by Layla Nash
Another pair of lights drew closer and the sleek shape of a boneyard fighter ship glided into view and started destroying every other flying object in the vicinity. Mrax finally breathed, though he didn’t dare put down the panel. That could wait until Rowan was safely aboard a ship. Well, he wouldn’t feel safe until she was aboard a ship and in his quarters. Then he could make sure she was safe and every inch of her was unmarked by sand or shrapnel.
Chapter 42
Rowan
He boosted her into the fighter and threw the hover lift into the loading bay after her. Rowan hollered a thank you to Jess but focused on moving the lift out of the way so Mrax could climb in. She held her breath as the fighter swayed and Jess yelled at them to hurry up. Lasers and explosions lit up the roof and made the whole ship shudder. Rowan grabbed Mrax’s arm to help him through the small opening faster.
Dablonians swarmed the roof, shrieking and shooting, and Rowan’s heart sank as Mrax grunted and looked down at himself. Blood bloomed on his chest and he looked up at her with a surprised expression. His grip weakened on the panel of the loading bay, and he started to slip. Rowan screamed.
He couldn’t fall. He couldn’t. She was just starting to know him, to know what it was like to be around someone who liked her quirkiness and the way she worked. She wouldn’t find anyone else like him. She needed him. And if he fell, all that promise disappeared with him…
Rowan grabbed the hook on the safety coil on the side of the ship and lunged out of the fighter to grab the back of his uniform. The hook nearly tore through the fabric but Rowan didn’t dare wait for a better grip. She cranked the auto-retractor and it hauled him up and into the loading bay. She dragged him backward long after the coil ground tight. The loading bay doors remained open. She managed to scramble to the panel on the wall, still holding onto Mrax, and smash her palm against the ‘get the hell out of here’ button. Rowan sobbed in relief and helped Mrax onto his back so she could look at the wound in his chest.
Jess shouted over the noise from the Dablonians and the other fighters and defensive pods racing by where they hovered. “Is everyone in?”
“Yes!” Rowan called back. She held on to Mrax’s shirt and leaned over him. Her vision blurred and the noise from outside the fighter deafened her to everything except the rattle and crank of the obstinate cargo door inching closed. “You better be fine. You can’t—”
The fighter pitched and blasted forward at the same time as alarms went off and Jess cursed and what felt like a near-miss flung the starboard side high. Rowan looked up as everything tilted in slow-motion and she went airborne. She tumbled over Mrax and toward the open bay door, staring down at the building’s roof filled with hostile Dablonians, and felt herself falling into the open air.
No. She couldn’t fall. She couldn’t, not when they’d just gotten away.
She arched to catch the coil or hook that still secured Mrax to the ship. Her fingers grazed the rough metal but slipped.
Slipped.
She sucked in a breath as gravity, that cruel bitch, seized and held her. That was the end. She’d die when she hit the roof or the Dablonians would kill her. She flailed and tried to catch hold of the ship even as it swung away, and the tips of her fingers brushed one of the bounce-blasters she’d left in her pocket as it fell free and plummeted to the roof below.
Something roared from the fighter and then she stopped short so quickly it cut off her breath. Something caught the back of her coveralls and held tight so she dangled from the side of the ship. Rowan squeezed her eyes shut so she wouldn’t see the ground disappearing beneath her, and sucked in a breath to replace the air knocked out of her.
Mrax grumbled. “I’ve got you.”
The bounce-blaster hit the roof, skipped through the crowd of Dablonians, and exploded powerfully enough the pressure wave knocked the aliens off their building and launched the fighter even farther away.
Scalding tears escaped her eyes. Rowan grabbed his arm as he held tight to her clothes and the hook held tight to his. No words came to her; there wasn’t enough time to say what she needed to tell Mrax.
He dragged her through the closing door, balanced against the tension of the hook, and fell back with her in his lap. Rowan reached for the button to re-secure the bay doors, then collapsed against Mrax. She struggled to breathe. “Is it… Are we safe? Are we leaving?”
