Sixteen
Reluctant to face reality, Lethe trudged up the ramp, following Ghost out of their underground hideaway, a place she’d grown to consider a sanctuary, an oasis for the two of them.
There was no peacefulness outside the subterranean chamber. The surface was as she remembered it, both from their crash landing and from her nightmares.
The planet could have been Mercury Minor. It appeared the same. Buildings were toppled. Insects buzzed around bloated bodies. Ash covered everything, turning the landscape gray. The air was filled with a foul smoke, fires burning around them.
Humanoid Alliance ships bombed buildings in the distance. The ground shook. Gunfire echoed. She drew her guns.
“Safe,” her cyborg rumbled, walking ahead of her.
She’d have to trust him about that. Her forward view was of his big body, his broad shoulders, his clenched ass cheeks.
His height and girth was reassuring. She might be back on a battle-torn planet, stranded, without a means of escape, but she wasn’t alone. She had him.
The male she loved.
Something moved to the right of them. Lethe aimed her guns in that direction. A being ducked behind a domicile square.
“Ghost,” she whispered. They were being watched.
“Ours.” He didn’t sound happy about that.
She stopped, lowering her guns. “She’s coming with us.”
Ghost turned and glowered at her.
“She is.” Lethe couldn’t leave the unknown female behind, not like she had been left behind by her father’s friend, a being she’d considered family. “Getting three beings off the planet isn’t more difficult than getting two beings off.”
“Protect.” Her cyborg frowned.
“You can protect both of us.” She gazed up at him, pleading with her eyes. “Please, Ghost. She’s alone, and likely afraid, and she’s ours. You said that. Ours to safeguard.”
He blew out his breath and grunted his agreement.
She smiled at him. “Thank you.” She returned her attention to the female behind the domicile square. “You can come out. It’s okay. We won’t hurt you.”
A female with green hair and green skin straightened. She was as thin as Lethe had been when she had escaped Mercury Minor. She’d likely not eaten in planet rotations.
The female was also dirty, bruised, covered with scratches and tiny wounds, had a shattered look in her eyes. Lethe had seen that same hopelessness in her own reflection.
“My name is Lethe.” She kept her voice level, soft, hoping to calm the female. “This is Ghost.”
Ghost grunted.
“My name is…” There was a pause as though she couldn’t remember her name. “Zielony.” Her gaze lowered below Lethe’s protective chest covering. She blinked. “My baby sister had a garment using that fabric. She loves the happy faces. Loved. She-she…” Her beautiful face crumpled.
“I know.” Lethe stepped toward the female, seeking to comfort her. “You don’t have to say anything more.”
Ghost growled, expressing his discontentment, and she stopped moving. Her cyborg was on edge. She didn’t want to trigger a killing spree.
“She was a baby, a baby.” Zielony covered her face and sobbed, her frail shoulders shaking. “And they-they…”
“I know.” Lethe watched her, feeling helpless, knowing the depth of the female’s pain, also knowing there wasn’t much she could do to ease it. Zielony had lost everyone and everything. Nothing Lethe said or did could reverse that.
Ghost shifted his weight from his right foot to his left. “Must move.”
“Stay with us.” Lethe echoed her cyborg’s earlier words. “You’ll be safe.”
Ghost moved again, slower. Lethe’s heart warmed. He was compensating for Zielony. The Deneb female didn’t have the energy to walk fast. She could barely lift her oversized-boot-clad feet.
“Do you require beverage?” Lethe offered. The female must be parched.
“Your mate left a container of beverage for me.” Zielony’s voice was as soft as hers.
Her mate was more caring than he’d ever admit. Lethe gazed at his back, savoring how the newly forming muscles rippled under his gray skin.
“He gave me daggers also.”
Since he couldn’t protect Zielony, her cyborg had given her weapons to protect herself. Lethe’s love for Ghost grew even more, expanding to fill her chest.
“Can you shoot a gun?” she asked the female.
“Not well.”
Not well was better than not at all. Lethe suspected they were shooting their way off the planet. She passed Zielony one of her guns. “Aim at the target and press the big button on the top.”
“Mine.” Ghost handed Lethe a replacement gun, brushing his fingers over hers, a gentle caress in the midst of war, a reminder he was with her.
“Yours,” she murmured.
They trudged forward. Ghost led them through demolished domiciles, shattered pathways, along what appeared to be a sewage disposal system, the repugnant smell making Lethe’s eyes water.
The sound of gunfire grew louder. The Humanoid Alliance ships were alarmingly close, casting shadows on the ground.
Lethe braced more and more, expecting a missile to drop on them at any moment.
They approached several structures, easily visible because they were some of the few structures still standing in an otherwise flattened settlement.
Ghost pressed his back against the remains of a wall. She did the same, pushing her shoulder against his arm, needing that connection. Zielony crowded against her other side.
He set the weapons pack on the ground and pointed at it, signaling that they should stay where they were, guard the weapons.
