The Million Miles High Club (Scifi Alien Romance) (Celestial Mates)

by Suki Selborne

  Rage pulses through my veins. Captain Plinaro cannot interfere in our love match. Nobody can do that.

  The certainty that Kalia and I belong together keeps me focused. I shall not stand back and accept our separation from Captain Plinaro, or the Gromalf Alliance, or anyone else.

  Before I can object, the idiot speaks again. This time he turns his pitiful sneer to my beloved.

  “And you, human? You are to be despatched to your fate. You shall be sealed in your ship and dropped into space. You shall not be given supplies of fuel, or food, or water. Let your slow, lingering death be a lesson to your species.”

  Kalia gasps. “You’re not serious?”

  Plinaro’s man cannot expand further on his thoughts, because my fist hits his face at high speed.

  8 Kalia

  Well, that escalated quickly.

  Scorvan single-handedly beats the shit out of six huge guys, while I try to get my brain to work again. It’s amazing how slowly I reacted to that. Usually, I would have been the first one to throw a punch.

  Being up close and personal with seven feet of pure sex has caused my grey matter to malfunction. Hardly surprising. The guy is so hot, it’s a crime. Since that first kiss, I don’t know what to do with myself.

  I’m freaking out about this death sentence, of course. Embarrassingly, I’m also still so turned on, I can barely stand still.

  Scorvan makes short work of the officials who wanted to fire me into space. It doesn’t take long before they’re all knocked out cold.

  “Shit. Are they okay?” I wince at the sight of the one who spoke to us. He’s unconscious, and he has a broken nose, for sure.

  “They are going to be fine, beloved. Yolcadians heal very fast. But now we need to run.”

  He grabs my hand and drags me through the open doorway. The force field is still switched off from when the officials stopped by.

  The corridor is lit by blue mood lighting, making me think it must be night time. But that’s just the impression I get. I have absolutely no idea what the time is, or even if Earth time has any meaning out here in this part of space. I lost track completely since winding up on this ship earlier. Weird how fast you can get disoriented.

  We sprint down long and winding corridors, past rows of closed doors. There’s a faint scent of burnt sugar in the air. It makes me think of baking cakes with Aunt Miranda when I was about six. The unexpected reminder of Earth makes me feel homesick.

  “Where are we going?” I call out, as we hurtle down the long walkways.

  I’m panting already. I’m pretty fit, like all pilots have to be, but I’m not sure I can run for much longer at this speed.

  Scorvan doesn’t even break a sweat. He’s probably slowed right down for my benefit, in fact. “It won’t be much longer. We shall use the elevator pod in a moment.”

  “Okay, great,” I puff.

  His idea of ‘a moment’ doesn’t exactly match mine. We run for at least another ten Earth minutes. The speed is so fierce, my legs begin to burn.

  Just as I’m sure I’m going to collapse in a heap, we turn a corner. Ahead of us, there’s a huge door, edged in what looks like thin white strip lighting.

  “This is the elevator pod,” he says, squeezing my hand.

  “Perfect. Let’s go,” I say.

  He pushes a button and the door opens. And… it’s an empty elevator shaft.

  He steps forward and I grab his arm. “No! The elevator’s not there! There’s a fault!” I catch my breath, shaking. “Oh my God, that was close. You nearly fell right in there.”

  But he doesn’t stop walking. Worse, he’s still holding my hand.

  We both step into the void of nothingness.

  I scream, until I realize we aren’t falling. Somehow, we are suspended in mid-air.

  I don’t want to look down, so I look up at his face instead.

  “What the hell sort of elevator is this anyway?” I say.

  “Hold on to both of my hands,” he says. “This is the high-speed one.”

  I scream my head off as we suddenly whizz through the empty elevator shaft at a billion miles an hour. That’s what it feels like, at least.

  Before I can faint, or throw up, we’re completely still again. The doors open, and we step out into a huge dark space.

  It’s cold in here, but at least there’s a solid floor, and no soldiers around. Well, except for Scorvan.

