Ruwen: Mated to the Alien

by Kate Rudolph

  “I don’t think so.” Lis pulled down her own top and zipped her bodysuit back up. “Unless it was that big red button by the door, I didn’t do anything.”

  The curse he hissed out needed no translation, even though it was Detyen. “That’s the perimeter alarm. We’ve been discovered.”

  There wasn’t any more time for discussion. Ru ran for the cockpit and Lis followed close behind, unsure of what else to do. “You said you needed to recharge the cloaking system for one more day. Can we make it off planet without it?”

  Ru strapped himself into the pilot seat, “Sit there,” he told her, pointing slightly back and to the left of the pilot seat to where the weapon master would normally sit. “We’re at 87% charged. It should be enough.”

  Should. That was the kind of wishy-washy word that got people killed, but Lis kept that to herself.

  Ru flipped down a visor in front of his face and Lis found something similar attached to her seat. She mirrored his motion, looking out through the visor while she clasped the seat buckle in front of her. The weapon master was responsible for defense of a small vessel like this, and that made it Lis’s job to fire the blasters and laser cannons at the enemy.

  “Don’t take a shot unless we lose our cloaking,” Ru instructed.

  “Got it.” There were dozens of buttons arrayed in the panel in front of her and the armrest of her chair ended with a joystick she could use to aim and fire. She turned one of the dials on her weapon’s panel to its highest setting. She’d seen a Central Fleet ship in a museum once and that was what the sign said that control was for.

  She hoped that was the standard because Ru didn’t have time to teach her any of this.

  The visor in front of her eyes didn’t give Lis an exact view of the Polans coming for them. What she saw instead was a grid with dots of varying sizes heading toward the center of her grid. Only one of them looked big enough to do them any damage; the rest she guessed were ground locked vehicles which couldn’t pursue them once they lifted off.

  The anti-grav engine engaged with a lurch, throwing her forward and jolting her back in her seat. She expected a lot of noise, but it was near silent, and she was afraid that if she breathed too loud it would tip off the Polans. Logically, that wasn’t going to happen. But she didn’t care about logic at the moment.

  They lifted off, and there was no way for her to tell that the cloaking shields worked except for the fact that none of the Polans started shooting. Lis kept her fingers hovering over her weapon controls, ready to fire the moment she needed to. Her heartbeat nearly deafened her and a fine sheen of sweat popped up on the back of her neck. Her hands barely shook, but that was only due to years of experience in dangerous situations.

  This one felt so much worse. She didn’t like not having control.

  “The cloaking holds,” Ru said as he pulled up on the throttle. “Charge is 84%.”

  Lis reached up and felt around the edges of her visor. She found a button and pressed, changing the view to get a look outside the ship. They’d just climbed above the trees, their engines ruffling the clouds. She cast her gaze around, trying to find the Polans who were after them.

  “I see a ship in the air,” she said. “Definitely within firing range.”

  “Hold your fire,” Ru commanded, all business. “I see it too.” His hands moved over his controls, but Lis couldn’t tell what he was doing.

  She turned her attention back to her visor. They climbed inch by grueling inch. Every minute or so Ru gave her an update on the cloaking charge. They’d climbed high; Lis could see for miles around them, and they’d left the scary looking ships behind.

  “Charge is down to 26%,” said Ru. “It’s not going to hold.”

  “What?” Lis jerked up, grasping the firing controls and switching her visor view back to weapons mode.

  “I need to engage the turbo engines to break through the atmosphere. It normally eats up 31% of a cloaking charge.” He sounded incredibly calm considering the situation. “That means that once we break atmo, we’re going to be visible to the satellite defense system. Shoot down anything that approaches us. We’re not going to have any friends until we’re through the nearest gate and out of this sector.”

  “And how far is the gate?” she asked, trying to match his calm.

  Gates were like magical doors between different sectors. Flying through one cut lightyears off a ship’s flying time and made interstellar and intergalactic travel possible for regular ships without FTL drives.

