But then another, larger signal showed on the navcube, just above the asteroid field.
Zyair sucked in his breath. “Drones are not necessary when they have a shaftzing battlecruiser.”
Battlecruiser? My gaze fastened on the signal, and my brain screamed for me to pay attention, even as my body pushed back into the rigid column of pure male behind me.
As Zyair’s breath left him in a rush that gusted across my temple, Xandros muttered something that sounded like a curse, but in a language I didn’t know. Then he added, “You could have just fornicated with thebituk. Butno. You had to haveprinciples. Now we are stuck in a rockgrinder with a battleship stalking us.”
“You might stick your shaftzing cock into anything that smiles at you, but you know as well as I that submitting was a short road to a fast end.” Zyair gritted his teeth as we ducked another asteroid. His hips shifted, ever so slightly. Pushing into me.
Even as my own breath hitched, my mind fastened on what he’d said. Fornicated? With who? Who and what were they talking about? I was having a difficult time concentrating on anything other than the hard warmth wrapped around me, and the even harder body bit poking me in the back.
Before I could clear my mind enough to ask, Rhodes interjected with a calm, deep rumble. “Use that superior brain of yours, Zyair. We need an alternative to confronting a battlecruiser.”
In an impressive display of brain over rather rock-hard hot and insistent body, Zyair spunStardrifteraround and headed for a mammoth piece of rotating rock—with one eye on the navcube, he lowered the ship close to the surface.
“Zoom,” he told the cube in a voice gone hoarse, and repeated the command until the cube showed us a scan of the asteroid surface. It was pitted and grooved by repeated strikes from its smaller brethren. He leaned forward, examining the hologram. Charted coordinates, and asked for another zoom. Then, “track.”
I caught a glimpse of a channel extending deep into the rock. My scrambled brain offered up a comment. “Watch for space slugs.”
“What is a space slug?” he murmured, his arms tightening around me.
I huffed a laugh. “Guessing you don’t watch many human movies.” Then I gasped, and squeezed his left arm, ever so slightly. He banked, and the rock shot past us, striking the surface below in a cloud of shattered debris.
Zyair spotted what he was looking for. “Ten seconds to radio silence,” he called into the comm.
“What?” demanded Xandros.
“You have ten seconds to shut up,” Rhodes clarified.
“Get ready to purge the airlock.” Zyair’s voice was hardly more than a whisper, but it vibrated straight through me. As my heart did more useless gymnastics, my finger hovered over the appropriate button, and he spoke into the comm to his brothers, “Choose a rock. Both of you blast it, together. Sustained blast.”
“Why?” Xandros asked.
“Always with the stupid questions,” Rhodes growled. “Follow my lead.”
TheStardriftershuddered as he fired at a nearby asteroid, and kept doing so as he didn’t let up. It amplified as Xandros opened up on it too. The rock glowed red-hot, before it exploded.
“Now!” Zyair told me, and I hit the button. The airlock disgorged its non-living cargo to space.
I was clutching Zyair’s arms as he barrelrolled theStardrifterand shot her into a cave within the mammoth asteroid…
11
Jaz
A yelp emitted from Xandros as Zyair rolled the ship and the viewports revealed only rock. “Give warning, bro.”
“Quiet,” hissed Rhodes.
The ship was engulfed in darkness as Zyair slowed it down, keeping one eye on the navcube, and another on the readings from the ship’s location radar. When the ship hit an outcrop in the narrowing cave and shuddered, he put her into a hover before lowering her landing gear to the rock below.
The large asteroid trembled with the multiple hits it endured. At least, I thought it was the blasts—I was shaking so hard I couldn’t tell for sure. I seemed irrationally focused on Zyair’s long fingers racing across the switches on the dash, shutting down everything except basic life support.
“Will their battlecruiser sense us?” I whispered. Even my voice shook.
“Depends,” he whispered back. “Would have helped to toss around debris other than a bunch of dead Drakes. Could have done Senaik too.”
The words seemed to vibrate from the big body wrapped aroundme. “I would have gladly tossed him,” I commented, but I didn’t really care about Senaik. My entire body burned like I still had a fever.
