Ensign Probus

by Wendie Nordgren

  “Your son and I plan to eat and sleep while you are away.” With a hand pressed against her lower back, she returned to their quarters.

  Phillip made a face. “Don’t try so hard to hide your disappointment about me leaving.”

  She waved over her shoulder. “You’ve worn me out, Phillip.”

  He smirked in a pleased way, having had his male ego stroked.

  I kissed Fitz and Nico goodbye. “Please, keep the kids busy so they don’t miss us.”

  Running from the nursery so quickly that his eight legs were a blur, Thunderdrop jumped and landed on my back. “Chirp?”

  “Yes, of course, you can come.”

  Fitz and Nico didn’t seem resistant to my going on the mission or too concerned for my safety. After all, seven of my husbands were going on the mission to Luna 241, not to mention Rovek and my team.

  Chapter Five

  In the flight bay, the seventeen of us loaded into four stealth ships. In a ship with Thunderdrop and me, after some arguing amongst themselves, were Yukihyo, Dario, and Zared. Dario had insisted that as an admiral and the father of one of my twins, he should pilot the stealth ship in which I travelled. Yukihyo had been prepared to secure his place at my side by sending anyone who had a problem with it to a medical berth, and Zared, well was Zared. Arguing with a telepath of his abilities was pointless.

  Eli said, “Stayton, Levi, and Tyler, you’re with me.”

  Rovek motioned with his hand and said, “Ross, Binder, and Cedrenus,” while boarding a vessel.

  Drex took Izaac, Clark, and Phillip with him, and I wondered if Kaoti was sneaking aboard one of our vessels or remaining aboard the Empress. I watched wistfully and wondered what it would be like to trade places with Phillip. Being alone in a stealth ship with one of my deadly Inquisitors and my youngest two husbands had the makings of yet another of my steamy fantasies, but I was certain Drex would be focused on work. Letting the thought go, Thunderdrop and I boarded our vessel, and after orienting myself, I realized a few seconds too late that I shouldn’t have dawdled. Dario, Zared, and Yukihyo had taken over the cockpit.

  “Hey!” I tried pushing each of them in turn from their seats, but none of them would budge. “I wanted to fly! Let me co-pilot at least.” Again, I shoved at Dario.

  “Baby, you can pilot once we’re free of the debris field once it’s safe.” Dario’s hands moved with practiced assurance over the control panel.

  Yukihyo had claimed the weapons station, and Zared had life support and shields under control. Medical was all that was left for me.

  I muttered, “It was my idea, and I get stuck with the boring station.”

  “Don’t let Phillip hear you say that,” Yukihyo cautioned.

  After I had verified that we had sufficient rations and medical supplies aboard, Dario disembarked. Captain Ricimer had deployed crewmen in fighter ships who used their shielding to create a tunnel through the debris from the flight bay doors and out past the extensive debris field toward clear space. Nervously, I observed as Dario flew us from the Empress. Spinning chunks of mangled metal crashed into shields, sparked, and ricocheted off into another fighter’s shielding.

  “Shit.” I watched through the viewport as a crumpled metal sheet, of what might formerly have been part of a ship’s hull, sped directly in our path. A grappling hook shot out from the Empress, latched onto it, and hauled it away before it could slam into our shielding. I let go of the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

  “It’s so much worse out here. On our warship, it looked smaller.”

  Dario said, “They knew what it would take to incapacitate us, but it’s only a minor setback.”

  I flinched when he made a sharp right to avoid what looked like a crushed land transport, dove under another piece of metal, spun us around like a pinwheel, and shot to the left to avoid more trash. “I thought our fighters were supposed to be shielding us,” I grumbled.

  “They are,” Zared said.

  “Eric didn’t leave a few bits and pieces to slow us down. He enveloped us in a virtually impassable cloud. He knew we wouldn’t be able to comfortably load everyone into our stealth vessels for a jaunt back to Epopeus or Aurilius. There are too many of us, and they timed it just right, waiting until we were far enough out to spring their trap.” Zared made a soft grunt. I couldn’t tell if the noise was symbolic of aggravation or appreciation at his cunning.

