by Lucy Snow
Therefore, I had a little time on my hands, and a very relieved, very stressed out mate in my arms. I began to return Melissa’s kisses one for one, and soon our embraces became more amorous.
As the shuttle made its way toward the dense atmosphere of what had been our temporary home planet of Garamond, Melissa and I made love with the force of two lovers who had begun to think they would never get another chance, only to find that because of their strength and faith in one another, they would have many, many more chances to come together and become one.
We savored the moment.
Afterward, when I lay on the floor of the aft section of the shuttle, my arm draped around Melissa, holding her close to me, I looked down at my mate and marveled at what we had just accomplished. We had crashed on a remote planet after having survived a sabotage attempt by unknown parties and the destruction of our space station, only to find ourselves searching for energy, finding it and stealing it from a race of ghost wolves, only to escape the planet at the last moment while the leader of the ghost wolves was attacking us.
And somewhere in there my mate and I had found each other and now we were together.
It had been an…interesting few solar days for me.
Melissa stirred, lazily opening her eyes and smiling up at me. I motioned for her to go back to sleep - there was nothing for us to do now, except-
The warning sirens went off all over the small shuttle, loud and obnoxious, shaking both of us awake and forcing us to quickly rub the sleep and relaxation from our eyes.
“What the fuck is that?” Melissa said, still lying down, and covering her ears.
“It is the alarm system.”
“You’re a master of understatement, among other things, Ark,” Melissa whispered between clenched teeth as she sat up. “I meant, what’s the problem? Did we make it out of the atmosphere?”
“By now we must have,” I shouted over the din of the alarms as I stood up, not bothering to put my survival suit back on. Melissa got up after me, but she had the sense to cover herself up at least a little bit, pulling her suit over her. “I will investigate.”
“I’m coming too,” she said. “Nothing really exciting going on back here.”
I nodded, and took her hand, and we went to the cockpit, where I slid into the pilot’s chair and keyed the main panel on. It lit up, showing a tactical display, localized system scans, and a defense grid.
“There is another ship out there.”
“What? Another ship? That’s great news! Your fleet found us!” Melissa cried, hitting me on the shoulder. “Your ship has showers, right? I could use a good shower. Or maybe even a bath! Yeah, a bath sounds perfect.” She paused. “Your species does take baths, right? Cause otherwise, that could be a deal breaker on this whole ‘mate’ thing.”
I ignored that for the moment. “It is not Kreossian,” I said, but Melissa didn’t hear me over the sounds of the sirens.
“What? What did you say? I couldn’t hear you over the sounds of these sirens!” Melissa furrowed her brow as the realization came. “Hey, wait a minute, if that’s a Kreossian ship out there, what’s with all the sirens? Don’t they come in peace? Unless….”
I reached over and tapped one of the side panels and the sirens stopped sounding, but the alert lights remained flashing yellow throughout the cabin of the shuttle. “It is not a Kreossian ship.”
“Then who could it be? It couldn’t be human, we don’t have anything that could have gotten here this fast.” Melissa leaned over me, and I felt her breasts press into my shoulder through her survival suit. It was a nice feeling and though we had just finished making love, under different circumstances I would be ready to go at it a second time, right here in the cockpit. I filed that away for later.
“I am scanning the ship now,” I said, engaging the shuttle’s meager scanners. “This ship is not built for any combat, nor for defense.”
“Then can it outrun whatever’s out there?”
“Very likely no. It is a simple transport shuttle.”
“For future reference, you Kreossians should attend diplomatic conferences with new species in more heavily armed and armored shuttles, OK?”
“The empire will take that under advisement,” I grumbled as the scanner chimed in. I looked up at the view screen and to the rapidly approaching ship that was now starting to come into focus. “The ship is Mazon.”
“Shit!” I heard Melissa say. “Mazon…as in your mortal enemies, the Mazon?”
“There is only one Mazon we speak of, Melissa. Any more would be confusing.”
“Thanks for answering my question the long way around,” she retorted. “What are we going to do about him?” She stared at the view screen. The Mazon ship looked sleek and aggressive, and loaded for combat. “He doesn’t look very friendly,” she gulped.
“The Mazon do not have a word for friendly in their language.”
“So what do we do?”
“For now,” I replied, “we do what we can to avoid his attacks. If he attacks.”
