by Kate Rudolph
Ruby’s first instincts were to mess with the controls at random on the theory that it would be more difficult to fix, but she was stuck on the ship with dozens of innocent captives, and she couldn’t risk putting their lives at stake. So she looked for the controls that Nyco had told her about, the ones that would disable the FTL engine. She followed his instructions as best she could, disabling several safeguards and the mechanism that allowed the engine to power up. She then looked at the regular engines to see if there was anything else she could do, but the controls might as well have been designed by an ancient alien species with no understanding of human logic. She closed out of the program and covered her tracks.
She had done her part, and now all she could do was wait and pray that Nyco got there soon.
WHEN THE GAMMA STATION shuttle came into view, Nyco let out a whoop of joy, but that was quickly quelled as he caught sight of the vessel anchored to it. It was an ugly ship that not even the cheapest of pirates would have been willing to call home. That told him a lot of things about this crew: they were new, they were poor, and they were desperate. He had gathered most of that before seeing the ship, but the ship cemented it. No one but a desperate crew would hit so close to Earth and the moon. Pirates were successful because they stuck to the sparsely populated shipping lanes and took their loot from freighters who couldn’t fight back. He didn’t know how these scavengers had planned to get away, and he didn’t care. They weren’t going anywhere now.
He examined the clock on his display and saw that nearly two hours had passed since he’d last spoken to Ruby. More than enough time for her to disable the FTL, that was, if she hadn’t been caught and thrown in with the rest of the prisoners, or worse. No, he wasn’t going to think like that. He could feel that his mate was on that ship, feel her through the connection the blossomed between them, and though he could sense nervousness and fear, it wasn’t any worse than it had been since he first realized that he could sense echoes of her emotions.
Nyco promised himself that he would marvel at all the possible joys of the denya bond later once he had his mate back.
With the stealth function on his ship engaged, the scavengers couldn’t detect him. If they started looking, he wouldn’t be able to stay hidden for long, but they couldn’t look for a threat they didn’t know existed. Nyco swung his ship around, getting close enough to be within blasting range. He saw guns on the scavenger ship, but none of them were powered up, and there were no cannons. He put the auto fire on his own ship’s single gun on standby. One press of a button and he could start targeting. But battles weren’t won by fire alone.
Nyco let his hand hover over the comm button for a moment before finally hailing the scavenger ship. They still appeared to be busy stripping the Gamma Station shuttle of everything of worth, and he hoped that left them too distracted to realize that he was only one man on one ship. He’d bluffed his way out of more dangerous situations before, but then he had only been playing with his own life, not his mate’s. He couldn’t think that now, couldn’t afford to get distracted. If he got distracted, Ruby would die, and he wasn’t going to let that happen.
Speaking to the scavengers over the comms wouldn’t immediately give away his position, but a skilled communications officer would be able to begin a trace in a matter of minutes. Nyco was willing to bet that the scavengers didn’t care about skilled positions, unless that skill was with a blaster. But he wasn’t willing to bet Ruby’s life on it. So he had to act quickly. If he did this right, it would all be over soon.
“This is Nyco NaZel of Gamma Station. Cease your actions immediately, disengage your engine, and surrender, and no harm will come to you.” He let the identification and threat repeat over the comms while he waited for the ship to answer. Unsurprisingly, no one responded, but the four guns on the hull of the ship came to life and started to swing on their hinges, looking for a target.
Perfect.
Nyco engaged the auto fire and took out two guns with a burst of speed he couldn’t hope to replicate. The remaining weapons must have also been on auto fire as they zeroed in on his position almost too quickly for him to counter. But Nyco was more at home in the cockpit of his ship than anywhere else in the galaxy, and his instincts had him spinning away, out of the line of fire, before he consciously realized that he had been targeted.
