Worlds Collide Read online

  Worlds Collide

  By Tracy St. John

  Engineer Velia Farrah always wanted to see an alien up close. Now that she’s assigned to study the top secret portal linking Earth to other worlds, she’ll get her chance. But when a fierce, gold-skinned alien from Risnar leaps from the portal and whisks her back to his home planet, “up close” takes on a whole new meaning.

  Believing Earthlings had killed his fellow warriors, Jape Bolep is determined to destroy Earth’s access to Risnar once and for all. Grabbing a curvy handful of a human wasn’t part of the plan, but he has no intention of letting her distract him from his need for vengeance—no matter how much he aches to make her his.

  Both are ready to do battle over right and wrong and good and evil, and their combustible relationship burns hotter than the sun’s surface. But distrust and treachery from all sides leave Velia and Jape in a fight against their own people to keep each other alive—and to ultimately save both Earth and Risnar from total destruction.

  One-click with confidence. This title is part of the Carina Press Romance Promise: all the romance you’re looking for with an HEA/HFN. It’s a promise!

  This book is approximately 90,000 words

  Carina Press acknowledges the editorial services of Alissa Davis

  Dedication

  To Felicia, with so much thanks for everything you do.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Tracy St. John

  Chapter One

  Pandemonium. Screams. Blood.

  Jape Ihucas Bolep snarled as ovals of golden flames bloomed around him and those who had gathered in the portal chamber. Drones stepped out, already firing scatter-shot at them, cutting men down at point-blank range.

  Anneliese, black hair flying, dove for the lone Risnarish woman in the room. She yanked the taller Salno to the floor.

  Jape saw it all in horrendous slow motion. The stippling of blood on Salno’s light yellow skin, blatant against her white stripes. Efno, crawling on four legs toward them, bleeding as well.

  And then a second collection pod emerged from the seething portal. Its hatch opened, spilling more Monsudan drones, an endless tide of the small but deadly creations. Cutting off more of Jape’s warriors. Killing them.

  The room was a vast chamber, but it felt tight, cramped as drones continued to arrive. The overbright oily smell was joined by the scent of things burning. Jape fought to breathe against the reek that tightened his chest, his twin hearts hammering.

  He screamed at the rest, “Incoming! Nex, Lan, get over here. Everyone, gather with us! Regroup!”

  Even as he shouted, a drone nimbly raced forward and shoved his boomerang-shaped weapon’s barrel against Lan’s chest. Jape’s second-in-command jerked, firing at his attacker. Too late.

  Brown-and-green armored flesh shredded from Lan’s torso, blown apart by concentrated scatter-shot. His eyes were already glazed as he crumpled to the floor.

  “Lan! No!”

  Jape’s shriek rang over the shouts and cries and sounds of shooting. But Lan could not be called back. His best friend, his second, his warrior brother—gone. In a great gout of blood and flesh, gone.

  Gone.

  One by one, they fell, the friends he’d worked with, lived with, laughed with. Duhon. Serek. Mun. They collapsed, dead or dying. Men he’d known all his life. In a shattering tide of blood, they were killed before him.

  Others were cut off, impossible to get to through the swelling tide of drones. In the thick of it, Nex’s desperate roar rose above the other shouts. “Leave me, Jape! Salno! Efno! Grab Anneliese and get out of here! Go before it’s too late!”

  But it was already too late. Jape’s warriors were dead. The fighters he’d been responsible for, the men who counted on his leadership. He’d failed them. He hadn’t realized the drones could get past the containment fields, that they could short-range ’port inside. And the pod in the portal...

  He stared at the pod that shouldn’t have been there, that had no business being there. It had finished belching out drones, but two figures remained in the vessel. Two faces peered out, faces that were not striped, that were not Risnarish.

  Earthlings. Exactly as he’d been warned. Earthlings working with the Monsuda.

  And all around him, his men caught in capture fields or dying or dead.

  “No. No!” The denial blasted from Jape’s lungs, even as Lan and the rest stared at him with blank eyes that somehow managed to accuse.

  * * *

  “No!” Jape shot out of his bed, his striped body soaked with sweat. He stared wildly around him, searching for drones, for treacherous Earthlings. It took several horrific seconds before he recognized his own bedroom, lit blue by the gas giant Cadi hanging in the heavens stretched over Risnar.

  When he did realize he was in his dome, that the fight had been months ago, that he’d led the charge to recover Nex and others, that Anneliese and Salno had lived, that Cas hive was still under his control, Jape’s hearts slowed their frantic pace, yet the hurt did not fade. It clutched Jape’s insides, a tight fist of twisting agony.

  It was not a mere nightmare. It had happened. It could happen again, and Jape was no more prepared for it than he had been the first time.

  As he had so many nights before, he sat down on his bed again. He bowed his head into his hands and let the grief and anger take him. His shoulders shook violently as he gave in to the loss of friends.

  And more. He’d lost so much more.

  Chapter Two

  The Great Basin Desert was about to have its climate temporarily rebuffed by a swift-moving storm. The air had turned electric, literally. Lightning flashed beneath the boiling slate clouds, sizzling the air in accompaniment with the ominous growls of thunder.

