’m so angry I feel like steam is coming out of my ears. “You probably showed up because you couldn’t find anything to shoot on your own, given you can barely find your own ass on a sunny day.”

I hear a laugh from a couple of raiders over. I don’t see who it is, but the sound gets to Khel, more than anything I’ve said so far. I realize I’m making this too easy for him. He’s baiting me, trying to piss me off by mocking me so I’ll embarrass myself.

He’s got another think coming.

“Come on, Cassidy, you were running away! I saw you turn and fly up and away. That bomb the droid launched obviously spooked you, so I decided to be generous and help out.”

I take a deep breath. Don’t rise to his bullshit, Zoey, or it’ll look like it’s true.

“You’ve never seen the lead-up to a dive bombing maneuver before?” I nod my head. “Wow, that explains a lot.”

“Why would you bother to dive bomb a single droid?” Khel is finally starting to look irritated. “Did it give you such a scare you had to be sure you destroyed it?” 

I laugh.

“I was doing a dive because it’s fun,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Not to mention, it’s good practice, although I know you’ve never heard of that. I’ve seen your sloppy flying enough times to know as much.”

“’Sloppy’? I’m the most renowned pilot in the Kraaj,” growls Khel. “There isn’t a better pilot out there. Unlike you, I don’t need to practice.”

“If you’re the best pilot ever, then why do you keep trying to one-up me? The only reason for such petty behavior is that you’re threatened by me.”

Khel cracks up at that, the tension draining out of his powerful shoulders. I curse under my breath. 

“You, threaten me?” He roars with laughter. “You’re a puny human female. You see that blood mark? That’s from me flying through a nest of serpents each the size of a star cruiser on Bast XII. You may have a sharp and poisonous tongue, but you are nothing compared to me.”

“You avoided the question though,” I point out. “Why do you keep trying to one-up me?”

“You wish I cared that much about you, princess,” retorts Khel. “If you think I’m trying to one-up you, it’s all in your mind. It never occurred to me to prove myself better than you. I already am.”

“Refuse to admit it, that’s fine.” I send him a steely smile, thin and cold as the blade of my best knife. “But if you don’t knock off your cocky crap, I’m going to —”

“What is this?” 

I spin around at the new voice, to find Raxtar, District Chief for Sannar, standing behind me. He’s looking at me and Khel, his lip curled.

“This whiny human has made up a story that I —”

“Cut the shit, Khel,” says Raxtar. I grin at him, until he sends me a look, too. “You, too, Zoey. There’s work to be done and sniping at each other isn’t going to do it.”

What is he talking about? 

I sneak a look at Khel, and accidentally meet his gaze. He seems as confused as I am. I give a micro-shrug to the question in his eyes.

“Come on, both of you.” Raxtar pivots and walks to the end of the hangar.

I have no idea what he wants from us, and clearly, neither does Khel. I guess the only thing to do is follow our Chief and hope whatever mission he’s about to give me won’t be too boring. 

At the very least, maybe Raxtar will assign Khel somewhere far, far away from here, and from me.