The Barbarians: Stolen Bride

THE BARBARIANS:

Stolen Bride

By

Angelique Anjou

( c ) Copyright by Angelique Anjou, January 2019

Cover art by Jenny Dixon

ISBN 978-1-60394

Smashwords Edition

New Concepts Publishing

Lake Park, GA 31636

www.newconceptspublishing.com

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.

Chapter One

It was probably the most bizarre reason to volunteer for a mission in the history of the Star-Troopers, but Charlotte Black needed the job and, like a lot of people—well women—getting the chance to drop a few pounds without a lot of effort and misery had a definite appeal.

She certainly wasn’t a big woman because she wanted to be!

Nature had conspired against her.

She’d inherited all of the traits that led to a lifelong battle with her weight.

She’d had treatment—what she could afford to pay for—for all of it, but with indifferent success.

When she’d heard about the plan for the newest Earth colony, she’d decided it was her destiny. Even if she never lost weight and got down to that dream size, she would at least be in the same boat as everyone else who was going. At least she wouldn’t have to put up with the insensitive assholes that were always commenting on her size perfectly audibly—and that was the polite ones! There were way more that almost seemed to see it as their duty to harass the fat, depressed woman!

Hey! Was it her fault that she was way more efficient than the skinny assholes?

Because that was what it boiled down to. Efficiency.

Her body worked more efficiently than theirs and she worked more efficiently than they did.

Finally, a group of scientists had agreed.

This mission to colonize a super Earth required that the colonists had reached adulthood carrying around at least twenty percent to thirty percent more weight than was considered ‘average—desirable—healthy’ for their height. Their bones would be far denser to carry around the additional weight and even their organs would be accustomed to moving a heavier mass so, less strain.

That had been the theory anyway and, as it turned out, it seemed to be sound.

It did suck a big hairy one that she’d lost forty pounds in stasis and still weighed, on this planet, the same thing she’d weighed on Earth. But she looked thinner and she felt great!

She didn’t think it had worked out quite as well for everyone as it had for her—some of the colonists were having a really bad time adjusting to the heavier gravity/air density. But, for once in her life, it seemed she had landed in the Goldilocks zone. She’d been just the right weight to maximize the effectiveness!

Of course, she was way taller than average and still stood out wherever she went, but at least she knew the criticism was aimed at her height rather than her mass.

And in sixty years they calculated she would settle three inches from the weight of the gravity in her new home! Whoopee!

A shift in the pitch of their engine and the sensation of dropping jerked Lt. ‘Charly’ Charlotte Black out of her reverie. They were approaching their destination. The cruiser was descending.

Instantly, Charly tensed with a combination of fear and excitement. Her hands tightened on her rifle.

Their mission was a tricky one—politically speaking.

The quarry they’d tracked to the doorstep of the planet Bacsheer was suspected in the murder of the governor of the planet Athena in the next quadrant over. And not only did they not have an extradition treaty with the Oloote of Bacsheer, they barely had verbal agreement of friendship and cooperation.

In point of fact, she thought it would be safe to say that the Oloote just hadn’t slaughtered any human visitors yet because they weren’t convinced they could pull it off and not face total annihilation.

They weren’t likely to cooperate with their team—which had been assembled specifically for their current mission to extricate their suspect without, hopefully, creating an ‘incident’.

The rangers had point—jurisdiction—but nobody, even them, had thought it would be a good idea for a pair of rangers to show up on the barbarians’ doorstep and demand they hand over the culprit, Ginko Nldick. Her team, which was a specialized group of investigators for the Star-Troopers, generally only investigated crimes in connection with the military, but since they were soldiers and they were investigators, they made the perfect backup for the prima donnas—uh—the rangers.

They at least had a better chance of fighting their way out of a violent disagreement with the Oloote if it came to that.

And it easily could.

In the first place, Ginko Nldick, their suspect, wasn’t human and didn’t look human and the Oloote might object to them taking him for that reason alone—since he didn’t look like anyone they should have dominion over.

In the second—well they were barbarians. They might not see his murder of the governor as a murder, or punishable by law—particularly since the governor was human.

There was just, unfortunately, way more they didn’t know about the Oloote of Bacsheer than they knew.

In some ways the aliens were frightening—their penchant for violence, for instance. In other ways not so much.

Physically, they were very human-like. In fact they might almost have been mistaken for humans—except for the skin and eye color.

They were very similar in size, as well.

But, like the gorilla on Earth that appeared to be about the size of an adult male, the size of the Oloote of Bacsheer was deceptive. Scientists guessed them to be two or three times stronger than humans—even the females—due to the fact that they were native to a significantly denser world than humans had come from.

Fortunately, humans had technology.

The suits they were wearing made them equals.

More or less.

Without surprise, they discovered when they had landed and disembarked that a party of the king’s guardsmen was there to greet them. They had announced their arrival, after all, which seemed the safest route to take since the Oloote looked upon subtlety as sneakiness and sneakiness as treachery, and they were violently opposed to that sort of behavior, by circling the castle before they’d settled on a landing spot in the cleared pasturage between it and the river that fed their fields and very likely supplied the castle itself—with sewage removal if nothing else.

The castle was actually a pretty amazing accomplishment, to her notion, for people known to be pretty damned primitive. Built mostly of stone and enormous timbers, it rose up from the rocky soil several stories high and was surrounded by an inner and outer wall for defense that was nearly as tall.

It looked ancient.

And it looked a lot like the castles that had been built on Earth.

How they’d constructed such a mammoth structure with nothing more than blood, sweat, and hand tools—well possibly animal labor, as well—was almost unbelievable.

Except there it stood, defying disbelief.

They stood at attention once they’d descended the gangplank, staring back at the primitives … waiting to see if they would be welcomed.

Or attacked.

Not that they could fight off a whole damned planet, but they were carrying enough firepower to make the Oloote deeply regret taking on soldiers of the Confederation of Planets—win, lose, or draw. That comforted Charly somewhat. She was still tense and alert, but that came with the job, and the certain knowledge that no technology guaranteed success in this kind of situation.

In any case, the Oloote of Bacsheer were tentative allies of the Confederation. They might be barbarians in the eyes of most of the Confederation and more inclined to settle disputes with physical violence than diplomacy, but they hadn’t met a delegation from the Confederacy with violence … yet.

One member of the group, clearly the leader, advanced when they’d formed up at the foot of the ramp and spoke.

Unfortunately, this is when Charly realized her damned translator wasn’t working.

The urge to race back inside and get a replacement hit her, but she quelled it.

The Oloote were liable to see such an act as a prelude to attack and then all hell would break loose. Even if she could explain, she couldn’t. The Oloote were technologically challenged—didn’t have a clue about the technology humans had—which, she supposed, was why they called them ‘gods’. They wouldn’t understand if she tried to explain and it was strictly against policy to introduce them to technology in any sense.

So she was screwed.

Forced by circumstance to rely on her other