by Renee Rose
“I’m not concerned for my safety. I need to speak with Lundric. If you hear from him, will you relay the message?”
He bowed. “I will.”
She dipped into a curtsy—the first she’d offered any of the Zandians. “Thank you.”
As she walked away, she chewed on her lip, her stomach churning. She needed her male back. They had things to discuss. She’d hurt him, and she wanted to fix the rift she’d caused. The trouble was, even if she knew where he was, she wasn’t sure how to fix things.
~.~
It took Lundric three planet rotations to locate the twenty-year-old slave named Tal, the only living relative linked to Cambry in Ocretion slave records. He found the young man working as a slave in a factory not far from the one Cambry had escaped from.
He used his life savings to purchase the human, though he had to buy three other males with him, to avoid raising suspicion. The four of them all sat in his battleship now, their wrists in manacles, their faces masks of wariness.
He faced them. “Humans, you have a choice. I only need one of you—the young one.” He lifted his chin toward Tal. The boy’s hair was brown, not auburn, but he had the same pale coloring as Cambry, with the light dusting of auburn freckles over his nose and identical brown eyes. He also had the same intelligent mistrust in his gaze. They narrowed when Lundric indicated him.
“The rest of you can come with me, or I can sell you back to other Ocretions. If you come with me, you will no longer be slaves, but you’ll serve the same master I do, follow the rules I follow, and will have to fight the battles I fight to win a better life. The choice is yours.”
“Who is your master? Where are we going?”
“I cannot tell you where, and if you decide to go with me, you cannot change your mind. Once you’ve seen our headquarters, you cannot leave. My master is Prince Zander, the rightful ruler of the planet Zandia.”
From their blank faces, he would bet they’d never heard of Zandia or Zander.
“What about me? Why do you need me?” Tal demanded.
“I will tell you after they’ve made their decisions.” He didn’t want to mention Cambry in front of the humans if they were not coming along. Any hint to Ocretions his female was still alive would put her, his species, and his mission at risk. “So, humans? Make your decisions, quickly. I don’t have time to waste.”
The oldest one, a tiny man with white-streaked hair, shrugged. “I’ll go with you.”
The wiry male in the middle slouched lower in the chair. “What is the work?”
“Battle.” Maybe when they won Zandia there’d be more, but it was all he had ever known.
The wiry man grinned a broken-toothed smile and sat up straighter, flexing his fingers in the manacles. “Battle, eh? Count me in.”
The third man, nervous and missing one eye, ducked his head, as if Lundric might not notice him.
“What about you?” Lundric demanded.
The male muttered something softly under his breath, but Lundric couldn’t make sense of it. He appeared to be a bit simple.
“Quin is in, aren’t you, Quin?” the wiry male asked.
Quin bobbed his head. “Quin is in, yes, Quin is in.”
“Good.”
“So? Will you tell me now? What do you need me for?” Tal asked again.
“Cambry wants you.” His voice roughened just speaking her name.
Tal’s face transformed as well. It went from brazen defiance to a mixture of hope and anxiety. “You have Cambry?” His voice raised in pitch.
He nodded.
“She’s alive? Because I’d heard—”
“She’s alive. So you will come with me. Agreed?”
The boy swallowed and nodded.
Lundric unlocked each human’s manacles even though there was a chance they could overpower him and take the ship. “Buckle up. We’ll be there soon.” He dropped into the pilot’s seat and started up the engines.
Back to the pod. To Cambry. He rubbed his sternum, which had ached since the moment she’d left him. Maybe now that she had her brother, she would no longer run. He couldn’t make her love him, but he could, at least, provide what she needed to be content. Because he wasn’t letting her go—not ever again.
~.~
Cambry swooped around Shooku, pushing the battleship to go faster, diving in and out of the rock formations to practice her skills. Vokart gripped the edges of the copilot’s chair with white knuckles, but he didn’t say a word.
“Captain Lundric requesting permission to land.” The deep sound of her warrior’s voice crackled over the comms unit.
Her heart bounded. Lundric had returned! She swung the craft around, searching the skies for him. There. He had just entered the planet’s atmosphere.
“There’s one student flight in the air, Captain, but otherwise you’re clear,” someone spoke from the landing dock.
Without asking permission, she positioned her craft and executed her best landing yet.
She’d already unsnapped her harness before she turned to Vokart.
He pursed his lips, appearing half-annoyed, half-amused. She’d asked him a dozen times for information on Lundric’s disappearance and return. “Permission granted,” he rumbled. “If you were going to ask.”
“Yes, I was,” she said, already halfway out of the craft. “Thank you.”
She grabbed a helmet and shoved it over her head, running the distance to the pod. Lundric and four other beings had gone in ahead of her. She entered through the hatch and waited for the atmosphere to clear before opening the interior door.
“Lundric!” she shouted as soon as she entered, ripping her helmet off and hanging it on a hook on the wall.
Lundric and another warrior stood with four human males. One of them snapped his head in her direction.
“Cambry!” The voice that answered wasn’t Lundric’s.
“Tal!” Her heart flew up to her throat. She ran for her younger brother, and he met her halfway, grabbing her and squeezing so tightly, he picked her up from the ground.
