“Right. I forgot.” Natalie was smiling, too.
“Besides, I’m not driving a car, I’m getting bride tested. And right now feels like the perfect time to do something insane.”
Natalie took my wine glass and set it next to hers on the counter. “Okay, girlfriend. First, we’re going to get you some coffee.”
We hit up the S-Gen machine and I waited for the caffeine jolt to kick in. When I was a hundred and ten percent sure I was sober, I met her gaze and nodded. I was done with waiting around, second guessing and hoping for what I couldn’t have. It was time to get matched to my perfect mate. If he was on Trion, great. If not? So be it. I’d miss Natalie and the kids, but that’s what comms were for. “Ready.”
“Okay. Let’s do this.” She placed her arm around my shoulder and walked me to the processing center to be matched to my perfect mate. She leaned in close as we approached the door to the medical center where the testing would take place. “And I won’t say a word about the wine.”
4
Captain Trist Treval, Sector 17, Battleship Zakar
* * *
I leaned over the battle map, the ever-present tension in my shoulders and neck a constant reminder that the war with the Hive was not won, that my warriors were out there dying. Still. Always.
“We’ve destroyed their scout ships, Captain, but the larger attack vessels just disappeared.” Captain Wyle spoke on my right. He was an experienced fighter who brought true honor to Prillon Prime. If he said the Hive ship vanished before his eyes, I believed him.
“Did you see one of the new destroyers?” I asked.
The new advanced ships developed by the Hive had recently begun arriving in other sectors. They were invisible to sensors and impossible to track. I’d never seen one, but he had. He knew what to look for, to know if that new threat was here, in this battlegroup. The Coalition Fleet had lost Battlegroup Varsten in Sector 438 before Battlegroup Karter and a fighting unit from the Intelligence Core had managed to eliminate the threat in Sector 437 under Commander Karter. Our assigned sector was nowhere near them, but with the Hive, nothing was ever that easy. And their new technology was being deployed throughout the galaxy much faster than we’d anticipated.
I hated the Hive.
“No,” he replied. “They were too small, but there were at least three of them. Enough to cause a serious problem.” Captain Wyle pointed to a planet on the star map. He’d been out there, flying with his warriors, when the battle happened. He was our best pilot, and leader of the Fourth Battle Wing. “We had a line-of-sight visual, but they ran behind the fourth planet and we lost them.”
Across from us, Commander Grigg Zakar cursed and slammed his fist down on the flat screen we stood before. “Gods be damned. Prime Nial warned us about their new cloaking technology. But I had hoped that with the destruction of the Hive ship in Sector 437, we wouldn’t have to deal with this yet.”
“The Hive are one mind, Commander.” The reminder was not needed, but I had not shared the same hope. I was a realist. Commander Zakar had been in charge of this battlegroup for more than twenty years. I’d been his second in command for long enough to know that despite everything he’d seen, he still had hope. We all did. He fought like a warrior who believed he could win. But then, he had a mate. He needed hope, needed to believe in a future for her and their children.
All I had, all I knew, was war. Killing. Watching thousands of new recruits come out of the Coalition Academy and from the member planets’ recruitment facilities to fight and die. Or worse, be taken alive by the Hive and converted into the enemy. Contaminated.
“Get the I.C. on comms. I want to know exactly how we fight this thing.” Grigg was dark, even for a Prillon, his lineage that of an ancient family that had defended this sector of space for hundreds of years. His skin and hair were brown, his eyes a blend of red and orange his Earth mate called “rust”.
While both Prillon, we were nothing alike, he and I, neither in temperament nor in looks. My family line was fair. Golden from head to toe. But where he was revered on the home world as something akin to royalty, I was no one, a third son whose two fathers had both paid the ultimate price in this war. They’d died fighting while I was in the academy, and I’d vowed to destroy as many Hive warriors as I could. I’d vowed to fight, as had my two older brothers. We’d stood side by side in our family home and sworn to protect our two younger sisters and our mother, who were now safely back on the home world. Prillon Prime remained safe because of us. Because of everyone who fought.
My brothers and I had scattered days later, gone to serve, sent to different sectors of space. Like me, they fought on. Still. But I’d made my own oath that day, to my dead fathers, to the gods, to myself. I’d vowed to kill Hive with every breath, including my last. And I had no intention of breaking that promise.
Behind me, the comms officer answered. “I’ll get I.C. for you, but it’ll take me some time, Commander.”
“Fuck that. Get me Commander Karter, instead. Sector 437.” Grigg was pacing now, his arms crossed as he stared down at the star map broken into a grid. This was our home. Our area to defend. And the Zakar family had not lost ground to the Hive in hundreds of years. We had no intention of starting now. “Gods damned I.C. won’t tell me what I need to know anyway.”
That made me grin. Grigg wasn’t wrong. Spies and their secrets. I didn’t like their games. I preferred to acquire a target and take it out. In that, Grigg and I were very much alike.
We waited a few moments, but the comms officer made a startled sound. “I’m sorry. Captain Trist, there is an incoming message for you.”
I turned around and walked to the control station, leaned over the officer’s shoulder. “From who?”
He looked a little uncomfortable. Odd. “Um, Trion, sir.”
What? I didn’t know anyone on Trion. It was an odd planet with an odd people. They lived in tents, from what I understood. Primitives who liked to place metal piercings in their females and treat them more like pets than mates of worth. I did not understand their philosophies, but I could not argue that their females were well-protected and taken care of. And Trion males were fierce and worthy fighters. Still, I knew no one from that world. “Well?”
The comms officer stiffened as Captain Wyle and Commander Zakar came from behind to stand on either side of me. “Captain Trist Treval of Prillon Prime, this is the Interstellar Brides Processing Center in Xalia City, planet Trion. I have your matched mate awaiting transport. This communication is intended to confirm your coordinates per Interstellar Brides Program protocol.”
“What?”
“Am I speaking to Captain Trist, or his commanding officer?” The matter-of-fact voice sounded bored, as if this happened dozens of times a day. But not to me. It had never happened to me.