Alien Shifter Force: A SciFi Alien Shifter Romance Read online

  ALIEN SHIFTER FORCE

  Maya Kane

  Copyright © Maya Kane 2016

  All rights reserved

  Two tough soldiers, one mysterious enemy. Teaming up should be easy... if they can resist the powerful chemistry that sizzles between them!

  United Earth Forces soldier Kate Brown was looking forward to a cold beer back at base in the Utah desert after her two year posting in Kanaven, a remote earth colony. Instead, she discovers earth is a very different place to the planet she left.

  Dragon shifter Redon, commander of the Uhalor III, was never meant to go near earth; not yet. But when a mysterious enemy attacks, he's left with little choice but to order his navigators to make an emergency landing on the planet that holds the key to the Dreon people's futures.

  But that's the least of Redon's worries. His body is going haywire. It can only be one thing, but it doesn't make sense—why would he experience the mating call so far from his home planet?

  Chapter 1

  Redon clenched his fists and threw back his head, silently willing the high commander to agree to the plan he’d just proposed.

  “No, Redon. And you know why. It’s too soon,” the high commander barked.

  Redon shook his head, wondering what the rulers would do if he simply ignored their orders and changed the course of the Uhalor III.

  “Redon?” the high commander’s voice sounded weary and Redon got the feeling that the old Dreon knew exactly what he was thinking.

  “But we’re so close,” he growled, staring at the screen in front of him.

  This was the mission; the endgame that he’d been training for all these years. He had never been so close to earth before—they hadn’t intended to get so close, but they had been forced to change course after encountering one of the Collective’s destroyers. Why not go in early when they were so close now?

  But it wasn’t that simple and Redon knew it.

  “Yes, High Commander. You have my word.” He glanced around to make sure nobody was listening. “But please reconsider. It’s premature, but I know we can do it. Think of the possibilities. It could be the beginning of a glorious age for our planet.”

  “Redon, I admire your spirit. But it is written.” The screen rippled with interference. “You… must… don.”

  Redon frowned. The high commander might have been light years away on Dreon, but their communications technology had functioned perfectly in the darkest recesses of the universe. Nothing should have interfered with it; nothing.

  “Aron,” he growled, gesturing for his second-in-command to join him. He plastered a calm smile on his face to hide his alarm from the technicians and junior officers clustered around the control room.

  “I know what that smile means,” Aron said, watching him closely.

  Usually, Redon might have argued, but not now. Not when the high commander was on the line and certainly not when something strange was going on. The interference had died down somewhat, but ripples of static still shot through the display every couple seconds.

  “What is it?” Aron asked, his scarred face furrowing.

  “I don’t know, but this isn’t right,” Redon muttered. “The communications team hasn’t reported a problem.”

  Aron frowned. “What could it be?”

  “There’s only one explanation I can think of and I don’t need to tell you what that is.”

  “But it can’t be. We’re on a Dreon Explorer. We have no cargo; only a basic armory. Who could be brave or stupid enough to attack us?”

  The screen fizzled again and adrenaline rushed through Redon’s huge frame. As the seconds ticked past, he became certain this was more than an electronics problem.

  “It can’t be the humans, they—”

  Redon shook his head. “The humans? Of course not. They don’t have the technology.”

  Aron shrugged. “I don’t see who else could be behind this. This part of space is all but empty. No one ventures here. It’s more barren than the hinterlands.”

  Unless, Redon thought. Unless somebody else out there knows what we know. And that would make a venture to earth very attractive indeed.

  From the grave look on Aron’s face, Redon knew he was thinking the same thing. He shook his head and glanced around the control room. They were the only two Highers there; the only ones who knew of the prophecy and the ancient words.

  “It has to be a coincidence,” Redon hissed as quietly as he could. “Whoever is out there must have another reason for being here.”

  Aron laughed uneasily. “You think there’s someone out there? Nothing’s showing on our scanners. And there’s no other reason to visit earth except for the—”

  “Redon!” the screen sharpened for a moment before fading again—but not before Redon had seen the look of fear in the high commander’s eyes.

  “High Commander? Do you read me? Come in.”

  He could hear nothing except a series of static blips. Redon had no idea what the old Dreon was saying or if it was related to their communication problems.

  “High Commander?” he said again as something jolted the ship and threw him against the control desk.

  Redon regained his balance and saw that the others were staring at him, awaiting his command.

  “Location?” he cried at the receivers in the ceiling. “Engineers, confirm damage.”

  A flurry of voices sounded over the ship’s PA system. Redon listened, waiting for the all-clear from the engineering team. Finally, after a couple moments where the navigation and communications teams fought to speak, Zalon, the chief engineer, roared for silence.

  “Sir, we’ve been hit. We haven’t been able to determine what it was.”

  “What do you mean, Zalon? We have two spotters on duty at all times. Force rules. They must have seen something?”

  Zalon was silent for a moment. “We’ve lost contact with the spotters.”

