Interstellar Angel (An Astral Heat Romance Read online

  Interstellar Angel, Copyright © 2021 Laura Navarre.

  All rights reserved.

  Interior Design by www.formatting4U.com

  Cover by The Killion Group

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  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Unless otherwise indicated, all the names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents in this book are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Prologue

  The Felon

  He was sentenced to die in the fighting pit at dawn for butchering the Third Indomitable of the Mogadon Empire in his tyrannical and sociopathic sleep. But the Mogadon prison guards wanted to work Zorin over before he kicked the bucket. Same way they’d worked him over the last three nights running.

  Well, that was A-okay with Zorin.

  Matter of fact, he was counting on it.

  While he stood waiting for the shindig to start, magnetoelectric cuffs shackled his muscled arms overhead, clamped his booted feet to the floor, and left his naked torso exposed to the biting temps in the Mogadon slammer. He definitely wouldn’t have minded sporting more than leather pants and space boots on his ugly carcass while old Tiberius went to work with the boning knife.

  But Zorin could roll with what he had going.

  Sweating under the nuclear-powered fluorescents in the interrogation cella, Tiberius swaggered up to Zorin with a scowl on his fleshy mug. His two sidekicks skulked by the exit. True to habit, Boots and Pyro would only risk coming in close to get their jollies after the blood loss softened Zorin up.

  Even chained to the wall, the deadly combo of his massive size and his brutal reputation still gave Zorin plenty of intimidation factor.

  “Ready for a little fun, Theodophilus?” Tiberius slid his knife gently along Zorin’s jaw. “You’re gonna bite the big one in twelve clicks—just in time to make the interstellar broadcast. But we got plenty of time to play before Dex Draven meets you in the pit and puts you six cubits under.”

  While the lunker brandished his shank, Zorin snuck a peek at the timepiece strapped to the guy’s wrist.

  Two ticks to showtime.

  Zorin hawked to clear out the blood still leaking down his throat from his nose. Which he hoped to hell wasn’t busted again. “You wanna be careful with that one-armed scissor, Tibs. Pretty sure Dex’s counting on killing me himself.”

  “You think I’m scared of that punk Draven?” Tiberius sneered, looking back at his buddies for validation. “That pretty-boy stunt pilot don’t have his dad’s moxie, even if you did just bump off his old man. Comets! Bet Dex’ll thank me for softening you up.”

  Tick.

  “One way to find out,” Zorin said softly. A bear-baiting he’d probably regret, but he wanted the guy in close.

  Tibs took the bait and closed on him with a snarl.

  Attaboy, Tibs. Mosey on over.

  The first cut burned through Zorin like a laser—a searing score carved down his naked side. He gasped as a line of white agony sizzled through his system. Liquid heat spilled down his skin and the meaty tang of fresh blood hit the back of his throat. The world blurred and darkened.

  Tock.

  The stone beneath his boots shuddered under the sonic boom of impact. That’d be the cyber bomb. Hitting the reactor bloc smack on schedule. Knocking out the defensive energon shield that bubbled the Mogadon capital. And plunging the whole city—including this funhouse down here—into blackness.

  Knew I could count on my boys.

  Tingling with an adrenaline rush of aggression, Zorin felt the metallic snick of the maglock release. The cuffs around his wrists and ankles sprang open and he got clear of the rack.

  A tick later the backup generator lumbered to life. The ruddy wash of emergency lighting switched on. Giving him an up-close-and-personal of Tiberius’s shocked and staring face. Their eyes met and locked.

  One corner of Zorin’s mouth lifted in a grin.

  “Howdy, Tibs.”

  The guy’s sweating face convulsed in sudden terror. “Look alive! He’s loose—”

  From barely a cubit away, the boning knife came at him. Then Zorin’s doubled fists, powered by the full force of his body and three days of pent-up rage, hammered down on the guy’s noggin. The sharp pop of Tibs’s neck cracked through the generator’s asthmatic wheeze like a snapped wishbone. His torturer dropped at Zorin’s feet.