“Almost,” Mrax said. His arms tightened around her and he breathed against the back of her neck. “Just stay here. Are you hurt? Did they hurt you?”
She managed to shake her head, then covered her face. She didn’t want him to know she cried; she didn’t want to be crying in the first place, but she couldn’t control it. Mrax must have heard the hitch in her breathing, because he held her closer and the scales she saw between her fingers swirled with green and hints of orange and blue. Worry and love.
“Where are you hurt?” he demanded. “What happened? I’ll get the medic kit and—”
“I’m not hurt,” she managed to say, though it came out kind of watery as the tears took over and she couldn’t breathe except to hiccup. She didn’t like it when logic failed her, because emotions just made her head ache and they didn’t have time for either tears or complaints. “I’m just scared. And you fell… They shot you.”
Which just reminded her that he was hurt. She struggled to get free so she could help him. “I’ll get the medic kit. Just let me go. I need to help you.”
“You’ll help me by staying right where you are.” Mrax buried his face in her hair and breathed, his embrace not easing even a nanometer.
Rowan couldn’t move, not with his arms and legs wrapped around her like one of those old-timey pretzels her gran loved, so she held him too.
Jess used the comms system to say, “Anyone actually hurt? We won’t have long at the boneyard before we’ll have to get the hell out of here. The rebellion sent half a dozen pilots, so most of the ships are already on their way out of here. We just have the transporter and two fighters; the transporter wouldn’t do more than start up, so we might have to leave it.”
Rowan dashed the tears from her cheeks. “I can get it flying. There’s just a few more things to tweak.”
“We’re not spending time on the ground except to get our things from the cabin and get back in the fighter.” Mrax growled.
Mrax finally turned her to face him. His normally tough expression softened when he looked at her, and Rowan’s eyes prickled as the tears returned. She didn’t even know why she was crying. She just never believed anyone like Mrax would look at her like she was special.
He caught her face and pulled her close enough to brush his lips to hers. He said very quietly, “We will be safe once we’re headed away from this planet forever. Then you can explain what you were thinking when you went over there to begin with.”
“Maybe you can explain how you were dumb enough to get caught,” she said. Some of the blurry joy at being next to him faded with resurgent irritation, and she started to understand more of why Jess and Trazzak argued. “Because I’m pretty sure my plan was going well until you showed up and ruined it.”
Mrax’s eyes narrowed and he started to argue, but the fighter lurched and then they were in the half-empty boneyard near the transporter. Trazzak threw the packed bags into the fighter next to Jess, and tossed one into the transporter. He eyed Rowan and Mrax before nodding at the massive ship. “Will it fly?”
“Yes,” Rowan said. She grabbed her tools and bolted to the transporter, even though she wanted to stay close to Mrax, but she knew neither of them would be okay if the transporter didn’t fly.
She focused on the work and not on the sounds of encroaching Dablonian defensive ships and the rebel fighters who circled the boneyard to give them the chance to escape. They had to get out of there. And fast.
Chapter 43
Mrax
Mrax wanted to throw Rowan over his shoulder and drag her to safety. Jess took off first with the larger fighter and the valua
ble cargo acquired from the Dablonians. He saw a vague outline of the Galaxos as it breached the atmosphere and supported the rebel fighters who kept busy knocking back any Dablonian craft that approached the boneyard. Trazzak growled and paced as his mate got farther away and still they hadn’t left the planet, though Mrax heard the other warrior’s relief that his mate, at least, was safe.
Mrax wasn’t so lucky.
The Dablonian defensive ships sped over the boneyard, firing some of their advanced weapons until the twisted metal of the old ships ignited and melted into puddles. Mrax shoved Trazzak at the other fighter. “Get out of here. We’ll be right after you.”