  Redon massaged the ridges at his temples. He didn’t like the way the usually smooth-flying ship lurched from side to side. The screen was dead—they had no communication line to Dreon now. That wasn’t the only thing that Redon had noticed. A small warning light in the right-hand corner of the panel was flashing red.

  “Zalon,” he yelled. “The engine failure warning light is flashing. What’s going on?”

  Zalon started to answer, but his voice faltered when the siren screeched. Redon turned and looked back at Aron. They didn’t have to utter a single word—both knew what that alarm meant.

  Doom.

  Only serious mechanical failure could have triggered the emergency siren.

  “Zalon, find out what’s damaged. If your team can fix this in time…”

  “What’s happening?” Aron said, coming to his side.

  Redon frantically pressed buttons in the control panel, sending pre-programmed emergency commands to the different areas of the ship. “It sounds like we’ve been attacked, even though none of our scanners have picked up a hostile ship in our vicinity.”

  “I’ll go speak to Zalon.”

  “No. By the time you reach the engineering room, we’ll have crash-landed. Zalon knows what to do—he needs to focus. I need you here,” Redon said calmly. “Confirm our location?”

  Aron moved to the screen and tapped furiously at the semi-liquid screen. “We’re passing through the Milky Way.”

  Redon frowned. “What’s the nearest planet where a landing is feasible?”

  Aron pursed his lips. “Earth, Sir,” he whispered. “Should we take our chances and try to fly further? You heard what the high commander said.”

  Redon grunted. “You know as well as I do what that
siren means. We’re minutes away from breakup. It’s not a question of deciphering the prophecies now. This is about survival.”

  “But, Sir. He told us not to… It’s too early. We can’t land on earth. It’s—”

  “It’s a matter of survival,” Redon said again. “Besides.” He leaned closer and looked around to ensure they couldn’t be overheard by any of the frantic officers running along the gangways above their heads. “If we survive, it might take us one step closer to the—”

  “Sir; respectfully; I—”

  He was cut off by another siren which seemed to scream in their ears so loudly that Redon feared he might pass out. He reached across the control desk and pressed a large button in the console to temporarily override the alarm so he could speak over it. If they were going to die, he thought they might as well do so without that ear-splitting sound being the last thing they ever heard.

  “Initiate emergency landing sequence one,” he said calmly. “Target: earth. Crew: prepare for crash landing—seek most suitable terrain. Begin the weapons sequence: prepare missiles. Hold fire.”

  He turned to Aron gravely. “I know what you’re thinking.”

  “Sir, I’m not. I—”

  Redon shook his head. His shoulder blades tingled the way they always did before he shifted. He gritted his teeth and fought to stay in control. This wasn’t the time for his Drayon to come to the fore. He was a strategist; an elite soldier trained in tactics. His Drayon may have been fiercer, but in his other form he lacked the focus and concentration needed to lead an entire unit into the unknown.

  “I know what you’re thinking because I share your opinion. It is too soon. This is not how the elders said it would be. Earlier, I could not believe that we were so close to the planet of the prophecies. I let my emotions rule my mind when I suggested we move in. But this is different. Now we have no option. It is a choice between landing on earth or perishing here on our ship.”

  Aron grunted, eyes riveted to the display that showed their rapid descent. “Well, they did attack us.”

  Redon snorted. “This wasn’t the humans. They don’t have technology capable of destroying a Dreon ship.”

  Aron’s eyes widened in confusion. “But who…”

  “We’ll find out soon.”

  A cold, calm voice boomed out through the speakers. Redon had ordered Eren to jam his finger over the override button to stop the sirens. It was Kadan, their navigator. “Brace. Impact in five, four, three…”

  Redon braced himself and thought of the prophecies. They had been so clear about his role in the future—so why did it look like he was about to be destroyed with his ship?

  Chapter 2

  Kate Brown peeked out the door of her quarantine room. She was almost certain she wasn’t being watched, but even that knowledge didn’t allow her to relax. She felt sure she’d never be able to relax again after the things she’d just seen.

  Home sweet home, she thought bitterly as she reached under her pillow for the notebook and pen.

  She would never have believed something was wrong if Commander Jessop hadn’t met her escape pod himself. He had fought with her father in the early days of the United Earth Forces—he was like another father to Kate. She thought back to their conversation, searching her memory for any hint that the old man had accidentally revealed. She knew it was a pointless exercise.

  Her mind raced with questions; questions she wouldn’t be able to ask until her mandatory quarantine period ended in several days. It seemed crazy to her—something was gravely wrong, yet the commander had stubbornly refused to discuss anything with her before she was marched to quarantine by ground crew in hazard suits.

  She opened the notebook. Her crewmates had teased her for her near-obsessive note keeping, but now she felt glad of it. It would give her something to do during the long, boring days she’d spend in quarantine, starved of any interaction. Technically, she wasn’t supposed to have taken anything into the unit with her, but she had an agreement with one of the canteen staff to slip her a notebook and pen whenever she returned from a mission. She’d be sure to sterilize them later and nobody would be any the wiser. Anyway, quarantine was an extremely conservative precaution—everybody at the base knew that.

