Chapter 1

1

B reanna Parks, ReCon Team 3, Hive Integration Ship, Sector 437

"What the hell was that?" I shoved a new ion charge into the Coalition Fleet's version of a grenade launcher—instead of an explosion of shrapnel, this baby would generate an electromagnetic pulse designed to take out the Hive's bio-synthetic control systems—and hoisted the weapon against my shoulder. Armed and ready, I risked a peek around the sharp, metal corner. Thick, green smoke filled the corridor ahead. The unnatural fog hid us from the Hive we hunted. Whatever electromagnetic particles the Coalition's alien science nerds put in the artificial haze kept the Hive sensors from getting a read on us. How? I had no idea. I didn't look a gift horse in the mouth.

"Something big." My fellow ReCon team member, Henry, crouched on my left, an ion blaster in each hand. He was new to the team, been out in space less than a year. Some girl back on Earth broke his heart and he did what a lot of guys did, he volunteered for the Coalition Fleet to get as far away from her as possible, like across the galaxy, far.

Seemed we were all running from something out here. I learned early not to ask too many questions, especially when I wasn't willing to give any answers myself.

I took another peek around the corner before flattening my shoulders to the wall. "Three. Two big guards on the right. I'll take down the sadist on the left."

Henry nodded. He knew better than to argue. If there was an Integration Unit—who I referred to as the ‘sadists' because they couldn't do what they did to other living beings without being sick, sadistic bastards—I took them out. My predilection for eliminating them had started as a coincidence. Multiple missions in a row, I happened to be in the right place at the right time to destroy the Hive's twisted idea of a doctor. After those first few kills, the ReCon missions weren't just about rescuing Coalition fighters, not for me. I'd helped drag too many bloody, broken warriors off these Hive ships. Prillon. Atlan. Viken. Human. Didn't matter the species or the size. The Hive were nothing if not equal opportunity torturers.

The Integration Units were the ones who experimented on our fighters, broke their minds, operated on them, injected them with nanotech and drugs alike. Killing them gave me a special kind of satisfaction my Baptist grandmother would frown upon. Funny thing was, I wasn't afraid of going to hell. Not anymore.

Yep. Been there, don't that, bought the T-shirt. I gave hell one star, would not recommend.

I met Henry's gaze and held up three fingers. He nodded and I started the visual countdown.

3…2…1…

I swung my blaster around the corner and fired the EMP as Henry rolled into the corridor. My charge disoriented our targets, but didn't take them down. Coming up on one knee, Henry opened fire with both blasters.

Damn. This had been happening more and more often. Were they adapting to the EMP tech? Two years ago, a blast like that would have knocked them all out for half a minute. Had the Hive modified their armor?

I swung the grenade launcher back over my shoulder to dangle across my back so I could pull my ion blaster from my thigh holster. Henry's shots hit the first Hive Soldiers before I had my weapon free. One huge Hive Soldier—an integrated Prillon Warrior by the looks of his copper-colored skin—fell to his knees but didn't topple. The second fired his weapon. Deadly accurate, as most of them were. My armor saved my life as a painful flash of heat spread across my chest.

The Hive weren't the only ones upgrading their tech. Two years ago, a blast like that would have taken me down. I would have woken up in a ReGen pod, if I made it back at all. Sometimes entire units didn't come back. We all knew the score. Accepted the risks. Someone had to keep these fuckers from wiping out every civilization they encountered, including Earth.

Henry kept firing. I joined him, taking my time, aiming for the chest where I knew their armors' main control functions were located. If I could disrupt their energy fields, our shots would get through and knock them out. We didn't want the Prillons dead. We tried to save as many as we could. Non-lethal attack put us at a disadvantage, but something about killing old friends, family, and fellow fighters didn't sit right with anyone on ReCon. We were out here to get the Coalition's fighters back, to rescue as many as possible.

The Hive Integration unit, on the other hand? I wanted his head on a silver platter, preferably smeared into pulp under my boot. Violent? Maybe. So, I wasn't Betty fucking Crocker. Sue me. Sometimes extermination was the only answer.

"Take out that IGU!" Henry shouted at me, and I focused all my attention on the Integration Unit, this trio's leader. Hive always came in threes. Take out one of them, and the other two were a little slower, weaker. When the leader was a true telepath, as all the natural born Hive species were, the remaining two—in this case two massive, integrated, Prillon warriors guarding the sadistic doctor—would be disoriented for a minute or two. Long enough to knock them out.