  “And who among us would want to spend a week in a two-seater fighter with no restroom?” Yukihyo asked.

  “Well, from personal experience, I can tell you being alone on a stealth vessel with an infant isn’t any fun.”

  Zared sighed. “Are you still mad about that? It happened ages ago.”

  “Yes,” I stated in a matter-of-fact tone.

  Yukihyo chuckled.

  It took Dario two hours of nerve-wracking, tedious maneuvers to fly clear of the debris field. By the time it was over, my palms were sweaty. I excused myself and went to the bathroom. Yukihyo came up behind me and wrapped his arms around me while I washed my hands. Closing my eyes, I leaned back against his strong, warm chest and relaxed, enjoying how he soothed my emotions through our symbiotic empathic bond. He provided me with comfort and safety, and I provided him with the stability to control his rage.

  From the cockpit, we heard the ping of an incoming communication and then Eli’s voice reporting, “All clear.”

  Dario replied, “Understood. Standard formation. Take the lead. Increase speed. We’ll rotate every four hours.”

  “Confirmed,” Eli responded. He flew his vessel to the lead position.

  Dario dropped back, and Drex and Rovek took up positions flanking us.

  Dario asked, “Teagan, would you like to practice flying in formation?”

  “Yes!” Happily, I took his place in the captain’s chair, warm after his vacancy. “You were right. Navigating through the debris field would have been too much for me. It was ragged.”

  “I’m an experienced pilot, and it was challenging even for me. I’m tempted to invite Eric to join me in the ring.”

  I frowned. “I’d rather not see the two of you fighting.” Thinking about it, I couldn’t recall ever having seen Eric in a match. I didn’t doubt his ability to defend himself, but I wouldn’t want to see his pretty face messed up.

  Listening to my thoughts, Zared laughed quietly to himself.

  The five of us passed the hours companionably. Dario and I took turns piloting the ship. When it was my turn, Thunderdrop sat on the back of my chair and watched. We napped in shifts and took our meals in the small habitation area. While stretching my legs, I’d wandered around to familiarize myself with the ship. The lower deck contained a weapons locker and a couple of rollers but was otherwise unremarkable. I ended up standing in front of the small kitchenette at the back of the main deck.

  “Lady Wife, it has been a long and stressful day. If I was to allow it, you’d remain awake throughout the night. However, I have no intentions of standing idly by and watching as you exhaust yourself.” Yukihyo crossed his arms over his chest.

  Turning from the counter to face him, I raised an eyebrow and asked, “Allow it?” I made my voice as haughty and imperialistic as possible.

  With a sexy grin on his beautiful lips, slowly he closed the space between us. Lifting his hand to my hair, he gently moved it behind my shoulder, lowered his lips to my neck, and feathered soft kisses against my sensitive skin. Chills raced across my flesh from his lips to my nipples which hardened painfully while heat pooled between my thighs. I caught at his waist. Closing my eyes, I drew in a deep breath and slowly let it out. Instinctively, I leaned into him, relishing his large, muscular chest and the strength he tempered with gentleness each time we touched. Moving my hand from his hips and up to his chest, I could feel his heart beating beneath my palms.

  His lips left my neck, and he gazed into my eyes. His were colored with the evidence of his desire. The faint traces of pink and gold enthralled me as they
always did. His fingers alighted on my arms and gently moved to my wrists until our fingers entwined. Taking half a step away from me, he moved toward one of the bunks against the hull and smiled when my steps took me with him, not allowing space to grow between us. Our clothing became a pile on the floor. Dimming the lights, he fanned my hair around my head on the pillow and pulled the blankets over our bodies. His fingers tickled my thigh as he moved them from my hip, down to my ankle, and back again. His hard length pressed against me, eagerly wanting entrance which I gave him. A soft groan rumbled through his chest, and he spread my thighs farther apart and pushed himself deeper. He rocked his hips forward and back, sliding his thick hardness along my sheath. Each thrust brought me closer, and I lifted my feet to cross my ankles behind his hips, urging him to go faster. I kissed his shoulder and bulging bicep. He held his weight effortlessly away from my abdomen. Trusting him completely, I let myself go, willingly succumbing to the pleasure the joining of our bodies gave me and smiling when he reached his own release.