Lethe nodded, raising her guns. She wouldn’t let him down.
He rushed around the wall, her cyborg a blur, moving faster than she could track. Shots fired. She peeked around the corner. Ghost barreled through Humanoid Alliance warriors. Her primitive male ripped off skulls and wielded his long gun like a club, beating the enemy to death.
A projectile hit him in the shoulder and he grunted.
Blast it. Someone was shooting at him. Lethe looked for the source.
Humanoid Alliance warriors crouched behind posts and nourishment carts. They poked their heads out of their hiding places and shot at her male.
No one shot at her male.
Lethe stepped away from the wall, fired a couple of rounds at the nearest warriors, returned to the safety of the wall. Projectiles ate away at the edge of that barrier between them, the warriors returning fire.
Ghost roared. A human male shrieked.
The gunfire slowed and then stopped. She fired more rounds.
At nothing.
Those Humanoid Alliance warriors were all dead, their body parts strewn across the ground, pools of blood darkening the surface. Lethe switched her focus to a new group of warriors, shooting two of them, blasting projectiles into their exposed necks.
The remaining males turned. She hid behind the wall.
They shot at her for one, two, three heartbeats. There was a splattering sound, more shrieks.
And then there was quiet.
She glanced around the edge of the wall. Ghost stood on top of a torso, wild-eyed, his chest heaving, his hands, arms, shoulders, all of him covered with blood. The long gun clutched in his right hand had a skull-shaped dent in it.
He’d killed everyone. There was no one left for her to shoot.
Lethe bumped against Zielony and pointed to the weapons pack. The female dipped her head, silently agreeing to watch it.
Freed of that duty, Lethe walked toward Ghost. His gaze met hers and she sucked in her breath. His eyes were bright with emotion.
The rage didn’t shock her. She expected that from him.
What she didn’t anticipate to see was the absolute terror reflecting in those brilliant blue depths, a fear that chilled her to the bone. Her C Model cyborg was scared stiff.
She holstered her guns and held her hands out to him. “You’re safe, Ghost,” she whispered.
He tossed the long gun to the side, surged forward, and swept her into his arms, lifting her off the ground. “Mine.”
She gasped as her breasts smacked against his chest, the impact pushing the air from her lungs. His grip on her was intense.
He burrowed his face into her hair, breathing heavily.
“You’re safe.” She stroked his shoulders, drifting her fingertips back and forth, back and forth over his gray skin, trying to soothe him, to take away his fear.
He grew more and more tense, his muscles flexing, not relaxing.
“Cyborg.” Ghost held her in the air, his face dark. “Human.” He shook her, clattering her teeth. “Stay.” He inclined his head toward the wall. “Safe.”
He worried about her. That terror had been for her lifespan, not his.
Lethe swallowed the ball of emotion forming in her throat. “They were shooting at you. I had to do something.”
“Cyborg,” he bellowed, the force of his yell blowing her hair away from her face.
She smiled gently at him. “Cyborgs can be damaged.”
“Aargh.” He set her on the ground, walked away from her, raking his hands through his patchy black hair.
The doors of one of the structures opened. Lethe caught a glimpse of a ship in the darkness. Two males in Humanoid Alliance uniforms exited, chatting animatedly about promotions and how dead female Denebs counted for half credits while dead male Denebs were worth full.
Ghost backed up, widening his stance, making himself as large as possible.
He was shielding her with his big body, Lethe realized. If she hadn’t been there, he would have rushed them, ripped them apart. The males would already be dead.
She was hampering the mission and she was splitting his attention between protecting himself and protecting her.
Lethe ducked under one of his arms and pointed her guns at the males.
They saw Ghost. Their eyes widened. They stopped talking mid-sentence, reached for their weapons.
Lethe tapped the triggers of her guns. Projectiles punctured the males’ foreheads, blasting their brains out of the back of their skulls. They fell to the ground, their legs kicking.
Ghost huffed, sounding impressed.
“I like that you protect me,” she admitted. “It turns me on. But I can protect myself.” She pressed her gun-filled hands against his spine. “There will be more males inside the structure. If you want to kill them, kill them, but if they damage you, I will be very upset.”
He grunted, running toward the structure.
Lethe gazed at his back for a moment, tempted to follow him, to protect him. That would slow his progress, distract him, put him in danger. She had to trust him as he trusted her.
Lethe returned to the wall, where Zielony was hiding. The female looked at her, her eyes wide with fear, her slight body trembling. She had thought, as Lethe often did, that she’d be left alone, forced to survive on her own.
“Everything is okay.” Lethe smiled to reassure her. “Ghost is completing a sweep of one of the structures.” He was likely killing everyone within range. “We have to move the weapons pack.”
It took both of them to lift it. They struggled, lugging it slowly toward the first structure. The massive doors were open, the metal around the frame bent.
Zielony’s breath hitched.
Blood painted the walls. Body parts were strewn everywhere. Ghost slammed his fists down on what looked like a flattened skull.
