Alien Paladin's Woman: SciFi Alien-Human Military Suspense Romance by Vi Voxley Read Free Book Online

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    But the stranger definitely wasn't anyone she knew, nor the mysterious Palian commander. Audrey squinted slightly, a horrible realization dawning on her. No, she did know the person before her. It was Joseph, a miner who had joined not too long ago with a batch of volunteers… but he looked as if he had somehow been broken and put back together again from the inside.
    He was grinning ear to ear. It hadn't alerted Audrey before, because everyone around her was happy, but there was something wrong with Joseph’s smile.
    It was completely empty, like someone was holding the corners of his mouth up with strings without there being any emotion in the man himself at all.
    "That man," Audrey told Aznim with a hushed voice, pointing. "He is… I don’t know what he is. He’s a miner of ours, but he doesn’t look like himself. I can’t explain it."
    She immediately drew her gun and the guard by her side did too. Aznim's expression was thunderous as they stared the man down. Suddenly, the cheerful mood in the space changed completely, turning to apprehension as people began to notice Audrey’s reaction, and then the stranger.
    The miners cleared the path between them, looking at Joseph with surprise and suspicion.
    "Control," Aznim spoke to his comm link. "We have a situation down in the mines. We need the paladins."
    If Audrey had thought the situation was odd before, now she knew it was completely fucked. The Palian paladins never showed themselves and now her guard was calling them down to the mines.
    It meant… it meant the plain little man standing in front of them was the most dangerous being she'd probably ever met.
    "Identify yourself," Audrey ordered, forcing her voice not to shake. "Joseph, has something been done to you?”
    She had been prepared for all kinds of answers. She had expected him to offer excuses or anything normal, really. But she hadn’t been prepared for what happened next.
    She almost screamed when the man split open like a body bag. One moment, he was standing there, looking at her with that dead expression of his, and then Joseph split in half straight down the middle, flesh and intestines and blood tumbling to the cave floor.
    Instead of the miner that had been there a second ago, a large, sprawling, brown centipede-like creature undulated in its place, clicking and hissing at Audrey.
    "A Jorcossi!" the Palian guard yelled by her side. "Protect the stone!"
    Audrey had no idea what was going on, but she instinctively stood in front of their discovery, the mysterious stone, along with everyone else. A few Terran miners were confused, trying to run away from the monstrosity that unfolded from the human skin it had worn, but all Palians stood their ground.
    Unarmed or not, they defended the stone with their own bodies.
    She didn't know what a Jorcossi was, but it was damned ugly. From the man it had been crawled forth a brown, sluggish creature that reminded her of a snake standing on two legs. It was tall and lean, covered in scales and slime.
    It didn't look that dangerous until it started growing. Audrey thought it was going to burst until she realized it was growing others on its own flesh. The creatures spawned from the first with horrible speed, dropping to the ground before standing up again. The rest were shorter than the first, a bit stockier but no less hideous to look at.
    "Open fire!" Aznim ordered.
    Audrey raised her gun and fired, trying to recall all the lessons she'd ever taken about physics, wondering if they were about to bring the mountain down upon their heads.
    The creatures burst apart under the fire, but more were coming. Only the guard, Audrey and a few of the miners had anything to shoot with, after all. They beat back the first wave, but by then the Jorcossi were crowding them and the biggest one was approaching with the same horrible grin on its snake face.
    The large one had reminded her almost of some cross between a meaty centipede and a serpent, but far slimier