  Velia Farrah rode ahead of the encroaching storm, her sandrail’s engine buzzing the tune of an overeager blender. She sat exposed in the open cab of what the uninitiated would call a dune buggy. Her jacket whipped in the competing winds of her passage and the storm-driven currents. She wore a helmet and long khaki pants with the windbreaker, protecting her skin from the biting grains of sand that flew like gnat pellets to pepper whatever flesh it could find. Covered as she was, she could feel the charged air. She felt it in her bones.

  She bounced over the dunes, sighting on the harder-packed terrain ahead that signaled the end of her day off in the desert. A mile later, the fenced military installation came into view.

  Camp Noname in the Middle of Nowhere, they’d dubbed it, having fun with a base so secret it hadn’t been granted a moniker. How the Pentagon or military referred to it in official documents, Velia couldn’t have guessed.

  She hit the hard pack area of sand, and the sandr
ail’s fat tires dug into it, sending a gritty mist in its wake. Velia arrowed for the installation, with its metal fences topped with razor wire, with soldiers from the Army patrolling its perimeter. Three of the armed forces of the United States were represented at Noname, but the Air Force was in command, under the rule of Brigadier General Andrew Thomas.

  The base was a vast, sprawling network of buildings and hangars. Until a few weeks earlier, Velia’s gaze had always turned to Hangar 13 as she returned from her desert jaunts. It was imposing, a structure massive enough to accommodate four Airbus A380s. It housed something much more impressive, the second-most incredible object she’d ever seen.

  The higher-ups called it the ship, as nameless as the military installation that hid it. The engineers who continued to construct it had given it another name: Devastate, Intimidate, Eliminate. Or more succinctly, DIE.

  And I helped build it to the point where it is now. If Father could only see. He’d be proud. He’d have no choice but to tell me I’d done a good job.

  Pride, mixed with the old feeling that she must have dreamed the last two years, was quickly cast off today. Velia dismissed the hangar and what it hid with an almost insulting mental shove, as if it hadn’t been her life since graduating from college.

  This time, her gaze riveted on the unimpressive building next to Hangar 13. They called it the shack, another low-key term for a place determined to be a secret.

  So blocky and utilitarian as to resemble an unimaginative child’s model of a building, the shack was nearly invisible in Hangar 13’s shadow. That was no surprise, given most of the structure resided underground. Deep in its recesses hid the most incredible object Velia had ever seen.

  Velia judged the storm was less than five minutes from breaking over Camp Noname when she pulled up to the outer gate. The soldier checking credentials was somewhere in his thirties, a likable Army grunt named Stoddard. Velia handed him her passkey, a red card that could have been mistaken at first glance for a credit card.

  “Got in barely in time,” he said, raising his voice over the rail’s idling putter. A crack of thunder answered his observation. “How was the sand?”

  “Outstanding,” Velia called as he moved off to slide her card into the reader that would open the automatic gate. “Too bad they never let you guys leave the perimeter during your posting here. I would have given you the grand tour.”

  Stoddard returned as the gate began to whine open. “Yeah, this station is the most boring I’ve dealt with to date. I’ll be glad to make it to the end of the month, when I head out of here.”

  “Already?” It seemed to Velia that he’d just shown up for his six-month stint. She’d been working up the nerve to ask him to have coffee with her. Anything more would have been off-limits. Hell, even a java jolt with someone outside the Project would give pause. But Velia had connections. She could have gotten away with a coffee date.

  “Going to miss me?” A corner of Stoddard’s mouth lifted, making the corners of his eyes crinkle pleasantly.

  “You’ve committed a grave crime at this facility. You own an actual personality.”

  He chuckled. “Yeah, pretty stiff around here. I’m headed to Fort Benning. If you escape your work in Thomas’s Bunker, look me up.”

  As he spoke, his glance swung toward the hangar, looming high above the other buildings even at the distance of over a mile. Stoddard’s eyes narrowed, and he looked at Velia, curiosity burning.

  She kept her smile pleasant, though she knew what was coming. He was about to give in and voice the questions they always had to ask.

  What is going on at this place? What is in Hangar 13? What’s in the red section?

  Stoddard was smarter than the average guy. His shoulders lifted in a small shrug, he handed her passkey back. Velia’s stomach loosened. Yeah, a cup of coffee with the man would have been nice. Too bad everyone had to be kept at a distance at Noname.

  “Fort Benning. If I get the chance, I’ll give you a yell.”

  “You do that.” He waved her through. “Have a good one, Ms. Farrah.”

  “You too. Stay dry!”

  The rail buzzed down the site’s roads, heading for the motor pool where Velia had permission to park it. She chased off dreams of coffee and quiet conversation with an attractive guy. Instead, she thought how deceptively simple it seemed to access a base with the kind of secret projects Noname had going on. It was easy to forget that thirty miles away, the latest in detection devices surrounded the installation. Fifteen miles out from that, a twenty-foot high lethally electrified fence ran a circle to enclose it all. Another ten miles beyond, armed patrols ringed the lot. They had orders to shoot to kill, no warnings given.

