Hostile Genus: An Epic Military Sci-Fi Series (Invasive Species Book 2) Ben Stevens (best contemporary novels txt) 📖

This is no time for embarrassment and courtesy, soldier. You need to be watching her, protecting her. But it’s just a couple of serving girls. And besides, Lucy is there.

At least a dozen times, Jon went back and forth in his mind, his dual duty as proper man and effective guardian exchanging blows with each other in a savage fight to the death. Finally, his sense of duty overcame his inner gentleman with a knockout punch.

Spinning around, Jon flattened himself back out and thrust his face and eye back up to the oversized scope.

He moved the reticle around the room to find Maya and located her. In one quick glance through the matter-penetrating telescope, he beheld the scene. There was Maya, facing him, sitting in the pool, legs apart, one up and out of the water as a serving girl ran a razor along it, up toward her—

Nope!

As quick as the involuntary gulp in his throat, he pulled his face from the scope and decided that audio monitoring through the earpiece would suffice.

Jon listened to the conversation in the bath, to Maya’s uncomfortable situation over her question and her lack of a tax connection and Citizen Stamp—whatever the hell those were—and therefore didn’t question the prolonged silence that followed.

He did, however, hear the occasional splash of water or rustling of fabric, and when he eventually didn’t even hear that, didn’t hear anything for several minutes, he began to wonder.

Not wanting to play the peeping Tom, but knowing he needed to check in, Jon again returned to the scope to investigate the mysterious silence. He returned to the railgun, which had been set up on a bipod as well as having the new modified spike driven into rock. It hadn’t moved an inch. Jon peered into the scope, apprehensive, guiltily hoping and yet not hoping to see Maya in the position he’d seen her in earlier, with the tub’s water and bubbles only slightly covering the most private bits of her body.

His heart immediately stopped its twitching when an empty porcelain tub greeted his eyes instead of a naked goddess. Panic set in like a flash flood. Jon took the weapon in his hands and pivoted it on the bipod stand, scanning the penthouse suite for any sign of life. Nothing. No one. They were all gone.

Then something glinted off the counter near the tub. Jon zoomed in on it.

The radio necklace.

Oh no.

11

The escorts brought Maya and Lucy through the byzantine palace to a large banquet hall with high, vaulted ceilings from which gaudy chandeliers hung, each bearing the weight of what seemed like a hundred candles, bathing the cavernous chamber in their light and warmth. As soon as they were all past the archway that separated the banquet hall from the hallway proper, the men abruptly turned on the girls, impeding further entry.

Lucy bristled, and her right hand parted her long coat in the fashion of an old western gunslinger. Not wanting to jump the gun, she kept the BFG hidden away inside the speed holster that was her right thigh.

“Your servant girl will wait outside with us,” one of the slick men said to Maya.

“The fuck I will,” Lucy snapped back instantly. Maya could tell that Lucy’s tolerance for pleasantries was quickly coming to an end. The men, for their part, remained unmoved. Maya quickly diffused the situation.

“It’s okay, Lucy. I will go on alone. I’m sure our host is as gentle as he is gracious.” She smiled at the men and then turned to Lucy. “I will be fine.” Her statement sounded like an order.

Lucy stared defiantly into the goddess’s eyes.

“Go, now. Find Ratt and wait for me,” Maya ordered her friend and then turned back to the men, smiling and nodding.

The men nodded back, one of them adjusting his gold bracelet as he did so, and they showed Lucy out, leaving Maya to enter and explore the hall.

Columns dotted the long sides of the hall, the tops of which were connected by arches, all decorated in Spanish Colonial style and adorned with well-placed flowers and fire baskets. A wooden table of fine artistry ran the length of the rectangular room. Chairs, like guard towers along New Puebla’s wall, interrupted the flow and studded the perimeter of the table, while a runner of bright silk ran along the top, spotted here and there by floral arrangements and condiment trays. At the far end of the table, Maya spotted two figures, casually reclined. She made her way down the side of the table and approached them, doing her best to appear as cool and confident as Lucy would. When she was halfway there, she could make out that the two figures were a man and a woman.

The man, a clean-shaven Hispanic fellow with gelled black hair pulled tightly into a long ponytail, sat at the head of the table in the only chair there.

He wore simple but expensive-looking black slacks and a tucked-in button-down white shirt with sharp folded collar flaps. It was a third of the way unbuttoned, presumably to show off his gold chains and not his chest hair, but Maya couldn’t guess. The man was reclining deeply in his chair, slouching really, looking relaxed and aloof. A jeweled goblet filled with a deep burgundy wine hung in his limp-wristed hand. He had one of his legs draped over the armrest of his chair. An empty plate and glittering silverware graced the table in front of him. He spoke to the woman to his left as Maya approached from his right.

“Sofia, look, our guest has arrived.”

The woman glanced over at Maya, a look of disapproval on her heavily made-up face. Sofia was sitting, legs spread wide in her chair and, like the man, with her chair pulled away from the table. She wore shiny black baggy pants and a matching short-sleeved top that was tight and exposed her copper midriff and diamond-studded navel. Her arms