Neither of them believed it. Mrax would grab Rowan and get into one of the smaller fighters she’d already fixed and if it took longer than a few heartbeats to get the transporter flying. And his chest ached with the wound searing through his scales and stealing away his breath. He wanted to rest but the need to protect his mate drove him on.
Trazzak nodded and abruptly shook Mrax’s arm in the warrior’s grip. “Do not wait long, brother.”
Mrax waved him on. “Try to kill some of them before you go.”
The Galaxos second-in-command grinned and jumped into his fighter. “Try to stop me.”
Mrax climbed into the transporter and found Rowan dangling halfway out of the engine room. He caught the back of her coveralls and tried to pull her to safety. “We have to leave. There’s no more time.”
“I’ve got it,” she said, breathless and excited as she straightened. “Go fire it up.”
Mrax frowned at her and would have questioned whether she’d actually fixed anything, but the snap and roar of the low-flying defensive ships—and Trazzak’s fighter shooting at them—motivated him to jog to the bridge. He held his breath as he began the ignition sequence and his hearts pounded against his ribs. Blood still seeped from his wound and for a split second during ignition, he considered putting a med-pack on it before they launched. But his kit was on the fighter with Jess, long gone into space, and the transporter had been emptied of anything useful during their work.
The ship’s power abruptly lit up and the bridge illuminated as the controls came alive, and Mrax started breathing again. He didn’t look up as Rowan slid to the bridge and threw herself into the seat, snapping the harness as she punched the controls a lot faster than Mrax would have dared. He opened his mouth to ask what the hell she was doing, but the transporter suddenly roared and lurched.
He cursed and struggled into his harness before he tumbled out the back of yet another ship. “What did you do to this thing?”
“Gave it a little extra juice,” she said, her whole face shining with excitement. She slapped at the control panels and the entire ship launched straight up.
Mrax gripped the arms of his seat as the massive ship spun to life and corkscrewed away from the boneyard. He didn’t believe it. Most of him had been certain they would both die in the desert, and yet... Rowan proved him wrong. He held his breath as the defensive pods from the Dablonians swarmed the enormous ship as it gained altitude and speed.
Rowan scowled at the viewer screen in front of her and jabbed at more of the controls. “Can you handle the weapons controls?”
“There aren’t weapons on a transporter,” he said slowly. She must have lost her mind.
“There are weapons on my transporter,” Rowan said. She gestured over her shoulder at another panel. “I took some off one of the stripped-down eighth-generation fighters. They’re not the best but they should be good enough. If you’d get over there and use them.”
Mrax growled but unhooked his harness and dove for the weaponeering station she’d cobbled together from what had once been a cargo controller’s panel, and hoped by the suns of Xarav that she’d hooked everything up correctly and the weapons didn’t blow up inside the transporter instead.
The laser cannons roared just as loud as the engines as the transporter hauled itself higher and higher through the atmosphere. Mrax’s vision darkened around the edges but he destroyed at least three of the defensive pods the Dablonians sent, and the rest of them retreated as the transporter climbed through the burning atmosphere and the sky darkened into the deep velvet of space.
He shouldn’t have doubted her. He’d never doubt her again.
The Galaxos and half a dozen rebel fighters greeted them and chased off one last Dablonian ship, and then they were free. Free and about to blast right by the Galaxos and every other ship there. Mrax smiled to himself as Rowan cheered her own engineering and tried some textbook evasive maneuvers to get around their own fleet.
Mrax radioed to the Galaxos that they had the coordinates for the rebel base in neutral space and would meet them back there. When he got confirmation from the other ships, he leaned back in the seat and closed down the weaponeering station so he wouldn’t accidentally fire off laser cannon at the fighters.
He’d lost feeling in his hands but it was fine. Mrax’s eyes drooped as he watched Rowan bounce in her seat and practically sing as she flew the transporter through space. He smiled and exhaled the rest of the tension that kept him upright. She was safe and happy. That was all that mattered.