  Dead as a sack of moon rocks.

  A primitive surge of bloodlust roared through Zorin’s brain. The gamy musk of wolf and steel flooded the air, triggered by a heady spurt of Mogadon pheromones. Weakened by three days’ torture with no grub to sustain him and blood still spilling down his side, Zorin’s big body swayed on his feet. His adrenal glands were going haywire.

  Jumpin’ Jupiter. I’m weak as a pup—

  A howl of rage brought Zorin’s head snapping up. Just in time to see good old Pyro barreling at him with the flamethrower. A thermobaric weapon the Quorum had outlawed ages ago all across the galaxy, but Pyro kept the contraband relic squirreled away down here in the playroom.

  And here comes the nozzle…

  Zorin hunkered down and just charged the guy. He hit him at a dead run and knocked him sprawling. The nozzle of the flamethrower flew wide, spraying an inferno of blue fire across the cella. He landed on Pyro’s sinewy frame like Vulcan’s mythic hammer. Pyro writhed beneath him, ferret-sharp teeth bared and snapping in the bloody light.

  Fighting like the dickens to bring that flamethrower around—still spewing fire—for another pass.

  Zorin got both hands around Pyro’s greasy head and slammed his skull into the floor with brutal force. The guy’s weaselly face went blank and his eyes glassed over.

  Permanently.

  The flamethrower slipped from his grip and went dark.

  Breathing heavily, Zorin rolled off him and wrestled the thermobaric out of the man’s slack hand.

  “Belay that, you space junk!” a shrill voice cried. “Or I’ll put you down like a rabid dog. I swear to gods I will!”

  Zorin’s eyes flashed up to find his old pal Boots hunkered by the door with his shadow all distorted in the horror-flick half-light.

  And his blaster leveled at Zorin’s chest.

  Zorin froze right where he crouched, one hand gripping the flamethrower, one knee braced against the floor. A steady drip from his gaping gash spattered Pyro’s limp carcass.

  Aw, shoot.

  “Here’s the deal,” Zorin rasped, locked on the youngster’s wild-eyed stare. “You can pull the trigger on that thing if you want. But you better make damn sure you take me down—cuz you’re only gonna get one shot. You shoot and it’s anything less than a kill shot? Then it’s barbecue time. And once you’re seared medium rare, if you ask me nicely? I’m gonna snap your neck like I did with Tibs and put you outta your misery.”

  “I got the drop on you.” Holy helium, the kid’s v
oice was shaking. “I got the drop on the First Indomitable! If I pull the trigger, I’ll be First Indomitable myself.”

  Zorin kept his own voice nice and easy. “Pretty sure Dex wants that gig himself. Besides, you ain’t exactly a crack shot, are ya, Boots? Or your centurion wouldn’t have you pulling guard duty down here in the armpit of the Empire, would he? Keep your head screwed on straight and you can still walk away from this hootenanny.”

  Think it through, you big dummy. I can see your hands shake all the way over here.

  Deaf and clueless to his silent urging, Boots straightened his scrawny shoulders and looked dazzled by the prospect. “I can be First Indomitable. Have the whole Mogadon army and the Mogadon fleet and the nukes and the novicide—the whole Empire at my command. Mine! I’ll be the youngest First Indomitable in history.”

  Neptune’s knickers, he’s talking himself into it.

  “Better be sure,” Zorin said softly, his big body tensing to attack.

  The silence was shattered by the soft whomp of an incoming missile. The slam of impact—no farther off than a Mogadon mile—made both of them stagger. A clamor of distant shouts echoed down the hall, thin and scattered under the whooping wail of the battle claxon.

  Boots lowered his blaster in confusion. “What the seven bloody hells—?”

  “That’ll be the sound of Dex’s dad getting the galactic war the old psycho was jonesing for when he kicked the bucket. The sound of the Valyrian fleet attacking this popsicle stand.” Zorin clambered carefully to his feet and swallowed a groan as his side gave a wicked stab of protest. “Since my boys took out the main reactor, the dome’s been down.”

