I didn’t care, as long as I made it to Lily’s side, where I belonged.
Tychofired the booster and I stared out into space for the journey, eyes open but seeing nothing. Thoughts of Lily consumed me. The soft curves of her skin. The way she tangled her fingers in my hair when I pleasured her with my mouth. The hot, wet heat of her clamping down on my cock when she came. The sounds she made.
Her voice. Her smile. The adorable crispness of her speech. She sounded nothing like the other two human females. Her tone was clear. Concise. I loved the way her cheeks turned pink when I teased her. And her obsession with her books.
I’d recovered the two she had placed in the recycling unit. Read every word last night. Had to use my hand to find release more than once as the dominant beasts in her stories claimed their human females. One claiming in particular caught my interest and I fully intended to speak to Lily about it once she was speaking to me again. Allowing me to touch her.
This time, I wouldn’t make the same mistakes. She was a Starfighter. An Elite warrior trained to fight to protect Velerion and our people. I could not deny her that power in a bid to keep her safe any more than I could order General Romulus to stop being a general. I’d made peace with that and determined my only course of action going forward.
I would stay by Lily’s side. Always. Every mission. We would face every threat, every danger together. And if she died, her life would only be taken once I’d already given mine fighting to protect her.
That was a decision I could live with.
The silence stretched for long hours. Perhaps I dozed off. Perhaps my musings about my female made the time pass quickly, but Tycho alerted me to our arrival a short time later.
“We are five minutes from our destination.”
“Copy that. Give me visuals.”
A nav grid popped up on my screen and I frowned. Squinted. “You have the wrong vid up, Tycho. Switch to a live camera feed.”
“Affirmative. This is the live feed.”
What. The. Fuck? This was not possible. “Is that a Dark Fleet Battlestar?”
The nav grid screen shifted and the small black star I’d seen in the center of the screen grew in scope to be equal in size to my face. “Based on the camera evidence, there is a high likelihood that the structure is a Battlestar. Class Seven. Twelve thousand ground troops, four hundred eighty Scythe fighters. Twelve detachable assault towers. That is all the data I have. I cannot confirm that data without scanning the ship. There has never been a Battlestar in the Vega system before.”
That, I knew. This was not good.
“Where is Lily?”
“Unknown. Do you want me to activate my scanners?”
“No!” Fuck no. We’d be dead in seconds. This was no half-century old Cruiser from Queen Raya’s fleet. That would have been bad enough. This was so much worse. A planet killer. Twelve ships traveling as one designed to break into pieces, surround a planet, block all transmissions, jam all signals in and out as their ship mounted cannons destroyed thousands of targets on the ground below. Followed by ground troop invasion with air support. Of course, they didn't send in their soldiers until there was no resistance left.
“Are we on target?”
“Yes. Impact in two minutes.”
“Vega help us. We’re in trouble here.” I wasn’t sure how much Tychounderstood about our situation, but I didn’t have to tell him to activate our grappling claws or tighten my flight suit in preparation for impact. “Give me a countdown when we’re close.”
I didn’t have long to wait.
“Three. Two. One.”
The Titan slammed into the dark black panel near a structural point attaching three of the twelve spikes to the core. I nearly lost consciousness as the force of impact hit me like a boulder in the chest despite Tycho’s automatic adjustments. Rather than strike head on, my Titan rolled, the mechanical arms redirecting our armored body in a way to minimize contact as the grappling claws dug deep and slowed us down.
When we finally stopped moving, I held still for several minutes taking stock of our condition. I should be dead. But the engineers, the people who figured things out, built and programmed our Titans, had pulled off a miracle and managed to get my Titan onto this ship without killing me.
I’d buy them all a drink if I made it back alive.
With a groan I felt all the way to my bones, I anchored the grappling claws of my foot deep in the ship’s surface and stood to take a look around, engaging the magboots which were designed to keep us from drifting off into space.
I was near the center connecting point for three rising assault towers. Each one black, taller than I could see, and each facet lined with too many energy cannons to get an accurate count. Each of those cannons was easily three times the size of anything we had on the Resolution. Compared to this ship, my Titan was like a microbe standing up to inspect a mountain.
“Tycho, are you getting this? General Aryk is going to want every bit of intel we can get him on these ships.” Assuming he was still alive in a few hours. But I kept that thought to myself.
“Confirmed. I am recording and archiving all data.”