Zakota: Star Guardians, Book 5

by Ruby Lionsdrake

  She smiled as she imagined herself bringing down enemy ships and becoming a hero to a people who hadn’t known until a few months ago that her planet existed.

  Juanita waved, maybe thinking the smile was for her. Katie was surprised Juanita hadn’t convinced the captain that she should stay, right alongside Tala. Wouldn’t participating in some huge war be good fodder for one of her stories?

  Orion filed in after her, so that could have explained her willingness to leave the Falcon 8. The captain must have decided that he should stay behind because he was a civilian.

  As the women crowded in, Katie remained up front by the navigation console, clearly not in the passenger area. Clearly a pilot. She was ready to take control as soon as Zakota flew the shuttle out of the bay. That was the deal, and a few minutes earlier, he’d come down and told her to get ready to fly. Now, he stood in the hatchway, directing the women inside.

  It would be a tight fit. The shuttle looked like it was designed to hold about ten of those hulking Zi’i warriors. Humans took up less space, but not significantly less space.

  “Katie’s flying?” Indi asked as soon as she walked in, Hierax right behind her. “Where are the seat belts?”

  “Probably wherever the seats are.” Juanita looked at the open space that could have held cargo as easily as people.

  Orion walked over to a hook on the wall, grasped it, and waved for her to join him.

  “That’s not going to cut it if she flies upside down,” Indi said.

  “There won’t be any need for that.” Zakota waved her farther inside to make room for others waiting to board. “It’s a straight shot over to the station.”

  “There was no need for it when she flew me to Brian Head, either,” Indi said. “But she did it anyway.”

  “I thought you would think it was fun,” Katie said.

  “I threw up in my mouth.”

  “If her flying gets too alarming, we can turn control over to Zakota,” Hierax said, touching Indi’s back.

  “Is that supposed to be comforting?”

  “Well…”

  “All right,” Zakota said, “let’s get everybody aboard. The captain said he’s leaving us all behind if we don’t get over there, buy the chief his supplies, and fly back within an hour.”

  “He won’t leave without me,” Hierax said. “I’m mission critical.”

  Katie tapped her palm on the console. She itched to get going, and it had nothing to do with the captain’s impatience. Despite the frustrating ending to her simulation, the “flight” had been fun—a lot of fun. Now she wanted the real thing.

  Zakota closed the hatch with a resounding clang, and Katie bounced on her toes. Her fingers itched. She hadn’t realized how much she missed her plane back home. She’d often dreamed of saving up enough money to buy an old barnstormer with the cockpit open to the air, so she could feel the rush of wind as she flew. She could never have that with a spaceship, but how amazing would it be to fly to different star systems, to skim past gas giants and through asteroid fields and to race comets between the stars?

  “Are we sure this boat isn’t sabotaged?” Indi asked.

  “Er, what?” Katie frowned back at her. “Is that likely?”

  “Back in the Wanderer System, the helm of the warship was sabotaged by an alien that was in hiding until it tried to kill me in engineering.”

  The words spurred a flurry of alarmed conversations and glances toward the hatch.

  “It’s not sabotaged,” Hierax said. “I checked both shuttles myself.”

  “Did you check the helm before it blew up?” Bethany asked.

  “It didn’t blow up. It caught fire.”

  “That’s such a relief.”

  “It was sabotaged after I checked it,” Hierax said. “We didn’t know there was a Zi’i warrior still in hiding on the warship.”

  “What if there’s one still in hiding now?” someone asked.

  Hierax gave Indi an exasperated look.

  She winced and mouthed, “Sorry,” as women continued to voice concerns.

  Zakota walked to his spot at the helm beside Katie and quirked an eyebrow at her. What, did he think she knew how to calm down a bunch of women? One could simply tell soldiers to shut up. That rarely worked with civilians.

  “All right, all right,” Hierax said, raising his voice and lifting his hands. “I’ll check the shuttle again.” He walked toward Zakota and Katie, his voice dropping to a mutter as he added, “I’m sure the captain will love a delay.”