“You’ve grown,” she laughed, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. “At least two more inches since I saw you last.”
“Have I?” he asked gruffly, his voice choked. “They told me you were dead. That you killed three guards escaping and they sentenced you to death. What happened?”
She tore her focus from her brother to look at the broad-shouldered warrior standing several feet off, watching with eyes still shadowed in pain. A Zandian was leading the three other humans away.
When Lundric saw her looking, he nodded once and strode off down the corridor.
“Lundric!” She bolted after him. “Lundric, wait!”
He turned just in time for her leap, catching her as she hurtled at him.
She strangled him in a hug, burying her face in his neck. “Thank you.” She dropped little kisses behind his ear. “Thank you, Lundric.”
“Stop.”
Her heart twisted.
He pried her from his massive body, lowering her to the floor. “I like the show of appreciation, but that’s not why I did it.”
The emptiness of his tone slapped her. Blood drained from her face as she realized her warrior was still just as withdrawn as he’d been before he left to find her brother. Her eyes watered. “I know that. You did it because you’re Lundric and it’s what you do. Because I’m your female.”
He went very still, watching her warily. “Yes.”
Tal had joined them, and he cleared his throat. “So—?”
She drew back from Lundric to include her brother. “So, you’ve met Lundric?”
Tal nodded and extended his hand.
She reached over and folded his fingers into a fist bending his elbow to form the ninety degree angle of the Zandian greeting. “This is how they do it.”
Lundric’s gaze lighted on her face with the curious, appreciative glint they usually held, but then it dimmed again. “I’ll let you two catch up.” He turned an
d walked away.
“Wait—Lundric?”
He didn’t turn or acknowledge her, his broad shoulders stiff as he disappeared around the corridor.
Her nose and throat burned.
Tal squeezed her shoulder. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”
She blinked rapidly and forced a smile. “Come on. Are you hungry? Let’s get some lunch.” She brought him to the main meeting room where the food packs were being distributed and picked up two.
They settled on the floor with their backs against a wall to eat.
“So, what is this place? How did you get here?”
“It’s a bizarre story.” She tried to push back the thoughts tangling around Lundric, the irrepressible urge to keep running to him, to keep leaping until he kept her.
“This originally was the death pod the Ocretions put me on. But I got lucky. They also put an escaped human slave named Lily on here. She happens to be the sister of the Zandian prince’s mate. Her boyfriend, a Zandian captain named Rok, orchestrated her rescue and pulled this pod down. So now, all the beings on the pod have been conscripted into the Zandian army, and we’re being trained for battle, because they want to take their planet back. Are you following?”
Tal grinned. “I’m trying. So who’s Lundric?”
“My mate. Except he’s still angry with me for stealing a ship and trying to leave to find you.”
“Who flew the ship?”
Her lips curved into a self-satisfied smile. “I did. They’ll train you, too, if you want.”
She didn’t really have to ask. Her brother was a born warrior, like her. “Veck, yes. When can I start?”
An alarm went off, screeching through the pod and echoing off the metal walls. “Ocretion police ships have entered the atmosphere. All pilots report to the loading dock. Repeat, Ocretion police ships have entered the atmosphere. Every pilot report to the loading dock. This is not a drill.”
She scrambled to her feet. “Come on, let’s go.”
Tal raced behind her as they ran to the loading dock.
She didn’t wait for instructions like the rest of the humans gathered, but grabbed two helmets and followed the Zandian warriors out of the pod, running over the rocky ground for a battleship, her brother right behind her.
“Cambry!” Lundric’s anguished roar came over the comms unit. She stopped in her tracks, looking around for him. He’d halted in the hatch of a battleship when he’d caught sight of her.
He thought she was running again. She’d just have to prove to him she planned to stay.
Battleships lifted off the ground around them and, above, the first shots were fired.
“Fire at will, repeat, fire at will!”
“Get back in the pod,” Lundric roared, jumping into his ship.
Veck that. She was a trained pilot, and they needed her. She resumed running toward the next available battleship and jumped on, waiting until Tal joined her before closing the hatch. “Buckle up,” she shouted as she jumped into the pilot’s seat. “You’re on weapons because I don’t know how to work them.”
Tal whooped and slid behind the controls. “Whoa,” he breathed with appreciation, lighting up as he took in the state-of-the-art craft. “Where did they get all these ships?”
“They’re rich. But almost extinct.”
“Hence their interest in human females?”
“I suppose,” she mumbled, slightly offended at having her relationship with Lundric reduced to the economics of available females. That must have been how Lundric felt thinking she’d only been interested in him for the ways he could help her.
But she knew Lundric’s interest in her wasn’t just because she was female. He’d seen her. Been attracted to her. She had to show him she felt the same.
She lifted off and entered the fray. She saw at least four Ocretion police ships, all firing on them. “Hang on,” she yelled and made a tight turn, swinging the craft around to get behind one of the police ships. “Fire, Tal!”
Tal shot the laser. It went wide, and the police ship dropped down, out of range. “Give me another chance—I’m still figuring out how these work,” he yelled.
