Alien Conquest Read online

  ALIEN CON­QUEST

  Clans Of Kalquor Book 3

  By

  Tracy St. John

  © copy­right March 2011, Tracy St. John

  Cover art by Erin Dameron-Hill, © copy­right March 2014

  This is a work of fic­tion. All char­ac­ters, events, and places are of the au­thor’s imag­i­na­tion and not to be con­fused with fact. Any re­sem­blance to liv­ing per­sons or events is merely co­in­ci­dence.

  Kin­dle Edi­tion

  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 Ama­zon.com and pur­chase your own copy. Thank you for re­spect­ing the hard work of this au­thor.

  To Cara, who al­ways makes me laugh even when I don’t feel like it.

  Ta­ble Of Con­tents

  Pro­logue

  Chap­ter 1

  Chap­ter 2

  Chap­ter 3

  Chap­ter 4

  Chap­ter 5

  Chap­ter 6

  Chap­ter 7

  Chap­ter 8

  Chap­ter 9

  Chap­ter 10

  Chap­ter 11

  Chap­ter 12

  Chap­ter 13

  Chap­ter 14

  Chap­ter 15

  Chap­ter 16

  Chap­ter 17

  Chap­ter 18

  Chap­ter 19

  Pro­logue

  The Kalquo­rian Em­pire was and still is a civ­i­liza­tion of great im­por­tance to the Ga­lac­tic Coun­cil of Plan­ets. The fierce but in­tel­li­gent species has been at the fore­front of tech­no­log­i­cal, med­i­cal, and sci­en­tific break­throughs for mil­len­nia. Their mil­i­tary might has never been in ques­tion; even their an­cient en­emy, the op­por­tunis­tic race of Tra­gooms, hes­i­tates to at­tack a Kalquo­rian force half its size.

  How­ever, Kalquor’s sur­vival is in jeop­ardy. The force that has threat­ened this mighty race is not one that wields weaponry. It can­not even be seen with the naked eye. It is a virus.

  Cen­turies ago, this virus struck the home world of Kalquor, wip­ing out a sub­stan­tial num­ber of its peo­ple, par­tic­u­larly the fe­males. Symp­toms in­cluded mas­sive bleed­ing of the body’s ma­jor or­gans, along with those of the fe­male re­pro­duc­tive tract. Dam­ag­ing the x-chro­mo­some of the Kalquo­ri­ans, the virus’ ef­fects went be­yond death. The ma­jor­ity of women not killed out­right were ren­dered in­fer­tile, and daugh­ters born to those who could bear chil­dren were not guar­an­teed the abil­ity to do the same. The virus al­tered the very DNA of the en­tire race.

  In an ef­fort to keep their race from go­ing ex­tinct and pre­vent fight­ing amongst the men, fam­ily groups called clans were formed. Each clan was made up of one fe­male known as the Matara (child­bearer) and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of each of the three breeds of male: the Dramok (leader), Imdiko (care­giver), and Nobek (pro­tec­tor).

  De­spite their ef­forts, the num­bers of Kalquo­ri­ans con­tin­ued to de­cline. So few chil­dren were born in re­cent years that ex­tinc­tion was thought by many to be in­evitable. De­spite all their med­i­cal ex­per­tise and at­tempts to find com­pat­i­ble species to mate with, the Kalquo­rian cul­ture seemed des­tined to dis­ap­pear.

  Less than a decade ago, a scout ship from a small, iso­lated planet no one knew of flew into the Ga­lac­tic Coun­cil of Plan­ets’ space. These new­com­ers, search­ing for a new planet to house the over­flow of their ever-grow­ing pop­u­la­tion, called their home planet Earth. It was im­me­di­ately re­marked upon how in­cred­i­bly sim­i­lar they were to Kalquo­ri­ans. The doomed race took note at once, and hope was re­stored. It has even been the­o­rized that per­haps the Earth­ers were the fa­bled Lost Tribe of Kalquor’s an­cient an­ces­tors.

  Earth, how­ever, was not as en­thralled with their po­ten­tial dis­tant cousins. Ruled by a gov­ern­ment based on fa­nat­i­cal re­li­gious be­liefs, Earth­ers were taught they were God’s Cho­sen, made in his won­drous im­age. They looked upon Kalquor with hos­til­ity and out­rage, par­tic­u­larly since the be­lea­guered in­hab­i­tants of that em­pire sug­gested com­pat­i­bil­ity test­ing for pur­poses of in­ter­breed­ing.

