by Sky Winters
Albion kissed her deeply. “It doesn’t matter,” he said, pressing his forehead against hers. “It does not matter that you took your time. As long as it is true. I cannot blame you for being uncertain and wanting to wait.”
She shook her head and then nodded, laughing a little at her apparent indecisiveness. “It matters to me. I should not have waited. I forgive you, Albi.” She stroked his green beard on his pointed chin. “What matters now is that you corrected your mistake, and you won’t ever do it again.”
He nodded, smiling at her as he gazed into her large green eyes. He was so smitten with her that the word Smitten was practically written there on his face. “As I promised, I will spend the rest of my life protecting you and loving you.”
Keandra beamed at him, and then she shook her head a bit. “Not just me.” She took one of his hands and brought it down to her lower belly, where the little dragon-like baby was swimming around. Albion felt its movements and his gold eyes widened. His mouth fell open and she laughed and kissed him for it. “Surprise!”
* * *
They made out for a while longer, enjoying each other on the floor of the cave without even caring about how uncomfortable it was. Once they were feeling hungry and uncomfortable enough to want to move, Albion got up and, taking her hands, pulled Keandra up with him.
“What is there to eat around here?” she asked him. “I’ve patrolled around here a lot, but I can’t say I’ve ever been in the mountain caves of Hoth.”
Albion thought about it. “I have flown around here enough to know that there is a stream around here. There are some lifeforms in it that are pleasing to taste.”
Keandra smiled wryly at him.
“What?”
“Sometimes you sound like an alien. It makes me remember that you can be shaped like me and you can speak English like me, but that doesn’t mean you are in fact like me.”
Albion blinked at her slowly.
She let out a laugh. “Just go and get some of these lifeforms. …Please.”
When he went away to hunt, Keandra huddled into a corner of the cave, doing her best to take up the least amount of space and so warm herself. She could hear as his insanely long wings took flight, flapping like a thunder clap as he rose higher and higher, flying away.
Keandra’s stomach growled. She could tell that her baby dragon was hungry as well, because he was extra restless. Thankfully, Albion was correct about the stream and he arrived back at their cave within the hour, holding two large fish-like creatures in his hands. They were not moving any more. She was tremendously grateful for that.
They ate together in silence, mainly because they were too hungry and the food was too delicious for words. Albion had taken it upon himself to cook the creatures with his fire breath. Keandra kept finding new reasons to want to keep him around. “If you can do that whenever you want, then we should be nice and toasty in here tonight,” she remarked, licking her fingertips as soon as her creature was in her belly to be appreciated by Albion’s spawn next.
He smiled at her as he gulped down the last of his meal. “And so we shall,” he said.
They cuddled each other in the spot in the cave that Keandra had picked out and sure enough they did not need a blanket. Albion kept them both warm and cozy.
* * *
The next morning, they were awakened by footsteps. A Hoth in its more humanoid appearance stepped into the cave. He had clearly not been expecting what he found and quickly pulled out his communicator to alert his compatriots in the area.
“Earthling and Gekkota spotted in a cave! Send reinforcements! Gekkota is—”
Albion smacked the communicator out of his hands with his long tail as he grew and grew into his dragon form. Keandra ran from him, toward the Hoth. She jumped onto him and her fists started flying.
The Hoth fought back, grabbing onto her arms and attempting to sting her with his poison appendage. She nearly got stung a few times, but Keandra was too tough and too pissed off to give this bastard the chance. She was too fast for him and kept clobbering him in the face. But Albion was uncomfortable seeing her in a precarious position no matter how fierce she was.
Chuckling after a few moments of letting her have her fun, Albion picked her up with a claw and placed her gently onto his back. “That’s enough now. Let me handle this.” With one puff of flame from his scaly lips, the Hoth was nothing but a charred stain on the stone floor.
“His friends aren’t going to find anything here,” Albion said to her in a low growl. “Not even him.”
