Chapter 22
Two days passed faster than I expected. There was no entertainment in the officer’s lounge, but there was food, safety and the illusion of bathroom privacy. It felt like heaven, our very own space vacation and Carn and I took advantage of our relatively free forty-eight hours.
Captivity and the threat of death had destroyed whatever sense of shyness that had survived my hospital days and poor Gigi walked in on us so many times, he started leaving the bathroom backwards.
What could I say, I’d waited a lifetime to fall in love and experience sex and I wasn’t willing to wait for the perfect moment anymore. It took a little bit of nagging, but I finally convinced my mate that his dick wouldn’t injure me if I let him prepare me properly.
After discovering that he could bring me to orgasm with his hands, he tortured me into a blissful fever every time.
I was almost worried for my health, it couldn’t be safe for my heart rate to climb so high so often.
But watching his face when he finally thrust into me was my favorite part, the wonder-filled heat in his eyes never failed to make me shiver.
Winning that argument had me walking on air, even with the sex-ed crash course we were giving Gigi.
There was a good chance we’d open the blast doors and go down in a blaze of glory. If the cost of showing Carn how I felt about him was an awkward blue guy seeing my ass, well, it could be worse.
To say having Gigi loose in the lounge with us was uncomfortable was an understatement. He was growing on me and I really did want him to have a chance at a real life, but damn, it had been convenient to stuff him in the closet and forget about him.
Now we were forced to make stilted interspecies small talk around our space food, listen to him scratch his balls in the middle of the night and pretend he hadn’t spent an hour in the bathroom jerking off after catching us having alone time in the abandoned closet.
It was all the worst parts about having a roommate, but with the added threat of looming death on the periphery.
I’d even started to feel bad about calling him Gigi until he told me his name was essentially a shortened version of his rank and assigned skills. Apparently being nicknamed after a mini poodle was more meaningful than his actual name. So Gigi, he remained.
By the time Gigi announced he had a vague idea of where the mated turoch had landed on Earth, I was more than ready to risk death and injury to get out of the confines of the lounge. I spent an hour stuffing supplies into a makeshift bag made of spare uniforms.
After that, we all made one last visit to the little aliens’ room, gulped down a last drink of water and huddled in front of the blast door while Gigi cautiously peered down at the security panel.
The hall looked empty but that could change at any moment.
We’d been woken more than once by the sounds of fighting outside and I knew all it would take was a bad roll of the dice for the full blown war on board to spill into our path.
And even with our new friend, we didn’t stand a chance against an armed squad of guards.
What was worse was the up to date log of skirmishes Gigi had found in the system. Nearly half of the turochs had already abandoned the ship, and now the sytos outnumbered the slaves nearly eight to one.
He’d also discovered that there were two escape pods left. Since neither Carn or I had the faintest clue how to pilot any sort of space craft, we’d all have to cram into a pod together. A feat that I was dreading after Gigi made me leave half the food behind because it wouldn’t fit.
I was eager to be back on Earth, and dying to be out of our little hideaway but the thought of being crammed in a space made for two sytos with a male the size of Carn... well, it was going to get worse before it got better.
***
WE MADE IT TWO STEPS into the hall before shit hit the fan.
A crowd of big, red aliens was just around the corner. They spotted us immediately, and every eye went straight to me.
Carn shoved me behind him and Gigi hefted his weapon menacingly as the turochs closed in.
“You have a female,” one of the males said, his voice shocked even as his eyes scanned me.
“My mate,” Carn rumbled, his shoulders flexed and I swore his body swelled up in front of me. “Claimed and gentled, in the way of our people.”
Angry grumbles met his statement.
“Is it the way of our people to slaughter hundreds of turochs?” Someone demanded.
“We know who you are, Butcher,” another voice bit out. “A traitor who entertains the sytos by killing us. No band would respect your claim.”
Carn’s tail lashed and he shoved me back a few steps. My hip bumped into the open door behind us and Gigi shot me a worried look. He might have a weapon and know how to use it, but I was smart enough to see we didn’t stand a chance against the wall of opponents crowding closer.
“Give us the female,” someone shouted. The demand was echoed by easily a dozen voices and my stomach twisted. I knew Carn would never let them take me. I also knew he’d get himself killed trying to stop them.