  The lead­ers of the Kalquo­rian Em­pire, feel­ing they had no other re­course, de­cided the time had come to se­duce Earther fe­males and con­vince them to come to Kalquor. Women on Earth were treated as lesser crea­tures and sec­ond-class cit­i­zens by the men, and the Kalquo­ri­ans with their near-wor­ship of women hoped they could en­tice these lifebringers to join their clans. And if the women would not be se­duced, Kalquor was no longer above the dis­taste­ful ne­ces­sity of ab­duct­ing them out­right.

  Al­most 2000 Earther women went to Kalquor, putting the Em­pire and Earth at each oth­ers’ throats. Then the un­think­able hap­pened: an Earther woman joined the aliens’ rul­ing clan, mak­ing her Kalquor’s em­press. Earth im­me­di­ately de­clared war.

  The fight­ing has been go­ing on for a year now. As feared, Earth’s greater num­bers are slowly over­whelm­ing Kalquor’s more ad­vanced tech­nol­ogy. With their al­ready dwin­dling num­bers reach­ing cri­sis stage, the Em­pire is des­per­ate to find a way to win the war and se­cure their fu­ture. That mon­u­men­tal re­spon­si­bil­ity has fallen to the men on one small spy­ship, fly­ing straight for Earth.

  Chap­ter 1

  Cas­sidy Hamil­ton sighed be­fore shov­ing a choco­late in her mouth. Cloy­ing sweet­ness in­vaded her taste buds. She of­fered a quiet moan of plea­sure, clos­ing her eyes to en­joy the treat bet­ter. It wasn’t the best choco­late she’d ever had, but such good­ies were few and far be­tween. Even bad sweets were pretty damned good these days.

  Open­ing her eyes once more, Cas­sidy stud­ied the page dis­played on her il­lu­mi­nated reader for the sec­ond time. Lit­tle more than a dis­si­dent rant from two cen­turies be­fore, the book was a dry read. Cas­sidy found it barely able to keep her at­ten­tion. It had been writ­ten when Earth’s na­tions had first been gath­ered un­der one ban­ner, fi­nally end­ing all-out war on her home world. For the most part, peace at long last reigned over the once bat­tle-torn planet.

  The au­thor’s di­a­tribe was against the one-world gov­ern­ment that had been es­tab­lished un­der the aus­pices of the One True Re­li­gion founded a few decades be­fore. There were the usual co­pi­ous ar­gu­ments against tak­ing away free will to de­cide for one­self if the Church was the real au­thor­ity on God, or if there even was a God. Cas­sidy had read such ar­gu­ments be­fore, much bet­ter ones, in fact. None of them an­swered her own pri­vate ques­tions on the mat­ter.

  The book was geared more to­wards the mil­i­tary as­pect and near dic­ta­tor­ship of the new world or­der. It es­pe­cially took is­sue with the fact that the new regime’s con­tin­u­ing suc­cess was tended to by armed sol­diers and soul­less bat­tle drones ca­pa­ble of wip­ing out en­tire cities. The ac­cu­sa­tions of mil­i­tant tyranny was at the heart of the au­thor’s ar­gu­ments, along with the loss of many free­doms. The book in Cas­sidy’s hand claimed sub­se­quent re­volts fol­low­ing the fi­nal war had been quashed with quick ruth­less­ness, barely dis­turb­ing the fear­ful com­pla­cency of the gen­eral pop­u­lace. It pre­sented memos and text com­mu­ni­ca­tions from gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials to bol­ster the au­thor’s claims, which Cas­sidy thought may or may not have been forg­eries.
Ei­ther way, the au­thor of this par­tic­u­lar book had no doubt been ex­e­cuted for his anti-uni­fied gov­ern­ment views. Free­dom of speech had gone into ex­tinc­tion right along with free­dom of re­li­gion.

  In the chap­ter Cas­sidy was now try­ing to di­gest, the long-ago rene­gade seethed over the gov­ern­ment’s as­ser­tion that all Earth’s out­dated nu­clear war­heads had been det­o­nated in space. He warned that such was an im­pos­si­bil­ity, given the small­ness of the blasts trans­mit­ted through the gov­ern­ment-con­trolled me­dia. He then went on with ex­ten­sive math­e­mat­i­cal for­mu­lae to prove his point, for­mu­lae that went on for five pages.

  It wasn’t that Cas­sidy couldn’t grasp the weighty data. She played in math­e­mat­ics the way a child might play with clay. Nor­mally, she’d be scru­ti­niz­ing the com­pu­ta­tions, look­ing for er­rors or lit­tle twists in log­i­cal ap­pli­ca­tion that would serve the au­thor’s needs. In her thirst for real knowl­edge, Cas­sidy was re­lent­less. She had no pa­tience with those who slanted re­sults to prove their the­o­ries. She liked facts, not fan­cies. She knew that lit­tle wrin­kle in her per­son­al­ity was to blame for a great many of her ills.