With that, he left the cave at a run, growing ever larger now that he was not confined to any space. He took off and was soon up in the air.
“Now what do we do?” she asked him, hugging herself with her arms and holding on tightly to him with her legs. She was down to just her panties and bra after electing to sleep in them instead of naked. She was quite glad she was not naked.
“Now we look for the Resistance,” Albion said calmly. “They will be able to help us. And we can start with getting you a new, better uniform.”
Albion flew around high in the air above Hoth while Keandra sat atop him, marveling at the harsh planet’s prettier aspects. She had no idea that Hoth had things like waterfalls and forests. She supposed she never had a chance to look when she was secretly surveying the area for spies and other such enemies.
Finally, she spotted a small encampment near the foothills of some mountains. “There! There!” she cried, pointing.
Albion craned his neck toward her somewhat and then looked in the direction she was indicating. He began his descent, careful to go down there slowly so as not to arouse suspicion from either the Hoths or the people down below who surely did not know that the dragon was on their side.
If it was, indeed, the Resistance.
A cluster of people came out of the tents and pointed up in awe as Albion came down to meet them. They seemed scared instead of hostile. They were wearing the white and blue uniforms worn by the Resistance. Two of them, the apparent leaders, wore shining blue stars on their chests. One was male, one was female. Both were humanoid, though the female was clearly not from Earth. Her hair was purple and her skin was chartreuse.
As soon as they landed, Keandra slid off of Albion’s back and he shifted back into his humanoid form to greet the strangers who were their friends. “Greetings,” he said. “I am Albion Pagoda and this Earthling here is Keandra Calhoun.”
“Staff Sergeant Calhoun,” she corrected with a smile. “I work with the Earth taskforce that has been assigned to monitor activities to and from Hoth.”
The chartreuse woman stepped forward and offered her hand to Keandra. “I am Dehneese Dravrez from Bortho,” she said. She had kind, black eyes. “And this is Ggregg Underwhood from Plythar.”
Ggregg stepped forward and shook her hand. “I lived on Earth for many years,” he said with a wink. He had sandy, dirty blond hair and blue eyes. Three of them. Keandra could practically hear Albion’s jealousy. It amused her that merely talking to another alien gentleman incited such annoyance and unease in him. She thought it was cute for the moment, but she would not let it fly if it continued and caused him to be rude.
No hero of hers would be a rude asshole to their friends.
Fortunately, Albion was not like other guys she had been with – duh. That was an understatement.
He proved himself to be worthy of her continued love and adoration when he greeted them in turn. “It is wonderful to meet you at last,” he said, shaking each of their hands and offering them a genuine smile. “Like the Staff Sergeant here, I worked as a patrol officer, but I recently fell into a bit of trouble and was held captive by the Hoths. They had me under mind control.”
The two resistance leaders gasped. “How dreadful!” Dehneese exclaimed.
“Horrible,” Ggregg concurred with a nod.
“Well, you are with us now,” Dehneese said kindly, gesturing for them to follow her into the main tent.
It was a la
rge, pinkish, octagonal-shaped tent, much bigger on the inside. There were tables and chairs set up within, making the headquarters of the Resistance appear, well, like a headquarters! Keandra felt oddly relieved by this simple sight. She found that she could not stop smiling. At last, she and her dragon would be safe.
Sort of, at least.
Ggregg directed them to some chairs by a desk that was clearly his, due to the placard with his name on it.
Albion and Keandra sat with Ggregg. Dehneese brought over a chair and sat with them, crossing her long, yellow legs and appearing to be quite eager to discuss things with them.
“We heard about a mine being torched last night,” Ggregg said, looking from Albion to Keandra. “Your doing?”
The pair nodded, proud of themselves. “A Hoth got a bit too rough with my girl here,” Albion said.
She blushed and smiled, glad to hear him call her that.
Dehneese made a sympathetic face at her, tilting her head a little. “How long have you been impregnated?” she asked, sounding concerned.
