Naked now, Rav crawled into bed behind Amanda and traced the curve of her hip with one hand, his exhaustion weighing heavily upon me through our link as he stilled and closed his eyes. “She just thinks she wants to know. It will terrify her, Grigg. It’s too much. We could lose her.”
“We’ll lose her if we don’t let her see the truth for herself.”
Rav relented, for we both knew just how stubborn our beautiful mate could be. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Grigg.”
“As do I.”
Chapter Twelve
Amanda
The command deck of the Battleship Zakar was not what I expected it to be. I’d seen Star Trek more than once and I envisioned a bunch of chairs facing a view screen with the commander at the center sitting upon his throne like a king.
What a joke.
The room was round with a central aisle for walking and multiple viewing screens that descended from the ceiling at the center. Additional screens lined the upper third of the exterior walls as well. The space was nearly the size of a small café and much more active than I had imagined. The screens displayed planets and internal ship systems, communications and flight plans, schematics and reports that I didn’t understand and had no way of comprehending. The objects chosen to be on display were seemingly controlled by more than one of Grigg’s officers stationed around the outer rim of the room. Nearly thirty officers of varying ranks manned the workstations or hurried about. Communication was precise and orderly and the warriors all worked like a fine-tuned machine.
Some wore the black armor of battle-hardened warriors, some blue for engineering and red for weapons. There were three warriors wearing white. I didn’t know what they did, and I didn’t want to interrupt to ask. The air hummed with tension and that energy flowed through my mate and into me as he prepared to watch his warriors go into battle.
The preschool several floors below was a complete opposite of this. That, was life. This…this was life and death.
This wasn’t their first battle, but it was mine. My palms were sweaty and I wiped them on the soft fabric of my blue tunic as I followed Grigg around the room like a puppy, listening to everything that was said, watching and absorbing everything I could. Those who looked away from their displays nodded to me deferentially, but I felt as if the respect was a distraction. I felt like a distraction for them, for Grigg. But he wanted me to see. Needed me to do so.
I saw weapons displays, ship tracking systems, navigation arrays that would make the astrophysicists and engineers at NASA drool. It was all here, and Grigg hid nothing from me. Nothing.
“Commander, the Eighth Battle Wing is in position. As is the transport shuttle.”
Grigg nodded. He’d told me the battle wings would take out any resistance as the shuttle landed to retrieve any captives the Hive might have taken. They were protection, the muscle for the helpless shuttle. When the captives were freed, the fighters would destroy the small Hive outpost. My mate walked to the only empty seat in the room. Positioned between the red of weapons’ controls and the blue of engineering, he motioned for me to sit beside him and I did.
“The Fourth?” he asked.
“Ready, Sir.”
“Get Captain Wyle on comms.”
“Yes, Sir.” A few seconds later the screen directly before me filled with the face of a golden-eyed Prillon Warrior, his face slightly obscured by a pilot’s helmet.
“Commander?”
Grigg stood and paced. “Wyle, what’s your status?”
The captain’s eyes darted around, checking data and systems we could not see. “We’re a go, Commander. I’m only reading three scout ships and no soldiers. Should be an easy clean-up, Sir.”
Grigg nodded. “All right, Captain. It’s your op. We’ll be monitoring from here. It’s a go.”
“Understood.” The captain’s face disappeared from the screen, but Grigg’s agitated pacing increased as he muttered under his breath.
“Something doesn’t feel right. It’s too fucking easy.”
A massive warrior with gold bands around his wrists, an Atlan Warlord I remembered, turned to Grigg from his station at the weapons display. “You want me to call them back?”
Grigg shook his head. “No, it’s Captain Wyle’s call now.”
“Everything checks out, Sir. The scout patrols didn’t pick up any additional Hive presence on the moon. Just the Integration Units.” The giant had dark brown hair, his skin more human than anyone else’s I’d seen so far on board the ship. He wore black armor, not red, and by the tight lines of tension around his eyes and mouth I knew he was as unhappy to be trapped in here for this operation as Grigg.
“I know.” Grigg’s eyes darted to me and I was well aware I was part of the reason for his anxiety, his nervous tension. I felt it through the collar easily enough, but it was just in the air too. The pressure, the intensity of what was about to unfold. I wanted to reach out and assure him that I was fine. I’d been in much more frightening situations than this. I was no delicate wallflower to be sheltered and protected. I wanted to know what was going on out there. I needed to know.
“It’s begun.” A young warrior in white spoke and everyone turned frantically to their monitors. In seconds multiple screens were ablaze with shots firing, explosions and the muted sounds of battle filled the room. It was like watching space fighters with live-action cameras attached to their cockpits. A dozen different screens tracked the fighter pilots as they fought the Hive ships. Explosions were muted on our end, as were their rapid-fire communications, the pilots’ voices a constant stream of chatter I struggled to break into comprehensible order.