Chapter 18
Wyl
For a second-gen concubine droid, Aura’s surprisingly skittish about making out.
At first, she simply mirrors everything I did to her: the neck kisses, the hand in my hair and on my back, the slow grinding of her hips … It feels good, sure, but without any real passion behind it, the motions fall flat.
So, unfortunately, does my cock.
Aura stops mid-kiss and sits up, still straddling my lap. “You are not aroused by this.”
It’s not a question. My lack of enthusiasm is blatantly obvious to her, I’m sure, and I almost wish I had the kind of laser-focused staying power that her father reportedly had. Even decades later, rumors of the Prime Concubine’s ability to last for days at a time still persist.
“Don’t worry about that,” I say, hoping to redirect her. “Just do what feels right.”
Her cheeks break out in a luminescent glow, and the effect is so heavenly that it takes me a moment to realize she’s blushing.
“What’s the matter?” I stroke the skin of her cheek, which is warm under my fingertips, just like a human’s blush. “Is something about this embarrassing for you?”
She looks away, and the blush brightens. “I was designed and programmed by a concubine; this should be second nature for me. I am … frustrated at my lack of knowledge and skill in this area.”
Well, if the mood wasn’t already dead, it is now.
I sit up with a sigh, scooting back until I’m flush with the headboard.
“C’mon. Come here.” I hold out my arms for Aura, who crawls into them, looking every bit like a dejected child who’s been scolded by her parents.
“Since this is obviously bothering you, we’ll stop, okay?
It definitely wasn’t my intention to upset you with this exercise, so I apologize. ”
Her mouth opens, but before she can say anything, the ship lurches so violently that even the artificial gravity can’t keep up.
Aura and I are thrown out of the bed, and I’m grateful for her excellent surgical skills when her body slams into mine as we slide to the wall.
That would’ve opened my wound otherwise, but thankfully all I feel is mild discomfort.
“Aura! You all right?”
The ship jerks again, and a loud metallic clang echoes out in the corridor.
Aura scrambles to her feet, freeing me to get up as well.
She reaches the ship’s diagnostic panel before me.
I peer over her shoulder as she pulls up the external scanners, and when the image stabilizes, my heart sinks into my stomach.
“Privateers.”
Aura’s assessment is right on the money. Space pirates—a Grivaldan ship by the looks of it. They launched towing cables at our hull, and the magnetic clamps locked on and jerked us to a stop.
Grivaldans are bloodthirsty. Savage. They have no qualms about using any means necessary to take what they want.
When I look at the nav readouts, I see that we’re still more than a solar day away from the outpost in the Klymani asteroid belt. There’s no hope for aid from another ship, not with that timetable.
“Aura, get dressed and go prep two escape pods.”
“But—”
I grab a uniform and start putting it on. “No buts. If they board us and see you, they’ll deactivate you and sell you for parts, and that’s if they’re feeling benevolent enough to shut you down before they tear you to pieces. In fact, put on a spacesuit, too. Keep the helmet on and the visor down.”
Aura frowns. “I do not require a suit if they breach the hull.”
“It’s to hide your face, doll. Now hurry. Remember: ready two pods. I don’t want you to wait for me. As soon as they’re primed and the nav is set, launch yours. I’ll be right behind you.”
My heavy footsteps echo through the halls as I race for my own spacesuit.
I shouldn’t need to hide my face from the Grivaldans—they don’t care about bounties or warrants, so any price the GA might’ve put on my head after the incident at the station is irrelevant—but if they cut a hole in the hull, that suit will keep me safe from the vacuum of space in the event that the ship’s bulkheads fail to close off the affected sections.
This is a disaster. I had hoped we’d make it to Klymani Prime without incident, but being caught by Grivaldan pirates ranks right up there on the worst-case scenario list. Of the extremely rare accounts from survivors, not one has had any useful information for fighting off the fiends.
Anybody who’s lived through a Grivaldan attack has done so by sheer luck.
Grivaldans can best be described as an amalgamation of every known species’ worst fears brought to life.
They stand over ten feet tall when fully erect, massive enough to make even a full-grown Jiinite quake in their boots, and their hide is almost impenetrable.
Despite their size, they’re blindingly fast, with dual-articulating spines that can contort in almost any direction.
Each vertebra ends in a spiny process that is coated in bodily secretions containing enough neurotoxic venom to take down a bull mrrn in its prime in mere seconds.
This all, of course, is bad enough, but when you add in the half-dozen arms ending in razor-sharp claws, foot-long incisors, and chillingly brilliant intelligence …
… I don’t stand a chance.
By all rights, I should be on an escape pod with Aura right now, headed for lightspeed. Instead, as soon as I have my suit I book it for the weapons locker. Why the weapons locker? It’s simple:
I won’t give her up without a fight. Besides, if I can distract them, it gives her a better chance to get away.
We don’t have a lot in the armory to fend off Grivaldans. A handful of incendiary grenades, a few laser guns. That’s about it. If I get lucky, I might injure one or two of them before they slaughter me.
Once I’m armed, I prime a laser gun and shut off the ship’s lights, plunging the ship into darkness.
It concerns me a bit that I haven’t heard a pod launch yet, but at least I know that Aura can use her thermal sensors to navigate the pitch blackness.
The Grivaldans, however, don’t have heat-sensitive vision.
They’ll be as blind as me in this, except my suit can tap into the ship’s sensors and display my location in the visor’s internal screen.
Grivaldans’ secondary hunting sense is sound; they use echolocation to find prey if they can’t see it.
Good luck on that … I flip a switch, and the ship’s speakers flood the halls with classical heavy metal music from twentieth-century Earth. Between that and the darkness, I might stand a chance of getting a couple of shots off.
Though I’m as hidden as I can be from them, I still take care when creeping through the corridors on my way to the aft of the ship where the Grivaldans’ ship has locked on. Last thing I need is to slip up and get caught being careless. I have to survive long enough for Aura to escape.
So far, so good. Eight halls to go until I reach the back of the ship, and I haven’t encountered any Grivaldans yet.
Maybe they decided we weren’t worth the effort.
I know that’s not the case, though. They’d disengage and release the ship if they were going to move on. No, they’re still here … It’s just a matter of time before they board and take what they want.
Just before I creep around the final corner, something happens that sends a chill down my spine …
The lights turn on.
The music stops.
Grivaldans can’t operate humanoid ships.
Their talons simply don’t have the manual dexterity to push tiny buttons or flip switches.
Even if one of them were literate enough to understand the display, there’s no way it could’ve changed my settings.
Those beasts are built for savage rending, not fine motor skills.
Only one person could have done this.
Dread fills me as I slowly round the bend. If Aura is still on board, I should’ve bumped into her on my sweep. The pod bays are between the weapons locker and the tail of the ship; there’s no way I would’ve missed her, unless she’s …
… Right here.
My blood runs cold as I see her standing in front of two Grivaldans, facing them armed with nothing more than the dinky little gun built into her arm. Her helmet lies on the floor at her feet.
“Leave this ship,” she says in Galactic Standard, “or I will be forced to open fire.”
“Aura …”
I want to tell her to get behind me, to run, but when she turns at the sound of my voice, I finally see something that had been blocked from my view until she moved.
My eyes widen, and I nearly drop my weapon.
Right there, standing between the Grivaldans, unmistakable despite the rags covering most of its lean, muscular form—
—is the Prime Concubine itself.