Zakota

by Ruby Lionsdrake

  “Who’s flying the warship?” he asked over the comm, then pointed toward the console in front of Katie. “There are rear weapons too.”

  “Me,” Asan said. “Some kind of bug came in via the comm and messed with power for a minute, but I think I’ve got it cleared now. I’m going to help with the inquisitor flying up your ass.”

  “Appreciate it. Feel free to hurry.” Zakota spun and whipped to the side as the enemy ship came up behind them, weapons blazing.

  The shuttle had reinforced hull plating, hence its survival of the explosion on the station, but it did not have shields. They couldn’t take many hits.

  Katie found the aft weapons and fired at their pursuer. Unfortunately, the beams shot well wide, all of them streaking off into the dark of space.

  “Ugh, I think the targeting is off,” Katie said as another groan came from the hull, and the console shuddered under Zakota’s fingers. “Trying to compensate,” she added.

  “Good, make sure to—” A thunderous snap erupted from the control panel. Light flashed, and an electric shock arced into Zakota.

  His vision went black as he flew through the air and slammed down on the deck. Pain coursed through his body, and his heart hammered against his ribs. He gasped, struggling to find air.

  “Zakota?” someone asked, seemingly from far away.

  Hands slid under his shoulders and cradled his head. Katie?

  He blinked furiously, trying to clear his vision.

  Underneath him, the deck jerked and shuddered. He floated upward a few inches as artificial gravity started to fail, but then he struck back down again. Gravity returned, but he could feel the stabilizers struggling to keep it there.

  Something battered the shuttle, and he flew off the deck again. Enemy fire?

  He groaned, trying to sit up. Who was flying? Or were they floating in space, an easy target? He had to get back to the console.

  Someone gripped his shoulders. “I don’t think you should get up.”

  That was Juanita, not Katie. It was illogical, but a surge of disappointment went through him. He wanted Katie to cradle his head, maybe stroke the side of his face.

  “She got him!” someone cried. Orion.

  “Who-what?” Zakota asked, his vision returning, though it was still blurry.

  Despite Juanita’s protest, he rolled to his hands and knees. He had to get back to the helm.

  “Nice flying, Katie,” Juanita said.

  “And shooting,” Orion added.

  “I told you I could do it.”

  Zakota looked up in time to see Katie tossing Orion a triumphant look over her shoulder.

  “I was just offering to help since I have more experience—I do pilot my own ship, you know.”

  Zakota gathered that he’d blacked out for a few seconds, long enough to miss an argument. Maybe Katie had swatted Orion’s hands away from the console.

  “But have you mastered the flight simulator for the Zi’i shuttle?” Katie asked.

  “No, have you mastered it?”

  “Practically. Except the part where the ship self-destructed at the end of the run.”

  Zakota used the hull to support himself as he stood and made his way back to the console. He looked at the sensors to see if he needed to do anything. There were more alarms flashing than ever, so he wondered if they even could do anything.

  The Zi’i warship hovered nearby, and the inquisitor that had been chasing them wasn’t registering power anymore. Part of its hull had been blown off.

  “That’s the one I got,” Katie said smugly. “The warship got that one.” She pointed at another wreck.

  Zakota located a third destroyed inquisitor, the one he and the fire falcon had taken out, and finally, he found the fourth inquisitor, the one that had been harassing the Star Guardian ship. Rather, he found the remains of it. It was in at least a dozen pieces scattered in a trail.

  “I think we should take you to sickbay,” Katie said, reaching out to touch his face. “You smell like spent fireworks. If you had hair, I think it would be sticking out in all directions.”

  “I have hair. In places.” He pulled his fatigue jacket and tank top away from his chest and peered down, moderately curious if an electrical shock would make his chest hair stand up.

  “You’re not one of those men who shaves everything, eh?”

  “No, why would I? I mean, who would?” He curled a lip at the notion of a bald groin.

  Then he noticed Katie was still touching the side of his face. She gazed at him as if she worried he might fall over at any second. He must look bad. But maybe that was all right if it elicited feminine concern.

