by Calista Skye
Charlotte nodded. “So if you're a warrior and someone rescues you, then you become someone else's slave. In principle, I mean. In their minds. They wouldn't actually enslave you, but I think it's the psychological thing that does it. You'd always feel that you owed someone your life. For these guys, that could get pretty tough. I don't know if you noticed, but they're proud as fuck. I totally buy that they'd rather be left behind and die alone than be rescued.”
Harper nodded slowly. “I think you got it. So, considering that they will happily leave you behind to be slaughtered, will you stay with them or return to Earth service, where we actually care about our servicewomen?”
To Charlotte, the answer was clear. Return to be a glorified bus driver after finally having seen some real action? It would take more than this. “They have their weird things going on, no doubt about it. But I waited too long for this to become reality, and I'm actually enjoying it just as much as I thought. And I think it'll be better from now on. Cori'ax and I didn't quite get along before, but now I think we ... umm ... broke the ice.”
Harper must have heard something in Charlotte's voice, because she had a knowing little smile playing at her lips. “Really? Broke the ice, huh? Again, you mean? Yeah, those parachutes are pretty versatile. I hear they can be used as tents, even.”
Charlotte punched her friend on the shoulder. “Hey, don't be so perceptive. Breaking the ice with aliens can take a lot of effort. In many ways.”
Harper laughed. “Don't I know it. He got you addicted yet?”
Charlotte smiled. “Maybe a little. I won't deny it.”
“Just make sure that you make your decisions based on common sense and not just the romantic things. I speak from experience here. You can still see him, even if you're not in his squad or even in their army. In some ways, it would be better like that.”
“Oh, I'm not that addicted. I'll stay because I want to fight with these guys, not because he has such a magical dick that I can't be without it for more than ten minutes. Harper, I still really want this. And now I want it more than ever. I can't thank you enough for coming to get me.”
“It's the least I could do.”
“But it was hard on you. I don't want you to worry. I want to be rescued if necessary. By the Acerex. I'll let everyone know that. I won't consider myself someone's captive just because he does the right thing and saves my life.”
Harper sighed. “You know, I'll tell you right now, I'll come and get you anyway. Whatever you say.”
13
Two months later
- Charlotte -
“Come on!”
Charlotte made the dropship hover over the ground and grit her teeth in frustration. The warriors sauntered towards it, not too worried. They had accomplished their mission without any casualties, and now they were relieved and pleased with themselves. It had been a hard mission, like they all were, but as usual the squad had done things that most other Acerex would have deemed very hard.
Still Charlotte wanted to bang her head on the controls. The end of a mission, when everything seemed to be great, was the most dangerous part. Things could go from success to disaster in a second if the warriors relaxed their guard and celebrated before they should. There were no enemies in sight right now, but this was a very wily species of alien and they had come up with bad surprises before. And here the squad was walking to their airlift, chatting and laughing as if they were in a bar.
She pressed the Transmit button on the radio she'd convinced Cori'ax to give all the warriors in the squad.
“Guys, the mission isn't finished until we're in space,” she reminded them with a tight voice. She couldn't talk to them too harshly – in the eyes of the Acerex, the pilot was the lowest ranking member of the squad, although they never treated her as anything other than an equal.
“Pilot's right,” Cori'ax's deep growl said into her earpiece. “We run until we're either dead or home.”
That worked. The warriors tightened their formation and jogged towards the hovering dropship in groups of five, with Cori'ax at the rear as a group of one. He was always the last to leave the battlefield and the first to enter it.
Charlotte both loved and hated that – he was a superb leader, but it was also risky. Well, that was the man he was and she knew it would be hard to change that, if she'd even wanted to.
Neri'on leapt into his seat and shut his hatch, the other warriors got inside and sat down, and Cori'ax said “dust off» into her ear again.
Charlotte immediately gunned the engines and made the dropship jump into the air. And then she yelped as a blue streak shot right in front of her windshield, followed by another. The enemies had been hiding and were now trying to shoot them down.
“Hang on,” she said into the comms and banked hard left, coming within an inch of making the engine pod on that side touch the rocks on the surface. That level of precision in flying was Charlotte's pride – no one else in the Acerex army could have done that. And no other dropship would respond so well to her commands as this Earth-made one.
She skimmed the surface, accelerating hard to keep a low profile and make it hard for the enemies to aim their missiles, whatever they were. The streaks were following them, and she could see on the radar that they were pretty large. If they contained any kind of explosive, they could probably blow the dropship right out of the sky.
Suddenly the air around the ship came alive with blue light as a large number of missiles were fired and tried to track the craft.
Charlotte ducked and veered and flew so erratically that it would be difficult for the enemy to aim at all, and then she made a sharp right turn that placed a low cliff between her and the source of the missiles. But she was only met with more blue streaks coming straight for her from straight ahead, and she plunged the ship even further downwards until the terrain alarm was wailing its piercing, last-chance warning. She leveled off so close to the ground that the missiles were so confused they hit the ground and exploded in blinding sprays of white light and fragments. The dropship shook as it was hit by the shockwaves, but no missile got close enough to do much damage. Still, with all this enemy fire, she couldn't evade forever.