Melissa pointed to the view screen. “A ship like that? It looks like the only thing it can do is attack.”
“Your conclusion is not wrong, Melissa.”
“I don’t see how you can be so relaxed about this. What’s gotten into you?”
I looked at her. “Whoever that is, if they wanted to destroy us, we would already be dead.”
Melissa looked back at me, pausing before she nodded. “So, whoever they are, they must want something.”
“That is correct.” I activated our now-repaired communications system. “They are not replying to my hails. It seems whatever they want, for now, will remain a mystery.”
Melissa focused back on me, ignoring the view screen and the approaching Mazon ship. “OK, Ark, tell me everything I need to know about the Mazon.”
“There is too much we do not know. They are shrouded in mystery, and we discovered them a few hundred years ago. Their people are conquerors like ours, but instead of trying to build a peaceful confederation with the worlds they assimilate, they seek to destroy them and subjugate the people into slaves of the Mazon.”
Melissa whistled. “Are they by any chance cybernetic? No reason, just asking…”
“What a strange question that is! No, their technology level matches ours. They are humanoid as we are, and not augmented by technology.”
“OK, good. I just wanted to make sure.”
“Why, have your people encountered a similar species?”
“Only the minds of some of our greatest fiction writers,” Melissa said, waving her hands. “It’s not important, I’ll tell you all about them when we get back to Earth.” She pointed back at the view screen. “Assuming we survive whatever pain that guy’s trying to bring us.”
“We have not yet discussed where we are going after this, Melissa, and the fleet is the near-“
“Let’s not have that discussion quite yet, Ark? How about we wait a couple hours, just for my sake?”
I nodded. “As you wish.”
“I think that’s for the best. Now what are we going to-“
The view screen flashed as the Mazon ship sent out a laser blast that just barely missed us. I tapped on the panel and the ship went into manual control mode, and I started moving around as the ship shot blast after blast across our bow. “You should get strapped in,” I said to Melissa, who nodded and quickly climbed into the copilot’s chair and slung one of the large belts over her.
For the next minute or so we bobbed and weaved in an out of the laser fire as it rained down on us. Each time I was narrowly able to steer the shuttle out of the way just in the nick of time. I glanced over and saw Melissa gripping the arms of her chair with white knuckles, the sweat pouring from her face as she gritted her teeth and leaned into the sudden shifts of position and angle.
I did not want to tell her that I could keep doing this all day, because it was the most fun I’d had in a long time, not counting all the sex she and I had had i
n the last few days.
“How long is this going to last,” Melissa groaned. “I think I’m going to vomit soon.”
“Do not do that,” I warned. “I will stop.” I let my hands fall from the controls, and the ship stopped lurching back and forth.
“What? What do you mean, you’ll stop?” Melissa’s eyes blazed. “He’ll hit us! Don’t stop! Ark!”
“It will be fine, Melissa.” I gestured at the view screen. “Watch.”
And sure enough, the Mazon ship kept firing, but it did not hit us, even without my hands at the controls keeping us moving in different, almost random directions.
“I…I don’t understand.” She said. “Is he just toying with us? Why?”
“That is exactly what he is doing,” I said, nodding.
And then the shooting stopped. I keyed the communications panel one more time, sending a greeting.
This time it was returned, and the view screen shifted to show a familiar, if still unwelcome face, and my hunch bore fruit.
“Khad,” I said to the Mazon man who stood before me, cackling with glee. “It has not been long enough.”
Melissa thrust her head toward me. “You know this guy?”
I nodded. “He is Khad of the Mazon. We are…not friends.”
Khad looked at me and sneered before he focused on Melissa. “Ark, you did not tell me you had found a mate. And such a…weak looking one? You are losing your touch, old man.”
I pointed at him. “Speak ill of my mate again, Khad, and I will drag your body behind this shuttle all the way back to Kreoss.”
“That would be a fine sight, Ark, but given what you are flying in, I do not think your ship could pull that kind of mass.”
I leaned in. “You may be correct. You have gained weight since our last encounter, Khad.”
“Nice one,” I heard Melissa mutter under her breath, and we shared a look and a smile.
“Your joke will get you nowhere, Ark, except spread out among the vastness of space. I am here to finish the job my assassin started.”
CHAPTER 13 - MELISSA
“Assassin?” I cried. What did he mean by that? Then it hit me. “On the station?”