My hands turned clammy around my own space gun and I wished I’d had a chance to practice with it.
“The female is mine,” Carn snarled, his stance widening as he prepared to fight.
The male at the front of the pack grinned.
“We won’t let you leave with her. Even you can’t defeat us all. Maybe you could kill us if you didn’t have to guard her, but one of us will take her while the others fight you.”
Carn’s chest heaved furiously but I could hear the truth in the grinning male’s words. There was no way Carn could stand between me and all these males. We were screwed.
“Idjiij, get Naomi to the vents. She’ll meet us there.”
Wait, what?
“The vents?” Gigi asked.
I realized Carn’s plan as the first turoch lunged forward. Carn met him with a crash of horns, effortlessly throwing him to the floor. I gaped at the casual strength in the move. He’d lifted a whole turoch with just his neck muscles.
Holy crap.
“Come on!” I grabbed Gigi’s arm and yanked him back into the lounge. Scanning the ceiling, I spotted a familiar slitted vent cover and pointed at it. The sound of fighting grew outside but I forced myself to ignore it. I had to believe Carn could hold them off.
If he didn’t have to worry about me, he had a chance at beating them.
“Lift me up, I’ll crawl through the ducts and meet you at the pods.”
Gigi opened his mouth as if to argue but a turoch crashed into the lounge, cutting him off. Gigi spun and fired at him, a blast of energy hit the turoch nearly point blank, hurling him into the wall with a deafening crunch.
The turoch didn’t get up and blood pooled under his open mouth.
Gigi snatched my gun away, tentacles furling madly as he fiddled with a dial on top. If the syto’s hair was nervous... I let out a slow breath and reminded myself that life support was almost gone and we had no choice.
“Here, I upped the power, it doesn’t really matter if we damage the ship anymore.”
“Thanks.” I stared down at the weapon as he handed it back and hoped I wouldn't shoot myself on accident while I was crawling in the tight ducts.
“The charge should last several hours of intermittent firing, or about twenty minutes of heavy use.”
“Only twenty minutes?” I ask, trying not to imagine living through that much fighting.
Gigi crooked a hairless brow and cast a long look out the door.
“If the Butcher takes longer than that to clear our path, I doubt we will make it out at all.”
Cheerful way to put it, but I understood. This was going to be a ‘by the skin of our teeth’ sort of challenge.
“Lift me up!” I demanded. “And go help him.”
Gigi interlaced his fingers and braced them against his thigh.
I grabbed his shoulder to steady myself and planted my foot on his palms. With a grunt, he hefted me straight up and I caught the vent cover with my fingertips, yanking it free and catching the edge of the duct.
I could feel his arms shaking with the effort of holding all my weight and I clutched the vent with all my strength.
“Give me a shove,” I barked.
He heaved once and I used the momentum to scramble into the shaft.
“I’ll follow you from above,” I called down to him. “Now go help Carn!”
“Going,” he called back.
I took a second to get my bearings and zero in on the echoing chaos to my right. Moving quickly, I crawled until I reached the next vent, peering down until I spotted the melee of red skin below me.
Several turochs lay on the ground, blood spray coated the walls and floor and I couldn’t make out Carn in the crush. A flash of blue caught my eye and I focused on Gigi, squeezing between the fight and the wall as he took shots at turoch after turoch.
I felt a little ill as I watched the red males fall. They didn’t ask to be here, they’d been enslaved just like Carn. But unlike Carn, they’d left their morals behind. I hated that it had come to killing my mate’s people, but it was us or them.
The fight was moving away from the door and I followed it, desperately searching for Carn’s face as I scrambled from vent to vent. As long as they were fighting, he was alive, I reminded myself.
A familiar bellow dragged my attention to two males locked by their horns. Carn’s teeth were bared as he forced his opponent back, clearly the stronger fighter. But there were still at least six other males and one of them charged at his back, his horns impaling Carn’s exposed side.
My mate took the hit with a grunt, blood spilling down his torso and slicking the floor beneath his hooves. I bit back a cry.
Calling out to him would be nothing but a distraction.
But I couldn’t just watch him get torn apart. I wiggled my gun up beside me and busted the vent cover to the floor. Bracing my knees against the sides of the duct, I let my upper body hang through the opening and aimed my weapon at the turoch whose horns had Carn trapped.