She shoved the gas lever all the way forward and the acceleration pushed her back in her seat. They were approaching three times the speed of sound in this atmosphere, and it was about time to change direction. The ship was not designed for this kind of speed in an atmosphere. No, this was fighter jet speed and maneuvering she was doing.
The thought gave her an idea. This dropship wasn't a fighter jet at all, but it was so sturdy that it could probably handle it.
“Duck and crouch,” she ordered into the comms. When the dropship was in flight, she was in charge and could issue orders to the warriors.
She hoped they were obeying back in the cargo compartment and that they hunched forward and put their heads down between their knees. If not, more than one of them might faint after what she was planning to do now.
She tightened her thigh muscles as hard as she could, tensed her body and breathing and felt the pressure suit help her compress her legs and lower body to keep the blood from draining from her head. Then she pulled back hard on the controls. She heard the dropship's stubby wings creak and rattle at the sudden change of direction, sensed the engines spinning wildly in a sudden vacuum before they drew air again and felt the immense pressure down into her seat as huge speed straight ahead was transformed to huge speed straight up into the sky within two seconds.
One blue streak passed far below as the dropship gained height very fast. They were pulling out of range of the enemy. Now that they were much higher, the radar showed fifteen enemy missile launchers surrounding the place they had just left. Charlotte checked again. Fifteen? That had been a straight ambush.
The pressure from the acceleration subsided and she started breathing normally. The display showed that the ship had registered almost three hundred missiles being fired at them. And not one had hit.
S
he pumped her fish silently in the air, then sighed as she experienced a moment of expert's regret; no one except her would realize exactly what she had just pulled off. She'd never heard of anyone escaping that many missiles in a simple dropship. Even Neri'on in the copilot's seat seemed clueless about what has just happened.
Then she heard a deep, calm voice in the comms. “Best pilot in the army.”
She checked the settings on the comms. Yes, everyone aboard had heard that.
Her cheeks went hot and she smiled. Public praise from Cori'ax was rare at any time. And more so with her, because now everyone knew that they were a couple and he was careful about not giving her any special treatment.
She wouldn't have thought it was possible, but his simple statement made her blush with happiness. He realized how good she was, and that was important to her. Still he had the power to make her blush.
The ship left the atmosphere and she set a course for their camp on another planet in the same solar system. For once, they'd found a nice planet with a pleasant climate, and they had a loose village of tents.
She dropship guided itself, and Charlotte could relax. Heat surged in her girly bits at the mere thought of her nightly routine of getting into bed naked and waiting with breathless arousal for Cori'ax to come and fuck her good for hours.
She turned her head so Neri'on couldn't see the grin on her face.
She had never enjoyed life more.
14
Two months later
- Charlotte -
“Good going, Char'ton,” Neri'on said and dropped out of the shuttle.
Charlotte smiled tightly. They had given her a nickname that was a friendly joke, a mix of her own name and a Acerex ending that had some kind of royal connotation. She knew many of the warriors felt that she was high above them in status, since she was friends with Harper. But they were also proud of having her in their squad, and they would tell other squads that she was an alien princess.
She finished the checklist, locked up the controls and jumped down onto the ground. It had been another victorious mission, and the squad had performed better than ever.
Cori'ax sauntered slowly after the other warriors towards the tents, giving her time to catch up. He always did that, and it was one of the many little things he did that Charlotte liked. He was both honoring her and showing her that he wanted to be close to her.
“Another good mission,” she said when she caught up. “We chased them home, I think.”
“They're running, certainly,” Cori'ax said as she fell into step with him. “Your idea to keep hitting them as hard as we can immediately and then giving them an easy way to leave seems to be working.”
“It does seem that way,” Charlotte agreed and felt the elation of another victory slowly being transformed into arousal. This had been a good one, and they had been able to win without killing too many alien invaders. Charlotte's idea of leaving the enemy an easy and obvious way to flee from the Acerex army, instead of slaughtering everyone, had been pretty successful so far. It saves lives on both sides, and an enemy defeated with a shock like that was unlikely to try again. The Acerex habit of aiming to annihilate their enemies was changing. Very slowly, but it was changing.
Cori'ax reached out for her hand as they walked, and she looked up at him in puzzlement before she carefully took it, looking around. He'd never taken her hand in public before.
“Yeah? Here?”
He smiled. “Here. We're down, the mission is accomplished. And I've kept a secret from you: we have two week's leave. The whole squad. Starting the moment we touched down. It's only two weeks, but I have a suggestion about where to go.”
Charlotte grinned. She wouldn't mind a little vacation about now. “You do, huh?”
The huge warrior looked away. “Unless you want to go somewhere else, of course. I would understand perfectly. Actually, never mind.”
Charlotte peered up at him. He was always totally sure of himself, but now he almost seemed embarrassed. “Well, how about you tell me what you have in mind, and I'll tell you if I want to or not?”
He have her a quick glance. “It's just... I haven't been home for a long time. I mean, the village I come from. I thought maybe ... but no, you have other places to go, of course. I'm sure you haven't been to your own planet for a long time. And of course you want to see your friends. It was just a thought, a spur of the moment thing. Please forget it.”