  “We can make it,” Ru promised. He reached out and held his hand up. Lis placed her own in it and gave him a tight squeeze.

  “Let’s see what this thing can do,” she challenged. They held onto each other for three more seconds, neither willing to be the first to let go. But if they were going to escape, they needed both of their hands.

  Ru straightened in his seat and began pressing buttons with quick fingers. “Engaging turbo in three, two, one. Engaged.”

  This time Lis both felt and heard it as the engines let out a deafening roar and they rocketed forward, up and up, through the last bits of Polan sky, and encountered the thick barrier of the atmosphere.

  She knew the determination on her face matched Ru’s, but she couldn’t look over at him. Her entire focus belonged to the readout in front of her. They’d evaded the ground patrols, but that wasn’t the only thing they had to worry about.

  Lis warmed up one of the guns, setting it to ready mode and waiting for the grid to light up with enemy fire.

  The ship rocked as they blasted through atmo, and then Lis felt the weightlessness invade her body as gravity dissipated around them. A second later, synthetic grav engaged and she could move normally again.

  Two large dots appeared on her grid on opposite sides of the ship. In moments they’d be passing right between them. Lis’s finger rested on the fire button, just waiting for the cloaking to fall.

  “1% left,” Ru warned.

  They flew as straight as possible for as long as possible, but Lis felt it the second that the cloaking shield gave out. The lights in the cockpit grew slightly brighter and Ru started swerving madly, not staying on any one trajectory long enough for the defense systems to get a lock on them.

  Lis watched as the two large satellites swiveled toward them. She fired at the first, letting off a laser shot, but going wide when Ru turned again. Lis bit back her curse and aimed once more.

  “We’ve got incoming!” she yelled, “Right on our tail.” She tried to shoot at the blasts of energy coming toward them. Ru had said to shoot everything. This had to count. Her shots acted as a barrier, deflecting the laser shots and keeping the speeder safe.

  Lis aimed for the satellite once more. She lined it up along her grid and shot. The blast fired an instant before Ru swerved again, jolting her in her seat. But one of the two large blobs on her grid went dark.

  “Hit!” she yelled. “That’s one of the satellites.”

  “Good.”

  Lis rolled her shoulders and tried to take aim again. She didn’t see the shot that hit them, but the lights flickered for a moment. It wasn’t enough to stop Ru. “That’s enough of this,” he said. “We’re getting out of here. Now.”

  Lis fired blindly behind them. She hoped to hit the unharmed satellite, but as long as she stopped them from being hit again, she’d consider it a success. Her ears popped, and suddenly the blob on her grid was getting smaller and smaller as they sped away from the planet.

  “One minute to the gate,” Ru said.

  “Got it.” Lis focused on the firing grid in front of her, looking for any speck of an enemy ship that would keep them from escaping. The satellite was nothing more than a vicious memory now, but she didn’t know what else the Polans had left to throw at them.

  “Thirty seconds,” Ru counted down.

  An array of dots crept up on the edge of the screen, hundreds of them gaining fast. Lis started to fire, laying down a wall of laser blasts. But for every one she hit, two s
eemed to take its place.

  “Stop firing or we won’t make it through!” Ru yelled.

  But they were too close. If Lis stopped shooting, they’d be overrun. She let out a shriek and fired three more shots directly behind them, opening up a hole in the Polan attackers before tearing her hand off the firing stick and holding it up in the air.

  “Get us through before they’re on us!”

  Ru didn’t respond, but he didn’t need to be told twice. Her ears popped once more and she felt a great weight press down against her skin. It became hard to breathe. The deeper a breath she tried to take, the less air she could pull into her lungs. Lis panted, trying for smaller gasps. It didn’t seem to help.

  And then it was over.

  She looked down at her readout and saw nothing. They were through the gate and home free.

  “They won’t dare pursue us through there. It would be an act of war.” Ru flipped up his visor and pushed his chair back from the controls. “We survived.”