  Katie stepped aside so he could take her spot. He pulled something that looked like a fancy multimeter out of his tool satchel and clipped a wire to a connector.

  “You’ve checked the shuttles since that Zi’i was discovered, haven’t you?” Zakota asked quietly.

  Hierax rolled his eyes. “I checked them an hour ago. Right before your protégé started blowing up simulated aliens.”

  “So what are you doing now?”

  “Nothing.”

  Zakota snorted.

  “The needle is moving on your gauge,” Katie observed.

  “Yes, it’s confirming that there’s power to the deck warmers.”

  “Deck warmers?”

  “Apparently, the Zi’i like to keep their toes warm in space.” Hierax waved to the deck, unplugged his meter, and stepped back. “Shuttle’s safe,” he announced loudly.

  The voices of protest in the passenger area faded. Orion eyed Hierax suspiciously but didn’t say anything.

  While Zakota powered up the shuttle, he pulled his necklace of teeth out of his uniform so he could kiss the large one in the middle—it was carved into a humanoid figurine. He dropped it back under his jacket and reached for the controls, but paused, snapping his fingers. “Almost forgot.”

  He ran to the hatch, opened it, and disappeared outside. He returned with a box in his arms, closed the hatch, and brought the item to Katie, setting it on the deck next to her.

  “Footstool,” he said.

  “Oh.” She nudged it into position. “That’s thoughtful. If a little embarrassing.” She glanced over her shoulder. “I’m not used to being short.”

  “Everything is oversized for humans here. Nothing wrong with standing on something. Better than having to jump up to reach the weapons controls.”

  Her cheeks warmed as she squinted at him. Was that a guess or had he been observing her? At the least, he had to have seen the results of the simulator test. Otherwise he wouldn’t have agreed that she could fly. She had been surprised by his announcement, given how the test had ended. Back home, blowing up one’s plane was generally considered a sign of failure.

  Her hand rested on the controls, and he gave it a friendly pat.

  Normally, she would pull away from a guy offering such a gesture—she was tough and independent and didn’t need supportive gestures, so there—but his fingers brushed across hers as he drew them away, and a warm tingle spread through her body, nerves in her core stirring to life.

  For a moment, all she could think was that she wanted his hand back on hers, or maybe elsewhere on her body. But that was dumb. It hadn’t been a sexual gesture, and they barely even knew each other. And forty women were looking at their backs.

  “Depressurizing shuttle bay,” Zakota announced, tapping various slides and buttons before resting a hand in the patch of gel that acted as a flight stick here.

  It was weird stuff that one could squish, push, flatten, and mold. Rocking one’s hand from side to side and pushing forward and back in the three-dimensional goo wasn’t hard, but it had taken Katie a while to get used to manipulating it in such a way as to direct the shuttle up and down. One couldn’t bank in space, not in the traditional sense, and wings and rudders seemed to be purely decorative if they were there at all. Everything relied on angling the thrusters correctly.

  “And we’re off,” Zakota said.

  The shuttle did not have a view screen, not like on the Falcon 8’s bridge, but the holographic display wrappe
d around what Katie thought of as the cockpit area, showing more than one hundred eighty degrees around the nose of the fang. A camera display floated to one side, showing the view to the rear of the shuttle.

  Even though the ship had dampeners or stabilizers or something that kept them from feeling G-forces, Katie’s grin widened as the display showed them advancing toward the shuttle bay exit. They were moving. Soon, she would fly.

  Two huge doors slid open, revealing starry black space ahead of them. In the distance, she could see the station, a well-lit X within a wheel with bulbous protrusions up and down the framework. Hotels, restaurants, casinos, and whatever else a station held, she imagined.

  She wished it were farther away so she would have more time flying, but at least this was something, a chance to control her destiny, at least for a while.

  “Can I take over?” she asked as soon as they cleared the shuttle bay doors.

  She expected Zakota to object, to make some excuse about why he needed to pilot them a little farther. Would he be nervous about handing a rookie the controls?

