Authors: Evanne Lorraine
Bon Sorority Shuttle Craft, New Eden air space
Same day, 4402 SG
Thank the
Goddess, the shuttle’s passenger compartment was blessedly empty. Camille sank into the nearest seat with a sigh of bone-weary relief. Her private moment didn’t last.
The
compact craft’s captain bustled through the sisterhood’s small craft, making a final cabin check before securing the outer doors. On her way back to the cockpit, she flashed a sympathetic grin at Camille. “Lost your nerve, huh?” She rushed on. “Not that I blame you. You’re not the first, and you won’t be the last. In-person breeding.” The woman rolled her eyes in dramatic revulsion and muttered, “Warriors, phah! Savages more like.”
Camille nodded, uncomfortable allowing the silent lie
, but unwilling to discuss the single most humiliating moment of her life with a stranger.
“Don’t worry,” the captain said
in a kinder tone. “We’re making a fast parts run up to the space station. None of the disciples on my crew will bother you on this flight. But if you don’t want a lot of questions, you should change your outfit before we dock. There’s a replicator next to the sanitizer. Come along, I’ll show you.”
“Thank you
, may the Goddess bless you.” Camille followed the woman, grateful to have something to do rather than sit and obsess about her worst day ever.
“There’s the replicator.” The captain narrowed her eyes in assessment. “
Do you know how to use it?”
“Yes,
indeed.” Camille tightened her shoulders in automatic defense, aware the other disciples regarded breeders as terminally stupid. Of course, she’d only learned about the wondrous device this past week.
The level of luxury and abundance on New Eden was still hard to assimilate.
Replicators in every room did not make up for treating their women like property—or worse, prisoners.
“Good.” The captain moved on to the next item on
her mental checklist. “As long as we’re here, see the emergency exit hatch?”
“The panel with the red wheel in the center?”
“Exactly. It’s for use in the event the main door is jammed.”
“Does this happen often?” Camille rubbed her temple.
She shook her head impatient with the question. “Never on my watch, but it’s possible. The docking bay could malfunction or the power to the outer door could be interrupted. The side exit is manually operated. It’s a standard safety precaution. The instructions are right on the hatch cover. Got all that?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.” The pilot headed toward the front of the Nike shuttle. “Better get a move on, little one. We lift off in five minutes.”
Camille unhooked the wicked pins anchoring the heavy veil to her head. Once free, she folded the traditional accessory
using the care it deserved. Perhaps another disciple would find the ceremonial garments and wear it with pride. A fast session with the craft’s replicator provided a plain, navy blue one-piece garment like the captain and the rest of the flight crew wore, minus the insignia. She zapped up a pair of light, sturdy boots and tucked the comlink the ambassador had given her into a cunning wrist pocket. Though she wasn’t sure why she bothered. Goddess knew there was no one she wanted to talk to about the disastrous mating ceremony.
As fast as possible
she shed the cumbersome robe and delicate slippers, put the finery neatly beneath the seat, and tugged on a new, modern identity.
“
Fasten safety harnesses, liftoff in sixty seconds
,” the vessel’s on-board computer announced in its faintly mechanical voice.
Camille
sank into a padded chair. The harness’s mechanisms eluded her trembling fingers. She found the fastenings and secured the straps, clicking the last buckle as the craft shivered and blasted them straight up into the clear blue sky. Fear over her uncertain future and an overwhelming sense of failure threatened to swamp her during the mind-numbing ascent. Despair wrapped so tight around her chest, it was hard to draw breath. The warriors’ rejection was only the most recent wound. Months of failing to conceive had eroded her normal optimism.
She shook off the gloom of depression
with a determined effort.
So what if breeding wasn’t an option? There were plenty of tasks that needed doing. She would learn new skills and contribute. No disciple was idle for long in the sorority’s compound. Her only
experience was with kitchen duties. Not impressive, but so what? Even humble jobs need done. Reassured, she sighed and eased her death grip on her seat’s armrests.
As the ship leveled off, the tension of the day and sheer exhaustion caught up with her. She must’ve dozed, because she was jolted awake by the screech of metal on metal. The sound reverberated through her jawbone, setting her teeth on edge.
Quiet followed. The sudden, total silence was terrifying.
The shuttle craft
stopped moving. She sensed no energy from the crew. Although there was nothing specific she could point to as the telltale clue to disaster, goose bumps prickled the fine hairs on her limbs.
With chilled fingers, she undid her safety harness. She grasped a seat back when her knees wobbled.
Once she’d found her balance, she moved toward the front of the craft and noticed the passenger door hung open at an angle. She stumbled over an unexpected bump. A quick inspection revealed the shuttle’s floor as uneven as a badly baked soufflé. As she neared the cockpit, the syn-wool under her boots squished. She crouched, pressed the carpet with shaky fingers, and slowly rose, bringing her damp, pink-stained hand close to her nose. Stale water mixed with human blood, thinning the distinctive coppery trace.
The captain and the rest of the crew were injured and trapped.
Fear fisted her empty stomach. She wrapped her arms around her waist, bent with pain and unable to straighten. Camille’s squeezed chest told her they were likely already dead, but she wouldn’t give up on them. She gritted her teeth and uncoiled her spine, eyeing the buckled door barring her from the other disciples. The metal portal must have been warped by the crash.
Plop-plop
-thuds shook the shuttle. She flinched at the noise. The sickening sound of blaster hits was much too familiar from the daily violence-filled holocasts that dominated New Eden’s media. The craft was still under fire. She had to get the crew out of here now.
Energized by
a clear danger, she was determined to wrench the door open by sheer force of will. She grabbed the handle. And let go even quicker.