  He spins me around, and I suddenly realize where we are. We’re in the loading bay! This is where I first arrived just a few hours ago.

  “So we return to the scene of the crime,” I say, trying to make light of the freaky situation.

  “What?” Even though I’m speaking his language thanks to my brain implant, he doesn’t understand my human turns of phrase. Of course he doesn’t.

  We stride purposefully through the loading bay. Scorvan looks up at the top corners of the vast walls.

  “Cameras,” he explains. “I estimate we have around thirty micro-fractal sun-turns before we’re ambushed again. We need to be quick.”

  I’m not entirely sure what he means, but I just trot alongside him like a little puppy. It’s all I can do to keep up with him.

  We reach my ship, right in the corner. I feel a pang in my stomach looking at it. My little Hummingbird. I hope they haven’t been too rough searching it.

  The door is cordoned off with something that feels a little like reinforced parcel tape. Scorvan rips it off with one swipe of his big hand. He gestures to me to go first.

  “After you. This is your ship. You’re the captain.”

  “I sure am,” I say, skipping up the steps to the door. The retina scanner still works, and it recognizes me, thank goodness.

  As the portal swings back, I take Scorvan by the hand and pull him inside. He has to duck his head right down to get in. My ship looks teeny with him inside.

  Once I’ve resealed the door, I reactivate Lola. It’ll take a few seconds for the mainframe computer to come back online, so I try to tidy up a little. I clear away the scattered evidence of my solo flights: soda cans, junk food wrappers, discarded apple core. It takes inviting a guy onto my ship to realize what a slob I’d become. Yeesh. If we get out of here alive, and we ever get back to the right solar system, I’m getting this ship deep-cleaned.

  “Well, howdy doody, stranger!” Lola says.

  I grin at the navigation screen as it flickers back to life. “Hey, Lola. Good to hear your voice again. So this is Scorvan. He’s joining us for, uh, a road trip.”

  “That’s rad. Welcome aboard.” Lola takes over the job of restarting each element of the ship’s control panel. “I notice you are not wearing your Wixer, boss.”

  I pat my bare wrist. “No. It was taken from me.”

  “Bummer. Let me upload all your information to our spare.”

  I look up. “We have a spare Wixer?”

  “Of course. Everybody needs a spare. What would happen otherwise if you lost it?” She flashes a light on a storage panel near the floor. “Two spare Wixers in there. Give the other one to your friend, if you like.”

  I scramble for the recessed corner of the panel, and throw it open. Two Wixers are boxed inside, and one is flashing blue. That’s the one Lola is uploading to, I guess.

  I throw the other to Scorvan. He looks at it curiously, like it’s a laughable piece of antiquated technology. I guess to him it is.

  “Put it on,” I say. “That way, we can communicate if we got…” I frown, trying to decode the flashing symbols on mine. “Separated.” I slip the flashing Wixer onto my wrist.

  Scorvan wraps the other around his mighty wrist. It only just fastens. He nods and grins at it again, like it’s funny.

  Maybe it’s like when I tried a twenty-first century watch on once at a museum. It was like being thrown back in time or something. Yolcadia is way ahead of Earth, after all.

  “What do you usually use instead of Wixers?” I ask him, scrolling through star charts on the touchscreen display
.

  He says a sequence of words so fast, I can’t even understand them with my LingoKnow® implant. He must see my baffled expression, because he tries to explain. “Kind of like a mind-meld. Telepathic transmission on the quantum level.”

  “O-kayy,” I say, not at all sure what he means.

  The ship’s engines engage. I hear the thrusters firing up.

  “Do we have a handle on the location of the wormhole?” I ask Lola. “Any idea where we should be aiming?”

  “None whatsoever,” Lola says, cheerfully. “Anyone want a soda?”

  “We can’t just blast a hole in the side of the ship,” Scorvan says, looking unnerved. “We’re really going to need to know how to get out of here before we launch.”

  “Yeah, I know that,” I snap, and immediately regret it. “Sorry. Just a little stressed over here. Lola, please put all your functionality into finding that wormhole.”