  Pulling his body from within mine, Yukihyo moved to his side and waited while I shifted to my own side on the narrow bunk so he could lie on his back. Lifting his arm for me, he waited while I rested my head on his chest and got comfortable. Then, within seconds sleep claimed us. No one woke us for our shifts, but hours later, the twins woke me.

  There was no way to get out of bed without waking Yukihyo, so I groaned and crawled over him, desperate to make it to the waste unit. Two babies were harder on the bladder than one. Unconcerned with my privacy, he made his way around me and into the cleaning unit. I joined him in the small space in time to get my hair washed. Once we were clean, dry, and dressed, we took over for Dario and Zared.

  “Sleep well?” Dario asked.

  Leaning over, I kissed his cheek. He covered my stomach with one large hand and rubbed my lower back with the other before relinquishing the command chair. “You know I did. I was far more tired than I realized.” I gave Zared hugs and kisses too before sending both of them off to take a rest cycle.

  Zared said, “Wake us when the base comes into view.”

  Activating communications, I called the other stealth ships and smiled when Drex, Eli, and Cedrenus appeared on my viewer. “Good morning! How is everything going?”

  Drex said, “The Hadrian continues on its course. They remain unaware of our activity.”

  “Excellent,” Yukihyo said. He gave a sly smile. The Hadrian’s captain and crew had pissed all of us off.

  Cedrenus directed his words to me. “After boarding the base on Luna 241, our team is ordered to work independently to find any links to the technology.”

  “Understood. I assume the usual rules apply?” If we asked for help, we lost points.

  “Correct.” His response was filled with an excitement he couldn’t hide from me, and I grinned in response.

  We were getting to do what the cadets at the Academy dreamed of doing. Checking my readouts, it agitated me to discover that it would be another eight hours before we arrived, but I was distracted from my annoyance with an order to change formation. Flawlessly, I completed the maneuver and placed my stealth ship in the wingman position to the back and left of the lead vessel. Just then, sensors blared their warnings. Pulling up the screen, I saw a large meteor hurtling through space in our path.

  Excited, I begged, “Let me blast it! Please!”

  Cedrenus scowled, knowing Drex and Eli would let me have my way since I was sleeping with both of them, but he didn’t seem inclined to argue.

  Eli said, “It isn’t necessary. Its trajectory will miss us, and we don’t want to give away our location.”

  Disappointed, I pouted at him.

  “Don’t be like that. You can blow up everything you like once we have returned to Parvac space. I’ll take you up myself,” Eli promised.

  Mimicking Neema, I said, “Bam! Bam!”

  Yukihyo and Cedrenus laughed. However, soon, Drex and Eli began lecturing Cedrenus and me about how to gain access to the facility on Luna 241.

  “Aren’t we simply following you inside?” Cedrenus asked.

  Drex said, “No, you need to learn. We will standby and observe, ready to intervene should your team require assistance.”

  Scrambling to recall what I’d learned about gaining unlawful entry, I asked Cedrenus, “What if we attached a codebreaker to a drone and used it to remotely override the base’s security on the docking bay doors?”

  He said, “Or we could mask our signature to match that of a scow returning to unload.”

  “We’d still need its security codes. Then, we can board and get to work.”

  “Ah-ah-ah,” Drex scolded.

  Cedrenus and I both pulled up our educational programs to see what we had missed. He found the chapter on protocol before I did and said, “We still need to suit up and scan for threats, both biological and mechanical, before we can disembark. We still have time to study protocol, prepare our drones, and program our probes before we arrive.”

  “What do you want me to do?” I asked.

  “If you will program a biological scanning probe, we will prepare the others. Of us, Ross is best suited to getting the doors to open.”

  “How will we mask our presences from internal sensors?” I scrolled through pages of text, searching for a solution. I’d thought we’d be tagging along with Rovek’s team and wouldn’t have to worry about the particulars.