One of the blasts came close enough to send his ship rocking, but his own defensive force field prevented any major damage. The scavengers should have been using their own force field, but again they showed just how amateur they were. This crew wouldn’t get a chance to learn better. And though a large part of him wanted to make the crew pay with their lives for harming his mate, Nyco was determined to capture them and return them to Gamma Station to own up for their crimes.
His gun took out the third gun and it was one-on-one. The scavenger ship rocked to its side as he sent off the shot that would have destroyed the final gun, but his blast went wide and shot uselessly into open space. Nyco bit back a curse; there was no need to get frustrated, frustration would only make him messy.
The ship rocked again and he saw that it was slowly undocking from the Gamma Station shuttle. There was no way that every member of the crew who was stripping the shuttle for parts had gotten off and returned to the scavenger ship. The scavengers were leaving their own in hopes of escaping justice.
Nyco wasn’t about to let that happen. He engaged the comm again and tried to hail them. “The jump gate for this system is closely monitored, you are surrounded. Surrender now.” Everything he said was a lie, but he didn’t care about being honest with a bunch of murderers.
His gun got a lucky shot and took out the scavenger ship’s final weapon. From the way it detached and floated away, it was clear that it had been roughly cobbled onto the broken down ship and wasn’t secured correctly. If it hadn’t been for Nyco, the gun most likely would have fallen off the ship due to rough flying or contact with a little space debris.
But still the scavengers weren’t stopping, not that he expected them to, not until all hope was lost. Under other circumstances Nyco would have continued to fire, but he couldn’t risk damaging the ship too much, he couldn’t risk Ruby or all the other people who had been taken prisoner. The ship turned slowly away from the Gamma Station shuttle and began chugging towards open space. Now was the moment of truth. The scavengers’ only hope for escape was a desperate jump to FTL. Nyco held his breath and waited. One minute passed, and another, and then one more, and though the scavenger ship put distance between itself and the shuttle, it didn’t speed up and it didn’t disappear from sight.
The FTL was off-line.
Nyco reached over to engage his comms once more, but before he could say anything, a new voice came over the speaker. “Surrender immediately and you will be shown mercy. We have your ships surrounded.”
Ships? Nyco switched over his view and saw that half a dozen Earth cruisers were ringed around him and the scavenger ship. His first instinct was to argue, but there was no way to fight back. He signaled his compliance with the command and only hoped that now the scavengers would do the same.
CHAPTER NINE
RUBY RETURNED TO HER room nearly twenty hours after she had first left Nyco lying in her bed. She slipped off the borrowed shoes that one of her rescuers had lent to her and stumbled into the shower still fully clothed. Exhaustion hung heavy on her shoulders and she just wanted to sleep for the next week. She managed to slide her clothes off and let them land in a wet heap in the corner of the shower stall. She’d worry about drying them later, right now she was too tired to care.
She wanted sleep, and she wanted Nyco. And though her bed was right there waiting for her, she knew she wouldn’t be satisfied until she saw the man who had kept her sane through that entire ordeal. She wasn’t exactly sure how it had all ended. After disabling the FTL, she found another place to hide, and not long after that things had gotten scary. The ship had rocked and twirled and sirens had rung incessantly for several
long minutes. She had been sure that it was Nyco coming to find her, but once her captors surrendered, they’d been met with a boarding party of human guards from Gamma Station.
The guards had taken everyone back to the moon and interviewed all of the passengers to determine what had happened. Ruby wasn’t sure if she should keep Nyco’s name out of it, but in the end she decided to tell the guards everything. Well, everything about their comm calls and her disabling the FTL. The guards didn’t need to know anything about her personal relationship with Nyco.
She felt clean, if not more refreshed, after stepping out of the shower. She grabbed the first shirt she saw in her bag and slipped it on before crawling under the covers into her bed. From how tired she was, sleep should have claimed her immediately, but of course she wasn’t so lucky. The last dregs of adrenaline were still working their way through her system and every time she shut her eyes she saw the inside of that scavenger ship again. Now that she had slowed down for the first time in hours, she had to face just how close she had come to a truly terrible end. If it weren’t for Nyco, she wasn’t sure that she or her fellow passengers would’ve been rescued in time. Even if she wasn’t certain of his role, his communication with her during the entire ordeal had kept her sane.