  “Gotcha,” she says.

  Just as I flick the next set of star charts onto the screen, there’s a squeak, and then a giggle. It’s a pixie voice coming out of my replacement Wixer.

  “Open the app, please,” it says.

  I touch the Wixer. As the screen clears, I see the Celestial Mates logo flashing. I touch it with one finger.

  The cherub appears again in hologram form. It’s Reginald Dollond-Waters himself.

  “You!” I shriek. “You did all this to me!”

  But it must be a recorded message, because the hologram isn’t interactive. Mr. Dollond-Waters isn’t even looking at me when he speaks.

  “Head for the three pink moons,” he says. “They will see you right.”

  The signal sputters, then crackles to white noise.

  “Fucking hell,” I roar, kicking the back of my chair. “What motherfrickin’ three pink moons? What’s the riddling jackass talking about?”

  Scorvan walks around edge of the place where the hologram appeared, like he doesn’t want to step through it. “The three pink moons of Joadah,” he says. “We’re about seventy million zooms from there now. It won’t take long.”

  “Joadah?” I wince. “Not the lizard shapeshifters’ planet? I had no idea we were so close.”

  “You really need some better navigation charts,” Scorvan smiles.

  Lola flips up one section of the star chart on the giant display screen, so Joadah and its three pink moons are prominently shown. I slump into my pilot’s seat and fasten my safety belts.

  “Dammit. All right then. I swear to God, if this gets us all killed, I’m going to haunt that cherub.”

  I switch on the engines at full thrust, my hand hovering over the boost button.

  “Are we ready?”

  “Sure are,” Scorvan says. He’s already strapped himself into the co-pilot seat. Nobody’s sat in that seat the whole time I’ve been flying. It feels very strange to have a companion in the cockpit. But also kinda cool.

  “Here we go then,” I call, as the ship vibrates off the floor of the loading bay. We’re juddering and shaking, as the engines reach maximum thrust. Scorvan looks mildly alarmed. I don’t suppose he’s used to the crappy suspension of a Hummingbird.

  I start the countdown. “Five.”

  Lola switches on the coolant and seals the airlock.

  “Four.”

  I switch my Wixer to flight mode. Scorvan does the same, watching my cues.

  “Three.”

  The seat headrests raise up to protect us from the blast.

  “Two.”

  This is feeling pretty great. God, I love being back in charge of my own ship.

  “One.”

  We raise right off the floor so we’re hovering around ten feet from the ceiling. If that cherub was wrong and we’re not pointing in the right direction to reach the wormhole, we’re going to crash right into the wall of the ship. We’ll probably crumple like a chip packet.

  It might even bring down the entire Yolcadian ship and kill everybody on it. Oh God.

  “Blast off.”

  With a roar, my engines let loose and we shoot forward toward the wall at eight hundred miles an hour.

  Are we going to make it?

  I close my eyes and brace myself for the impact.

  9 Scorvan

  To my astonishment, the tiny toy-size spaceship locates the wormhole perfectly. We emerge into open space, without a single scrape.

  The cherub’s instruction was exactly right. I stare at the primitive device on my wrist. Is this really all my beloved has to use to communicate with her base while on missions? She is even braver than I realized.

  I unfasten my seat belt and stand up. Then I fall on my knees in front of her.

  We kiss like that, with her still in the pilot’s seat and me on the floor at her feet. It works, because of the height difference. My face is level with hers this way.

  We kiss more deeply.

  “Lola, go to sleep,” Kalia calls out. The lights on the flight deck flash once and then dim. I think this is the computer’s way of confirming the order.

  “You are asking for privacy?” I say, smiling. “I like the way you think.”

  With a rip, I tear away the top of her space suit. Her beautiful soft peach-brown skin shimmers under the opening. I drink in her glorious beauty.

  She reaches for me, undoing my uniform with her hands. My hardness throbs violently when she touches me.

  So close. We are so close to being as one. Just as two fated mates should be.

  I cannot wait for her to undress me. It is taking too long.