  “Stayton has been working on a proximity emitter, but we might be forced to rely on visual displacement shielding.”

  I nodded and set my controls to autopilot. Then, I found a programmable probe in a storage locker, returned to my seat, and set it to alert us of any life signs. The work took me twice as long as it should have since I’d never before done it. I’d had to start over twice to get it right. Testing it, I activated the probe, and it verified five life signs in our vessel. I smiled up at Thunderdrop who had made a small web above me while I’d worked.

  “Chirp?” He showed me a mental image of a can of spider food.

  “Are you a hungry, spider baby?”

  “Chitter clack,” he said angrily.

  Defensively, I asked, “What?” After all, what had I done?

  “Clack chitter chirp.” He showed me an image of a baby spider, which he was not, and an image of a fierce warrior spider.

  I rolled my eyes at him. “It’s a term of endearment and not a definition of who you are. Do I look like a baby?”

  Climbing from his web to the back of my chair, he walked along my arm and then perched on my knees. Tilting his body to the side, he looked at me with his eight eyes, judging me. “Chitter.” He agreed that I wasn’t a baby. Extending one of his front legs, he touched the tip of his claw to my stomach. “Chirp chirp.”

  “Yes, I have two babies in my tummy. My point is this. Have you heard Dario calling me baby?”

  “Chirp.”

  “He doesn’t say it because he thinks I’m a baby. He says it to be sweet because he loves me as a term of endearment.”

  Lifting his eight, long, black legs up and down in excitement, he chirped and crawled closer so he could nuzzle my cheek.

  “I love you, too. Now, how about that food?”

  Quietly, so as not to wake Zared and Dario, I went to the kitchenette, got his bowls, filled them, and placed them on the coffee table in front of the couch. Then, I left him to eat in peace. Returning to the cockpit, I sat and reviewed mission protocol. Busy studying, the hours went by quickly, and before I knew it Luna 241 became visible.

  Stark and desolate, the moon was a large clump of rock in space. Worthless for any other use, it had gained a purpose as a recycling, collection, and storage facility. Sensor magnification enabled Yukihyo, Thunderdrop, and me a first glimpse of metal structures and interconnected buildings beneath artificial gravity domes. A band of broken meteors seemed to constantly orbit the moon, keeping the lonely orb company.

  Luna 241 wasn’t open for public trade. Only those who had spe
cial permits were allowed to drop off or pick up. I read through the facility’s description and learned it was seldom visited by anyone other than the rare skeleton crews of salvage scows that were either picking up or delivering. However, most of its visiting scows were automated. I kept reading and smiled. In the case of an emergency crisis situation, docking permission could be obtained.

  Hailing Ross, I told him what I had learned. It would make boarding the base far less problematic. He said, “It won’t be difficult to trick the base’s computers into believing our vessels are a damaged scow in need of emergency repairs. Onboard systems will then facilitate our efforts.” His expression changed as he became absorbed in his work.

  Without calling attention to himself, Rovek had been quietly observing us.

  My confidence increased. I might not be able to prove my physical prowess to any male of my acquaintance, but I was smarter than I gave myself credit and planned to use our mission to prove something to myself. Getting up, I went to wake Zared and Dario.

  Chapter Six

  Ross launched his probe and managed to trick the base’s sensors into opening its docking bay doors. I waited until Cedrenus had flown inside and docked before following. All was dark within the bay with the exception of emergency lighting. Our stealth vessels all docked without any problems, and we powered them down but didn’t disembark. Carrying my probe to an airlock, I sent it out into the hold to scan the environment for dangers such as radiation and to check for life signs. My findings appeared on each of our viewers. A small red blip surprised me. The reading appeared in the far reaches of one of the reclamation holds.

  Reporting it, I said, “I’m detecting one very faint life sign, but it’s not humanoid.”

  “It’s probably a rat,” Eli said.

  “Air pressure and environmental systems are operational. Sterilization drones aboard the base are functioning. There are no signs of environmental contaminants or radiation,” Binder reported.

  “Alright, team. Suit up,” Stayton ordered.