The Gate Jumpers Saga: Science Fiction Romance Collection

by Elin Wyn

  “What’d you do?” Sherre asked, just barely keeping herself from putting her hands over her ears.

  “Nothing,” Zaddik said calmly, distracted as his eyes stayed on the screen. Then, shaking himself out of his thoughts to glance at Sherre, he explained, “It’s my crew. Someone’s setting up a communication line, but being this close to a Thagzar infested planet means we’ve got to scramble it.”

  “Their technology is that good?” Sherre asked, honestly surprised that Zaddik was so confident that the other aliens had the ability to pick apart their transmissions so easily.

  “You tell me,” Zaddik chuckled humorlessly. “You’re riding in one of their pods right now.”

  Sherre looked over at him, her eyes wide as she loosened her grip on the arms of her chair and blurted, “What?” He didn’t reply, but as he played with the controls and the static noise receded, Sherre glanced around the pod’s black interior with new eyes. “I don’t understand – you stole this from them—?”

  “They,” Zaddik said with more than just a touch of anger, “Stole from us. They invaded our planets, overpowered our ancestors, and died by the thousands when we finally took our homes back.”

  Sherre shrank into her seat, trying to make herself as small as possible while Zaddik growled angrily to himself. Watching him glare at the screen reminded her of what he’d said earlier.

  “It is not a mission. Hasn’t been just a ‘mission’ for a long time.”

  “Sorry,” Sherre apologized, realizing, for the first time, just how long the feud between the Thagzars and the Eiztars had been brewing.

  “Sorry?” Zaddik frowned, snapping his head up from the screen to look at her. “No, no – don’t be sorry. It’s not…” he trailed off when he looked at the screen again, scowling. “Oh, fuck me,” he breathed.

  “What?” Sherre asked, squinting at the screen. Instead of the default hologram mapping out the road ahead, the screen was now black, empty except for a broken text box on the bottom. “Stay away from Eiztar-Nine…dangerous snakes?” Sherre read aloud, confused.

  “It’s code,” Zaddik ground out, almost punching the buttons as he typed back. Scowling, he added, “‘Snakes’ mean Thagzars.”

  “And Eiztar-Nine?” she asked.

  “Our mother ship,” Zaddik said.

  “Oh,” Sherre frowned. “Well, that’s okay though, right? I mean, we weren’t going back to the main ship anyway—”

  “Yes, we were,” Zaddik cut her off angrily. “This is a pod,” he said, gesturing to the room around them. “It’s an extension of our main ship, one that we had no reason to think would need to be prepped for more than one day’s excursion.”

  “Wait,” Sherre squeezed her hands together in her lap. “Just how far away is this lab?” Had she just signed up for a month in space?

  “It’s going to feel like a hell of a lot farther if we aren’t prepared,” Zaddik grumbled. At the same time, he typed, ‘How many?’

  “How many what?” Sherre asked as she read along, frustrated.

  “Thagzars,” Zaddik said shortly.

  “Thagzars?” she repeated. Trying to make light of the situation, she forced out a laugh and said, “What, want to know your odds?” Only, Zaddik didn’t laugh. In fact, he didn’t say anything. “Zaddik?”

  Ripping himself away from the controls, Zaddik turned to her and said, “How long have you been doing this?”

  “I—sorry?” Sherre frowned.

  “How long have you been traveling with your crew?” he asked again. “A year? Six months?”

  Flustered, Sherre stiffened and said, “Look, just because I’m young—”

  “I’ve been in search of this,” he said, flipping open a pocket on his black belt to yank out the vial that his captain had given him. “For two years. That’s when I got the orders to track it down, and that’s when I took the ship – my ship, that I’d been a pilot of for eight years – into Thagzar territory for the first time.” Stuffing the vial back into his belt, he said, “I’m not about to abandon her there.”

  “Eight years?” Sherre had thought that he’d been a pilot for at least as long as her Captain had been serving.

  “I’ve been fighting the Thagzars since I was twelve and we took our planet back. Joined up officially when I was sixteen, and earned my ship out there when I was twenty-six.” Pausing for a moment, he said, “Do you think anyone else on my crew remembers that night? The screaming? The uncertainty?” Closing his eyes, he put a hand over his mouth and breathed, “We all thought we’d be killed for sure, for rebelling.”