Charlotte smirked. It was very rare to see Cori'ax embarrassed. On one hand she wanted to make the most of it, but on the other hand he had done something that she knew was extremely rare.
“Just to clarify: you're inviting me to your home village?”
“Yes, but I spoke without thinking. The elation of the victory overwhelmed me for a moment.”
She squeezed his hand. “Hey, so, are you inviting me or not?”
He took a moment to answer. “I am. But like I said, I entirely understand if-”
She broke him off. “Sure, I'd love to see your village. Let's leave right away.”
He stopped in his tracks. “You don't have to do that. My village is primitive and remote. I fear you'd hate it.”
She was thrilled that she might be able to see the village he came from. He didn't have much close family left, but she would love to see where he had grown up. “Maybe you could let me be the judge of that? We'll go there. If I hate the place or, I don't know, they don't make the coffee exactly the way I want it or something else that's totally unforgivable, I'll just slap you and leave in a huff, okay? The Friendship is still in orbit and it would take me an hour to get up there.”
A rare, boyish smile spread slowly over Cori'ax's face. “Yes. Good point. Promise me that if at any point you want to leave the village, you tell me right away. I'm not that attached to it anymore. And I truly think you'll hate it.”
- - -
“I love it,” Charlotte sighed and laid back on the deck, feeling the breeze and the pleasant rays from Acerex's sun. “No, wait. Correction. I totally love it.”
Cori'ax's home village was on the coast of one of the continents, about halfway between the equator and the North Pole. The ocean was deep blue and as clear as crystal, so she could see the sandy bottom a hundred feet under the little sailboat that Cori'ax had borrowed. There were thousands of little islands all around the area, and the village was built on about fifty of largest of them. All the islands were rocky, but the rock had been polished by glaciers and water over millions of years and were now just gentle slopes that from a distance looked like the backs of huge, gray whales just cresting the surface.
Between the islands where people lived there were little wooden bridges, so that it was possible to walk from one end of the settlement to the other. But it was much more common to use boats, either rowboats or sailboats. The Acerex had boats with engines for emergencies, but they preferred to use the traditional ways or crossing the sea and the little straits between islands.
They had spent the first night on the mainland, but now they were going out to Skato, the island where Cori'ax's family lived.
Cori'ax was sitting in the back of the sailboat, steering it with a simple tiller. Charlotte was lying lazily on the little deck in front of him, hearing the sail flap in the breeze and the waves clucking against the hull, just relaxing and feeling happier than she had for a long time.
“I'm glad,” the huge warrior said. “And somewhat surprised. It's such a simple place.”
Charlotte shaded her eyes with one hand. “Am I really that complicated?”
“Not as far as I can tell. But you are an alien ambassador. Confidante of royals, even. And this is a humble village, even by Acerex standards.”
“Did you ever consider that I'm a simple girl, despite all that?”
“Not until now. Watch out.”
He pushed the tiller away from him. The boom that held the bottom of the sail swung slowly from one side of the mast over to the other, and then the sail filled out as it caught the wind a
gain.
She shaded her eyes with one hand. Cori'ax was sitting very calmly, handling the boat with the relaxed confidence that he always exuded. He had a content look on his face, and Charlotte realized that he must have been sailing like this since early childhood.
But no one would mistake him for a sailor. For once his torso was bare, and the flame tattoos framed the burns he'd suffered on the Fire Planet. He had many scars all over his immensely muscular body, acquired on countless alien worlds. But there were no fresh ones. Since Charlotte joined the squad, their injury rate had gone down sharply.
The sword lay in the bottom of the boat, within easy reach for him. Even here he was ready for anything. But he was relaxed.
“You love this, don't you?”
He nodded. “My early life was like that of any other Acerex male, just a preparation for the Fire Planet. But I was lucky. I had this, too. Whenever I had the chance, I would sail. In the boat, I could push away the thoughts of the horrors that lay ahead. It emptied my mind and let me enjoy just being alive. While it lasted. Because I knew it wouldn't last long. Like all warriors know.”
One of the gray islands lay straight ahead, and Charlotte guessed that it was his home. There were bright red trees in the middle of it and a handful of little huts along its shoreline. It looked calm and idyllic.
“When were you here last?”
“Right after the Fire Trials. I recovered from my injuries here before I went on active duty. After that, I made sure not to come back here. I suppose I wanted to preserve this as some kind of paradise in my mind, just dreaming of returning here once and for all when I was too old to fight in the army.”
Charlotte frowned. “But here you are now.”
He sent her a look that had both puzzlement and happiness in it. “Yes. I changed my mind and realized that this place is still here and ready for me to enjoy any time I want. And it's improbable that I'll retire alive. So why not gain all the pleasure from it that I can?”
Charlotte nodded. Not many Acerex warriors survived to old age. But Cori'ax had become more careful in his fighting, and she thought maybe it was because of her. “Well, try your best to stay alive. Some of us like to have you around. As in, really seriously like it a whole fucking lot and don't you dare go and die or there'll be serious trouble.”