Shifting Cargo (A Shift in Space Book 1)

by Danielle Forrest

  Then Zee stepped in, connecting with practically every inch of skin down her back. She leaned into him, enjoying the heat he projected. All her muscles dissolved, threatening to send her into a pool on the floor of the shower, but he wrapped his arms around her waist, holding her up.

  She looked down as something scratched against her stomach, not hurting her but definitely noticed. His fingers ended in sharp, pointed claws like her own. Did they extend like hers did? She pulled them away from her skin, running her fingers over the tips.

  “Careful, they’re sharp,” Zee said into her ear.

  She smirked, twisting to look up at him and lifting her unoccupied hand. “So are mine.” She flexed her hand, the clawed tips extending slightly.

  “Beautiful,” he said under his breath.

  She released a humorless laugh, shaking her head at him. How the hell were deadly claws beautiful? Her father had once used his to shred sheet metal at a temporary research colony. She couldn’t imagine anything less beautiful.

  Zee’s hands receded, but moved to her back, rubbing soap into the skin there. He leaned in, whispering into her ear in a way that rumbled through her. “If you’re anything like me, this is hard to reach. And I did have you laying on that nasty gym floor.”

  Ellie laughed, her insecurities forgotten for the moment. “You did.” She nodded, finding it hard to keep her head upright. She leaned against the opposite wall, her hands supporting her as the water beat down on her, and Zee massaged her back. But he didn’t stop there. No, he continued on, at first teasing her sides, her shoulders, her butt, but before long, he’d left no inch of her body unexplored.

  Well, except for maybe the good bits.

  She wanted to entice him to continue what they’d done in the gym, but her brain had shorted out. God, what he was doing to her!

  But when he reached her toes, she sucked in a breath, shoring up her courage. “Okay, my turn.” She turned around, whirling her finger in the air to ask him to do the same.

  He just stared at her, confused, then tried to reach for her again.

  “Oh, no,” she said, jumping back and hitting the wall. Her skin smarted, but she didn’t let it stop her. “I am squeaky clean. You’ve done a fantastic job.” Damn, he sure had. She shook her head. Focus. “But you’re still dirty.”

  God, what a stupid line!

  He didn’t seem to mind, though. His lip tipped upward, making his usually narrow mouth look fuller. “By all means.” He turned around, giving her full access to the canvas of his skin.

  Ellie bit her lip and sighed. God, he was gorgeous. She traced her fingers lightly over his back, fascinated by the way the strange groupings of muscles twitched under that teasing caress. She ran them upward, pausing when she caught sight of the deep gouges in his shoulders. Tears pricked at her lashes as guilt surge inside her. “I’m so sorry!” she said, resting her cheek against his back.

  Shit, how could she have done that? How could she have been so stupid? While he was busy giving her pleasure, she’d been busy stabbing him in the back.

  Literally.

  What was I thinking?

  She should have shifted back. That would have been safer. She would have never hurt him with those blunt human nails. What had made her think, even for a moment, that it was okay to be in her Danaus form outside of Ara?

  You’re an idiot, Ellie.

  She’d forgot. She’d honestly forgot what form she was in, and Zee hadn’t exactly helped. He’d been so accepting and look what she’d done in return! She’d stabbed him in the back!

  “It’s nothing,” he mumbled, his back vibrating against her cheek.

  She pulled back sharply. “It’s not nothing!” Her voice rose in pitch, making her flinch as it hit a shrill tone. “I hurt you.” She bit her lip again, the accusing wounds taunting her, eating away at her confidence.

  Zee turned, holding her face between his hands. “It was worth it.”

  She stared, but saw only certainty in his alien eyes. She wanted to believe him, but the image of those marks was burned into her retinas as if she’d stared at the sun too long.

  Opening her mouth to speak, he silenced her with his hand. “It’ll heal. Quickly, in fact. There is nothing to be upset about. I promise.”

  Ellie nodded, the guilt still churning at her gut as his warm palm remained plastered to her mouth. She grabbed his fingers, peeling them back. “Okay. Can I have my face back?”

  He laughed, dropping his hand to his side. “Absolutely.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  After the shower, they sat in her room. Normally with guests, they would have each sat in one of the overstuffed chairs against the display wall, but Zee dragged her so she fell on his lap. She laughed, smacking him on the chest where he hadn’t bothered putting his armor back on.

  Much to my benefit.

  His hand ran idly over her bare arm, a thoughtful look in his eyes.

  “What?” she said, raising her eyebrows at him in question.

  “Tell me about your ship.”

  “My ship? What do you want to know?”

  He paused. “Its capabilities.”

  She chewed on her lower lip. “I’m not sure how much help I’ll be. Victoria designed the ship, and Cass designed the software. I can do maintenance tasks on it, but I don’t know much else.” She shook her head, feeling stupid. Shouldn’t she know more about her ship? It was her lifeline out here in space. She should know every bolt and circuit board like the back of her hand. After all, knowing that could save her life one day.

  But she wasn’t anything as creative as a programmer or inventor. Ellie wasn’t as smart as an engineer, mathematician, or computer scientist. She could take something apart and put it back together again. She could figure out if something was busted, even if she didn’t know what it was supposed to look like, but she couldn’t make it from scratch. She just wasn’t that special.