She clutched the blanket close and tried to wrap it around herself as tightly as she could, but that was no substitute for a strong pair of arms holding her close and giving her comfort. Even under the blanket, despite the warm shower and the pleasant temperature in the room, Ruby was cold. Unsettled. And she no longer felt safe on Gamma Station. If a bunch of scavengers could pick off a tourist shuttle that easily, what was to stop them from getting inside the station?
She drew her knees up tight to her chest and clenched her jaw as she tried to convince herself that the ordeal was over, she was safe now.
But she didn’t have Nyco.
It occurred to Ruby that he might be keeping his distance. After all, the last time they’d seen one another face-to-face she’d been yelling at him about keeping secrets and she’d said some terrible things. They’d pushed it all aside in the face of danger, but now that they were safe, or as safe as they could expect to be, maybe he didn’t want to see her again. Or maybe he thought that she didn’t want to see him.
Ruby threw the blankets off of her bed and rolled to the side until her feet hit the ground. She turned on the lights and found the communicator embedded in the wall. She entered Nyco’s room number and counted down the seconds, waiting for him to answer. But the call didn’t engage and after a minute she was prompted to leave a message or try to call again later. Ruby was about to go and find her own communicator to call his personal device when she remembered that her comm was still lost somewhere on the scavenger ship. She couldn’t call him that way, but if he was in his room he was only a few steps down the hall, and she could simply knock on his door and have her questions answered quickly.
She already had her hand on the knob before she remembered she wasn’t wearing any pants. Ruby quickly backtracked and got dressed, even taking the time to slip her feet into a pair of slippers. She didn’t want to get caught anywhere without shoes this time. She had learned that lesson the hard way. The hallway was deserted outside of her room and Ruby realized that it must be quite late at night if it wasn’t already early the next morning. She had lost so much time to her unwanted adventure and she realized with a start that she was scheduled to go home tomorrow. What a difference a weekend could make. She felt like a different person, and only part of that came from her connection to Nyco.
Nyco’s door loomed a few meters away and before she could hesitate, Ruby closed the distance and knocked three times, the sound loud enough to echo. There was no answer. Could he be asleep? It was late, after all, and his day had been just as trying as hers. Ruby tried knocking one more time, but when he didn’t answer she spun around to return to her own room. She wasn’t going to wait in the hallway until he got back, or until he woke up.
Then before she could take two steps, a figure turned the corner and as he got closer, she saw it was Nyco. She didn’t realize she was running towards him until her arms clamped tight around him and she hugged him close. He buried his face in her hair and she could feel his lips brush against the back of her neck, the whisper of a kiss.
“Where were you? I thought...” She wasn’t sure what she thought, and she let the sentence trail off.
Nyco didn’t let go of her, instead clutching her tighter and speaking into their embrace. “I had to convince them I wasn’t one of the scavengers, it took a little longer than I hoped.”
Ruby tried to pull away to get a look at Nyco’s face, to see if he was serious, but he was holding her so tightly that she could only slightly crane her neck. “You? Scavenger? You’re way too smart for that. You wouldn’t get caught like they did.”
The laugh that boomed out of him seem to catch him by surprise, and just as quickly it was overcome by a yawn. “I don’t think I’ve slept for the past three days, at least it doesn’t feel that way.”
“I know what you mean.” And for the first time since she’d left her room that morning, the knot in her chest and all the tension she carried in her shoulders seem to melt into nothingness. “I know we have a lot to talk about, but do you think we could catch a few hours of sleep first? I can barely string two thoughts together right now.”
Nyco finally drew back from her and his expression shuttered. “Of course,” he said cautiously. He let silence hang between them for a moment after that, and Ruby realized that he was waiting for her to push him away again.