  “The dome’s down? But—we got the whole Valyrian fleet parked just off Parthon!”

  “Yep.” Zorin eased an arm against the oozing gash down his side in a bid to slow the bleeding. He needed a med kit like blazes. “And with the dome down, the Empire doesn’t have squat to deflect those psi-powered weapons away from the city. Intel says the Precursor herself—strongest telepath in the whole damn galaxy—she’s in orbit on the Valyrian flagship. And she’s pretty ticked about that biowar Dex’s dad just unleashed on her whole flipping race.”

  “The Precursor!” Boots gasped, in a tone usually reserved for Swarm cannibals or a spacepox outbreak.

  Zorin tried to stay focused on the convo, but the blood loss was making him woozy. The blinking blaze of the hazard lights and the whooping wail of the battle siren weren’t helping any.

  Dimly he registered the heavy thud of running feet, the welcome sound of Boots losing his head and taking to his heels, clumsy in those titanium-toed clodhoppers of his. A factoid Zorin knew because he had the bruises on his aching ribs and back from those boots to prove it.

  Hearing his footfalls fade, Zorin let the tension ease from his battered body.

  Then he got his head together and staggered over to the guard cubby where his captors kept the med kit and the Mogadon whiskey. Squinting to focus his blurred vision, he slathered on a clotting agent and slapped the glossy square of a polymer bandage over the bloody gash.

  Mars, he was gonna need nanostitches again, wasn’t he? Old Doc Cicero was gonna chew him out bigtime—assuming they even made it to the Relentless like they’d all decided when they threw together this half-assed plan.

  Grimacing, Zorin jabbed an antimicrobial booster into his deltoid.

  Then he schlepped back to the cella, wrestled off Tibs’s black uniform jacket with its double row of steel buttons, and eased his arms into the sleeves. Zorin’s shoulders were too damn big and his chest way too wide for a standard jacket, so the thing gaped open all the way down his front. And he already knew there was no way he was getting his big feet into standard-issue army boots. His own clunky space boots would have to do the trick.

  But maybe if he got lucky, with the reactor down and the Valyrians attacking and this whole humdinger of a planet-wide crisis unfolding around him, he’d pass the once-over test.

  Zorin tossed back a burning slug of Mogadon whiskey—a hit of thirty-curie fortitude that seared his sinuses and shot straight to his head—then made tracks for the rendezvous point. Where his boys and Julius, the cyber samurai behind the downed reactor, would hopefully still be waiting to rearm his sorry ass.

  Cuz he might be out of the slammer, but he still needed to get the heck off Mogadon before the Precursor’s attack mobilized the whole planet into furious retaliation.

  And he needed to be a parsec away in deep space before Dex Draven figured out his dad’s killer was MIA and had eluded the ruthless reckoning of Mogadon justice.

  #

  “Here’s what I want.” Dex Draven fired the staccato barrage of directives at a goggle-eyed prefect as he wrestled the fuel nozzle from the belly of his nuclear-armed Zephyr. “I want four wings of fighters under my command prepared to launch into exospheric orbit ASAP to protect the city. And I want every engineer in the Empire flown hotfoot to the power plant to bring that reactor back online. We need to get that dome up.”

  Around him, the cavernous expanse of the Mogadon capital’s spaceport echoed with the drum of running feet on tarmac, curt voices shouting commands, the rumble of fuel trucks racing to feed Dex’s wing of armed Zephyrs—flown by those men under his direct command he’d managed to mobilize since the first missile strike.

  Beyond the immediate impact of his personal efforts, the claxon’s wavering wail would muster every able-bodied soldier in the city to battle stations.

  And if that prefect he was bossing like an illegal galley slave retained any wits at all amid the exigencies of the current crisis, he’d surely stop to question why newly minted Wing Commander Decimus Draven—who’d only just celebrated his twentieth birthday—was issuing orders that should rightfully be issued only by Second Indomitable Septimus, resident boozing blowhard and commander of the Mogadon civil defense force.

