Chapter 9
Talyn
I’d delayed leaving my quarters this morning for as long as I could. I’d looked at her sleeping form longingly several times. The beauty of her eyelashes spanning across her pinked cheeks were mesmerizing and I found myself just wanting to stay and enjoy the sight of her resting so peacefully.
I found myself oddly attached to her and I didn’t quite understand it.
I was hoping that the mission out into the streets of New York would distract me from such strange feelings.
I’d always been extremely dedicated to my work.
It was why I’d risen to the rank of commander at such a young age.
It was what I was designed for, and I did it very well.
When I finally forced myself to walk out that door, those feelings didn’t fade like I expected them to.
With every step, I began to miss her and that only escalated the further I walked away from her.
With a sigh, I tried to ignore it, but it was there at the back of my mind even when I approached my men.
They were all waiting for me in the air dock. After a quick briefing from my second, I took the opportunity to address them.
“Today, we’re on a reconnaissance mission.
I want to figure out what the source of these anomalies is, first and foremost. Your orders are not to engage, at least not today.
Bring me back reliable information and I will decide what our next moves are after we return.
On the off chance that this is a human group, I want to know everything about them before we crush them like the cockroaches they are,” I began.
My men chuckled. They enjoyed being the superior species in many ways, as did I.
Especially when it came to conquering my little female, who was probably still sleeping in my bed.
“Now, my men, go get me some answers,” I demanded, and they roared with excitement.
I broke off first and climbed into my airship.
Lieutenant Kathar boarded with me. The doors slid closed behind him and he sat beside me as I typed in the flight codes to our destination.
Once the dock opened, the ship lifted into the air and sailed off at top speed.
“You looked well rested, Commander Talyn. Did you enjoy your few days off?” he asked pointedly. He was curious. I could tell.
“I did,” I answered, keeping my expression neutral for no other reason than to remind him that I was the authority and he answered to me.
“Your human is quite pleasing to the eyes,” he added and a stab of something that felt like jealousy jolted through me. I took a second to push that away before I answered him. It was unlike us to place too much thought into a human like I was doing.
To say it was highly unusual would be an understatement.
I wasn’t quite certain how any of my brethren would respond if I told them that I couldn’t get my mind off my human female, that she felt like something more to me than just a possession or a warm sheath for my cocks.
She was so much more than that.
Kathar cleared his throat and that prick of jealousy returned. I almost wanted to gouge his eyes out for even looking at her, let alone commenting on her appearance to me.
I didn’t do any of those things though. Instead, I behaved just how he would expect his commanding general to.
“That she is, my friend. Insatiable little thing too,” I declared, and he grinned.
“You deserve it, Commander,” he replied. “You know, I’ve never used a human girl before. I’ve only indulged in the virtual variety. Tell me, how does it compare?”
“I very much prefer flesh and blood,” I answered carefully. The vision of Raiza’s naked little bottom flashed before my eyes and I shook my head, needing to focus on the mission at hand rather than the fantasy of filling her tight little holes with every last inch of me.
Like I was going to do tonight.
“Well, maybe if I find a pretty one like yours one day, I’ll try it out myself,” he replied.
Thankfully, he didn’t suggest trying out mine because I probably would have knocked him out.
We flew over the city of Zenarkin and left its limits in no time at all. We sailed over the treetops toward the old, abandoned New York.
It looked quiet down below.
In the days following the raid on what remained of the renegades that Raiza originated from, I’d received no reports of any attacks on the fringes of my territory. No stolen supplies, none of my men killed, nothing.
Now I could focus on expanding my borders even further.
I searched the ground below for any evidence of a recent human occupation. I didn’t see anything noteworthy, so I stopped looking and decided to spend my time digging through the reports about this electronic signature in a place where there shouldn’t be one.
I was aware that there was a significant underground system beneath the streets of the once populous city.
There hadn’t been anything of interest to me before about it initially, but I imagined we might be able to utilize the existing structure to develop more research labs and incubation chambers with the purposes of expanding the population.
Zenarkin had been established and built before I took the helm. Building a whole new city from the ground up would add that much more to my legacy.
All that was left would be to stamp out what remained of the human resistance there.
There were pockets of them all throughout the abandoned buildings.
They hid as best they could, and I hadn’t yet thrown the full power of my army at them with the intent to conquer them all.
To be honest, if they hadn’t been particularly bothersome, I would have just let them be.
That was going to change starting today.
I put a call back into base.
“I want every observation drone we have assigned to New York. I want to know where the human heat signatures are. I want to know where they are hiding. All of them.”
