A rescue gone wrong...
Osopa stood up straight again, scowling as he examined their
surroundings. “How long since you saw the Tragoom, Zac?”
“The thing with the pig face? A few minutes, but I could
hear it just before you came by.” He crept closer to Tina, his head poking out
from the pile of rubble.
Osopa had his blaster at the ready. His obvious alarm
frightened Tina. “My Nobek?”
“Usually, you can’t smell anything but them if they’re in
the vicinity. The stench should be drowning out Zac’s, but if the wind is
coming from the wrong direction—”
He took off without finishing his statement, racing around
the hill Zac hid within. A hoarse animal shriek, unlike anything Tina had ever
heard before, echoed through the landscape.
Shoo-wup! The sound of a percussion blaster firing.
More shrieks, then the furious shout of a man. A pair of
figures lunged from behind the hill, grappling with each other.
Tina had seen only stills of Tragooms in the past. They’d
been ugly enough in static poses, but the creature grabbing for and swinging at
Osopa was a nightmare on cloven feet.
Its face resembled that of a wild boar, complete with tusks
curling out of its lower jaw to bracket its snout-shaped nose. Warts growing
bristled hair sprouted all over its heavily jowled visage. Triangular ears on
top of its skull and tiny eyes completed the porcine vision.
It was immense, as gray and appearing as impenetrable as the
concrete slabs sheltering Zac. Its legs were thicker than Tina’s waist, and
what swung into view beneath the ragged loincloth it wore wasn’t much thinner.
Remembered tales of human women being raped by Tragooms sprang into Tina’s
mind.
No one could survive that.
It was far larger than Osopa, and it didn’t react to the
blows the fast-moving Kalquorian rained on it. Tina realized he no longer had
his blaster, and she cried out in horror.
Now on Sale!
Amazon, Amazon UK, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, and print.
To be loved is all Tina ever wanted. She never dreamed her
prayers would be answered by the enemy.
Aspirant Tina Novak, living on Europa’s convent colony, has
no place to call her own. First rejected by her father, now being sent away by
Mother Superior, where can a young woman with no prospects go?
The question is delayed by a Kalquorian invasion that takes
the aspirants and nuns prisoner. The enemy Kalquorians are teetering on the
brink of an extinction disaster, and Earther women are always welcome spoils of
war.
Chosen by the young and ambitious clan of Dramok Tukui,
Imdiko Yorso, and Nobek Osopa, Tina can’t imagine what her shattered future
might bring. When she discovers the gentler side of the fierce Kalquorians, her
fear of them becomes fear of losing them.
Can it last? Or will they turn her away in the end, as
everyone else has? When the war reaches its unthinkable, violent end, Earther
and Kalquorian alike find their lives altered forever. With the lives of Tina’s
most vulnerable family members at stake, she and Clan Tukui must set aside what
they thought they wanted and embrace what’s possible.
Now on Sale!