  And if she didn’t have a manual or something like Angus to rely on, she didn’t have a clue about the specs. “I’m sorry,” she said, dipping her head in shame. She did the best she could, struggling along and almost always over her head, but she tried.

  “Hey,” he said, tipping her chin back up with a finger. “There’s no reason to be sorry.” He sighed. “When I left the control room, Angus was being blocked.”

  “What?” she shrieked, tripping to her feet in her haste. “What do you mean he’s ‘being blocked’?”

  Zee looked away, shifting in his seat in the first sign of uncertainty she’d ever seen in him. “He’s working on it, but when I tried to send the message to my home world, it failed to send.”

  “Shit,” she said, pacing away and then back again. “What are we going to do? Shit.” She stomped her foot, her teeth grinding together. “We need to tell them in person.” If they couldn’t send the message from here, there was no point in staying. Her ship was already repaired. They already had enough information to give his superiors. They just had to get it to them. If they couldn’t send a comm, they needed to leave.

  And that’s not my cowardice talking…

  I think…

  Zee pushed himself out of his seat, walking to her, holding her shoulders and stopping her pacing. “Breathe,” he said, staring into her, smiling when she stared back. “Good. And I don’t think that’s a good idea. Not yet.”

  “What?” said, confused. What had she said? Right, delivering the data in person. She pouted, tension ratcheting through her body. “Well, why the hell not?”

  “How fast can this ship go?”

  She frowned. It was pretty fast, but as he asked, she realized she had no idea if it would be fast enough. “I usually do those calculations on a computer when planning out jobs, but I think at least a half light year per day.”

  He sighed, shaking his head. “That’s too long. We don’t know the enemy’s timetable. If we flew back to the home world, the colony could already be destroyed before we reached it.”

  She bit her lip, th
inking. “They didn’t damage our comms, did they? They’re just blocked, right? Maybe we just need to get far enough away?”

  “And if that doesn’t work? What if we can’t get the comms up?”

  She slumped and sighed. He was right. If they didn’t know how the comms were blocked, it would be a gamble, a gamble played with an entire colony’s lives. “What if we fly to the colony? Is it closer?”

  “Yes, much closer, but what good would that do? Those maps didn’t show the timetable or the strength of the force they’d be up against. Colonies rely on the might of the larger military force. They have security forces on planet, but nowhere near enough to stave off a full-fledged invasion.”

  “Well, what about an evacuation?”

  He stared at her like she was stupid, and she bristled. “Even if we could convince Ezzaruh’s governors that an invasion was imminent, no colony has sufficient ships to evacuate the entire population.”

  Ellie relented begrudgingly, her body sagging with the facts. He was right, of course. Earth still had no fully developed colonies, but even the off planet stations couldn’t evacuate fully. Hell, the Kennedy Moon station didn’t even keep a ship parked for emergencies.

  But if they could just warn the colony somehow…

  Maybe it wouldn’t be enough, but maybe they could prepare. Maybe they had bunkers or could lay in traps or evacuate the most vulnerable populations.

  Helplessness overwhelmed her.

  She was just a cargo ship captain, and she couldn’t come up with any arguments that might sway Zee. For a moment, she thought about just doing it anyway. She could take off, use the maps to find the colony and warn them herself, but why would they even believe her? She was a nobody from a species and planet they’d likely never heard of before.

  And she certainly was no diplomat. Sure, she’d learned at her parents’ feet, but she’d never developed the skill for it. That’s why she hadn’t followed in their footsteps. She was often good at manipulation, good at cajoling, but sometimes, when push came to shove, she pushed back. That was okay with her job. Sometimes you had to push back or people would walk all over you. But for a diplomat? That was career suicide.

  Feeling sorry for herself, she walked back to the chairs and collapsed into one, looking at Zee for answers, for the next move forward.

  Zee felt like he’d kicked a baby animal. Ellie wanted to help so badly, and yet he’d dashed her every hope. He wanted to warn them, too. He wanted to tell her he understood her desires, but he was practical. Their best chances of stopping this was sticking close to the enemy, keeping them in sight.

  Unfortunately, he worried the enemy had grown suspicious. They’d lost essential long-range comms, and he wasn’t sure what their next move should be. Zee was a grunt, a soldier. He took orders. He didn’t create them. Without that skill, he felt uneasy, stressed. He wanted to go back to the gym and run through his training again. It always helped to clear his mind, but what about Ellie?

  He looked at her, at how she curled into herself in the cushioned chair. She looked tiny in that moment, like a child. All his protective instincts rushed in like an approaching storm, clouding his better judgment. He should be coming up with better strategies. He should be finding ways of getting their communications back up and not relying on Angus.

  Instead, he kneeled down in front of her, his hands pressing into the padded space next to her thighs. “Hush.” He ran the back of his hand against her cheek, his mind zeroing in on the silky texture so different from his own. “We’ll find a way. Don’t worry, Ellie. I have no intention of letting harm come to the people of Ezzaruh.”

  She looked up at him, hope and fear in her eyes.