  Tonight she couldn’t con­cen­trate though. More in­ter­est­ing tomes awaited in the il­licit book col­lec­tion stored in her reader. Know­ing about the other books kept her from fo­cus­ing on the out­lawed man­u­script she’d been stead­fastly try­ing to ab­sorb.

  Cas­sidy shifted, search­ing for a more com­fort­able po­si­tion in the cramped ven­ti­la­tion shaft. Stretched out on her belly, her stiff, long-sleeved night­gown bunch­ing around her knees, it wasn’t easy to move around. The nar­row duct­work glowed sil­very-white in the wash of light from her de­vice. It was the only place she dared to read the il­le­gal ma­te­ri­als she’d down­loaded from her grand­fa­ther’s col­lec­tion be­fore be­ing se­questered in the con­vent on Eu­ropa.

  It was still early in the con­vent’s sleep­ing hours on the eter­nal night side of the moon. Cas­sidy read ev­ery night in her hid­ing place, nib­bling on sweets and snacks bought with the mod­est al­lowance her grand­fa­ther sent her. She’d been stuck on Eu­ropa for three years now, her days a mo­not­o­nous drone of pray­ing, tend­ing crops, scrub­bing floors, and bible study. Even the nov­elty of creep­ing through the ven­ti­la­tion sys­tem to spy on her fel­low as­pi­rants and the nuns had worn out. Only the stolen col­lec­tion of banned books kept the young woman’s mind sharp and sane. For­tu­nately, the li­brary was vast. She’d barely sam­pled the many of­fer­ings her grand­fa­ther had kept hid­den deep in se­cret com­puter files.

  Cas­sidy didn’t won­der why her grand­fa­ther, so strict and up­right with the Church’s teach­ings, pos­sessed the il­le­gal book col­lec­tion. His oft-quoted di­rec­tion to the sol­diers be­neath him was, “Know the en­emy bet­ter than you know your­self.” She could imag­ine him study­ing the words that en­thralled her, his thin lips pressed in a bit­ter line of dis­gust.

  She was half­way through the page once more when she re­al­ized she had yet again not di­gested any­thing she’d read. The siren call of the book she’d dis­cov­ered two weeks ago kept her usu­ally thirsty brain from ab­sorb­ing the cur­rent ma­te­rial.

  The Church, which had run Earth’s gov­ern­ment since Uni­fi­ca­tion, taught women were in­nately evil and awash in sin. Cas­sidy’s pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with her re­cent dis­cov­ery cer­tainly bore that out. She’d had no idea what she’d find when she opened the file la­beled The Kama Su­tra, and she hadn’t been able to get the il­lus­tra­tions out of her head since then.

  Just like your mother.

  Cas­sidy shook her head, and her long, plat­inum blond hair spilled over the reader. No, she had never of­fered her­self to any man. She had never shown a man any part of her devil flesh. She was not the har­lot her mother had proved to be.

  Yet she could not deny the urges were there. Right now there was noth­ing she wanted to do more than look at those pic­tures of men and women com­mit­ting sin­ful acts. Like Eve, she was se­duced by the temp­ta­tion of the for­bid­den. It whis­pered to her, dis­tract­ing her vo­ra­cious mind from soak­ing up more in­tel­lec­tual ideas.

  Just look­ing won’t hurt. It’s not like you’re for­ni­cat­ing.

  The al­lure of The Kama Su­tra wouldn’t give Cas­sidy a mo­ment’s peace. Who was she kid­ding any­way? Even if she did man­age to fin­ish this chap­ter, she knew she would end up open­ing up the other book. Just as she tol­er­ated no false­hoods in her books, she could not bear to lie to her­self.

  Cas­sidy gave up the pre­tense that she cared about how the Church-run North Amer­i­can Bloc had de­voured the rest of the world. She tapped the reader’s screen with a trem­bling fin­ger to change books. She tried not to think about how much eas­ier it got each night to talk her­self into view­ing the taboo pic­tures.

  She rolled over on her back as the first im­age came on the screen. Lick­ing her lips, she scrolled through the il­lus­tra­tions slowly, her eyes drink­ing in the im­ages of men pierc­ing women from ev­ery an­gle pos­si­ble. When she got to the end of the book, she started over.

  Cas­sidy’s thick cot­ton panties were soon damp. The scent of her juices teased her nos­trils, the aroma rem­i­nis­cent of the salty tang of the Neuse River back on Earth. She looked at the art­work de­pict­ing a man, his devil flesh drawn out in a straight line from his body, in­sert­ing fin­gers into the gap­ing sex of a smil­ing woman.

