The Gate Jumpers Saga: Science Fiction Romance Collection

by Elin Wyn

  Jeline wasn’t about to insult him, but when she tugged at the bindings and brought it up to her face, the overwhelming stench of what smelled like soured grapes gave her pause. “Um,” she frowned. “This isn’t wine, is it?”

  Kogav took another gulp before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and shrugging. “Eh,” he smiled, and dropped the bag he’d just drained back into the console with a plop. “It’s more of a mead, really.”

  Lovely.

  As he bent to rummage through the console further, Jeline very quietly tied her bag closed and slipped it into her right vest pocket.

  She could feel the contents sloshing around uncomfortably as she zipped it closed, but nothing was going to make her drink it, not right before a flight out of enemy territory. Crossing her arms, she nonchalantly took a seat in the first chair; careful to keep her arms below the pocket.

  “Um, so,” she asked, more than a little distracted by the chair’s velvet material brushing against her. “Do you normally—”

  Beeeeeep!

  Stephine jumped at the sudden screech going off inside the pod. She stood up without thinking, and looked toward the door for whatever might be setting it off.

  Or who, her mind supplied.

  “Shit,” Kogav cursed, and Jeline stepped out of his way as he dove at the controls. “Shut up, shut up, shut up,” he chanted hopefully.

  “What’s going on?” Jeline shouted out over the noise.

  “Alarm!” Kogav yelled back as it grew louder. “Just—damn it! Just give me a minute!”

  Sure enough, with another flick of his hands and a stomp of something on the floor, the beeping subsided and the screen flared to life, only to flicker out again a second later.

  And then, all at once, the alarm started up a second time.

  “What the…?” Kogav muttered to himself, glaring at the controls. But Jeline wasn’t paying any attention to them – she was looking outside, her eyes on the other pod ship just a few feet away.

  “Kogav,” she called over her shoulder. “I think – yeah, I think it’s coming from that pod! The alarm—”

  “Oh damn,” Kogav stood up, the panel of controls forgotten as he rushed past Jeline to take a running leap off the bridge and land on the sand below. But he didn’t stop there; tucking his arms in at his sides, he began sprinting toward the other ship.

  Jeline didn’t understand. At the sound of the alarms, she’d immediately thought that the Eiztar’s scaly enemies were launching an attack, but hadn’t Captain Taryn said that she and Kogav’s crew had more or less razed the Thagzar base to the ground? So what was going on, then – a false alarm?

  Kogav made it to the other pod in record time, and Jeline watched as he gave a quick slap to the ship’s exterior only to race up the ramp the moment it descended.

  She wasn’t surprised to hear the alarm stop only a few seconds after he had disappeared inside, and finally relaxed in the doorway, desperately trying to convince herself that the whole thing had just been a simple ship security malfunction.

  It was a hope quickly dashed as an eerie rise of static sounded from behind. Turning, Jeline looked to the screen.

  The controls were back online, though they were only flickering when they should’ve been glowing.

  “What on earth…?” Jeline whispered to herself. Edging closer, she raised her chin and narrowed her eyes as she tried to read the tiny script that was flashing at the bottom of the screen. She barely registered Kogav’s footsteps walking back up the bridge outside as audio kicked in.

  Stay away from Eiztar-Nine. Dangerous snakes.

  “Jeline?” Kogav called, striding over to her. “What’re you—Oh.” Pausing beside her, he clicked his tongue and side-stepped her to drop into the chair situated in front of the controls.

  It was weird to see someone else assuming the pilot’s seat, but for Jeline, their entire situation had already gotten too weird for her to complain now.

  Kogav didn’t seem to notice her eyes upon him, and simply leaned forward on the edge of his seat. Staring at the screen, he placed both his hands just above the controls, but didn’t touch, as if unsure of where to place them.

  Jeline had taken that same position enough times to know that things must not be looking good.

  Computerized messages filtered through the ships audio, almost piling on top of each other. Jeline could only assume that they were from his crewmates, and she listened intently to keep up.

  One line made her stop: What’re we supposed to do about supplies?