Keandra brought a hand to her belly and gently rubbed it, gazing down at it just as the baby kicked. “About a month now, I guess… It’s hard to tell time here.”
The Resistance leaders smiled at her. “We will take good care of you. It won’t all be easy, but it will be heaps better than what you have experienced no doubt,” Ggregg told her.
* * *
It was wonderful to be sleeping in a bed again. There were plenty of beds in the Resistance’s tents, but Keandra still elected to sleep beside Albion in one. She found that she slept best when his strong, protective arms were around her. Her belly had for so long prevented her from being able to get fully comfortable but now, in the bed with him, safe at last, she slept like a baby herself.
The rebellion turned out to be thousands strong. It was impossible to meet all of the members because so many of them were out on missions at any given time. Whenever some were on the ground, carrying out one task, thousands more were in the air, attacking that way. Ggregg and Dehneese did not assign Keandra to any tasks that involved endangering herself. At first, she was irritated and frustrated that they were coddling her, but she knew that they meant well.
“No one has had a baby in the Resistance,” Dehneese told her once, when she was sitting with her at the monitoring desk. “As far as I know, no one has had a baby for years. Except for the Hoths, of course, who breed like flies.”
Keandra pouted a little at that. She was dressed in one of the uniforms of the Resistance, and she was stuck doing a desk job. Never before had she done something so boring. She felt humiliated. However, now it made sense why they wanted so badly to keep her from going out and risking anything. The Resistance needed more allies and could not afford to lose any of their new recruits. Not even the in utero ones. “Just promise me that as soon as this baby is out of me and I’ve recovered, I can join you in every capacity.”
Dehneese nodded. “Sure, of course.”
A light suddenly started flashing on the monitor. An enemy ship was approaching the Resistance forces they had sent up. “Shit!” Keandra shouted. “Enemies approaching!”
She and the other ground leaders were fairly safe in their protective alcove in the foothills, but Albion was out there with the patrol group. Keandra wished that she had a direct communicator with him so she could make sure he was okay. As it was, she had the main channel, which had to be good enough.
“Find him,” Dehneese told her, understanding immediately what brought on Keandra’s specific sense of urgency.
Keandra lifted the communication device to her mouth. “Come in, patrol units. This is HQ. Come in, patrol units.”
For a long, intense few minutes there was no response. The radio silence almost drove Keandra crazy. She and Dehneese looked each other in the eye, holding their breath.
He has to be okay, Keandra thought, as though pleading to some unknown, made up deity in her mind would save him. He is going to be okay…
“Patrol units,” a slightly broken voice said back through the machine.
Keandra sat forward in her seat. “Albion?!” she cried. “Come in, Albion?”
Dehneese breathed a sigh of relief but just hearing one phantom voice was not enough for Keandra. Her heart was racing and she felt like she was going to be sick. Reaching over, Dehneese took her hand and squeezed it.
“I’m sure he’s fine,” she said softly. She sounded just as hopeful as Keandra wanted to be.
Suddenly, there was loud crackling on the intercom. “Yeah, hello? Hello? Come in, Keandra at HQ. This is Albion. I’m safe. We made it into a cave.”
Grinning at Dehneese, Keandra felt tears in her eyes. “Great, Albion. Be safe. Help is on the way.”
She hugged Dehneese and then they got to work rounding up some troops to go out and find the patrols. The troops were armed with heavy duty blasters so they could attack any incoming ships. Keandra wished like hell that she could go out there with them and bring her Albi back.
She wanted to be his hero for a change.
CHAPTER FIVE
From her place inside the tent, Keandra watched as the ground troops returned, carrying their large blaster guns. They were also carrying several people back on stretchers. Keandra gasped as soon as she noticed that, checking each one with nervous eyes to make sure that Albion was not one of those sad souls. Fortunately, she did not see him.