  He reached up and touched his hand to hers, in part to let her know that he would be all right. And in part because touching sounded nice. She had soft skin. He wondered if he could convince her to take that jacket off so he could see more of it.

  “Some bodybuilders on Earth do it,” Juanita offered, “to show off their chest muscles. I think they even wax.”

  Katie lowered her hand, and Zakota felt a stab of disappointment. Why hadn’t he booted Orion and Juanita off the shuttle back on the station? There hadn’t been any reason to take them into battle, and if he’d left them, he and Katie would be alone and she might still be caressing his cheek.

  A moan came from the deck, their tied captive finally regaining consciousness. Zakota supposed they wouldn’t have been entirely alone.

  “I think I owe you some flying lessons, Katie,” he said quietly, turning his back toward the others.

  “Because I so obviously need them?” She folded her arms over her chest, taking the words as an insult.

  “No, because you need a lot of supervised flight hours to get a space pilot’s license in the Confederation, and you seem like you’d like to do that.”

  “Oh. I mean, I don’t know if there’ll be time, or what’s going to happen in the future, but I’d like some more training, yeah. On the fire falcon.” She gave him that challenging look, as if daring him to find a way to make that happen.

  He snorted, but he definitely owed her a favor, and after this, he wasn’t quite so horrified of the idea of her sitting in his helm chair on the bridge.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Zakota said.

  “Who was flying the Falcon?” Juanita asked.

  “Uh, good question.” Zakota rubbed his head. “If Asan is on the warship, and I’m here, I guess it could be Arkyn. I didn’t think he had those kinds of maneuvers in him.” For the most part, Arkyn could pilot ships through open space, but Zakota couldn’t remember him piloting one in battle.

  “Zakota,” came Sagitta’s voice over the comm, “your shuttle looks like it could fall into a sun at any second. You better land it for repairs. Do you have Hierax aboard?”

  “No, sir. We left him gathering his materials. We saw you under attack and rushed out to help.”

  “Ah.”

  Sagitta didn’t sound annoyed, but maybe disappointed. No doubt, he wanted to take off right away. That must mean that the Falcon 8 hadn’t suffered much damage. Had he been playing dead to lure those inquisitors into getting foolishly close? That seemed like the kind of thing he would do, but Asan had also mentioned some kind of computer virus.

  “Dock your shuttle, then take the other one over to the station to pick him and his supplies up.”

  “Yes, sir. Uh, who was at the helm over there during that skirmish?”

  “I was,” Sagitta said.

  “You, sir?” Zakota realized that might sound insulting and hastened to add, “I didn’t know you’d had pilot training.”

  “I’ve taken a few classes,” Sagitta said. “Dock, Zakota. I’ll tell Hierax to be ready when you get back to the station.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Is Orion still with you?” Sagitta added before Zakota cut the comm.

  “I’m here, Sage,” Orion said.

  “You still have that prisoner?”

  “Yes.”

  “Alive
?”

  “Yes,” Orion said dryly. He sounded a lot like Sagitta when he got dry.

  “Good. I want to question someone about this mess.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have obliterated those inquisitors so thoroughly when you were practicing your piloting skills.” Orion smirked. As the captain’s little brother, he was apparently allowed to razz the captain when others weren’t.

  “Blame that on Ku. He’s still working on mastering the difference between the commands, ‘Disable them,’ and ‘Utterly obliterate them.’”

  “Captain,” came Ku’s voice, “all you said was ‘Take care of them.’”

  “Just bring me that prisoner, Orion,” Sagitta said.

  “You forgot to say please,” Orion said.

  Now Zakota smirked, wishing he could say something like that to the captain.

  “He has difficulty with such words,” came a new voice. Was that Dr. Tala?

  If she was on the bridge, did that mean someone up there had been injured?

  “Tell me about it,” Orion said.

  Zakota’s logostec beeped, letting him know about a comm on another channel.

  “What is it, Hierax?” he asked after closing his call with the captain.