  He didn’t want to dash that hope, but his mind ran in circles, chasing its own tail trying to come up with some plan, some strategy, that would work. He stood up, pulling away from her. “I’m going to check on Angus.” He turned on his heel and left.

  Maybe Angus would have answers.

  Ellie gaped as the door banged closed. He left. He just left. She wanted to be angry at him, but she was too shocked. One moment he’d been sweet and gentle. The next? Like a ghost, like he’d never really been there.

  She didn’t know what to think. The interlude in the gym had been hot, hotter than anything she’d ever done. Ellie didn’t often engage in sexual liaisons. She liked it well enough, but her issues always got in the way. She always felt like a fraud, like she was lying to the other person. Either she pretended to look human and felt like the lowest of con artists, or she showed her true colors and earned their disgust.

  Which probably explained why she’d had such a long dry spell. She hadn’t been to Ara in years, and most of her sexual experience had been there, with people who accepted her appearance and didn’t have the sexual hang-ups humans did. She smiled, shaking her head. More than a few of her encounters had been in broad daylight, in public, and with passersby “testing” her partner.

  She chuckled. In spite of spending so much of her time with the Danaus growing up, she still found that practice bizarre. Their biology created coital ties during sex, and they valued staying power, just not the same staying power as with humans. Theirs involved how long they could stay in their partner after sex. And as part of that, people who caught someone having sex usually grabbed one of the participants to “test” their connection by trying to pull them apart.

  It had embarrassed her the first time, especially since it was the boy’s father who’d caught them and tried it. She’d squawked and tried to hide under him, but the boy had stayed put, and they’d all laughed about it afterward. Well, at least the boy and his father had. Her own cheeks had darkened so much she’d wanted to disappear.

  Ellie wasn’t the same naïve girl. She wasn’t a prude, but she still wasn’t overly fond of the practice and tried to avoid public sex if she could help it. But that was then, and this was now. She hadn’t been with Zee in public. It hadn’t involved a coital tie, which seemed so weird to her, even though she had been with a few people who didn’t have that biological quirk. It had been nice, unself-conscious, and she really just wanted to go hunt him down and start something up again.

  She smiled to herself. What would he do if she walked up to him stark naked? She could imagine his eyes rounding with surprise, see his body stiffen as he tried to hold himself back. Would he jump on her or would he be more reserved? Really, she knew so little about him.

  Ellie chewed her lip, the worried spot cracking open and bleeding again. She didn’t know much about him. Who was he, really? He was a soldier, an alien, but she didn’t even know much about his species. Had she even heard of his species before meeting him? Military might wasn’t exactly something she paid attention to in her travels. Was she making a mistake?

  I don’t even know him.

  A chill raced down her spine, and she wrapped her arms around herself as she pulled her knees closer to her chest.

  What was I thinking?

  Chapter Seventeen

  Zee scowled as he stared at the lush flora of the planet from his seat in the control room. “There has to be something we can do, Angus.” His muscles tensed again in frustration. If only he were some sort of leader, some sort of strategist.

  Angus didn’t respond right away, as if giving Zee a moment to cool down. “Unfortunately, my systems were not designed for military applications. I don’t natively have the data required to run the advanced simulations you requested. While communications are down, I cannot acquire that data.”

  “Hacht.” Zee looked away. He didn’t blame the AI. AIs were smart, adaptable, more so than people, but without data, they couldn’t learn.

  And without those simulations, he had no hope of giving detailed enough reports to convince the Ezzaruh governors of the necessity for action.

  Zee imagined how it would go. He would land on the planet in Ellie’s ship, an alien craft that would make officials suspicious. Even if he got past security and didn’t get held up by the planet’s
defensive forces, his appearance would likely bar him from meetings with the decision makers. Their minders would take one look at his haggard appearance and tell him they weren’t in.

  Permanently.

  Looking down at himself, he couldn’t really blame anyone. His armor had seen better days. There were dents and holes from being shot, and the anti-UV finish had worn off in places.

  He could see the silver streaks in his fur where the nanites had been unable to help his body repair and had been forced to replace tissue instead. Those silver spots peeked out along the holes in his armor, reminding him of the costs he was paying for this mission.

  When would it be too much?

  He scratched the back of his neck, sighing, thinking about home. His people revered veterans, really anyone who had gone through hell and come out the other side. Soldiers, veterans, police, security forces, and more wore their silver scars like badges of honor. People looked up to them for that, for the sacrifices they’d made for their species.

  As a soldier himself, when he looked at those who carried more silver than black, he often wondered if it was worth it? Did they regret the path they’d chosen in life? Did those visible scars serve as a constant reminder of the horrors they’d experienced, horrors they’d survived because of the nanites coursing through their bodies, changing them more and more with each injury? When did they stop seeing themselves as Ateles? When were they more machine than man?

  “Whatcha doing?” Ellie asked, startling him out of his morose thoughts.

  He jerked, turning to her as she smiled from the doorway, the expression freezing and dropping as concern filled her eyes.

  “Zee?”

  He shook his head. “Everything’s fine, Ellie.”

  She bit her lip, that familiar gesture drawing his attention. “Is it?”