Below them, the pod lifted from the ground, the battleships circling around, protecting it as it made an escape. Where was it going? She hoped the Zandians had a plan. And she sure as hell wished she’d been privy to it, because she had no idea where to rendezvous if they survived this battle.
“On the right, on the right!” she shouted as one of the police ships appeared in their range.
Both ships fired on each other. She held tight when the ship sustained damage to the wing, but Tal nailed them with laser fire, and the police ship exploded.
“I did it!” he yelled. “Give me another one.”
“We might not have a chance!” She gripped the controls with all her might, trying to direct the craft as it fell into a spin.
Her mind raced, trying to remember what Rok had said about recovering from a spin. Cut the power, turn away from the spin and push down.
The ground came hurtling toward them, and her fingers flew over the controls, cutting power and pushing down and left, away from the spin. Nothing happened. Ten more seconds and they’d hit ground and they wouldn’t survive a fall from the height they’d been hit.
The craft wobbled. She pushed harder on the controls, encouraged she’d made any kind of change in the spin.
“Cambry!” Lundric’s cry rang in her helmet’s comm unit.
“I’ve got it!” The craft wobbled harder, then banked hard to the left, out of the spin. Thank sweet Mother Earth.
A second fleet of police ships appeared in the atmosphere, dozens of them.
“Retreat, retreat!” The command blared in her ears but three ships were chasing Lundric, at least she thought it was Lundric.
She joined the chase, Tal firing on the police ships from behind. He hit one, two. The third spun around them and fired directly on them. The windshield exploded in a ball of fire. Not willing to go down easily, she gunned the ship forward and rammed it into the police ship. Both ships hurtled toward the ground.
“Cambry, Cambry, no!”
Their descent slowed. The magnaray. Lundric must be above them. But her ship was on fire, which meant a fireball could travel through the magnaray and blow up Lundric’s ship.
“Leave us,” she screamed. “Release the ship!”
“Never.” His growl conveyed 100 percent determination.
Their ship lifted away from the ground. Five police ships surrounded them.
Tal unbuckled, racing to the rear of the craft. “Is there more firepower back here?” he shouted.
“I don’t know!” She hadn’t been trained in the weaponry part yet, just flying, but since the craft was unflyable and the forward part of the ship was on fire, she followed Tal.
“Here they are.” Tal climbed a ladder toward an upper deck.
She ascended behind him, only able to squeeze her torso into the small area made for one being. They both took controls, firing as rapidly as they could, causing the police ships to dodge and fall away, out of their range.
“Nice work, Cambry and Tal.” Lundric’s deep voice rang in her ear. “Hang on, I’m going to get you out of there.”
A lurch indicated Lundric had entered hyperdrive. She squeezed her eyes closed and held her breath, waiting for the explosion that ended them all.
A second passed. Then another.
Still alive.
She opened her lids. They were in space, hovering near the pod. Other Zandian battleships circled it. And the giant hangar-ship, an open craft that had housed all the smaller battleships, hung beside it.
“You are not cleared for landing in the hangar, Captain Lundric. Your cargo is on fire. Repeat, your cargo is on fire.” The lack of oxygen in space should have extinguished all the flames, but the cabin pressure kept the fires burning inside.
“Then get the fire spray ready, because I’m landing,” her warrior growled.
<
br /> “No, Lundric, don’t,” she cried. She didn’t want to be responsible for setting the entire hangar on fire and wiping out all of Zandia’s battleships in one fell swoop.
Her mind racing, she ran for the container of fire spray located below on her craft. “Tal, help me with this,” she shouted.
Her brother scrambled down and the two of them attacked the fire on their ship. She needed to get it out before Lundric dropped them onto the hangar.
~.~
The only thing keeping Lundric from a total implosion was the fact that Cambry’s voice still registered on his comms unit. She was alive. Stars, she was still alive.
Twice back there, he’d been sure he’d lost her. What in the name of Zandia’s true star had she been thinking? At first, he’d feared she planned to run away again—to take her brother and leave. But she hadn’t. She’d stayed to fight, and he was so vecking proud of her courage and prowess as a pilot.
His little rebel—so brave. Such a fighter.
The moment he docked her ship and then his own, he leaped out. A crew already had the fire under control and had helped Cambry and Tal to evacuate the destroyed craft.
“Cambry!” He sprinted toward her.
She ran for him.
He opened his arms wide and caught her when she launched, squeezing the breath right out of her. “What in the veck were you thinking? I told you to go back to the pod.”
She scrambled out of his arms and stood facing him, chin lifted, her small fingers wrapped in the front of his uniform. “I’m a Zandian pilot,” she said, the determination in the set of her mouth daring him to disagree. “I fight for Zandia.”
He staggered a bit under the weight of her declaration. Truly? Had she taken his cause on as her own now? What had changed her mind?
He grasped the back of her head and pulled it against his chest, lowering his lips to her hair. “I guess I’ll have to get used to your being in danger, then,” he said gruffly, emotion closing his throat. He didn’t want to. He wanted to forbid his female from ever putting herself in danger again, but it would go against her nature. Cambry was a warrior like him. So was her brother, if the way he’d been shooting back there had been any indication.