  “I’ve got a pallet full of boxes here and no shuttle to load them in,” Hierax announced.

  Zakota rubbed his head again. “I’m beginning to wish I’d stayed unconscious.”

  “Want me to fly us into the shuttle bay?” Katie asked, her eyes gleaming. Maybe she wished he’d stayed unconscious too.

  “Go ahead.” Zakota waved to the controls. Anyone who could evade the enemy while firing back at him could surely handle landing the ship. “Just don’t bounce off anything this time. I think the console will explode if any more indicators start flashing. Explode again,” he amended.

  8

  Katie wasn’t able to drag Zakota back to the Falcon 8 until he’d landed the damaged shuttle, used the other one to pick up Hierax, and spent ages talking with him about the necessary repairs. It wasn’t until Hierax’s two young engineering assistants had come over to help with the shuttle that Zakota had been willing to leave. The fact that he’d started wobbling while he stood may have helped convince him that checking into sickbay wasn’t a bad idea.

  Halfway through the airlock tube, which had been reconnected so people could come and go between the fire falcon and the warship again, he wobbled once more, having to brace himself against it for a second.

  Katie maneuvered herself under his arm and lifted it across her shoulders.

  “I think I should lie down soon,” Zakota said, accepting her help, though he seemed reluctant to lean much of his weight on her.

  “Exactly what I had in mind,” Katie said, wrapping her free arm around his waist. “An hour ago. When your nonexistent hair was trying to stand up.”

  “I’m certain I assured you that I do have some hair.”

  “Yes, I saw you checking on the three on your chest.”

  “There are more than three,” he said as they walked into the cargo bay.

  “Four?”

  “A large, manly number of hairs.”

  “Five, gotcha.”

  Zakota shook his head. “I have no trouble believing you’re a pilot back on your home world.”

  “Because of the deft flying I did today?”

  “Because you’re a smartass, and I’ve yet to know a pilot who wasn’t.”

  “You really know how to charm women, don’t you?” Katie patted him on the side to let him know she was joking.

  She much preferred men who traded jokes with her to men who hit on her by saying stupid things about her hair or her eyes. She also liked men who had hard bodies under their uniforms, and from her current position, she could tell Zakota did. Not that there’d been much of a question from the lean lines of his face and the thick muscled forearms on display when his sleeves were rolled up. She wouldn’t mind seeing him with his shirt off, and hoped Dr. Tala included that in her exam. While Katie watched.

  She still thought Zakota was weird, but he was also… she wasn’t sure. She couldn’t deny that her body responded to his touch, even inadvertent touches, and she felt hyperaware of the heat of his side against hers right now, of the appealing weight of his arm around her shoulders, of the masculine scent of him lingering in her nostrils. She imagined him pulling her into a ladder well, trapping her between the rungs and his body, and kissing her hard as he shoved his hands under her clothes to rub and caress her receptive flesh.

  They turned sedately around a corner, and Katie blushed at her wayward mind. Clearly, it had been too long since she’d had sex, and she needed to blow off some steam.

  But it wasn’t just the physical that she was starting to imagine with Zakota. Her insides had warmed when he’d said he would see what he could do in regard to her getting a chance at the helm on the Falcon 8’s bridge. Even before that, he’d been willing to take her over to the shuttle to run the simulator without demanding anything in return. She’d known guys who would have taken advantage of the situation and tried to finagle sex out of her in exchange for favors. But he wasn’t like that. He helped his family, and there was no question that he was honorable.

  “Of course I don’t,” Zakota said after a thoughtful pause. “If I did, I wouldn’t need to carve talismans that are blessed by the god Qat to help attract women.”

  “Are you carrying one of those talismans now?”

  “No, I sold them all. These teeth are supposed to be lucky in battle.” Zakota pulled out the thong of pointy teeth that had fallen under his fatigue jacket. “They’re probably the reason I didn’t die when the helm exploded today.”

