Elemental Warriors: Origins: A SciFi Alien Warrior Romance Page 3

  It made sense, in a fantastical sort of way. No one knew how the elemental warriors got their powers. No one knew why the planets where they lived where so spread out. Most of them didn’t even make sense for where they were. Fora, the planet of ice, for instance, was located in a hot region, and it would have made more sense for fire to be there. But no, it was ice, and it was ice because the ice stone or whatever it was had chosen that planet to rest on.

  “And so this is your plan?” Lemaria asked. “You want to find these stones?”

  Sandigo smiled at her. “Think of it,” he said. “Think of the power. One stone is enough to give hundreds of people the powers of that element, and cover the whole of the planet in ice or fire or what have you. In the hands of one person, the power would be limitless.”

  “And also dangerous. Do you think one person could hold all of that power in themselves?”

  “They wouldn’t have to,” Sandigo said. “It would be held in the stone. The person would just be the conduit for it.”

  “And what of the stones going only to the worthy?” Kaffir wanted to know.

  “Who decides what worth is?” Sandigo fired back. “And anyway, the stones have been stones for thousands and thousands of years. Any sentience they once had is surely gone now.” Kaffir looked unconvinced, but the others were coming around to the plan, he could tell. “Think of it this way,” he said. “How many times have the elemental warriors foiled some plan of yours? How many times have they made a nuisance of themselves in places where they do not belong? This is our chance to take that power from them and take it for ourselves. We will be unstoppable in the universe, and we will rule.”

  And this was one thing that was handy about greedy, ambitious criminals. However much they didn’t want to believe that they were easily manipulated by the greed, they were. Already they were smiling, and Sandigo knew the gleam in their eyes well.

  It was all well and good for them to get caught up in this now. He needed them excited and eager if this was going to work. But in the end, they would be just as powerless as the warriors were going to be. They would end up with nothing, and Sandigo would have the powers of a god.

  Bilshort Baigib was a philosopher in his own mind, and he wrote books about what makes a criminal. In most prisons on planets across the solar system, prisoners were required to read it, so that they might better understand the consequences of their actions and where they had gone wrong in life.

  Sandigo, for all he was a very good criminal, had never been to prison before, but he had read the book.

  According to Breaking the Law Within (translated into seventy three different languages galaxy wide), criminals were made and not born. No one was born with the desire for bad deeds, they were just tempted into them by hard living and bad influences.

  It was hard to say where Sandigo fit into that continuum.

  He hadn’t lived a hard life at all, being raised in the lap of luxury for his entire childhood and then continuing to enjoy it as he became an adult. He didn’t think he had bad influences in his life, unless one counted his parents who had been rich and distant and useless for the entire time he’d been growing up.

  They were the type who showed their love with things instead of gestures, and they’d treated Sandigo like he was nothing more than an inconvenience whenever he tried to get them to spend time with him.

  Honestly, was it any wonder he’d killed them?

  Not himself, of course. Sandigo hated getting his hands dirty more than anything. All the crimes (of which there were many) that had been committed in his name, at his order, were impossible to trace back to him.

  The fact of the matter was that Sandigo sometimes wondered if he’d been born for this. He had a flair for it, no one could deny that. And whatever mistakes he’d made had come from youth and inexperience, not stupidity. He’d done his best to shake that as soon as possible, and now he had a veritable empire around him.

  And it wasn’t enough.

  He deserved more, didn’t he? People lived their lives, they got old and died, and one day they would be forgotten. And didn’t he deserve better than to have the same fate as everyone else? He was meant to be a god. Meant to hold all the powers of the world in his hands and control them at his whim. Sandigo was born for that. Whatever power his parents had commanded, the money, the things that kept them too busy to take care of him, that was nothing compared to what he could have. What he deserved.

  He was a man with vision and talent. A man who refused to listen when someone told him he couldn’t do something. He’d always known that there was power out there in the universe, hadn’t he? He’d been unable to sleep at night, dreaming of it. Wanting to hold it in his hands and bend it to his will. It had just been hard to put a name to it, to figure out what it was that he needed to find.

  But now he knew. Now he knew what he was looking for, and he had a plan. All he had to do was get the imbeciles in order so they could do some of this work for him. That was paramount. No one needed to know that he was behind this, and if somehow the plan fell through, it would be the proxies who took the blame, leaving him safe to keep scheming. That was paramount.

  “My lord?”

  Sandigo looked up. Shae strode into his room with Corinth in tow, and he found a smile for the pair of them.

  “My lovelies,” he said, inclining his head in acknowledgement. “What brings you to me?”

  Shae’s look turned dark. She was a fierce little thing, barely came up to his shoulder, but she was all wiry muscles and intimidation tactics. She had a reptilian look about her, but had never known her family, so no one could say where she was from. Her eyes burned red when she was happy, and then bled black when she was angry. It was fascinating to watch her move, watch her kill men twice or three times her size at his command.

