The Alumari Renegade (Patreon)

A/N: This is a trashy smut novel set in the "The New Species" universe. I thought it would be an amusing challenge to write outside of my established genre. This novel is written by a human being who has never met nor researched an Alumari. They also haven't been to Earth. So this is essentially a stylized depiction that is not accurate to the actual universe of "The New Species". This probably won't get a sequel.

Chapter 1

Shit. I woke up with a splitting headache in my crummy apartment. Last night's a blank. Either I drank too much or got into a fight. Or both. I tried hard to remember what I'd done but nothing came to me. With a bit of alarm I realized that I didn't even remember my own name. No, wait... Nova. Nova Holt. That's right. When I'd come to Earth as a kid that's the name they had given me.

I got up off the floor and stumbled over to my sink to get some water, my mouth tasting of stale booze, vomit, and a certain hint of femininity. As I watched the glass fill up I thought about how my life had gone downhill since Veronica left. When we were together I hardly ever woke up like this, but now it seems like it's every other day. I chugged the water and filled another glass with a sigh.

Once it was full I turned from the sink and looked around my apartment. I had rented this place after I had been evicted from the fancy house that I'd shared with her. She hadn't exactly been the breadwinner, but without her help I couldn't afford it. This apartment had a slew of problems. Broken heating/AC unit, cracks in the window panes, stains on the walls and floors, and paper thin walls. Even without the mess I made it was a shithole.

The mess in question was pretty standard fare for this kind of apartment. A grungy couch, an out of date tv, a questionably stained mattress without a frame, and various litter scattered everywhere. Not a place that a proud insect would bring a girl back to, but I'm not proud. I seek comfort wherever I can find it. Most of the girls that go for me don't mind the mess at all. Maybe it's because they expect a bug to live in a trashcan.

I'd fallen pretty far in the two years since Veronica and I had split. I knew that I should find a new mate and try again, but the heart wants what it wants. Whenever I looked at another woman all I could see was Veronica. Her luscious chestnut colored hair, her smile that could light up the room like a supernova, the supple flesh of her perky tits that bounced whenever she laughed.

I shook my head to clear it and shuffled through the mess looking for a bottle of aspirin. Or ibuprofen. Or booze. Something that would take the edge off. All I found were empties of everything. I'm sure there's some poetry there somewhere, but I'm not in the mood to search for it. Gotta get my head right first. I peeked out the curtain to see the sun starting to set. I knew it was setting instead of rising because I hadn't woke up at dawn in over a year.

I checked my comm unit to see if I had enough credits to order a delivery of pills. Ignoring my notifications, I opened my account. Negative twenty-three credits. Fuck. I checked my transactions to see if there were any that I could dispute. I had gone to two different liquor stores and three different clubs last night. Damn.

They would have me on camera so they'd be able to know that I made these transactions. The damn banks watch your every move here on Earth. They even give the businesses the cameras on the condition that they're able to access them. Bunch of crooked fucks. Veronica was the one who let me in on that little scheme. She worked at one of the bigger ones, Bank of the Wells or something like that.

It was those god damned cameras that had caused her to leave me. One of her admirers at her work had shown her a video of me giving a guy what-for. The guy was scum, and deserved every smack I gave him. But that didn't matter to her. I had lied to her about what I do for work. Told her I was in shipping and receiving. How could I not lie, though? Why would she want to spend time with someone who spent his days beating people up and worse for a living? How could I expect her to understand that people like me are a necessary evil so that people like her can live well?

Earth's a hell-scape with a shiny coat of paint on it. And nowhere is that more evident than the city of New Yorkland. For every pretty politician there are a dozen cops on the take. For every legitimate business there's two money laundering schemes. For every model there's ten porn stars, and for every banker there's three street thugs. But when you've got your head in the clouds like she did it's hard to see that you're walking on dogshit.