  “Supplies?” she repeated. “Why do we need supplies?” If Kogav had alcohol aboard, then wouldn’t he have food, as well?

  “Shit,” Kogav sighed, scrubbing a hand over his face. Jeline thought he was sighing over her question, but then he mumbled, “Fuck, Captain Kanthi just issued a ‘do not engage.’ Zaddik’s gonna be pissed.”

  “Do not engage what?” she asked, though by the mention of ‘snakes,’ she figured she had a pretty good idea. “Kogav? What does that mean?”

  When he only looked straight ahead, his shoulders hunched and his eyebrows furrowed, Jeline straightened up and placed a light hand on his shoulder. “At least tell me what Eiztar-Nine is. It isn’t a planet, is it?”

  Kogav’s purple eyes flicked to where she was touching him, and then finally up to her face. “Of course not,” he said after a moment, his tone soft. “Captain wouldn’t abandon one of our own.”

  “Then?” Jeline furrowed her brow, impatient.

  “It’s our ship,” Kogav sighed, looking at the screen again. “Our mother ship.”

  Jeline stared at him, dumbfounded. “…So?” she asked.

  “So?” Kogav frowned, whipping his head back up to look at her properly. “What do you mean, ‘so?’ That’s my ship!”

  “Yes,” Jeline agreed. “But we’re departing in pod ships, and leaving your main ship parked just off-planet of a Thagzar base. Didn’t you consider that it might get overtaken by them anyway?”

  In Jeline’s opinion, it was bound to happen. Still, as a pilot, she could understand the look of horror on his face and the regret in his voice at the prospect of abandoning his ship.

  “There’s a difference between figuratively leaving her in the hands of the enemy and turning a blind eye while they board her under my very nose!” Kogav hissed, his fangs flashing as he curled his upper lip.

  Ah, she’d offended him.

  “Besides,” he growled, “I saw what they did to your ship. They’d sooner blow it up than transport it here!”

  “Maybe they won’t attack if your ship doesn’t,” Jeline half-guessed. Though really, from what the captain had said about the Thagzars, they sounded like a race to open fire first and ask questions later. “Was there something valuable onboard?”

  “Oh, I could care less about the crap that Zaddik and I collected over the years,” he shook his head, his eyes already back on the screen. “It’s the food and liquids that I’m concerned about.”

  Jeline had been afraid of that. “You didn’t, uh, stow anything away on your pod?” she asked, glancing at the console.

  “There wasn’t time,” Kogav shook his head. “The captain had called for backup, and we rushed to respond. We never outfit the pods for more than one day’s travel at a time anyway, and we couldn’t have guessed that Kanthi was going to have us split up rather than take the virus back as a team aboard our single vessel. And speaking of which,” Kogav flicked a switch, and the sunlight that was streaming in suddenly cut off as the pod door closed. “If Thagzars are sniffing around, then it’s not a good sign. We need to get going.”

  As if someone had heard them, the order to close the chat popped up on screen.

  “Right-o, sir,” Kogav muttered to himself, his fingers flying across the controls as the screen seemed to blip off and then on again, this time with a familiar holographic display that Jeline was happy to recognize. Tapping the screen to zoom in on their location, Kogav winked at Jeline. “Get comfortable
.”

  Jeline wondered if now was a good time to ask for the controls, but from the way Kogav was handling it, she took a tentative seat and hoped he knew what he was doing.

  Kogav

  “Oh!”

  Kogav glanced at Jeline as she gasped at the security harness suddenly flying out across her lap. “Oh yeah,” he said, turning his attention back to the controls as his own leather strap buckled him in with a click. “I noticed your pod lacked that feature on your bench.” That, and any other feature that would’ve made her pod even remotely more comfortable. “Hasn’t Earth ever heard of ‘safety first?’ I mean, hey, it’ll save your life.” Taking a moment to pat the belt over his own lap, he added, “It’s saved mine enough times.”

  “Um, thank you?” she said dubiously, frowning down at it.