Chapter 44
Rowan
Rowan knew she should have been in the pilot corps. Flying the transporter was one of the most exhilarating experiences of her life. She couldn’t get enough of the feeling as she dodged fighters, space debris, and meteors. She wanted an obstacle course or something, just to prove the transporter could maneuver as well as the fighters. Even if it felt like flying a brick in comparison to the sleek surface runners they’d been using on Dablon.
She glanced back to ask Mrax whether the weapons actually worked as planned but froze when she saw him slumped in his seat, only the harness holding him upright. Rowan sucked in a breath and ripped off her harness to check on him. His scales had faded to a dull blue-gray and his hearts beat sluggishly. The wound in his chest hadn’t healed. It still leaked dark green blood into his uniform
Although... She looked around and her heart sank. They didn’t have any of the medical equipment that made miraculous survival possible on the Galaxos. Rowan smacked Mrax’s cheek to jostle him awake, and the Xaravian blinked as he stirred. Relief washed over Rowan until her knees wobbled, but she couldn’t afford to be weak. She had to make sure that Mrax—that both of them—survived to reach the rebel base. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“We needed to get off Dablon,” he said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “I didn’t want to distract you.”
“You know what would really distract me?” she asked. Rowan fumbled with his harness to get him out of the chair so he could lie flat on the deck. “If you died. I’d never be able to…to work again.”
She stumbled over the words, since she hadn’t thought to say something like that to him, but she didn’t take them back. It was true. She didn’t think she’d recover if something happened to Mrax. Even if the medical officer could be annoying and overprotective and unnerving when he focused on her and she got warm all over.
Mrax smiled and watched her as Rowan stumbled to the duffel bag that Jess had tossed into the transporter after it wouldn’t fit in her fighter. Maybe there was something in there.
The medical officer didn’t seem particularly concerned about the hole in his chest. “You would miss me?”
“Of course,” she muttered. Rowan’s cheeks burned as she dug through the bag and tossed a few clean towels at him. What the hell did Maisy use to fix people if there weren’t healing packs available? Rowan vaguely remembered some Fleet pamphlets on ancient medical practices to use on planets without tech, but she didn’t remember anything except putting pressure on stuff that bled. “So you have to stay alive, okay?”
“I’ll be fine,” he said. Mrax reached out to catch her arm and pulled her closer, absently pressing the towels to his own chest. “Just calm down.”
“You’ve lost a lot of blood,” she said. Rowan frowned and trie
d to untangle herself so she could keep searching for a way to fix him. “We need to get to a medical bay, and the rebel base is too far. We don’t have any medical stuff.”
“I won’t die,” he said.
Rowan huffed “Bullshit” under her breath, then scrambled to pin him down as Mrax pushed up on his elbows. Which left his nose very close to hers as Rowan leaned over him. Mrax smiled and his hands slid to her waist. “I feel better already.”
Heat flushed through her and she tried not to lean on his wounded chest. “I’m sure you think you do, but you really need that blood somewhere else, and it’s not—”
“Hail the Galaxos,” he said quietly. Mrax craned his head so he could kiss her. “Tell them we need a level five med pack. We can hook up the transport arm and they’ll send one over. Easy. Then we can... get back to this.”
Rowan almost couldn’t see straight. It felt like he was going to pull her on top of him and just the thought left her aching and squirmy. Maybe he’d like it if she straddled him and did what she wanted. His scales had definitely turned purple when she told him what to do at the headquarters building. And his eyes sparked into silver pools when she sat in his lap and pulled on his hair.
The memories just made her even squirmier and she had to push away as Mrax’s scales flared with lilac. Rowan fled to the comms station at the front of the ship to hail the Galaxos, and hoped they didn’t sense something was going on by the way she cleared her throat and her voice went higher than normal. She couldn’t look at Mrax without blushing more and nearly dropping the communicator, since he reclined on the deck of the transported with his hands behind his head and a wolvish grin on his face.