Judging by the vigor of the beating, her cyborg was unharmed. The knot in the pit of Lethe’s stomach unraveled.
“I believe he’s dead.” Her tone was dry. She set down the pack and gazed at the ship. It was a skimmer, a vessel designed for planet surface use only. “Skimmers aren’t meant for long space travel but this one should get us to the next inhabitable planet.”
It should. Lethe had trained on the small ships but they hadn’t been allowed to take them off planet. She wasn’t one hundred percent certain it was doable.
“We’re leaving the planet?” Zielony raised her eyebrows. “The Humanoid Alliance will shoot us out of the sky.”
“This is one of their ships.” Lethe patted a panel.
That didn’t mean the Humanoid Alliance wouldn’t shoot at it. They had plenty of other ships. It was unlikely that any Humanoid Alliance warrior would exit the planet in a skimmer.
“One gun.” Ghost bumped against her. The skimmer’s sole gun was positioned on the top of the vessel.
“It is fortunate we will have a cyborg operating it.” She leaned against him, savoring his warmth, his strength. “Your quick reflexes will compensate for the one gun.”
“No shields.” He mentioned an issue she found more worrisome.
“Then we’ll have to avoid all missiles.” Lethe tried to look confident. Confidence was the key to good leadership. “I’m a great captain.” That wasn’t a boast. That was a fact. She ranked at the top of her Rebel training program. “I’ll outfly them.”
Ghost grunted, transferring the weapons pack into the small ship.
Lethe smiled. He didn’t doubt she could do it. “Let’s roll this ship out.”
They entered the skimmer. It was a tight fit, the three of them crowded into the small space. There were only two chairs.
“What do I do?” Zielony looked at her, at the console and then back at her.
“Strap yourself in.” Lethe waved her hands at one of the chairs. “And watch for red circles on the control panel.” Those would be the proximity alarms. “Tell me when and where one appears.”
The female complied. Lethe did the same. Ghost stood beside her.
“Ready?” She glanced up at him.
He grunted an affirmative.
She started the engines. The floor tiles vibrated under her booted feet.
“There are red dots all around us.” Zielony informed her.
“That’s the structure.” The skimmer’s systems were simple. They didn’t have the capability to distinguish between forms.
Lethe rolled the ship through the doors. It passed cleanly. Her back straightened with pride. She had remembered the little quirks of operating a skimmer.
Humanoid Alliance warriors ran toward them, guns in their hands.
Ghost had a bigger gun. He mowed them down, the projectiles cutting their bodies in two. Lethe accelerated, coaxing the little ship higher.
“Red dot to our right,” Zielony yelled.
“Missile,” Ghost added.
“Hold on.” Lethe veered the skimmer to the left, spinning the small ship. The straps dug into her shoulders. Everything not strapped down, excluding her cyborg, tumbled around the interior of the vessel.
The missile whistled past them. There was a loud boom and flames lit the ground below the ship.
“Up.” Ghost grunted.
Lethe knew their current elevation was dangerous. It was within the range of the ground missiles. “This ship isn’t designed for space travel. We need speed to offset the planet’s gravitational pull.”
Ghost peppered the ground with projectiles. More missiles arced. Zielony warned Lethe. Lethe flew the little ship as she’d never flown another vessel.
It was exhilarating yet unmaintainable. She’d make a mistake eventually and they’d all die. “I love you, Ghost.”
“Mine?” His voice was choked.
“I love you.” She had to say it. She might not have another opportunity. “I wanted you to know that.”
“Mine.”
“Red dot to the right.” Zielony’s voice was frantic. “And to the left. And there’s another one to the right.”
Lethe would have liked to have more acceleration but they’d run out of time. “We’re doing this.”
She guided the ship upward. Gravity pushed her against her chair. The entire vessel shuddered. Metal whined.
Stars. She gritted her teeth, not raising her hands from the embedded control panel. The ship might not make it. One loose panel could doom them.
Ghost must have thought the same thing. He moved closer to her.
It was a futile action. Even he couldn’t save her if the ship imploded.
There was pressure, pressure, pressure, and then they were free, breaking into the blackness of space. Lethe looked at the main viewscreen and her jaw dropped.
They faced the Humanoid Alliance’s huge battle stations.
“Red dots. Big red dots in front of us.” Zielony’s announcement was unnecessary. “Some smaller ones. All of them are larger than us.”
All of the enemy’s ships had shields and better guns also.
The communications system beeped. They were being hailed.
“Don’t answer that,” Lethe instructed.
That hail meant one of the enemy ships had spotted them. If the Humanoid Alliance didn’t receive confirmation the skimmer was operated by their warriors, they’d start shooting.
Lethe couldn’t give them that confirmation. She and Zielony were female and Ghost was a cyborg. The Humanoid Alliance would never allow any of them to fly their ships.
“Shit.” She stared at the scene. Sweat dripped down her spine, slid between her ass cheeks.
They were dead.