  She clicked her pen and tapped it against the blank paper. For once she didn’t know what to write. She had no evidence that anything was amiss, yet everything about that landing and the aftermath was totally screwed up.

  Sighing, she began to scrawl across the top of the page, absently wondering if she was in shock. She had remained deathly calm throughout the entire ordeal—did that mean she was in shock? Shouldn’t she have cried and screamed after what happened?

  23 May, 3243

  She stared at it morosely. Seeing it on paper made her suspicions seem even more ludicrous. It was just a normal day in May and she was going crazy. Two years in space could do that to a person.

  Kate shook her head. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t shake off the sinking feeling that the others hadn’t gotten out alive. Danni and Athena, that was—she knew that the rest of the crew hadn’t made it.

  Were they as agitated as she was? Were they even alive? The last time she’d seen them was when they’ve rushed to their evacuation pods—she had no idea if they had even made it.

  Arrived at base at 11:00 hours, she wrote. She glanced up at the white plastic clock on the wall. Now 13:00. Still no explanation as to cause of ship malfunction or radio silence.

  Kate shook her head, wishing for the millionth time that she’d wake up and discover that it had all been just a dream. But she knew deep down that it wasn’t. This was reality. She stood and walked to the tiny reinforced window, but she had already checked—there was no sign of any escape pods and she hadn’t seen the other two when hers had landed.

  Why hadn’t she asked the commander? She shook her head. There was so much to process. The truth was, she’d been so shell-shocked to see the commander that all thoughts of the others had evaporated from her mind.

  She bit the top of her pen and tried to organize her thoughts.

  Yesterday I looked forward to coming home. To seeing everybody. The commander. Today I discovered that they lied to us. They set us up.

  She didn’t know that for sure, of course, but what else was she supposed to think? She remembered the look in the commander’s eyes when she’d refused to go to quarantine until he told her what was going on. The old man hadn’t budged, no matter how much she screamed and shouted. He’d said what he said every time she returned to base. They were the United Earth Forces. And UEF soldiers followed the rules, no matter what had happened. It was the only way to prevent everything from descending into chaos.

  But this was different. This wasn’t Kate trying to get out of quarantine because she couldn’t stand the prospect of solitary confinement for several days.

  Fuck the rules. I knew something was up the moment we reentered earth’s atmosphere. I don’t know what it is. I was expecting devastation, but everything seems normal. It can’t be. It can’t.

  Why couldn’t they just warn us instead of doing what they did? Why let us leave Kanaven? We could have stayed there if something was up.

  The thought of living on Kanaven made her grimace. As a soldier in the United Earth forces, it had been her job to defend the planet against alien bandits. And there had been many. Kanaven was largely uninhabited except for a number of earth colonies. Its attractiveness lay in the vast mineral reserves at its core. Those were the only reason earth had colonized the otherwise barren planet. But the humans weren’t the only ones interested in controlling those mineral reserves.

  And the conflict was getting worse. Kate hoped that the replacement crew had made it off earth before… She shook her head. She had no idea what had happened, and the frustrating thing was nobody had told her anything.

  She sighed and tried to bring her mind back to that morning. If nobody was going to tell her the truth, then she had no choice but to try and
figure it out herself.

  It was the silence. We heard nothing on the radio from base, even when we were inside the atmosphere. That’s not normal procedure. Usually, landing control stays with us for the entire time. It’s one of the most dangerous parts of a mission, so everybody strives to get us home safely.

  Not this time.

  She shook her head, feeling sick at the memory. There hadn’t been a sound on the radio, even when they had begun to get worried.

  And then the engines had failed. All of them.

  Getting closer and closer to earth, they had had to make a choice—trust their command center or go it alone. In the end, the unit was divided, convinced they could get the engines started again in time. Kate, Danni and Athena had voted to abandon ship. The others?

  She sighed.

  She couldn’t believe the blind faith they had shown in the face of near-certain doom. At that stage, they’d been able to see land in the distance. Kate had raced through the ship to her designated escape pod. Even then, she had barely strapped herself in and entered the release code before the ship hit earth and exploded like the Fourth of July fireworks she remembered from her childhood.

  She still couldn’t believe they were gone. She hoped Danni and Athena had activated their pods in time.

  She had emerged from her escape pod shocked and dazed; terrified at what she might find. The United Earth Force was the most fearsome force on all of earth. She was indoctrinated, she knew—abandoning ship had saved her life, but she still felt a lingering guilt that she hadn’t followed her captain’s order to remain. It would have been suicide, of course. But even seeing the smoldering wreckage that had fallen to earth before her did little to dampen the feeling that she was a bad soldier.

  Kate bit her lip and forced her attention back to the page.

  We all looked to the captain. He ordered us to stay on the ship and await further instruction, but we could all see the fear in his eyes. That was the most terrifying thing—I’ve known Captain Grant since I was a rookie and I’ve never once seen him ruffled. He looked as if he was about to cry. How could all four engines fail at once? What would our superiors do if he abandoned a multi-billion dollar ship that could have been saved?