  “Let me guess” he said sarcastically, and gave her a look. “You’ve never needed one.”

  “Well, we have a whole slew of security protocols on our mother ship,” Jeline said thoughtfully. “But the pods don’t really come programmed with much beyond Torpor Sleep, and I myself haven’t flown one in the field long enough to know if a harness would really be all that beneficial.”

  Kogav stared at her. He wondered if that really made sense, on her planet. On his, a man wouldn’t hesitate to strap himself in before gallivanting off to the stars; it was just common sense.

  Something Jeline’s moon lacked, apparently.

  As if Jeline could read his thoughts, she crossed her arms and said, “It’s not like I had any real say in it. The security sector deals with all that.”

  “Then just take my word for it,” Kogav shrugged. He couldn’t help but spare a glance at her uniform as she slouched forward in her chair and rested her chin in her hands. It was a tight blue stretchy thing, made of some sort of superior material that put his patched work pants and singed shirt to shame.

  Really, he wouldn’t have cared, but he’d noticed that all of her teammates had been wearing an identical outfit, too. Except the engineer – Willovanch? Willovatche? – and he’d caught a glimpse of the neck of her uniform under the baggy shirt she wore over it.

  Which, with Jeline’s mention of a ‘security sector,’ could only mean one thing: Earth had a fully funded military.

  Must be nice.

  “It’s fine,” Jeline sighed. “Obviously, we do things differently. It doesn’t make one better than the other.”

  “Says the human who didn’t even have warp capabilities installed on her pod,” Kogav muttered under his breath.

  “Warp?” Jeline repeated, straightening up. “Why on earth would you force warp into a pod’s mainframe? It’s highly unstable—”

  “On Earth, I’m sure it is,” Kogav cut in gently. “But for us, pods are more than expendable escape shoots.”

  Jeline seemed to deflate at his calm tone and leaned back into her seat. “We know they’re useful for more than just a quick departure; that’s why every pod is set up with a compatible Torpor Sleep chamber for long voyages.”

  “You keep mentioning that,” Kogav recalled as he flicked a switch. The pod hummed around them as it vibrated with power, and Jeline gripped the arms of her chair in response.

  Kogav wondered about her anxiety as he gently tapped the pedal on the floor and revved the ship up further. Setting the pod for the flight ahead, he thought about it for a moment and asked, “Did you dream?”

  It was clearly not a question that Jeline had been expecting. “Excuse me?” she frowned. Kogav held back a smile and shrugged.

  “When you were asleep,” he said simply. “You had been unconscious for two days.”

  She seemed to consider him for a moment, but ultimately looked away without an answer. Kogav didn’t press her and turned his full attention back to the controls.

  He liked talking to Jeline. He liked it more than listening to Zaddik tell gruesome war stories about the Thagzar overlords, or hearing what embarrassing dirt Kanthi had to share on the nobles at Eiztar court.

  Sure, the human was a little awkward, and though he’d initially thought her a shy mess, the little passion she’d shown when they’d talked about Earth had quickly caught his interest.

  And nothing more than engineering algorithms and shield advancements had done that in a long time.

  “I didn’t dream.”

  Kogav looked up to acknowledge her. She was staring at the spot where the door had been, though now secured and locked for takeoff, it had properly melded back into the wall and all but disappeared from sight.

  He cleared his throat. “Ah, well. Sometimes that’s better.”

  Jeline opened her mouth to say something, but a rumble of the ship around them had her flattening herself back against her chair and giving him an accusing look. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

  “Don’t worry,” Kogav chuckled, keeping a smile on his face as he played with the controls and steered the ship off the ground into a hover just above the sandy surface. “I told you, I know how to fly a pod.”

  Truth be told, he wasn’t the most efficient (or safest) pilot in the Eiztar Alliance, but flying the one-engine aircraft had never been difficult for him.

  “All right,” he muttered, more to himself than to Jeline. “Here we go!”

  With a stomp that sent the foot pedal all the way to the floor, Kogav set the thrusters to max while simultaneously starting the pod’s take-off sequence.