  “I’m surprised you haven’t already,” he said, grinning at her and extending a hand toward the console.

  She found herself grinning back, and paused to appreciate the amusement in his eyes before pressing her right hand onto the gel pad. Even though she barely knew Zakota, she felt more relaxed at his side than she would have expected. In the past, she’d gotten nervous under the eyes of flight instructors. Maybe because he was younger than those other instructors had been—or because she was older than she had been back then—this was more comfortable. Maybe it was also because he seemed more like a colleague than an instructor. He certainly had that roguish and mischievous attitude that many of her military colleagues had possessed.

  Still grinning, she immediately commanded the shuttle to surge forward at a speed that wouldn’t leave the captain impatient. She was a little disappointed that the vessel compensated so well and that she didn’t feel the surge. Though perhaps it was a good thing since she was standing on a box instead of being harnessed into a seat.

  Zakota smirked but didn’t comment on her speed.

  When she saw how rapidly the station grew on the display, she was tempted to slow down to lengthen the trip, but she doubted that would be a popular choice.

  An alarm flashed on Zakota’s side of the console.

  “Is that the proximity alarm?” she asked, remembering seeing that flash over there during the simulation.

  The computer hadn’t been amused by how close she’d taken the shuttle to some boulders.

  “Yes, watch for traffic as we get close to the station. There’s a freighter coming in from above.” Zakota pointed toward the ceiling of the cockpit.

  Katie almost flinched. She’d known the wrap-around display flowed across the ceiling in addition to the front and the walls, but she’d forgotten about it.

  A hulking reddish-brown ship that looked like a flying brick had come in from an angle. It was heading toward the station, too, like an elephant that didn’t care if it stepped on some ants along the way.

  She dropped lower to put more space between her shuttle and the brick, and she sped up, wanting to reach their destination first. After all, the captain didn’t want delays, right?

  Ahead of them, a couple of ships the size of theirs flew into a rectangle on the bottom of the X. The opening led into a hangar-sized bay with at least a dozen craft of vastly different shapes, sizes, and designs inside.

  She leaned forward, surprised by other figures. “Are there people walking around in there?”

  Zakota glanced at her. “You have good eyes.”

  “They don’t let you fly if you’re blind.”

  “Yes, those are people—humans and aliens. After we land, we’ll be able to walk into the station. There’s artificial gravity in the bay. That’s something to be aware of when you’re landing. Which I’ll handle this time.”

  “How are the people not being sucked out into space?” Katie glanced up, noticing that freighter over them again. It had sped up to match their pace. No, it was going a little faster than they were now. She scowled at it.

  “Technically,” came Juanita’s voice from behind them, “you’re blown out into space.”

  “I’m sure it makes a huge difference.”

  “Actually,” Hierax said, in a tone that made it sound like a lecture was coming.

  “There’s a forcefield across that opening,” Zakota said, putting a finger to his lips as he glanced back at Hierax. “It’s designed to allow ships to come and go while keeping the atmosphere inside. I’ll be flying us through it, but if you were to do it, you would feel the resistance as we enter. You have to be careful not to overcompensate, or you can end up kissing the far side of the bay. Spectacularly.”

  “Which your engineer would not appreciate,” Hierax said, apparently feeling the need to say something.

  “Let the freighter go ahead of us,” Zakota said.

  “Even though he’s being a posturing asshole?” Katie asked, certain the brick’s pilot was intentionally crowding her.

  “Well, we’re in a Zi’i ship, remember. Most of the galaxy has a reason to hate the Zi’i.”

  “Do they eat other species too?”

  “A few,” Zakota said. “Though I’ve heard humans are their preferred protein source.”

  “Fantastic.”

  Though she wanted to zip in to beat the freighter—Katie didn’t back down when people challenged her to races—she knew she shouldn’t start anything with forty passengers on board, passengers trusting her to get them safely to their destination.

  “This is why I never got into commercial stuff,” she muttered.