  Sherre didn’t know what to say. Earth had never had to deal with an invasion; in fact, the most they’d ever had to fight was each other.

  Between the second gen colonies on Mars and the Moon, it had been a blood bath.

  Thank goodness for the jump gates that’d been found near Pluto, or else the vast expansion of humanity probably never would have banded together as one to further space exploration.

  A sudden influx of beeps sounded off as the text box on the screen filled up with replies from Zaddik’s crew. It wasn’t a minute before someone sent a final message that said exactly what Sherre had been thinking and silenced the rest.

  ‘Do not engage.’ Then, a moment later, ‘Close the chat.’

  Zaddik seemed to stare at the screen for a moment, his jaw clenched before he clicked away at the controls and made the textbox disappear. Relieved, Sherre shrugged to herself and suggested, “Well, there’s got to be somewhere to get more supplies.”

  Her words seemed to spur Zaddik into action, and he bent back over his controls. “Yeah,” he said, “My ship.”

  That made Sherre frown. “Your—”

  “Yes,” he said, pumping the button with his foot as the engine flared up once more. “I’m not about to leave her to the likes of those demons.”

  “Her?” Sherre repeated.

  “My ship,” he said again.

  “Okay, just clarifying,” Sherre muttered quietly, keeping her tone light in an attempt to appease him. But still, she leaned forward. Watching silently as Zaddik punched in some coordinates, she tried to get as close as possible to the screen as she asked, “Um, so, we’re going to it—to her?”

  “Yes,” he said, his eyes on the screen.

  “Even though your crew said no?” she asked tentatively. She had a suspicion that it’d been his captain who had finally messaged to not engage, but she wasn’t about to say it out loud.

  Zaddik scrubbed a hand over his face as he hit two buttons, effectively making the holo-map zoom out for a broader perspective. Pointing to the far right of the map, he said, “This is where we have to go. You’re a navigator, right? What do you see out there for us?”

  Sherre blinked at the hologram. It was a touch more advanced than any she’d ever seen at the academy or on her tour, but the basic readings were the same. “It’s empty,” she said simply, eyeing the various markings between their position and Zaddik’s finger. “Oh, wait,” she said, raising her hand to point at the map. “They’re a little out of the way, but here are some space stations—”

  “You see a few corrupt ports that’ve been overrun by thieves and gangs,” he said snidely, shaking his head. Sherre dropped her hand at his tone – it wasn’t unlike the way that the Captain had often scoffed at her, and it hurt. “No, the only thing keeping us alive from here,” he said, tapping their current location. “To here,” he pointed to the right again, “Is this.” Slapping his palm over a spot not a hundred clicks away from them, he elaborated, “My ship.”

  Sherre watched his face as he spoke, more convinced by the look in his eye than the play of his hands. “Okay,” she said, resigning herself to her fate. Putting on a brave face, she clapped her hands together and flashed him a smile. “What can I do?”

  Zaddik seemed taken aback for a moment, but then he flashed a grin. “I knew you’d understand,” he said, and as he glanced to her shoulders for a moment she couldn’t help but wonder
if he was looking at her braids again. “You’re strong,” he nodded at her.

  “Not really,” she said, desperately hoping that he wasn’t planning on fighting the Thagzars head on with her at his side.

  “No, really,” Zaddik assured her, his eyes already back on the map. “You’ve got a strong heart.”

  It was the first time that anyone had complimented Sherre on her compassion in years, and she felt guilty to be receiving praise for it when she was being tolerant rather than sympathetic. Still, she couldn’t help her blush, and she shrugged, “Takes one to know one.”

  Zaddik smirked and tapped his own braids. “It certainly does.”

  Zaddik

  Zaddik didn’t know what he was doing. One moment he was yelling at Sherre, and the next he was rubbing elbows with her, as if his decision to fight for his ship wasn’t suicidal. He tried not to let the obvious holes in his plan bother him, but then that raised the question: what the hell did she think he was thinking?

  “What do those red dots mean?”

