The Alien Warrior King's Accountant (Royal Aliens 4)

“You’re not eating,” I note. “Aren’t you hungry?”

“I feast once a month,” he says. “When the hunger comes upon my kind, we consume for a full day and a full night. Then we eat no more until the rising of the following cycle, determined by the moon on our planet of origin.”

“Oh.”

“But you do not have those energy reserves,” he comments.

My energy reserves, as he calls them, are replenishing themselves with the meal. I feel much clearer headed, which enables me to experience the full force of pure awe from just looking at him.

This alien is an astounding creature in every respect. He is built as powerfully as a bull and as artfully as Michelangelo’s David, but his alienhood is a lot larger.

I have to get myself under control. Being attracted to this alien king is a mistake. You're never supposed to fall for the boss. No matter how hot he is. Even if every time he looks at me I feel as if I am being sucked into the core of a nebula, all my inner thoughts and feelings spilling to the outside.

I am sure it is not common practice for kings to feed their accountants. I can see him watching me as I stare out the window, at the vastness of his chambers, everywhere besides directly at him where I might have to meet his gaze.

There’s a loud, vague clanging outside the door, and suddenly we are interrupted by a shiny aide whose flesh is lit with a particularly bright red glow. I am starting to learn that the colors have meanings, even though those meanings may not be what I think they would be.

He’s excited. I see bloodlust in his eyes. I can feel it pumping off him, even at a distance. Tyrant keeps the aide away from me, blocking me from view with his big, broad back.

“What is it? I am consulting with my accountant!”

“Sire! We have a prisoner! We captured him attempting to make entry through the exhaust port.”

The irony is lost on Tyrant, who attempted to make entry through my exhaust port not all that long ago. I refrain from mentioning that out loud, preferring to smile into the remnants of my meal.

“Is he in the interrogation chamber?”

“He is sealed inside the bulkhead, where he chewed his way through with biting mouthparts.”

“An insect class interloper!”

“A Mantid,” the aide agrees. Suddenly, I realize it is not an aide. It is Terrible. Tyrant’s XO, the one who doesn’t want me here, the one who thinks I’m worthless. The closest thing I have to an enemy on this ship. I didn’t recognize him with actual emotion in his voice.

“Can he fly?”

“Yes. He’s fluttered against the lighted parts of the ship more times than I can count. He claims he didn’t know this was our ship. He says…”

“What is it?”

“He says he smelled human.”

“That’s not possible,” King Tyrant declares.

“Mantids have an unerring ability to catch the scent of a human across a galaxy. The concern, sir, is not this single interloper. It is the possibility that a swarm could catch her scent. It would be wise to return her to Earth as soon as possible. The hull cannot tolerate sustained attack from thousands of these creatures. The bulkheads will only hold them off for so long.”

“So I need to kill a bug for my human.”

“That’s… rather an understatement, sire. Again, I would urge you to return the human.”

He would say that. Any reason to get rid of me he’d take, I bet.

“If I return the human, we won’t have one Mantid to worry about, or even a swarm. We’ll face annihilation from DICK — and not the fun kind. I will deal with the prisoner.”

I expect Tyrant to tell me to stay behind, or maybe to take me back to my work. But he doesn’t. He walks out the door, and I am left to trail behind him. In the beginning, I couldn’t move through the walls, but maybe the technology inside me has shifted my biology and I’m able to do it now, because I walk through what once were solid walls as if they were thin veils of nothing at all.

I am getting good at this. I…

“Get up here!”

I am grabbed under the shoulders and pulled upward, away from Tyrant, through the floor and into an upper level of the ship. Terrible has me, and he is glowering at me with a furious stare.

“If you had walked through that last wall, you would have ended up in the same room with the Mantid.”

Oh. Terrible has saved my life, and stopped me from walking straight into a situation which would kill me in multiple ways, because the last veil is the bulkhead itself. Though, looking down, I’m not sure I could have gotten through it. Unlike the other walls which accepted their status as mere suggestions with a happy meekness, the bulkhead seems to be made of thicker stuff. I see Tyrant force his way through it, and it absorbing him like silly putty.