  She drew her knees up like the woman in the pic­ture. The stiff fab­ric of her night­gown slid down her thighs to bunch at her hips. Cas­sidy drew light cir­cles on her in­ner thigh with her fin­ger­tips as she stud­ied the il­lus­tra­tion. Her wom­an­hood flexed with arousal, and she bit back a moan. What was it like, to feel some­thing pen­e­trate her body? Did it feel as good as touch­ing the outer parts of her se­cret flesh? To judge by the smil­ing par­tic­i­pants in ev­ery pic­ture, the sen­sa­tion must be pleas­ant.

  Cas­sidy’s fin­gers slid down her soft, downy in­ner thigh and danced del­i­cately over the moist crotch of her panties. She knew where the spot was, the sweet nub­bin of skin that felt best. Af­ter only a mo­ment’s hes­i­ta­tion, she touched it.

  A warm, melt­ing sen­sa­tion poured through her core. Cas­sidy sighed.

  The char­ac­ters in the book were all thin, dark-skinned peo­ple with black hair. They looked noth­ing like Cas­sidy’s pale, am­ply curved body. The peo­ple of Earth came in so many col­ors and sizes, a smor­gas­bord of of­fer­ings. It made the young woman won­der how many men would find her at­trac­tive with her rounded but­tocks and large breasts. How many of them would want to en­joy sex with some­one such as she?

  Cas­sidy cer­tainly didn’t look like the al­most sex­less twigs ven­er­ated on mag­a­zine cov­ers back home. Her love for the com­fort of snack food since her mother’s ar­rest had made her a far cry from fash­ion­ably thin. For­tu­nately a good me­tab­o­lism and hard phys­i­cal work at the con­vent kept her rea­son­ably in shape. When her face warmed in a blush from the thought of a man see­ing her naked, it wasn’t be­cause her body em­bar­rassed her.

  She scrolled to the next im­age, her fa­vorite. The man mounted the fe­male from be­hind, his or­gan poised just at her open­ing. Cas­sidy stud­ied the mush­room top of his sex. She won­dered what it must be like to have a rod of flesh stick­ing out from one’s loins. And how would it be to have that rod en­ter her body? Her breath came quickly now, and she forced her fin­gers to move more slowly against her strain­ing bud. The light­ning flashes of plea­sure sub­sided into a plea­sur­able hum.

  She tried to imag­ine her­self as the woman in the il­lus­tra­tion. She thought of be­ing crouched on all fours, feel­ing the man kneel­ing be­tween her legs, the hard­ness of his erect sex touch­ing her en­trance,
poised to plunge into her body. His hands grip­ping her hips. His pe­nis slowly part­ing her wet lips…

  Cas­sidy’s fin­gers slipped into the leg band of her panties. For only the third time in her nine­teen years, she touched bare, sin­ful flesh. She arched with a soft groan, and her fin­ger­tips slid against wet warmth. The reader fell from her other hand, land­ing softly on the cush­ion of her breasts.

  Both hands plunged into her panties, rub­bing and ca­ress­ing her aching sex, spik­ing de­sire from the depths of her womb. Cas­sidy was un­aware of the tears creep­ing from be­neath her closed eye­lids as the pres­sure built within un­til it cas­caded in warm con­vul­sions to leave her sob­bing with re­lease. She moaned softly, her thighs clenched around her hands as her soft­ness throbbed.

  Sin­ner. Whore. Un­clean har­lot.

  The guilt flooded in as the last joy­ful spasms flexed in Cas­sidy’s belly. Yet stroking her devil flesh felt so good. Why had God made the most sin­ful touch also the most plea­sur­able? Not for the first time, Cas­sidy’s in­tel­lect warred with her faith. So much of the Church’s teach­ings when it came to sin made lit­tle sense. Think­ing about the re­stric­tions on in­ti­ma­cies only made her more con­fused. There was no one Cas­sidy could trust to share her doubts with, not even her fa­vorite nun, Sis­ter Kather­ine. The sub­ject was sim­ply too dan­ger­ous.

  If only she could re­sign her­self to the pure faith that would keep her soul blame­less, she lamented. If only her evil, grasp­ing mind would quiet on this one sub­ject and leave her in peace.

  * * * *

  Cap­tain Tra­nis didn’t hear Weapons Com­man­der Li­don move to his side, but he could smell him. It was no sur­prise that the Nobek’s pleas­ant an­i­mal-like musk was all that gave away his silent ap­proach. Li­don was a preda­tor through and through, a prime ex­am­ple of Kalquor’s war­rior caste. Tra­nis in­haled the scent deeply, en­joy­ing the near­ness of his clan­mate for a brief mo­ment of self-in­dul­gence.