Body half shielded by the corner, I knelt and swapped out my ion blaster pistol for a short rifle with a modified scope. The entire rig connected to a targeting system in my armor. "Head shot." My whispered command registered, and the suit nudged me in the direction I needed to go. The scope's crosshairs were on the IGU's head, but my suit's system corrected for wind—there wasn't any—distance, recoil, and any particular strengths, bad habits, and tendencies that were mine and mine alone. The suit knew me, knew how I held the rifle, how I aimed, exactly what would happen as I pulled the trigger. The new rifle-to-armor integration system was the ultimate cheat code, game mod, and built in auto-targeting hack.

I'd been an excellent shot before. When I had time to use the tech, I never missed.

"You waiting for an invitation?" Henry fired multiple shots, his suit lighting up with warning lights as he took return fire. With every shot from the integrated Prillon guards, his armor's defenses depleted. The warnings on his armor weren't flashing yet. I had time.

"Don't want to miss." My voice was calm. Soft. I knew Henry would hear me just fine through our comms.

A loud roar filled the corridor, followed by loud banging. The echo made my ears hurt despite the fact the source of the sound was nowhere to be seen. The thunderous noise distracted the Integration Unit. He turned to look behind him, held still a half second too long. His mistake.

I knocked him out with a headshot as Henry fired at the Hive Soldier standing behind the copper-top he'd already hit multiple times. Despite his injuries, the copper-skinned Prillon managed to lift his weapon from where he knelt on both knees. He was almost finished, his body swayed as he fought for balance. I added a barrage of lower energy shots—didn't want to kill him—to his chest as Henry focused his attention on the Prillon still standing.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

Was that an explosion? An alien jackhammer? I would swear I felt the reverberation through my boots.

"Fuck. There weren't supposed to be any Warlords on this ship." Henry's calm tone on comms contradicted the chaos of blaster fire erupting from the guns he held. Neither of us stopped shooting until both Hive Soldiers finally crumpled to the cold, metal floor.

Atlan Warlords were the biggest, meanest fighters the Coalition had in the Fleet. In battle, or when claiming their mate, their bodies literally morphed into something I could only compare to the Incredible Hulk. Atlans were massive to begin with, almost seven feet tall with hands the size of dinner plates. But when they changed into their beast forms, they were even bigger. Stronger. Faster. Meaner. Tough as hell and nearly impossible to kill. Their beast mentality took over their bodies as well, made their speech sound primitive, even though the thinking male was still in there somehow. I wasn't sure how it worked, I just knew every fighter on Battleship Karter breathed a little easier if they knew a group of Warlords would be on the battlefield with them. They literally turned the tide on the ground, made sure more of the other fighters made it back alive. They were the ultimate Special Operations teams.

The Hive rarely took Atlans for their Integration Units because they were so difficult to command. The beasts literally fought to the death to resist the Hive's mental manipulation. Most beasts died before the Hive could break them. Only the strongest of them survived the process, and those were the most terrifying Soldiers the Hive had under their command.

Even on Atlan, the Warlords were held in high esteem. They were the ultimate warrior class on their home planet. I'd heard that if a Warlord survived their service, the leaders of their planet literally made them super-rich when they returned home. Gave them tons of money, property and land. They were treated like gods.

If an Atlan Warlord was on this ship, and he was fully under Hive mind control, we were screwed. We'd need more than a couple ReCon units to bring him in.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

"Whoever he is, he's not happy." I did a quick sensor scan, made sure there were no more active Hive on this level, and clicked over to open comms. "ReCon Three, this is Breanna. Level five clear. Over."

"Roger that. Level five clear. Took your sweet time. Everyone else took a ten-minute nap waiting for you two." Lieutenant Wade Collins, our team's second in command, loved to give us shit—as long as we stayed alive. He was big, had an Irish temper, the red hair to match, and in addition to being a former Army Ranger, he'd been a boxer in college. Good guy to have on our side. Even the Prillons respected him, after he'd knocked one unconscious over a shit order that nearly got one of our team members killed last year. Luckily, Commander Karter, the head honcho in this sector of space, agreed with Lieutenant Collins. Case closed. No demotion. No court martial. Nothing.

The Prillons didn't suffer much in the way of politics when it came to war. They weren't like humans on Earth, starting wars to justify massive taxes and corporate weapon development. This war with the Hive was about basic survival of every species, on every world in the Interstellar Coalition of Planets. If we lost, entire civilizations would be conquered, captured and "integrated" into the Hive mind collective. These things were literally like The Borg from Star Trek, only worse.