  Lis unbuckled everything she could as quickly as possible, one arm getting tangled in her restraint. But after a short struggle she was free.

  She launched herself at Ru, clutching him close and hugging him with all her might. His own arms wrapped around her and he cradled her head with one of those big alien hands of his. She couldn’t make herself let go. They could have just died and she was only beginning to figure out what he meant to her.

  She tried to make herself pull back so she could get a handle on her emotions, but she couldn’t let go. It felt too damn right to hold him close. Now that they were in the relative safety of a new sector, all of the things that could have gone wrong were blasting through her mind.

  No, she wasn’t letting go. Not until she was sure she could survive without him.

  Chapter Twelve

  The blast did a number on the ship. Ru spent a few hours trying to determine the extent of the damage after they made it through the gate, but after scanning all of the obvious systems, the only conclusion he had was that it was too early to tell. When he was certain that they weren’t being pursued and the auto-pilot would last for at least a few hours, he took the time to get some actual rest.

  Lis made herself scarce, though he wasn’t quite sure why. If it weren’t for her, he would be dead. Untrained though her technique was, she’d laid down enough fire to combat an entire army, not merely one blast from a Polan defense satellite.

  When he woke the next morning, her door was closed and a quick consult with the ship’s computer let him know that she was still asleep in her room. Ru didn’t try to wake her. She’d had a big scare the day before and no doubt needed a rest.

  Instead, he started to fix his ship. The work consumed him and before he knew it, his muscles were sore from holding awkward positions for hours, and he was entirely surrounded by hundreds of feet of colorful wire.

  No one system had been completely taken out by the blast, but the only things that hadn’t been affected in some way were the life support and cloaking systems.

  Navigation had been nearly fried to a crisp and if he hadn’t known the coordinates for Honora station by heart, they would have been lost in empty space. Few ships jumped through the Polan gate, and they were floating in one of the least populated shipping lanes in the entire galaxy.

  Ru knew that they wouldn’t see another ship until they hit the next gate. And with the fried systems and nearly nonfunctional navigation computer, their trip had just gained a few days. He’d hoped to be at Honora station by the end of the week. Now, that wasn’t going to happen. They couldn’t fly at top speed, and he would need to watch the flight computer with a keen eye to make sure they stayed on course.

  But he had friends on Honora. They’d be able to repair his ship. Or take it off his hands, if Lis decided to leave him.

  No, he wouldn’t think of that.

  A noise in the kitchen caught his ear. He disentangled himself from the wires and cords and stood up, taking just a moment to stretch. He exited the cockpit, leaving the door open behind him, to find Lis standing before the food processor and drawing on the input screen.

  He stood in the doorway, one arm resting casually on the ceiling of the ship, and just looked at her. She already seemed so at home on his ship and in his life. Her hair was pulled back and secured with a torn piece of cloth. It was messy and comfortable and so damn homey that for a moment, Ru was struck by a feeling of longing for something he’d never had before.

  Her brows were furrowed in concentration as she tabbed through all of the options in the processor. In one hand, she held a spare tablet he’d left in her room for entertainment. Since she couldn’t read IC, he figured she had a dictionary app open so that she could stumble through food preparation.

  Lis looked over to find him staring, and her mouth pulled into a bright smile. “Morning! I thought you might like some breakfast.”

  “That sounds wonderful.” A fragile awareness blossomed between them, born of danger and protectiveness and a heady dose of attraction. Ru wanted to hold it tight, but he knew if he grasped it too hard, it would disintegrate into dust.

  So they’d start with a meal and move slowly. After all, preparing food was a long held courtship custom among his people. With no planet to call their own any longer, a next meal was never guaranteed. Sharing food and culture was the ultimate kindness. He kept this from Lis, not to lie, but because he wasn’t sure what she was ready to know. She’d already run from him once and he would not let her contemplate doing so once more.