  He’d saved her and her twin brother from a fighting ring when they were just teenagers. Some moron with no vision had kept them chained up, used them to fight others with an aptitude for it so that he could make money off of them. Sandigo had seen them and known they deserved better. Their talents could be much better used than being kept shackled in a dirty building on a backwater planet. And so he had saved them and brought them to work for him. It was gratifying to see that the two of them had gone from dirty children to the accomplished fighters he kept at his sides.

  “Caldo was giving Corinth a hard time,” Shae said, shaking Sandigo from his memories.

  His eyes narrowed. “In what way?”

  Shae gestured to Corinth as if to say ‘Well look at her’, and so Sandigo did. She was lovely as always. Hard to believe the stunning woman standing before him was the same urchin he’d pulled out of a gutter all those years ago. She had clearly just come from working, dressed as she was in a nearly sheer dress that skimmed over her curves appealingly and left shoulder and an expanse of her bosom bare. The pale pink color was truly lovely against her dusky skin, and Sandigo smiled.

  “It’s not my fault,” Corinth said sharply. “And I could have handled him fine.”

  “Not your job,” Shae said, sounding tired.

  Sandigo held up his hands. “She’s right, Corinth,” he said. “It is Shae’s job to handle when violence is necessary and yours is to handle when information needs to be obtained. You have done your job admirably, so allow Shae to do hers.”

  Corinth sighed and folded her arms. “Very well, my lord. Shae’s here because she assumed I needed an escort through the Manor. I’m here because I wanted to see if there was anything more I could do to help you.”

  His gaze softened as he gazed upon them. Truly, it was like a breath of fresh air after having to deal with Caldo and Lemaria and the rest. These were his true followers, and once he had the powers of a god, he was going to make sure they got everything they deserved.

  “Thank you,” he said. “But you have done well and enough for me right now. The rest will be handled by those who will be facing the most danger. And those who I have the least amount of faith
in. But the plan is coming together, and I would like for the pair of you to be with me when I tell them what will be happening. And Sho, of course,” he said, nodding to Shae. “It’s going to happen, my lovelies. I will have the power that I seek, and once I do, you will all be rewarded.”

  Corinth smiled at him and bowed at the waist. “No one deserves it more than you, my lord,” she said, and Shae murmured her agreement.

  Sometimes Sandigo wondered if he should write a book of his own. Breaking the Law Within might have been the book that everyone turned to when they wanted to know something about how the common criminal worked, but that was but a small drop in the ocean of how things could be.

  He knew better than anyone that there were many, many ways to be bad, and very few ways to be good at it.

  Sandigo prided himself on being very, very good at it.

  Phase Four:

  Outskirts of Hanam Haven (The Boundary of the Wind)

  Caden considered himself to be good at his job. He was a warrior, but the days of all out battle were over for the most part. He was a Joutlen, and no one wanted to come after his people anymore, so they dedicated themselves to taking care of the others around them. There was always some criminal or mercenary who thought they were good enough to wipe an entire race out of existence without even thinking about it, and his kind like to stop them before they got very far.

  It was a thankless job sometimes. Many of the races were bitter about needing help, and they liked to pretend like they could do it all on their own. Like they had never needed the warriors to step in in the first place.

  But people like Caden knew better, and there was a thrill that came with being able to help them. There was also the thrill that came with finding someone who was truly appreciative of his help. Like the woman who was currently clinging to him.

  “Calm down,” Caden said, voice soft as he brushed fingers through her hair. Another Abalessi, which was honestly a very large coincidence because it was so rare to see them so often, especially if one wasn’t in a pleasure house.

  This one was different from Corinth in nearly every way possible. Where Corinth had been lithe and dark, this woman was pale and had thicker curves. Her face was streaked with tears, and she had her fingers clenched tightly in the sleeve of Caden’s tunic. Her eyes were fearful, and Caden tried his best to soothe her so he could take her statement.

  “I can’t,” she said, and her accent sounded like it came from one of the borderland planets near the asteroid belt, unless he was much mistaken. “You didn’t see them! Great horrible things they were.”

  “What were they?” Caden asked. “Can you tell me what you saw?” He kept stroking her hair, and she leaned in even closer to him, her breath tremulous and warm against the skin of his shoulder.

  “I...I can try,” she said. “I’m from Glifton-Three.”

  Caden nodded. He was familiar with it, certainly. It was one of the five planets that were on the boundary of the Elemental Planet of wind. The wind elemental warriors and those that depended on them for protection considered the people of the Glifton-Five to be their allies. They protected each other and the five planets served as watchtowers to let the wind warriors know when danger was coming.

  Judging from the smoking wreck that Caden had pulled this woman out of, he was guessing there had been plenty of danger.

  “We were...we were taking our shifts at the towers,” she continued. “I was with my mentor, Ipsen, and we were standing on the tower wall, watching. And then...and then…” She shook her head and seemed to gather herself together, leaning back to meet his eyes. “Creatures came.”

  It was hardly specific, and Caden frowned. “What do you mean, creatures? What kind of creatures?”

  She let out a shaky breath. “They weren’t alive, I don’t think. They...they seemed like they were made from mud and metal. We had some of the Gutters with us, and they couldn’t do anything to stop them.”