  Zaddik glanced at Sherre, envious of her ignorance but also desperate for her to keep talking. “Thagzar ships,” he admitted, his heart jumping in his throat as he waited for her reaction.

  Rather than breaking down she merely frowned, and said, “Wait. If our map is tracking them, then aren’t they…?”

  “Tracking us? No,” Zaddik assured her, shaking his head. He was sweating now, his brain a jumble of nerves. He was usually calm in the face of battle, but his instincts were failing him, his whole body screaming that this was a bad idea. And it didn’t help that every time he looked at Sherre, the screams only grew louder.

  “That’s a program we installed,” he continued. Then, thinking better of it, he explained, “We retired the original pods that we hacked during the rebellion years ago. This is actually one of the newer designs, with more Eiztar elements than Thagzar. Like the seatbelts,” he said, gesturing to her lap.

  God, her lap. He shouldn’t have looked, but now that he had, his stare was caught, drinking up the curve of her hips.

  He didn’t know how he could have missed it before, but the woman was voluptuous, almost irresistibly so. And while Zaddik’s own kin were generally lean because of the constant jumping, climbing, and balance that Eldiriak demanded, he’d seen enough of the other four planets to know that his preferences fell elsewhere.

  Zaddik had always tended to seek out more full-figured companions – and Sherre fit most every fantasy that he’d ever had.

  Sherre, fortunately, was clueless to his hot gaze. “Good,” she said, shifting in her seat as she settled more comfortably into it. Zaddik couldn’t help but marvel at her own sense of calm, though he wondered if maybe it was because she hadn’t quite understood their situation yet.

  “Even if they aren’t tracking us, they will eventually see us,” Zaddik said seriously. “I give us twenty more clicks, and then I’ll have to begin evasive maneuvers.”

  “But that’s only if they haven’t boarded the ship yet, right?” Sherre asked, turning to him with her large brown eyes. Zaddik stared into them, momentarily lost in the depths that he found there. “Zaddik?” she blinked.

  “They haven’t,” he assured her, clearing his throat as he turned back to the screen.

  “But if they have?” she pressed.

  “Then we will still deploy evasive maneuvers, only against my ship’s artillery,” he answered gruffly, trying to focus on the anger sparking up from just thinking about a Thagzar worm turning his baby’s cannons against him. It was a nice distraction from Sherre, even if it only lasted for a second.

  “Ah,” Sherre said, nodding. “So, at that point, we’ll just use evasive maneuver right on out of there?” she asked hopefully, mimicking a successful takeoff with her hand as she shot it upward above her head.

  Zaddik was tempted to pull away from the screen completely and properly look at Sherre, but his focus on the controls was crucial in their upcoming stealth attack against the Thagzar scout ships. “At that point,” he said, forcing himself to keep his eyes on the screen. “We’ll just evade until we can get underneath my ship and board her ourselves.”

  When Sherre didn’t say anything, he gave in and shot her a glance. She was biting her lip as she stared down at her fisted hands in her lap, frowning at them with the oddest look on her face. And, while Zaddik felt a ping in his chest as he realized that her expression could’ve only been described as someone who was adorably confused, he scowled. She needed to know that this was happening.

  Yet, before he could open his mouth, she huffed out a sigh and said, “Hey, Zaddik?” It gave him pause, and a part of him felt betrayed that she might disagree with his plans. Still, he wasn’t about to silence her, and he watched as she looked up, and asked sheepishly, “Do you remember me mentioning Earth’s Weapons, before?”

  Well, that wasn’t what he had been expecting. “Sorry?”

  “Weapons,” she said again, as if that cleared things up. Then, blushing harder, she added, “That they have better pods, and that they’re more aggressive?”

  He could just barely remember Sherre saying something about that, though it wasn’t so much her words that he’d committed to memory as the deep blush that’d formed on her cheeks when she’d said them. That was when they’d been flying in Sherre’s pod; the tiny deathtrap that’d locked him inside with Sherre snug between his thighs.

  “Yes,” Zaddik nodded, clearing his throat as he forced himself to pay attention to the screen once again. “The ones who are crazier than your captain,” he clarified.