With another sigh I checked my notifications. I had a message from my landlord telling me off for being late on rent, a message from an associate about a potential job, and... a missed call from Veronica. My heart skipped a beat. I hadn't handled our breakup well. It had torn me up pretty bad, and I'd left an embarrassing amount of text messages and voicemails for her. She hadn't returned a single one.

What could she have called me for? Did she want to get back together? Or is she just making sure that I'm not dead? Does this mean she still cares about me? Or... maybe she just wants something. Doesn't really matter, I'm not in the right state to talk to someone right now. Especially her. I checked my stash to see if I had any chits left.

Score. I had enough to get myself some headache relief. I decided that I'd go to the store, get myself fixed up, then decide if I wanted to talk to Veronica or not. No, that's not right. I definitely WANT to talk to her. I long to hear her voice, to smell her scent, to feel her smoothness on my rock hard exoskeleton. The thing I needed to decide was whether I SHOULD talk to her or not. In many ways she's better off without me. Whatever, off to the store.

Chapter 2

The ding of the store's entry bell shot through my head like a needle. I couldn't help but wince. My sunglasses helped with the pale fluorescent lighting, but couldn't do anything against that piercing ding. I went straight to the pharmacy section. Most of the items on sale were behind lock and key. Made sense for a store this close to my apartment. Shitty parts of town have a tendency to chew up and spit out trusting shop-keeps.

Even though it made sense, it was still inconvenient for a poor bug with a throbbing headache. I grabbed a slip of paper that indicated which headache relief I wanted and wandered the aisles looking for an employee. Since it was pretty late in the day, there weren't many other customers around. An old lady looking at kitchen stuff, a teenage boy checking out the deodorant. Just people going about their lives, completely oblivious to how dangerous this part of town actually was.

"Hey, Nova!" came a loud, feminine voice from behind me.

Despite myself I flinched. The voice was nice, but just loud enough that the throb in my head got a bit worse. I turned to look at the owner of the voice. It was one of the cashiers, a young girl named Bella. A freshman in college, and very aware of how attractive she was. Today she was wearing an employee uniform that was cut high on the bottom and low on the top.

I couldn't help but take a glance at her assets. Even under fluorescent lighting you could tell her skin was lovely. Slightly tanned, and as smooth as glossed ceramic. Her light blonde hair was resting on her wonderfully large tits, but not covering her ample cleavage. They jiggled as she moved into a more comfortable standing position with her right leg resting behind her left leg. And what legs they were. Perfectly proportioned to created the finest of asses, and showing off plenty of skin with those short shorts. I felt my pants grow tighter and moved my large leather overcoat to cover any potential protuberance.

"Hey Bella, why so loud today?" I asked.

"Oh, sorry, do you have a headache sweetie?" she asked playfully.

"Yeah, I apparently had a long night."

She smiled at me and said, "Well, let's get you taken care of."

She grabbed the slip of paper from me and I followed her to a cashout station. She scanned a code on the paper and pressed a few buttons. I handed her the chit and she inserted it into one of many slots in her machine. A few seconds later she took it back out and handed it to me. I put it back into my pocket without looking at the readout to see how much was left on it. Then a bottle of precious pills popped out from the machine, and I grabbed them. I opened them immediately and downed a couple of aspirin, chewing them because I didn't have anything to drink.

"There you go, all better now," Bella said with a sunny smile. Then her look darkened a little, "Did Rex reach out to you yet?"

I remembered the notification on my phone, "Yeah, but I haven't had a chance to read it."

"Well, you should. It's not the kind of job that you're gonna wanna pass on," She said.

Bella was a pretty unique gal. In this neighborhood, assault is very common. But she dressed the way she did without fear because she was best friends with the head of the Sarcato family. As I looked around, I spotted three Sarcato goons pretending to mind their own business. Her protectors. If anyone so much as tried to cop a feel there was a good chance it would be the last thing they ever did.

"Yeah? Alright then. I'll check it out when I get home," I said as I turned to go.

She grabbed one of my four hands and rubbed it with her warm, soft fingers, "And hey... call me sometime, handsome."