  With one flick of my wrist, I slide her pants off and discard them. Then I do the same with the top half of her clothing. She wears a black embroidered garment beneath the silver layer, matched with black panties. A low rumble escapes me as I view her in them.

  My desire is so inflamed, I am driven wild.

  With my teeth, I tear her panties off. She squeals, then laughs.

  “Wow, that’s what I call a neat trick for parties.”

  I cannot comprehend her words, even though she speaks Yolcadian. I have only one thing in mind, and it is all-consuming.

  I need her. Most of all, I need her to come, screaming my name.

  I kiss the soft silk of her inner thighs. She weaves her hands into my hair, not joking any more.

  With careful strokes of my tongue, I caress the most intimate part of her. She is a luscious tropical flower, and I am devoted to worshipping each perfect petal.

  Her breathing is faster. Her thighs grip my head and her fingernails jab into my scalp as I quicken my pace.

  Before long, I sense that she is on the edge of bliss. I keep going.

  With a shout, she bucks against me, half-standing in the heat of the moment. I persist, pressing my tongue against her. I lap her sweet honey, only just controlling my urge to join with her right now.

  She explodes in pleasure, crying out as the full force of the wave hits her.

  I hold fast, through every shake and shudder.

  At last, the quake of her ecstasy passes.

  She grips onto me, her breath hot against my ear.

  “You’re amazing,” I say.

  We embrace, locked together. I feel her heart beating against mine. She appears to only have one of them. Humans are so basic.

  But beautiful. Gods above, she is beyond beautiful.

  I need to be inside her. I need to join with her right now, to make this universe right again. Nothing in the world matters more than this.

  I pull her close and kiss her. Her hand reaches for me, and I groan.

  I cannot wait to be inside her. It must happen now.

  Mine, I think, as I press myself against her soft, wet perfection.

  I am just marveling at the glossy sheen of her sunlit-amber skin when the lights flicker back on.

  The computer’s voice rings out over the sound of our fast breathing.

  “Fuel level critical. Prepare for landing.”

  Kalia takes a second to react. She looks spent. “Lol
a? What do you mean ‘fuel level critical’?”

  “Secondary fuel tank does not contain fuel. I tried to load it up, but it seems to contain only liquid nitrogen.”

  Kalia leaps up. She smooths the messy tendrils of hair from her face and peers at the navigation screen.

  “We’re only close enough to one planet to land, with this much fuel.”

  “That’s right, boss. Shall I get things ready?” Lola’s voice is tranquil and unflustered.

  “I guess we have no choice.” Kalia turns to me, frowning. I look her up and down, still hopelessly bewitched by the contours of her body. “Scorvan? We have a problem.”

  I press down my straining hardness. It appears that now is not the time for our union.

  Damn it all to Chronos and back.

  I have no choice but to back off and hope I don’t die of frustration.

  “I hear you. Where are we landing?”

  “It’s a Joadah outpost. It’s the only place near enough to reach with this level of fuel. Some jerk on your ship must have sabotaged my secondary fuel tank. They switched it with a bunch of fucking nitrogen. We’re screwed.”

  “Oh, no.” I feel so enraged, I could smash the entire Qualfigon with my bare hands. “I can only apologize for the inhospitable welcome you received on my ship.”

  “Don’t worry about it. We’re out of there now, anyway.”

  But where we are going isn’t much better. If anything, it’s even worse.

  With a judder and a mechanical screech, the ship begins its rapid descent.

  Kalia turns back to the pilot seat and jabs at the screen again.

  “Better get our clothes back on, officer,” she says. Her tiger-stone eyes flash with fear. “This ship’s going down.”

  10 Kalia

  After dressing hastily, we strap ourselves in and assume the safe crash position. Of course, there’s no such thing as a safe crash position. So we pretty much just sit upright saying “Fuck, we’re going too fast”, and stuff.

  Actually, Scorvan doesn’t cuss. But I’m guessing “Holy moons of Chronos, our velocity is excessive” pretty much means the same thing.