“I don’t think I’d feel safe alone in my room tonight. What do you say we sleep in yours?” She’d been the one to push him away the first time, and so she had to be the one to make the offer now.
Nyco’s face lit up, blooming into a smile. He held out his hand towards her, and she linked her fingers with his as they walked back to his room together.
WAKING FOR THE SECOND time in Nyco’s arms was different than the first. This time Ruby knew exactly where she was and exactly who she was with. She knew that their relationship was a little bit complicated and way more intense than she would ever expect from a few days’ acquaintance, but that no longer scared her. Sure, she needed a little time to adjust, and she wasn’t positive where this road would lead them, but she thought that they might be able to walk it together. Whatever problems were coming their way, they could figure it out. If they could take on the scavengers, they could take on anything.
She could feel Nyco waking beside her, his body pulling and stretching as he roused from sleep. After several moments and a groan that did interesting things to her body, Nyco’s eyes opened and met hers.
“Good morning,” he said. He held himself still beside her, as if he was afraid that a simple touch would send her running. Again.
Maybe he was smart to be cautious, but Ruby had had plenty of time to think, and though she could not have possibly figured out every angle of their relationship, could not have solved every problem that they would face, one thing was certain. Nyco was hers, and she was going to keep him. She reached out and traced the edge of his cheekbone with the tips of her fingers. Nyco tilted his head into the touch, his skin warm and soft against hers. “Are there any other big secrets between us?” she asked, offering a small smile to let him know that she wasn’t angry anymore. “You’re not hiding a dozen other mates or anything like that are you?
It was meant as a joke, but Nyco’s face was utterly serious. “I need only you, my denya, if you will have me.”
“I will,” she responded. “We can figure out the rest later.”
Their gazes held and locked and then Nyco’s eyes shifted from black to red, that reaction he had when feeling intense emotion. Ruby’s eyes would have done the same if she were Detyen, she was sure. She could feel something in her chest, like a cord stretching out from her heart to his, binding them together through a connection she still didn’t quite understand, but now it
gave her hope. Through the impossible distances of the universe, the vast spaces filled with dangers unknown and species she couldn’t hope to make sense of, she had found the one being out there meant for her. And though this was all happening so fast, it felt so right that she was almost terrified by it. But she trusted Nyco, and she thought she could grow to trust the bond, and from the heat in his eyes, and the hard press of his body against hers, she was done thinking for the moment.
Now was time to feel.
She couldn’t say who leaned in first, but they were kissing, clenched together and laying in his bed, like they wanted to devour one another. At some point in the night her shirt had ridden up, exposing her stomach to the hot heat of Nyco’s hands. His fingers brushed against her sensitive skin and she couldn’t have stopped the moan that escaped her throat if she had tried, but Ruby was beyond trying to hide her reactions to this man, this mate. She wanted him, and that was all she had to understand now.
Nyco pushed her shirt even further up until they both managed to wrench it over her head and throw it somewhere out of sight, leaving her bare before him. The light of the room was dim, still set on the sleep cycle, but she could see well enough to watch Nyco devour her with his impassioned red eyes. When he looked at her like that she felt worshiped, cherished. Precious.
And then he was using his lips and fingers like an expert, teasing all of her exposed skin until she was a writhing, wanton mess desperate for the pleasure he could give her. He seemed to understand her needs before she was forced to beg, giving her the friction she craved as she rubbed against him, needing the contact more than she needed air.
When he pressed his lips to the heat of her sex, Ruby realized that her pants had disappeared somewhere in the onslaught of sensation Nyco was giving her. She arched against him, her fingers digging into the sheet under her, and the sounds that she made edged on barbaric, but when Nyco flicked his eyes up at her, a dirty grin on his face, she knew that he loved that he could bring out this side of her. She’d always liked sex, but Nyco took it to another level, focusing so completely on her that Ruby couldn’t think beyond what he was doing to her, and there was no room for inhibitions or judgment.