  “Sure,” Sherre said sarcastically and shook her head. “Look, I’m just saying that my planet has a Weapons unit, and I’m not in it. That I don’t have the training that they – or you – do,” she said, crossing her arms. “That I may not be all that helpful in the retaking of your ship,” she added quietly.

  Zaddik glanced at her, honestly surprised that someone with her braids and her age could be lacking such confidence. Furrowing his brow, he scoffed and said, “What makes you say that?”

  Sherre seemed surprised at his counter, and she shrugged back and said, “Don’t get me wrong, give me a map and I’m your girl.” Zaddik tried not to read too much into those last three words and frowned in concentration as she continued. “But,” she said, “Combat isn’t really my area.”

  “Your captain is a part of your scout crew,” he replied smoothly, glancing between her and the screen. “She handled our Thagzar foes quite well.”

  “She’s the captain,” Sherre said simply. “She—”

  “Shit,” Zaddik cursed, his eyes on the screen as he accidentally cut Sherre off.

  He blinked purposefully at the hologram, hoping against hope that he wasn’t seeing at it right. But no, the two red dots that he’d been watching really had formed a blob of red on the screen, hovering over the one spot that he didn’t want them near.

  “Isn’t that where your ship is?” Sherre asked, pointing to it.

  There was no mistake: the Thagzar’s overlap and lack of movement could only mean that they had boarded. “Yes,” he growled, slamming his foot down to press the button flat to the floor.

  “Whoa!” Sherre gasped, clinging to her armrests as the pod accelerated wildly and the alarms rose in volume. “What happened to ‘evasive maneuvers?’” she called over the noise.

  “They’ve only just docked!” he shouted back, silencing the alarms. “We have to take them now!”

  Thankfully, Sherre didn’t argue, but the warring emotions brewing in Zaddik’s heart were not so easily persuaded. He knew he needed to take his ship back – needed to keep the items and artifacts that they’d stored from their travels out of Thagzar hands, not to mention the ship itself. He wasn’t the engineer that Kogav was, but even he could see the disadvantages of handing over one of their most modified crafts to the enemy.

  “Almost there,” he hissed, his hands sweating as the computer relayed that they were less than ten clicks away. The
mother ship hadn’t gotten a lock on them, so he could only assume that the Thagzars hadn’t even made it to the main deck yet. Zaddik forced a smile, knowing that he should’ve been elated at the news.

  And yet, something was boiling under his skin; a twitch in his hands that was urging him to turn the controls around and leave his ship behind. At first, he’d been ashamed that it was fear, but he’d felt that too, and that wasn’t this.

  This was something else.

  Sherre

  The flush on Zaddik’s neck was getting worse, but Sherre knew better than to bring that up now. She forced herself to ignore him and focus instead on the pod’s readings, using what Jeline had taught her to figure out just how bad their odds really were.

  “Five clicks away,” Zaddik informed her, as if she couldn’t read it herself on the screen. Then again, she wondered if most navigators probably didn’t know where to look, let alone an alien navigator.

  “Might want to deploy the landing sequence,” Sherre suggested quietly, chewing her bottom lip as she leaned in as close as possible to the hologram. She almost missed the look of surprise that Zaddik shot her, but was relieved when he didn’t get defensive and wordlessly set the ship up to dock.

  “Two clicks,” he said, reading the screen. He needn’t have; even if Sherre hadn’t been familiar with pilot controls, she could clearly see the Eiztar mothership on the hologram ahead.

  “Wow,” she said, staring at it.

  Zaddik didn’t spare her a glance, but prompted, “Different than yours?”

  “Oh yeah,” she nodded. The ship was massive, something she’d tried to prepare herself for after seeing just how big the pods were. A pointless attempt, as the sheer size of it still blew her away.

  “Here we go,” Zaddik muttered, and suddenly they were being pulled directly up into the mothership. Without a word, Zaddik pushed a finger to his lips, motioning for Sherre to stay quiet. She nodded in understanding, trying not to stare at the vast contrast between his cracked finger and plush Cupid’s bow. She properly looked away as he took his foot off the button on the floor and slammed a hand into the controls, making the engine shut off and the pod go dark.