They were real. They weren't clunky or slow. Their tech was centuries beyond what the television show had imagined, some of it microscopic, hidden inside a person's cells.

"You're welcome to join us, Lieutenant." I glanced back the way we'd come. Six more unconscious fighters littered the floor in the corridors behind us. "We've got eight on the ground."

"Eight?" For a ship this size, eight was a lot of guards on a single level. Apparently, that fact was not lost on Collins. "You two be careful. They're guarding something."

Henry met my gaze. Collins was right. The question was, what the hell did they have on this ship that was so important? "All eight are Soldier class. Prillons."

"What are so many Soldiers doing on this ship?" Our commander, Captain Seth Mills, interrupted, barking at all of us through the comms. It was a rhetorical question. Hive Soldiers were their biggest, strongest fighters, normally reserved for fighting on the battlefield. "Begin your prisoner sweep. Medical teams have been dispatched. Two shuttles. Heads on a swivel. I don't like this."

"Roger that, Captain." Henry held his pistols in ready position and motioned for me to follow. "Let's go find out who's been trying to get our attention."

I needed to give our people one more heads up. "Make sure medical has extra-large tranqs, Captain. We think we have an Atlan Warlord up here." God only knew how much tranquilizer our medical team would need to inject to get an angry Warlord off this ship. Depended how much pain he was in, how integrated, if his mind was his, or if the Hive had broken him. Hopefully, he wasn't in his beast form. Based on the banging and roaring we'd been hearing, I didn't think he'd accepted the Hive mind control. That didn't mean he wouldn't literally rip our heads off our bodies the second we entered his confinement cell.

I'd once watched our medical teams give an enraged Atlan beast enough tranquilizer to take down an elephant, and it still hadn't been enough. They'd been forced to give him enough to risk killing him, transported him out, and then rushed him to a ReGen pod just as the drugs stopped his heart.

"A Warlord?" Collin's shocked tone made me grin. He was a tough one to rattle. "There are no Warlords on this ship. Our scans were thorough."

"Don't know what to tell you, sir." Henry walked over to check the pulses of the two downed Prillon males ahead of us. "Tell medical to hurry. I don't know how long all these Prillons will be out."

Boom! Boom! Boom!

"What the fuck was that?" Collins's question wasn't quite a shout.

"That would be our not-Atlan saying hello."

"Funny, Bree." Captain Mills sighed. "Medical is ten minutes out. Find the Warlord and see if he can be reasoned with."

"Yes, sir." I knelt next to Henry as we secured the two unconscious Prillons' arms and ankles in cuffs specifically designed for the task. Six more integrated Prillon warriors wore identical restraints in the corridor we'd just left, scattered behind us like breadcrumbs we could use to find our way home. Medical would haul them all out and transport them to The Colony. The doctors there would take out as much of the Hive integration tech as they could, help them live out a normal life.

Once they were bagged and tagged, our job was done. Rehabilitation was not a skill I possessed. I didn't have the patience. I'd rather take out the bastards who hurt our fighters than try to help wounded warriors heal. Healing was not my forte. Vengeance, on the other hand? Justice? I was a soldier, not a nurse. It had taken a few years, and dealing with a lot of self-hatred, but I'd finally made peace with myself out here, in the endless darkness of space. Fighting pure evil helped. There was no grey area when it came to the Hive. No politics. No confusing their motives. Kill or be killed made things real easy for me. Maybe the black and white attitude was a cop-out. Maybe I was running from my past, from my mistakes.

Didn't matter. Not out here.

I stood over the two Prillon warriors and kicked at a pair of cuffs, confident they weren't going anywhere, even if they did wake up. The Hive Integration Unit didn't move, but I wasn't taking any chances. He was a Hive original, one of them. There was nothing our doctors could remove from his body that would change him into anything but what he was, the enemy.

"You gonna get that?" Henry asked, staring at the unmoving form of the creature who had probably tortured and killed more Coalition fighters than I could count. Listened to them scream and beg for mercy. Enjoyed their suffering.

The thought made the backs of my eyes burn, my chest tighten, my throat swell until I struggled to swallow the swell of hatred that flooded every cell in my body. An unnaturally strong reaction? Yes. Did I fight the grief-fueled need for vengeance? No.

I took aim at the creature's head and fired. At close range, the hole my shot burned through the Hive's skull was the size of my palm. I could see the floor through the center of the monster's cranium. Nothing would survive that. "You know I always double tap."

"Amen."