Suddenly, there he was. He was walking toward her, blaster over his left shoulder, uniform torn in a few places, grin on his face. She had never seen such a sexy sight in her entire life. Getting up from her seat, she ran to him, jumping into his arms.
He dropped his gun and it clattered to the stone floor with a sound of galactic plastic. They kissed each other passionately, deeply, as though they had never kissed before and they wanted to experience every facet of it at once.
Keandra wished that their kissing could go on forever, but outside there was a war going on. Albion carefully let her back down onto the floor and went with her to the desk with the monitors and the controls for the ground weapons that the Resistance had hidden within the planet’s soil or up in the mountains behind the flora of Hoth.
The Resistance had been on this planet for years; long enough to make a full operation in order to fight back when need be. And need usually was.
Albion hit a bunch of switches and suddenly the headquarters became an armored tent. The cloth changed form and became hard, heavy plastic like the weapons of the Resistance. It was not Keandra’s grandmother’s plastic. It was engineered by an interplanetary scientific coalition. Fancy plastic.
“Get down!” he suddenly shouted, essentially pushing Keandra until she was on the floor. She scooted under the desk for some extra cover.
“You get down, too!” she shouted up at him. “I am not going to raise this baby without his father.”
Albion looked down at her and smiled. He opened his mouth to say something, but was interrupted by a blast of laser beam fire coming through the front of the tent. All at once, all Keandra could see was blue and green flames. All she could hear was shouts and screams. She covered her ears and huddled down into a ball in an effort to protect herself. Her heart was racing and so were her thoughts.
She could not see Albion anymore. All she could see was explosions and death.
* * *
When the enemy fire finally subsided and the Hoth starship flew away from their encampment, the survivors of the blast crawled out of their hiding places. Keandra awkwardly crawled out from under the desk and got to her feet. She had a gash on her right forearm from some fallen debris, but she was otherwise unharmed.
At least physically.
As she was making her way to the group of other mostly-unharmed people, she discovered Albion. He was lying on the floor, eyes closed and a huge and bleeding wound on his upper left shoulder.
“Oh, no no no,” Keandra cried, rushing back down onto her knees and taking his head in her arms. “Don’t
do this to me, Albi. You don’t get to be hurt. I’m always the hurt one. I was starting to live with it.”
Dehneese caught sight of her and hobbled over to her. She had been slightly banged up and was now wearing a bandage around her head, but otherwise she had made it out in one piece. She knelt beside Keandra. “I will get anything you think you may need. Let us take him to the hospital tent.”
“Is it clear yet?” Keandra asked her, panic in her voice. “Is it safe to go out?”
Dehneese nodded shortly. “As safe as it will ever be here. They know where we are now; we’re going to have to relocate as soon as possible.”
Together, the two ladies lifted Albion. Some of the other Resistance fighters brought over a stretcher and they all carried Albion from the room. Well, the others mostly carried him. Keandra was instructed to just follow them.
There was no sign of Ggregg, which she supposed was a bad sign…
Once they got into the hospital tent, it was mass hysteria. The amount of injured was high and there were not enough beds, let alone enough nurses and doctors, to be able to adequately care for the wounded. Some of the medical crew were hurt themselves. The blasts had been brutal.
Keandra found a space for them that would have to be big enough. Albion groaned on the stretcher and they laid him down on the ground where Keandra directed. Then she knelt at his side once more.
Dehneese went and got bandages and some of that Vlwarx stuff that was all the rage. Keandra took the bottle and poured a generous amount onto his gaping wound.
Albion sat bolt upright and shouted a slew of curse words in some alien tongue. Keandra couldn’t help but smile. “Oh, sorry,” she said. “Vlwarx may sting a little.”
Realizing what was going on and who he was with, he grabbed Keandra and pulled her to him. The godawful medication got onto the top of her uniform but thankfully did not hurt when in contact with fabric or skin that was not searing. Possibly it would leave a pink stain, though, but then so would Albion’s blood.