Chapter 12
TWELVE
Amelia
Amelia woke to the sound of the waves and the weight of a male arm over her shoulders.
Her head rested on a broad chest. A warm breeze danced over her naked skin.
This could be a dream. A good one. If she kept her eyes closed, she could imagine that she and Taron were on a tropical getaway.
At any moment, a server could arrive with a tray of appetizers and margaritas.
She cracked her eyes open and instead of a colorful cabana, the twisted metal roof of their makeshift shelter was above them.
The leaves they lay on had shriveled, and no one was going to arrive with a drink or anything else.
The body beneath her shifted. Firm lips pressed to her forehead. “How are you?” he murmured.
She loved the rough timbre of his voice. “Good, considering the circumstances.”
“Yeah. They’re not ideal.” He stretched and sat up, flexing long biceps and all those rippling back muscles.
The sight made her mouth go dry. Even now, she longed to slide her body over his and make him hard again.
She wanted his length inside her, bringing her to those passionate heights and wiping out thoughts of everything else.
He strode out of the shelter, and off behind some rocks for a bit of privacy.
Amelia pulled her flight suit on. It was looking ragged.
The seams at the shoulders were pulling away.
She finished the job by pulling the arms straight off, making the suit sleeveless.
That would be far more comfortable. Still, she grimaced as she pulled the suit back on her body.
It was still better than those skimpy outfits from the chest at the raiders’ camp.
Taron returned with his pants on, sadly, and some cooked fish from last night. “Most of this is still good.” He nodded to the small pile that they had left on a rock. “Just pick the pieces that aren’t smelly.”
She gave him a look. “I’ll check it out,” she said.
She doubted it was still “good,” but who knew when they would have food again?
That blaster she used to boil the tide pool with heat, would run out of charges for boiling sea life in tide pools.
There was no room for complacency here. She crawled out of the shelter and walked down the shoreline to a bald outcropping of rocks.
She gazed out over the sea, taking in all those hulking ships. Taron joined her. “Something else, isn’t it?”
“It’s hard to imagine that these ships went down here,” she said. “They look so mighty.”
“Even the mighty can fall.”
“Yes, but…here?”
He shrugged. “I bet there are small ships, too. You can’t see them because they’ve sunk.”
She squinted out into the ocean when a thought came to her mind. “You know how to fix things, right?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Well, you said some of these crashes weren’t that old. What if we can get a ship operational?”
He shook his head. “No way. These things are here for a reason. Even if they weren’t in obviously terrible shape, I don’t have any of the parts to repair a huge battleship.”
“I don’t mean the battleships.” She grabbed his arm, excited.
“What about the ships inside the ships? You said there were little ships that we couldn’t see because they sunk.
So, don’t these big ships hold small ships?
The shuttles, small fighters, transports?
Maybe there are still some on these ships.
What if we can get one of those flying?”
He rubbed his chin, eyes unfocused in thought. “I don’t know. We still don’t have a fuel source.”
“What about the vehicle we used to get here?”
“The ground skimmer? It’s at the top of the cliff. I’d have to get in there and override the access code. It might take a while.”
“We have a while,” she said, arms spread. “What else are we going to do?”
His hand slid over her bottom. “I can think of a few things.”
“Hmm, me too.” She grinned at him. “But there will be time for that when we are off this planet.”
“Will there?” he asked. “What happens when we leave here?”
Her belly fluttered. Confusion mixed in with all the other emotions. “I haven’t really thought that far ahead. I was thinking we take it one step at a time.”
He nodded curtly. “Logical plan.” He stepped away, then paused and turned. “But, Amelia, if I were you, I would start thinking a few steps ahead. This thing between us, it’s not going away.”
Amelia’s throat closed up. She couldn’t talk.
All she could do was nod. Everything about Taron went against her plans.
He was an unknown, and unknowns were the enemy in the Ward family.
He wasn’t even human. Her father would go through the roof if she told him she was dating an alien.
Not just any alien, a disgraced one. Well, he didn’t need to know about that part.
She almost laughed at the thought of the look on her dad’s face. Hi, Dad, I’m hooking up with an alien who’s exiled from his planet for criminal reasons. Don’t worry, he’s a good guy now! Oh boy, that would be epic.
She blinked and looked back, but Taron was walking away.
He headed back to the cliff for the transport.
She followed him. When they got to the top, the transport was still there and had recharged.
He spent the better part of the morning breaking into the computer system of the ground skimmer to get it running.
Then, they maneuvered the vehicle along the forest line until they found an area that wasn’t so steep.
Carefully steering, they brought the vehicle down onto the beach.
“This is very visible,” said Taron with a worried eye to the sky. “I don’t like it.”