  “Undoubtedly.” Katie glanced at his face. “Do you believe in that stuff? Gods? And blessings? I know you said your father was a shaman, but you seem like a modern space-going man, and…”

  She shrugged. She didn’t want to insult him, but she’d gotten the impression from the rest of the men, at least the Dethocoleans, that most of them were atheists or agnostics and mostly mentioned their gods out of habit rather than because they were truly praying to them.

  “I believe there’s more out there than men see or understand,” Zakota said, “and it’s easier for my sanity to believe someone is watching out for us as a species. And watching out for my family back home. When I left… Well, I need to believe that.”

  “I see.”

  So he did believe. She’d always been skeptical that anyone was watching out for her. But she vowed to be careful and not go out of her way to offend him or belittle his religion. Honestly, it wouldn’t have occurred to her to do so if he’d believed in God. Somehow the idea of multiple gods always seemed like something from mythology rather than anything real. But that was surely her cultural prejudice showing.

  They reached sickbay, and the door slid open. Katie extricated herself from Zakota, though she wouldn’t have if they could have easily maneuvered through the doorway as a pair. Walking arm-in-arm—or arm-around-waist—with him had not been unpleasant.

  Her ladder fantasy flashed into her mind again, and she snorted to herself. All right, it had been more than not unpleasant.

  Voices greeted them as they entered sickbay, and she had to stop, lest she run into someone’s back.

  Captain Sagitta. He turned, saw them, and stepped out of the way.

  He didn’t appear injured, but maybe he had come down to check on those who were. The exam tables and beds were filled with men sitting or lying down. Dr. Tala and the medical robots were all working on patients.

  “Maybe I should just lie down in my cabin,” Zakota said.

  “No.” Katie gripped his arm. “You’re staying.”

  Tala looked over at them.

  “A console blew up in his face,” Katie said, “and he flew ten feet, and I think he was unconscious for a while.”

  “A few seconds,” Zakota said, “that’s it.”

  “Long enough for me to blow up the ship pestering
us.”

  “Which was a few seconds, right?” Zakota smiled at her.

  “For you to blow it up?” Sagitta’s eyes narrowed as he looked at Katie.

  Er. That was right. Zakota hadn’t gotten permission to take her over to the warship, show her the shuttle, or let her pilot the shuttle.

  “Someone had to,” Katie said, “after Zakota was knocked out.”

  She lifted her chin and tried to hold his eyes, but the captain had one of those if-you-spout-any-nonsense-I’ll-have-you-flogged kind of gazes, and it was hard not to squirm under it.

  “She’s a pilot on her home world,” Zakota said, shifting to stand slightly in front of Katie and draw the captain’s attention away. “She’s been itching for a chance to fly a spaceship.”

  “I am aware of that,” Sagitta said coolly. “This is not the time for flying lessons.”

  “I just let her use the flight simulator on the Zi’i shuttle. And she did really good. She made it all the way to the end. And then she flew us over to the station smoothly—with me standing right beside her and watching, of course.” Zakota hesitated, and Katie wondered if he would mention the freighter and the unorthodox landing in the bay. “And then, she was there to take over when I got knocked out, just like she said. And she blew up the ship firing on us.”

  Katie warmed under his defense, though if anything, Sagitta seemed to grow cooler. “Orion was on the shuttle. He’s a pilot. A trained and certified pilot.”

  “Not trained on a Zi’i shuttle, sir,” Zakota said sturdily.

  Katie was surprised he was standing up to his captain, though she wished she’d kept her trap shut so that he wouldn’t need to.

  Would he be punished over this? She’d wanted to fly—she’d been dying to fly—but she hadn’t wanted to get him in trouble. She’d been selfish, she realized, not to think about that before. She should have considered that it would be a possibility when she’d gone behind the captain’s back to ask Zakota directly.

  “An hour on a flight simulator hardly qualifies her as trained,” Sagitta said. “What if—”

  “If you’re going to argue, do it somewhere else,” Tala snapped, not looking up from the nasty blistered burns she was patching on a man’s bared arm. “There are injured people here who need rest.”