  Ru took his seat at the table, sitting on the pillow covered bench along the wall of the ship. Lis pulled out plates and prepared drinks, not giving him one hint of what she’d made. It smelled different and delicious and his mouth watered. He hadn’t eaten yet and only now did he realize how hungry he’d become.

  She turned around with two plates in hand and set them on the table. “There’s no maple syrup in your processor,” she explained. Ru had no idea what ‘maple syrup’ even was. It must have been a human thing. “But I think we’ll be able to make do with what I’ve put together.”

  Ru took a deep breath, breathing in the sweet aroma of the small stack of cakes piled beside links of sausage. “It looks delicious.” She was biting her lip and looking down at him expectantly, just waiting to see what his opinion would be. Ru was happy to oblige. He sliced into the fluffy cake and dipped it into the dark syrupy mixture she’d put in a small bowl.

  It was delicious. He took another bite and then another, finishing off the cake with aplomb. Then he tried the sausage and the salt and protein was the perfect balance to what she’d just made.

  But Lis wasn’t yet satisfied. She slid into the seat beside him and said, “No, try them together.”

  Ru didn’t know what she meant. The sweet cake couldn’t possibly pair simultaneously with the sausage. They would taste too different.

  Seeing that he wasn’t about to take her advice, Lis tore into one of his cakes and used it to wrap up a small bite of sausage. She dipped them in the syrup and held her fingers up right in front of his mouth.

  “Trust me,” she said.

  With her seated flush up against him and her fingers only a breath away from his lips, there was no way that Ru could make himself refuse. He opened his mouth and let her feed him, catching the edges of her fingertips with his lips as he bit down on her concoction.

  As the flavor exploded in his mouth, he bit back a moan. She’d been so damn right that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d tasted anything as scrumptious.

  Well, except for her lips.

  She settled back to sit beside him, but Ru threw his arm around her shoulder to keep her from moving too far away. Lis readjusted herself, leaning up against him and pulling her plate closer so she could eat her own food. She didn’t try to pull away, leaving Ru preening and oddly satisfied.

  Lis cut up her food and explained, “It’s the only meal that the mother at the orphanage could make. Everything else was… blech.�
� She scrunched up her face and scoffed. “She thought she could cook, and that’s just about the worst decent thing you can do to a bunch of half-starved kids.”

  That she’d lived a hard life had never been in doubt. It had made her strong, but her edges were sharp.

  “Were you there long?” he asked. Human adolescence lasted so much longer than Detyen. He’d been apprenticed to his first intergalactic mission before he turned ten and completely trained by thirteen.

  Lis took a bite and shrugged. “A few years. I wandered in off the street when I was seven and was put into job training when I turned twelve.” She smiled, a glint in her eye, “It didn’t take.”

  With the hand draped over her shoulder, he played with a strand of hair, wrapping it around his finger and letting it fall loose. It was so soft that it was hard to stop touching it. “Always the troublemaker?”

  “I was an angel!” Lis laughed as she protested. “What about you?”

  Ru shook his head, a mock look of confusion on his face. “I don’t know what you’re asking. I, too, was perfect.”

  “Really?” There was a hint of vulnerability in her gaze, like she would believe him if he said he spoke the truth. When she used that tone and that look, he was powerless to lie.

  “I may have—only once—caused a ship to become stranded half a lightyear from civilization.” And in doing so he’d learned more about interstellar engineering than ten years of classes could teach him.

  “No shit? What happened?” Lis casually picked at her food while she spoke, but she stayed cuddled up close to him as if it were the most natural thing in the universe.

  Ru sat on the knife’s edge of worry and bliss. She was opening up for him, but it could all disappear. He let none of the concern out when he spoke. “It was in the second year of my apprenticeship. I’d been begging my boss to allow me to make small, common repairs that I had watched him take care of dozens of times. At every turn, he said no.” Ru still remembered the harsh expression Yov levelled at him every time he asked the question. “So one shift I was left to watch for any issues. If one arose, I had been instructed to fetch one of the journeymen or masters if anything went wrong. And in the middle of the night, one of the sensors started to blink.”