  She expected Zakota to ask what she meant, but his eyes glinted, as if he understood perfectly.

  “Man, it’s like the camera panning across a Star Destroyer in Star Wars,” Juanita said. She and the other women watched as the huge brick flew over them, leaving them in its obnoxious shadow.

  “It’s just a freighter,” Hierax said. “They don’t even have weapons.”

  “It should be heading for one of the open docking spots,” Zakota said. “As soon as it passes, we can continue to the shuttle bay. The captain commed ahead and let station control know that we’re not Zi’i, so nobody should be wetting themselves as we fly in—or lunging for weapons.”

  “Things I don’t typically have to worry about when entering a room,” Katie said.

  Zakota glanced at her chest, and she thought he might ask about other reactions her presence in a room might inspire, but he quickly looked away. Had he been checking her out? She wasn’t showing any cleavage, but the top under her jacket hugged things nicely. Maybe he’d noticed.

  She shifted her jacket open further, just in case he wanted to notice more. Then she snorted at herself. She wasn’t looking to date him, just play with his shuttle.

  She smirked, imagining Hierax asking if that was a penis euphemism. Maybe this time, it was.

  Zakota was a little odd, but he was handsome standing there in profile, his face expressive, his lips quick to grin. And he had forearms that would make most bodybuilders envious.

  The freighter was flying ahead of them, and Katie shifted her attention to it again. The stupid brick seemed to slow down now that it had passed them. No, not seemed. She checked the shuttle’s equivalent of a speedometer. It had slowed down.

  “We have weapons,” she said. “I know we do. I fired at things in the simulation.”

  “This is civilized space,” Zakota said. “You don’t get to fire at people for being bad chariot drivers.”

  “Hell, it’s as bad as home then.”

  Instead of heading for one of the docking stations higher up on the X, the freighter ambled toward the shuttle bay.

  “Uh, he knows he’s not going to fit, right?” Katie asked.

  “If he doesn’t, he’s going to find out soon.” Zakota scratched his jaw and looked back at Hierax.

&n
bsp; The engineering chief was the higher ranking of the two and in charge of the mission, despite Zakota shushing him earlier.

  Hierax only shrugged. “No idea what he’s doing.”

  The freighter came to a stop. Directly in front of the shuttle bay entrance.

  “Well,” Zakota said. “That’s problematic.”

  “Comm him,” Hierax said.

  Zakota pushed a couple of the sliders around and tapped a holographic button.

  Katie was forced to slow the shuttle to a stop, where they had a close-up view of the freighter’s pimpled red ass. “You’re sure we can’t fire at it? Just a little?”

  “You sound like Killer,” Zakota said.

  “Who’s that? One of the svenkars?”

  “Might as well be. No answer, Chief. Which is odd. The Drynka are known for being chatty.”

  Drynka? Was that a nationality? Or a species of alien?

  “Maybe they’re busy talking to station control,” Hierax said. “Explaining why they’re stopping up the pipe works. Give it a minute to see if he moves, then comm the captain. His name carries a lot more sway than mine does. Unless we’re in engineering circles. Or Razor Wars circles. Where I’m known for being quite the badass.”

  Katie snorted. She didn’t know what Razor Wars was, but Hierax was about as badass as Bill Gates. He had the Star Guardian muscles and the tattoo, but geekiness oozed out of him.

  “In case you’re wondering,” Juanita said, “Orion showed me Razor Wars, and it seems to be a cross between World of Warcraft and the Star Wars MMORPG.”

  MM-what?

  “Just so you know, Juanita,” Katie said, tapping her fingers on her thigh, “when you clarify things for me, it doesn’t help as much as you seem to think it should.”

  “Angela says that too. And Tala. I don’t think you all were the right people to go into outer space.”

  “I’ve noticed.” Katie waved at the holographic display, wondering if she could zoom in on things or figure out exactly how much room was between the freighter and that forcefield entrance.

  “Captain,” Zakota said, comming the Falcon 8, “we have a problem.”

  “I noticed,” Sagitta responded promptly.