“Let’s hurry,” she said, but no sooner had the words come out when a hum broke through the sounds of the waves. “It’s them!”
Taron punched the accelerator, and they flew down the beach, racing over the shoreline. He slowed abruptly and skidded the vehicle under their shelter, where it was about two-thirds covered. He jumped off and gestured urgently to her. “We need to get under it.”
She did as he said, diving into the two-foot-high space between the bottom of the hovering vehicle and the now crunchy leaves they’d put down the night before. He pulled her into his arms and held her close.
“It’s not the ship we saw yesterday,” he whispered. “The sound is all wrong. It sounds like a scout drone, deployed to scan sections of the planet.”
“Looking for us?”
“Yes.”
She tucked tighter against him. “That’s creepy.”
“It’s efficient,” he said. “It will detect the heat of this vehicle, but it’s probably been programmed to search for two humanoids. If we’re under this thing, it won’t register us as the sought-after targets. It can buy us some time.”
“How much?”
He squeezed her tighter. “Hopefully enough, if your idea works.”
The drone hovered over them. Amelia shifted slightly so she could see through a sliver of a crack in the roof of their shelter. “I can see it. It has some markings on it.”
“Really?” he asked. “What are they?”
She squinted, trying to angle herself to get the best view. “I’m not sure.”
“Look carefully,” he said. “If we can identify the insignia, we’ll have a better idea of who is after us.”
“And kidnapped Kimberly.”
She felt him tense. “I would try to put her from your mind, Amelia.”
“Because you think she’s dead?”
“Something like that.”
Amelia’s jaw tensed. She didn’t want to believe it. “I see a red circle with three wavy lines inside that meet in the center.”
Taron cursed. “That’s the Tulashi regime. Mean fuckers. They control most of the Tero-8 space station. Nothing comes or goes from there without their knowing. If the Tulashi have Kimberly, she’s deep inside some warlord’s harem by now.”
Amelia craned her neck to look at him. “She is the human I was hired to protect. I can’t give up on her.”
He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again. “One step at a time,” he muttered. “We need to get off this rock first.”
After the drone moved off, they climbed out from beneath the vehicle and drove it back out to the beach. “Will it ride over water?” she asked.
“Yes, if the water isn’t too choppy. The tide is low, so we should be fine.
” Taron planted his fists on his hips and surveyed the wrecks.
He pointed to a black mound sticking out of the waves.
“Based on the color and style of the hull, that one looks to be the newest and most intact. Judging by what I can see, I’d say it’s Hurian made, which means it hasn’t degraded too much.
They use an alloy-silicone material that’s incredibly tough.
It looks like some foredecks aren’t submerged, so I’d say that’s our best bet. ”
“You know your spaceships,” said Amelia, more than a little impressed.
“I spend most of my life in them. Well, I did.” He winced. “It’s going to take a long time to build another transport as good as the one that I just lost.”
“Wait.” She held up a hand. “You built that ship?”
“From a lot of different parts, yes.” He looked at her, confused. “How else would I get a transport like that? I’m not one of those rich Virilians who you send your females off to.”
She stared at him in total amazement. “They look complicated.”
“They are.” He waved a hand toward the water. “That’s why I’m saying this idea of yours is a long shot.”
It didn’t look like such a long shot anymore. A wide smile spread across her lips. “Taron, if you can build a ship like the one we travelled in, you can fix whatever we find on one of those wrecks.”
He gave her a skeptical look. “I would tone down the shining hope in your eyes, if I were you. I’m an adequate builder. There was nothing elegant about my last ship. Its functions were basic.”
She leaned up and kissed him hard on the mouth. “Basic sounds pretty damn wonderful right now.”
He shook his head and muttered something about inappropriate cheerfulness, then steered the vehicle out onto the ocean.
“I warn you, though,” he shouted over the noisy water.
“There may not be any small vessels left. They may be ruined beyond repair, or they may have all been used for evacuation when the ship was going down.”
“We won’t know until we look,” she shouted back. “Stop being a pessimist.”
She heard him sigh, but he shut up and steered the small vehicle over the churning waters.
Amelia looked down. The dark shapes of gigantic creatures moved below.
She glimpsed tentacles, each as wide as a bus on one, and the white glint of teeth on another.
This ocean was teeming with life, none of which seemed particularly friendly.
One huge fin rose from the surface. Taron steered around it, giving the creature a wide berth. The ship they headed toward didn’t seem this far away when they were on the shore. She hugged Taron’s middle and glanced backwards. Their shelter was a speck in the distance.
Meanwhile, the wrecked ship they were approaching rose like a skyscraper from the ocean. It didn’t look this big from the shore. She could only hope that it held the key to their escape, and that Taron could work with whatever they found in there.
Her belly clutched. Maybe she’d been too optimistic about their chances.