Double tap. My number one rule. The Hive were vicious, tough bastards. My first week in outer space, a Hive asshole I'd thought dead almost killed me. Rule number one was pretty much my only rule out here. Well, that and don't date anyone on the team. When I'd needed some personal attention over the last two and a half years, there were plenty of willing fighters on Battleship Karter who knew the score. I didn't want a relationship. That wasn't why I volunteered to fight. I sure as hell didn't need to worry about falling in love with someone who might die in my arms.

Once was more than enough.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

"We're coming!" Henry shouted down the hall, toward the source of the unholy banging. Whoever was beating the hell out of this ship sounded strong enough to tear the place apart. Had to be a beast. No other fighters in the fleet were that strong. Unless they were integrated with Hive tech.

Shit. Were we going to have to fight a beast? Had they successfully integrated an Atlan? It was rare, but there had been a handful of survivors. The Warlords they managed to control were the Hive's prized possessions, saved for special assignments, or they served directly under the Hive leaders, the Nexus Units, as personal bodyguards.

Was there a Nexus Unit on this ship? Shit.

"Careful, Henry." Henry was a good fighter, but he was just a kid. At thirty-three, I had a decade on him, including four years in the Navy, six in the D.E.A. and almost three out here.

He was an innocent, snot-nosed kid as far as I was concerned. Nice kid. Smart. Aggressive. Good with those pistols. But still too young. He felt like the little brother I never had, and that scared the shit out of me. I didn't want to care about anyone out here. I didn't want to hurt. I'd left my heart in a coffin on Earth, six feet under, buried with the only man I'd ever loved. Well, except for my father, but that hadn't worked out well, either. He'd been gone a long time, but it still hurt.

"Yeah. I know." Henry adjusted the damage setting on his blasters to high. Fewer shots per power pack, but more damage per shot. If we were dealing with a Hive beast, I wasn't sure his pistols would be enough, even with my EMP blast. Apparently, Henry's thoughts ran on a similar vein. "Be ready to run."

"Let's go." With a nod, I shoved my short rifle back into its sling holster and brought the grenade launcher back to the front. I checked the charge and moved forward.

"Don't use that thing unless you have to." Henry shrugged. "I don't want to have to haul his ass out of here if he can walk."

Well, duh. Been there, done that as well. Wouldn't be our first three-hundred-pound haul. "Afraid I'll singe your ass?"

Henry chuckled as we moved in unison toward the sound of banging. "Naw. But I do have a beautiful head of hair. Be a shame to lose it."

"That's what these helmets are for," I teased. But Henry did have a gorgeous head of blond curls that made him look like the Florida beach boy I knew he was. Almost a year in space and Henry still had remnants of a tan. Not that I needed any color. My light brown skin looked the same as it always did. One benefit of the ReGen pods, every time I was injured, I came out of the healing pod looking like a damn princess. Perfect, glowing skin. Bright eyes. No pain. No fatigue. Coalition technology beat the hell out of human hospitals.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

We moved slowly, ignoring the radio chatter as other teams secured prisoners in their sections of the ship. By my count, our ReCon teams—there were two full units on board—had rescued fewer than five prisoners. Either the Hive had just finished an integration cycle and already sent their new, mindless drones out to fight and kill, or something else was going on here. I'd never heard of them keeping just one prisoner as isolated as Boom-Boom appeared to be, not even an Atlan Warlord.

Boom-Boom? Hah! Bam-Bam! A flashback from a childhood cartoon made me chuckle. All I could see was the little blond caveman's—Barney's—baby boy, Bam-Bam , slamming his club on the ground over and over chanting ‘ Bam! Bam!' .

Was the Warlord on the other side of this door blond? If so, I might burst out laughing when I finally saw him. What if he was wearing one of those old-time, Flintstones , caveman, animal wraps? Vivid imagination? Guilty. Kept me entertained out here.

Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!

My mind had already reassigned the sound. Too funny. I was glad Henry wasn't looking at my face. Didn't want to have to explain to him why I was smiling.

We moved in close and isolated the sound behind a closed door at the end of the corridor. We crouched down on either side of the doorframe. "Ready?" Henry asked.

"Ready." I settled the grenade launcher on my shoulder and gave a slight nod. He would open the door. I'd make sure the room was clear of enemy combatants. If not, I'd fire the EMP. If the prisoner inside got knocked out inside the radius of the blast, so be it. Easier to haul an unconscious beast out of here than an angry one. And from the sound of metal pounding on metal, he was seriously pissed off.

Henry activated the door. A large panel slid to the side.

I expected an explosion of sound. A roar. Screams. Blasts from Hive weapons.

Silence.