White hot
metal seared her palm. Frantic, she looked for something to use to pry her way into the captain’s cabin. Snatching open compartments at random, she tossed contents and bit back a hiss at each contact with the burn.
She cradled
her injured hand and renewed the search for a tool. All she needed was a single piece of sturdy syn-steel. She yanked open an overhead bin, dodged the heavy canister that tumbled out, and came up empty again. Another screech of metal grated across her taut nerves. The ship rocked. She needed to get into the cockpit.
Strong arms lifted her, moving her away from the debris as easy as if she were a hologram. “Watch out, sweetheart.”
Something long, hard, and cold dug into her back. For a second she froze, imagining the shape of the weapon and the kind of catastrophic injuries it could inflict. Images from the violence-filled holocasts flitted through her mind’s eye. Was he one of the bloodthirsty Baldoreans? Would her death be instantaneous or would she die by increments from the cell damage after even a grazing blaster hit?
S
he forced herself to shake off the paralyzing fear. If he’d wanted to zap her to particle dust, she’d already be gone.
Unless
he intended to kill her, he should damn well let her go.
“Put me down.” She punctuated her demand with a punch
on the closest restraining arm. Her dimpled knuckles connected with rock-hard muscle.
“Fine, but we need to get you outta here.” He set her down carefully, keeping a hand at her waist to steady her. Apparently he was unimpressed, uninjured, and probably unaware of her vicious jab.
In other circumstances, she would’ve been intimidated by the man’s obvious strength as she had been, during the mating ceremonies. At the moment, she had more urgent problems. The crew was still trapped.
She didn’t spare him a glance.
There’d been no sound from the cockpit. Part of her mind said no one could have survived the kind of blunt force necessary to buckle the craft’s hull. Yet she couldn’t give up on them. Miracles happened, Goddess willing.
Too stubborn to
quit, she resumed her search for a tool to use on the intractable door. “I’m not going anywhere without the crew.”
“Where are they?”
Turning to level him with a speaking glare, she froze. Her jaw hung agape. He bristled with weapons of death and destruction. More entrancing, he was totally jaw-droppingly stunning. Tall and powerfully built, like every other warrior she’d glimpsed, this one appeared fiercer than any of the others. Perhaps it was his sharp blade of a nose, his piercing, deep-set eyes, or hair cut so short it barely bristled above his skull. Not to mention his frightening arsenal. Whatever the reasons, she knew this man would sire healthy sons and protect them.
A slow burn tightened her belly and warmed her from the inside out until she was certain she must glow a vibrant pink.
She stared at him like a mindless fool for too long. At last she snapped her teeth back together. Angry at herself for being distracted from helping the injured sisters, she sniped, “If you’re not going to help me rescue the crew then get out of my way.”
The warrior ignored
her demand, studying her. Slowly he grinned, exposing a boyish dimple in his left cheek. The smile transformed his sharp features into something even harder to ignore. “Have we met?”
Her heart
gave a foolish little skip. This was so far from what she needed to focus on, it made her furious. She hissed at him. “On your Goddess-forsaken world where the women are imprisoned behind walls like zoological specimens? I don’t think so.”
The tops of his ears reddened
.
Contrite
, she found enough grace for guilt to deepen her blush. She shouldn’t have taken her helpless frustration out on him. “I’m sorry for snapping at you.”
“Let’s save politics and religion for when your friends don’t need rescuing, ’kay?”
“Yes, please.” She sighed with relief at his implied offer of help.
“Good. Now where’s this crew of yours?”
Camille jerked her head toward the forward cabin, not bothering to correct his assumption that the crew was hers. “They’re in there. The door is stuck.”
His features hardened into a rigid mask.
The stony expression confirmed her fears about the crew’s chances of having survived the crash.
“I can see that.” He brushed past her, reaching for the knob.
“Don’t,” she yelled and tackled his midsection, shoving him away from the hot handle. Her full body slam didn’t move him more than a few millimeters off course. She slowed him long enough for her to hold up the angry, red, and throbbing palm as a visual aid. “It’s too hot to touch.”
“Gotcha.
Hit the replicator for a cold pack.” He snagged a sturdy parts canister from the debris littering the cabin floor. When she waited for him to proceed he turned to frown at her. “Go ice your hand. Now.”
More deceptively soft thuds rocked the craft
. She stumbled. The weapons fire sounded closer. She caught her balance and hurried toward the device, ticking off a mental list of first-aid supplies the crew might need: cellular repair stimulator, neural blocker, healing balm, and—. Her brain stammered to a full stop. Not a single moan or cry had issued from the crew since the disastrous landing.
No one
had survived the impact.
A
loud crunch behind her snapped her gaze back to where the warrior battered the metal cabin door with the heavy canister. A second male loomed into the shuttle. The newcomer was much larger, even more heavily armed, and he shimmered and transformed before her eyes. He should have been much scarier than the first man. Camille blinked, hoping to clear the stress-induced hallucination, but nothing changed.
The
huge man was very green, and clearly not human. Glistening scales covered him instead of ordinary skin, delicate tentacles like those of a sea creature waved from his head, surrounding knobby horns. Rather than frightening her the alien features pulled her closer with the inescapable lure of the forbidden.
A
side from his fascinating differences, she sensed nothing from him but concern for her and his companion’s safety, along with surprising tenderness and a strange nobility she didn’t know how to interpret. Her impression went beyond odd. She wasn’t a mind reader or truth sayer. Still she couldn’t shake the sensations. Something warm and caring definitely radiated from the strangely attractive male. She didn’t recognize his species, but she admired the way his sleek green scales covered heavy musculature, massive shoulders, and narrow hips.