  Or, failing that, by Dex’s father.

  If only Dex’s father weren’t already dead.

  “B-but, Commander—” The youngster flinched as an incoming missile screamed past overhead. “Shouldn’t I, uh—”

  “Good lad.” Dex forestalled the objection by thrusting the fuel hose into the prefect’s unsteady hands and giving his adolescent shoulders a bracing shake. “I knew I could rely on you entirely. Make it happen.”

  Dex focused on unlocking the docking cable that tethered his fighter to the tarmac. But he was heartened to hear the prefect’s booted feet beat a swift tattoo as he raced to carry out Dex’s commands with gratifying alacrity.

  No doubt his formidable father would’ve cuffed the poor kid to instill blind obedience. But Dex had opted early on not to emulate the extremes of his father’s brutal command style.

  Greatly to the old war dog’s displeasure.

  That displeasure had fueled their most bitter battles. Battles exceeded in intensity only by that final, furious, no-pulled-punches blowout the night Third Indomitable Maximus Draven accused his own son of craven cowardice.

  The infamous night his father unleashed his genetically targeted bioweapon against the entire Valyrian race.

  The high-pitched scream of dying thrusters dragged Dex’s narrowed gaze from his preflight checklist to the crimson heavens, where the sleek silver ovule of a Valyrian cruiser spiraled across the sunset sky, the purple pulse of its psi-powered cannons pounding away pointlessly at empty air. A classic indication of his father’s biological novicide—his Valyrensis novicida—eating away at the command crew’s brains.

  The streamlined spacecraft twisted into a death spiral that culminated in a holocaust of heliotrope fire in the Mogadon mountains, etched stark against the bloody sky. Dex’s heart contracted with a wrenching spasm of grief.

  Are you on that ship, Ben Nero? Or on the flagship, the Precursor’s ship, the ship raining megaton warheads of psi-powered death on the southern cities, the ship I’ll have to shoot out of the sky whether you’re aboard or not?

  His boyhood friend. His oathsworn broth
er. His closest ally in the youth ashram, where they’d been packed off in that laughably futile bid to build interracial tolerance.

  Or did my father kill you weeks ago when he unleashed his novicide on the Valyrian homeworld?

  Ben Nero with his psychic gifts and his flamboyant charm and his effortless ability to inspire indulgent affection in everyone he’d ever met. Ben Nero with his violet eyes and his silken hair and his secret smile that promised forbidden favors which Dex, with his emphatically masculine Mogadon DNA, had never known how to ask for.

  Nor even how to name.

  Between his bottled-up anguish over Ben Nero’s unknown fate and his smothered guilt over the grief for his tyrannical father he should have felt but didn’t, Dex’s head was a space wreck.

  He prayed it wouldn’t fatally affect his judgment in battle.

  Firmly banishing the past from the present, Dex slanted his head to fire his next barrage at the comm unit strapped to his wrist.

  “Alpha wing, I want you in the air. Beta, Delta, be ready to launch on my command. Epsilon wing, I want you on standby in the stratosphere playing active defense against any Valyrian vessel that slips past our assault on the flagship. All wings, give me atomic torpedoes in the tubes with safety tethers engaged until we clear the thermosphere.”

  He’d just swung several rungs higher up the chain of command than his current rank merited. But he knew that Beta and Epsilon would follow him, with their own commanders offworld running scout patrols off Parthon. And the wing commander of Delta had always been diplomatically deferential to Max Draven’s favorite son.

  Planting a resolute boot on the Zephyr’s boarding ladder while he assumed his flight helmet, Dex sliced an assessing glance across the tarmac to gauge his wing’s readiness. Good pilots to a man, they’d be in orbit in less than ten ticks.

  He was lowering the helmet over his head when a knot of activity surrounding a Sirocco scout shuttle caught his eye.