  As if all that wasn’t enough, Air Force pilots patrolled the skies above, calling in anything that moved. A magnetic field had been generated over a one-hundred-mile radius, confusing the typical GPS system. A basic compass worked only in certain spots around the area. True to Noname’s full moniker, it rendered the place nowhere to the average person. Besides her compass, Velia had come to rely on landmarks, constellations, and a map marked with latitudes and longitudes to explore the desert.

  There was little fear that unauthorized personnel would find their way to Camp Noname. Nothing came in without permission. Nothing went out without permission. From what Velia could tell, the soldiers and airmen that showed up and left every six months kept the installation secret. She wondered if they’d do so well keeping their mouths shut if they got a peek inside Hangar 13 or at what hid beneath that barely noticeable building beside it.

  As Velia pulled into the vast garage filled with assorted vehicles, the heavens opened up and dumped rarely seen moisture on the base.

  Velia rumbled into the spot in the rear corner of the garage. She climbed out and tugged the helmet from her head. Her walnut-brown hair fell about her shoulders in waves, curled from being tucked in a knot against the back of her head. She combed her fingers through the thick mass, loosening the worst tangles with her fingers. She sighed wistfully at the sight of the fat curves of hair laying over the swell of her breast. Even if Velia didn’t shower, her mane would be straight as a board within an hour. No product or hairspray could convince the stubborn Farrah locks to hold a hint of a curl for any length of time.

  Before leaving the garage, she topped off the sandrail’s tank, wiped down the motor, checked the chassis, and made sure it would be ready to go the next occasion she managed to grab a day off. As much as she loved tearing over the dunes, Velia half-hoped she wouldn’t be taking the rail out again soon. Her work had taken a dramatic turn for the incredible.

  A network of underground tunnels ran beneath the site, so Velia didn’t have to plod through the storm outside, which had descended with ferocity. Instead, she went to the elevator and rode it down the one level it took to reach the tunnels. As she did so, she ran her thumb over the passkey in her jacket pocket.

  I have to see it again. Why not? My clearance is all-access now. My golden ticket to the universe.

  When the elevator opened into the endless, underground, gray-walled corridor, Velia stepped out. Until a few weeks ago, she’d begun to regard the smooth, featureless walls enclosing her as depressing. The gray surface of the walls and ceiling was dull and seamless. It truly was a tunnel, with a textured flat floor beneath her ankle-booted feet. Otherwise it was a perfect circle. Smooth as glass, almost as if the bedrock had been melted rather than bored. It had a sheen that on first glance, made it look metallic. The panels of overhead lights left no shadows, rendering the view as two-dimensional as a photograph.

  As she walked down the corridor, occasionally interrupted by other equally featureless corridors and closed doors that led to offices, living spaces, and the like, Velia thought of how recently she’d equated the underground tunnels to her existence. Cold. Secretive. Isolated. Even working on the astounding DIE in Hangar 13 had lost some of
its luster for Velia.

  Life was full of color and sparkle once more. I have the key. The golden ticket to the universe.

  It was a substantial hike from the garage to the top-secret section of Camp Noname, or Thomas’s Bunker, as the wags called it. The red section, at the end of the mile-long tunnel, was its official designation. The journey passed in a blur, a distance that floated by faster the closer she got to her goal. The main corridor had little traffic at the hour, with most personnel in the mess hall in the green section above ground. Velia nodded at the few people she passed, mostly enlisted men. She smiled too broadly for those whom she didn’t know, and probably looked idiotic, beaming the way she did. She didn’t care.

  Familiar faces awaited at the entrance to the red section. Velia didn’t note the dire warnings posted on ominous black-and-red placards on either side of the guarded double doors. They promised dreadful consequences for unauthorized personnel who dared try enter, that deadly force might be used against interlopers. They did not apply to her, a member of the Project.

  She nodded to the Marines stationed outside the access, her passkey already out, though the pair knew her by sight. These soldiers didn’t swap out every six months. They were at Noname for the duration, men and women loyal to their military, their government, their country to the end, whether it be bitter or sweet. It was an attitude Velia identified with, a viewpoint she been born and bred to. For them, she toned down the giddy expression she wore and nodded in respect as she held her golden ticket to the sensor embedded in the panel by the entrance.

  “Good evening, Drake, Parsons.” Nobody had first names in the restricted section.

  Only when the door beeped and clicked, indicating the lock had been released, did they return her greeting. Allowed by virtue of her passkey to live, Velia entered.

  The seemingly infinite corridor ended twenty feet beyond the access. At that point, it split in a T intersection. To the left, past two more Marines, was the underground access to Hangar 13. To the right...

  Velia’s heart pounded fast as she went down the last of the corridor, veering toward that side. She offered the guards on the left a little wave when they came into view but didn’t pause to note whether or not they acknowledged her. Her attention diverted to the doorway on her right instead, to the Marines flanking that entrance.