Ark looked at me, confused at first, but then back at Khad on the view screen, and I could see his confusion resolve into anger, and I saw his fist open and close, staying clenched as hard as it could. His eyes nearly glowed. “You are responsible for the death of Admiral Kaalax, Khad! I will have you disintegrated for this.”
“You seem to forget, Ark, that you do not have any weapons on that rust bucket of yours.” Khad laughed. “I suppose you could turn around and destroy my ship with the backwash of your engines, but it might take several hundred years to work!”
I could see the fury chase up and down Ark’s body as he opened and closed his mouth, trying to find the words to retort. I knew how frustrated he must have been in that moment, and my heart reached out to him.
With a cry of fury, Ark took ahold of the controls and he must have thrown it into the lowest gear because we began accelerating as fast as we had when we were trying to leave Garamond’s thick atmosphere. Khad reacted with a look of surprise, then I saw him concentrate.
“What are you doing, Ark?” I screamed as Khad’s ship started getting bigger and bigger. “Are you going to ram him!? Tell me these plans before you make them, please!”
“There was no time to discuss the plan, Melissa,” Ark said, calmly.
“When it involves crashing the ship we’re both in into another ship, you can make time to discuss it with me first, is that clear?” I shouted back, gripping the arms of my chair, even though my hands already hurt from the last time. “We have a lot to discuss when this is all over!”
“As long as we can discuss it without clothing,” Ark said, still calm as a summer day.
“Clothing is always optional, my love.”
Just before we would have collided with Khad’s ship, he must have decided that was a bad idea, because he hit the gas and moved just out of our way. What followed after that was a dogfight in space, if you could consider it a dogfight when one ship had all the weapons, and the other ship tried to use itself as the weapon.
I actually started looking around for a barf bag, but I couldn’t find one. Stupid Kreossians, probably never got space-sick, no matter what acrobatics they were coaxing their ships into performing. I hated them all.
Even Ark, for a brief second. Sitting over there looking like he was having the time of his life racing spaceships with his best alien friend, while I sat over here in this giant oversized chair and this seatbelt that didn’t work and all these panels that I couldn’t read, but were plenty handy if I wanted to vomit all over. Humph.
Every so often Khad would call again on the comms system and yell at Ark, trying to goad him into making a mistake. Ark would come back with some sort of pithy retort, and then our ships would dance all over again, laser blasts arcing out from Khad’s ship and narrowly missing ours.
This time, though, I could tell that Khad wasn’t missing on purpose - it was only by the grace of Ark’s flying skill and experience that we weren’t space dust at each and every turn.
It was actually pretty hot to watch him fly like that. Or, it would have been, if I wasn’t so close to being sick the entire time.
Finally, it all stopped. Khad must have gotten tired of batting us around like a kitten with a ball of string to play with, because suddenly our ship froze in place. I looked around, confused, and Ark was as well, for a moment, before we saw Khad’s ship emitting a soft green light.
“Tractor beam,” Ark and I said at the same time, and then nodded to each other.
“Well, this is about to get interesting…” I added.
“It was interesting before. Now it will be more so,” Ark said, at the same time. His talent with understatement was getting stronger by the second, but it seemed to me he was using it a little bit too much in a short amount of time.
We both sat in our chairs and watched as Khad’s Mazon ship got closer and closer, the green glow of the tractor beam becoming more intense as our the distance between the two ships shortened.
“What do we do?” I asked. I had no idea what to do in a situation like this - I had never been on a ship under a tractor beam before - this wasn’t exactly a scenario that we had planned for on back on Earth.
For that matter, none of this was - I was adrift in a sea of uncertainty, and that sea wasn’t so much filled with familiar water so much as it was filled with cold, dark, and empty, space.
My only lighthouse in all of this was the giant alien sitting in the chair next to me. I knew that something bad was about to happen, but Ark sat there like a stone, and when I saw him unbuckle his belt and stand up, there was no hesitation in his movement or worry on his face.
Ark was a river of calm, and all I could do was both marvel at it and try to draw some strength from him. Without any of the experiences he had had before to aid me, that was not easy.
“What’re you doing?” I asked, my eyes following Ark as he walked purposefully out of the cockpit to the aft section of the shuttle after making some adjustments to the control panel.