  Easing his foot off the pedal as they shot into the sky, he could feel the vial of Thagzar poison heavy in his pants pocket as he set the lab coordinates as their destination.

  A final prompt from the controls was all he needed before he pumped the pedal as hard as he could and sent them into orbit.

  Though a pilot he was not, Kogav knew the startup sequence to a pod just as well as anyone else; prided himself on it, actually.

  And yet, with Jeline’s sharp eyes watching his every move and the thick scent of Draegon Teeth turning his muscles into a pool of tingling nerves, he found that he was having quite a hard time concentrating.

  Not to mention, Jeline seemed to be having a negative reaction of her own.

  “Are you all right?” Kogav asked, his attention dangerously wavering between the ship and Jeline as they approached Peshdushdar’s atmosphere.

  “You’re not—I don’t,” she gasped out, furiously shaking her head. Finally, she muttered through clenched teeth, “I don’t want to tell you how to fly your ship, but this is too erratic a speed even for my pod!”

  Apparently, this was not the way that human ships took off.

  Kogav tried not to take it as a bad sign and pressed on, literally pinning the pedal down to the floor with his foot as he double-checked the readings on the screen.

  Sure, maybe they were going a little faster than they should have, but Zaddik had always said he had a lead foot. At least, the one time they’d gone out on a field mission together, he had.

  “We’re nearly there,” Kogav promised, and even though he knew that he had nothing to worry about, a chilling sensation was creeping up his neck. It was a feeling he knew but loathed; something he hadn’t felt since he was a boy, fresh to the Thagzar fighting pits.

  Rolling his shoulders in an effort to ease the feeling, Kogav kept his sweaty hands on the controls and his eyes on the screen, doing his best to ignore the fact that the comforting smell of Draegon Teeth was gone.

  Now, there was only the smell of pickled Necteen – a fickle herbal cure that never boded well.

  With a terrible shudder, the ship groaned under their feet as the holomap flickered upon entry into space.

  Kogav did what he knew to do to keep the ship stable, but even he could tell that something was wrong.

  And the sudden cluster of red dots popping up in the screen’s top corner certainly didn’t make him feel any better.

  “What’re those?” Jeline hissed through clenched teeth.

  Kogav let up on the floor pedal and turned them in the other direction. “T
hagzars,” he said shortly.

  “Are they following us?” she asked quietly, leaning in toward the screen. “Do they see us? Are we running?”

  “They haven’t detected us yet,” Kogav muttered, his mind on the controls.

  “How can you be sure?” Jeline scoffed. “We’ve detected them—”

  “Because we reverse-engineered their technology when we got our hands on it,” Kogav growled, his eyes darting around the map between the nearest space station and the red dots. They didn’t seem to be following them, at least not as a horde, but one dot was straying away from the group toward their general direction.

  “We can pinpoint them, but with the new tech that we dumped into the systems we originally commandeered, they won’t have any luck locking onto us with the same trick.”

  “Then why is that one getting closer?” Jeline pointed to the lone dot.

  Kogav opened his mouth, but quickly closed it again.

  He didn’t have an answer.

  Jeline

  Jeline was rooted to her chair as she stared at the screen. Despite the safety belt, she was holding on for dear life; half-buried in her seat with hunched shoulders and wide eyes as she watched Kogav floor the thrusters and swerve them all over the holomap.

  Normally, she would have been the one bent over the controls, muttering and cursing as she maneuvered the ship to take evasive action.

  And, normally, she would have been doing a hell of a lot better job of it than Kogav was currently doing.

  Which was probably why Jeline was going crazy in her seat just to the left of him. Even though she wasn’t in the pilot’s seat, her body was still taking her through the motions of a chase: headache, nausea, chills.

  She knew it was probably just the adrenaline, but stuck in a seat with nowhere to go wasn’t exactly giving her anywhere to make use of it.

  Not to mention, Kogav’s crazy driving was only adding to her stress.

  Gulping, Jeline breathed, “Kogav. Kogav, listen to me. If you keep cutting the controls like that, they’re bound to—”