  Caden’s eyes widened. The Gutters were a special force within the Wind warriors. They were advanced in their craft, and instead of just being able to control the flow of the wind and bend it to their wills, they could go a step further to control all air, even the air that someone was breathing. They could cut a person off, suffocate them, or overload them with so much air that they passed out. As such, they were only called in for extreme situations. If the Gutters hadn’t been able to keep the creatures at bay, then it stood to reason that they weren’t alive and that they had a real problem.

  Caden made himself focus. “Can you describe the creatures to me?” he asked, leaning over to flip a switch that would record what she was saying.

  “Y-yes,” she said, nodding. “At first we couldn’t tell what they were. They were so far away, but when they walked, the ground shook. There were a lot of them. At least twenty. But no one thought they were going to be such a threat. Our warriors went out to meet them, and the Gutters stayed behind because it didn’t...it didn’t seem like it was going to be a problem. But it was. Our warriors were cut down so easily, and the creatures got closer. They were huge, nine or ten feet tall at least, it was like...like their bones, their skeletons were made of metal, and the rest was done in mud or clay. It was a dark red color, whatever it was, and they were invulnerable to our weapons. Blaster bolts went right through them, and they barely even stopped. We got one to crumble, but it took ages, and by the time that one was down, the others were at our gates. The Gutters went forward to stop them, and they were cut down, too.”

  The tears were flowing down her face again, and Caden pulled her back to his chest, patting her head soothingly. She was shaking in his arms, and it was clear that what had happened had scared her badly.

  He didn’t blame her. Seeing Gutters, who were supposed to be the best of the best, cut down… That had to leave an impression. Her story made sense with what they had seen when they’d realized there was a disturbance, but that opened up a more troubling line of questioning.

  “If your warriors failed, and the Gutters failed, then where were the creatures when we got there?” All they’d found were terrified people, injured people, dead people, and the wreckage of the city. No giant mud monsters to be seen anywhere.

  The woman’s eyes widened nearly comically, and she shook her head. “I don’t know. I passed out when the tower fell, and I didn’t see them.”

  “You stay here,” Caden said, putting her in his chair and wrapping a blanket around her. “If anyone tries to get you to leave, tell them Captain Caden says you’re to stay put.”

  She nodded, pulling the blanket up over her head. “Where will I go?” she asked, and he could only assume that back to her home wasn’t an option.

  “I’ll figure something out,” he told her and smiled before he went to go question the others that they had brought in.

  Two hours later, and two things were beyond clear. No one knew where those things had gone, and no one knew where they had come from. No one had ever heard of such a creature before, and while the tech and research team were doing all they could to look up information to see if there was any way to trace the monsters to a source, so far it wasn’t looking good. Which was honestly just absurd.

  They had to have come from somewhere! Giant mud monster things didn’t just appear out of thin air. And furthermore, unless the creator was somewhere on Glifton-Three then they would have had to be shipped to the planet on a vessel of some kind. And yet no one seemed to know anything about it.

  Either someone was lying, and he didn’t think any of the poor, injured, terrified people would do that, or whoever knew anything was long gone.

  The more likely story here.

  Caden sighed and rubbed his forehead, tired.

  “You should go home, Captain,” a smooth female voice said, and he glanced over to see Commander Duelva standing there, watching him. “You’ve done good work tonight.”

  “Thank you, Commander,” he said, giving her a tired salute. She was beautiful, honestly, tall and sturdy wit
h falls of white hair that she usually kept braided and coiled at the nape of her neck. Her skin was lavender and she had four eyes that Caden knew from experience glowed silver when she was in a mood. It was odd that they weren’t glowing now, since he knew how much it annoyed her to not know what was going on during an investigation. “Unfortunately,” he continued. “Not good enough. We still have no idea what happened here.”

  She shook her head. “Not true. You know exactly what happened here. What we are missing are the whys and the whos. Which are frustrating things to be missing, yes, but it is hardly as if you haven’t found out plenty already.”

  Her praise usually cheered him up, but now he had a pit in his stomach. Caden prided himself on his intuition. He wasn’t so good when it came to flat out smarts, but he had good hunches and usually managed to put himself at the right places at the right times based on how a situation felt. And this situation felt...weird.

  “Can I say something, Commander?” he asked, eyes anxious.

  Duelva frowned, but then nodded. “Of course.”

  “This doesn’t feel right.” The words practically burst out of him.

  “In what way? Is there ever a right way for a crime to feel?”

  Her tone wasn’t derisive or judgmental, so Caden kept talking. “Not to sound callous, but yes. I don’t know if I can explain it properly, but… Sometimes you get to a scene, and you just know, right? There’s a motive and witnesses, and you can piece together what’s happened there even if you’re missing information. But now we’re missing so much information that there’s no way to tell what’s happening here. Who’s being targeted? Who’s behind it? What kind of power can control these monsters they’re all talking about? There aren’t any clues, and aside from the monsters themselves, no one saw anything that could help us.”