Now he's quiet?

Weapon sighted, I moved into position and scanned the room.

Two Hive Soldiers lay unconscious at the feet of the biggest Atlan I'd ever seen. He wasn't even in beast mode, his face far too refined and handsome to be transformed into one of the Atlan planet's formidable fighters. His gaze bored into me like acid burning straight through my helmet. Loops of heavy chains secured his arms and chest into so many points along the walls and ceiling he looked like a metal octopus with at least sixteen legs. His feet were encased in metal boots, visible wires running from the backs of his ankles to a device that appeared to be used to run electricity through his body.

He was covered in cuts and gaping, open wounds where he'd obviously torn their implants from his flesh with his bare hands. So. Much. Blood. Jesus.

How was he making that?—

Before I finished the thought, he lifted one booted foot, then the other, slamming them against the floor. Bam! Bam!

"Holy shit." Henry's voice came from just behind my left shoulder and I dared a glance back. "How is he still on his feet?"

"That's a lot of blood," I agreed. Then again, he was a very large male.

"Release me." The low, rumbling voice soaked into my body like an electric current. Deep, utterly devoid of emotion or pain. The only indication the massive Warlord felt anything at all was the fact that he spoke through clenched teeth. His lips barely moved as he gave the order.

"Will you be able to stand without all that holding you up?" I stepped over one of the Hive bodies and circled the prisoner. I glanced at the large belts around his chest and waist. The chains attached to those ran along his spine and had been bolted to the ceiling. He was massive. I'd seen Atlans before, but this guy was incredible. Even torn and bloody, covered in burns and open wounds, there was no mistaking the underlying bone structure, the layers of muscle on top of muscle that flexed and pulsed with the slightest shift of his weight. He could probably bench press a car.

When I glanced up, I found him staring at me with an intensity that made my entire body go on high alert. Did he want to kill me? Or fuck me? I wasn't sure. Either way, I couldn't look away from those shocking gray eyes. His focused attention literally locked my feet in place. My heart raced faster than when the Hive shot at me. Every cell in my body buzzed with awareness. Interest. Raging curiosity and stark desire.

Who was this guy? How did he get here? I didn't see any silver imbedded in his flesh, nor any gadgets or other Hive tech. Didn't mean all that wasn't on the inside. Didn't see any remnants of a Coalition uniform, either. That didn't mean anything. Hard to torture someone and cut them up this badly if they're wearing body armor.

"Release me." His command jolted me into motion, the deep timbre of his voice like hot silk stroking my overly sensitive nerves. I wanted to wrap my arms around him and offer comfort. Yes, I'd seen worse the last few years, but no fighter, warrior or Warlord we'd rescued on a ReCon mission had ever looked this bad and still been conscious.

I inspected the restraints as Henry notified the commander that we did, indeed, have an Atlan on board, one who appeared to be lucid and cooperative.

"I am not Atlan."

"What?" I lifted my eyes to inspect his square jaw, straight nose, the full lips I suddenly wanted to kiss. He looked like an Atlan. Which basically meant he looked like a super-sized human, even if his coloring was a bit off. No human had truly black hair like he did, deep space, no color, black as the abyss, black. I itched to run my fingers through the shoulder length strands, see if it was as soft as it looked.

The amount of damage done to what had to be one of the finest male specimens—of any species—I'd ever seen made nausea twist in my stomach. Damn shame. He was gorgeous. Big, which at almost six feet myself, I appreciated in a man. His dark olive skin tone was nearly as dark as my light brown. The thing that really made my body perk up and take notice was that he looked at least ten years older than me. Maybe twenty. This was a fucking man. Mature. Knew his way around.

I wondered if that knowledge included how to properly sex-up a lady.

"Do I pass inspection?"

"What?" Oh shit. He totally caught me ogling him. I should have been mortified. Embarrassed. Not wet and ready, struggling to keep my brain on task despite a flood of mindless lust.

Our gazes locked, his gray eyes so intense and focused, words literally fell out of my head. I couldn't form a single coherent thought.

"You look like an Atlan." Henry's bland observation saved me. Kind of. I was still staring into the alien's eyes like a deer caught in headlights. Hard peaked nipples rubbed under my armor. I licked my lips. The action caught his attention, his gaze lowered, and I managed to break free of his hypnotic sex stare.

This guy was lethal to the libido. Not an Atlan? Then what the hell was he? How did he get here?

Why did his lips look so soft when the rest of him looked so… hard.

Holy shit.

I stumbled back a step. Blinked twice.

Were those fangs?