“Yes, Commander,” Naxyn replied. “Consider it done.”
The city came into my sights and my airship began its descent. Within minutes, we were on the ground. The sun was high overhead.
It was going to be a good day.
I stepped forward, the crunch of crumbling pavement beneath my feet.
Kathar followed as we closed in on the location of one of the anomalies.
At first, I didn’t see anything at all on a cursory look.
There were several broken-down buildings to my right, as well as a number that were partially collapsed on my left.
I surveyed the area and found nothing, turning back toward the structures to my right.
There was nothing that indicated that the source was underground. It should be somewhere visible.
The dilapidated buildings looked sturdy enough to climb up a few floors.
After a more thorough study, there was one that appeared to be the most likely option above all the rest. As I moved closer to it, I noticed a hand-drawn picture tacked onto the wall with dried mud.
It was a face and when I drew near enough to make it out, I started at the realization that it looked deceptively like my Raiza.
The top of the paper was labeled with the word ‘Traitor.’
There was a brief description beneath the drawing, mainly detailing her betrayal to humankind by lying with an alien. It blamed her for the slaughter of her people, giving no indication it was by my order and not hers.
I ripped it down.
It annoyed me that the humans would label her like that. No one branded my pet a traitor. She had no choice about where, who, and when I’d decided to attack. I wouldn’t stand for it.
I looked around for any others quickly. Thankfully, I didn’t see any more or I would have ripped them all down.
“Do you think it might be up there, Commander?” Kathar asked. He only glanced at the ripped paper as I crumpled it in my hand.
I squinted up at the rusted metal walls. There were a few exposed steel beams, which were probably one of the only reasons that the building was still standing.
“I think so. Let’s climb up and see what we find,” I replied.
He gave a quick nod and jumped up high enough to test his weight on one of the beams. The whole building creaked a little in protest, but it remained standing, which I thought was a good sign. He pulled himself up onto a nearby ledge before looking around.
I joined him. He didn’t offer his hand because he knew I wouldn’t take it. I went up by myself.
There wasn’t anything on the second floor or even the third. We made it all the way to the sixth floor before we started finding what looked to be a thick wire running along the floor. It was newer than the rest of the building.
We followed it until we approached a room without a roof. It was open to the elements and the floor was covered in solar panels. I turned around and followed the wire in the other direction, finding a battery at the other end.
“There’s a human settlement close by somewhere,” I mused. “There’s no other explanation.”
Overhead, a drone buzzed by. By now, the scanning and mapping of the city would be underway. It would give us plenty of data to work with until I decided our next course of action.
“I want someone posted outside this building. The humans will come back for their power source eventually and I want to know where they take it,” I said.
“Consider it done, Commander,” Kathar replied.
We climbed down, disturbing as little as possible in the process.
We covered up our tracks as well so that no one would be the wiser when they returned to check on the solar panels.
I was quite surprised at the ingenuity behind the whole operation.
They’d ensured that it was hidden in a place that we’d be unlikely to search.
I wasn’t certain where they’d have obtained so many undamaged panels.
Maybe they’d found an old factory or had figured out some way to produce them all on their own.
We spent some more time searching the immediate area, finding nothing more of value. I spotted one more poster that had Raiza’s face on it, making sure to destroy it as I done with the last one.
When the sun started to dip on the horizon, I decided it was time to leave. I’d made my human a promise and I fully intended to keep it.
“Come on. Let’s go. I want everyone to regroup so that we can find out if our human problem is more widespread than we thought,” I explained.
In the back of my mind though, I was thinking more of the naked female waiting in my bed. I spent the entire ride back thinking about her.
I missed her too.
* * *
Upon my return, I spent several hours going over the data my men had collected in the command room.
By the time we were done going through it, it was very apparent that there were several places where the humans had hidden solar panels to generate power.
Most of them were stored in abandoned buildings, some on rooftops in places that weren’t visible from the ground or from above unless one of my drones was right on top of it.
I started studying the heat maps generated next. There were lots of small groups of humans that continued to survive on their own, but I didn’t think any of them would be large enough to facilitate something like this.
The next option would be to search underground, but I wanted to know more about the kind of numbers I might be dealing with before I decided on the best manner of attack.
Whoever these people were, I was going to conquer them. It was only a matter of time before they all learned that they answered to me and that their freedom thus far had simply been a privilege that I had granted them.
With that in mind, I set off to return to my human.
She had a fucking coming and I was going to give it to her.