Mak, Shuttle 2, The Colony Moon

“Marz, you read?” Gwen sat next to me, in the co-pilot’s seat, her hands moving so quickly over the control panel they were nearly a blur. She was in her element. Fast. Deadly.

Beautiful. It was a wonder she’d been grounded, for she was an incredible asset to any mission. An amazing Coalition fighter, and a pilot, which I hadn’t known about. To think she had to bargain with the governor to be able to use her expertise was a shame.

Her scent lingered on my skin and it made my cock grow hard. Again. I did not wish to bathe for days so I could hold on to that last connection to her once I left.

“We’re here,” Marz copied. “We’re on foot. Ten minutes to first coordinates.”

“Copy that. We’re heading out in five. Radio checks every ten.”

“Ten minutes. Mark.” Marz sounded calm, which was good. I needed to make sure this mission went according to plan, that Gwen and the two Prillon warriors wandering around out there in the moon’s fog returned to the planet’s surface alive. I might be leaving Gwen behind after this, but while she was with me, I’d ensure her safety.

“Mark.” Gwen checked the display on her wrist and looked up, those dark eyes looking at me, but laser-focused on the mission. “Ready?”

Nodding, I looked back out the cockpit display and set our small shuttle down gently, the landing struts taking the weight with a soft groan.

“I will protect you, Gwen, and then I must leave. I can’t go back to the Colony.”

“I know.” She unbuckled and climbed out of her seat to stand, for once, taller than me. She lifted her hands to my face, leaned down and kissed me gently on the lips. Her touch was soft, feminine. It was the lightest touch she’d ever given me, and it rocked me to my core, especially now, knowing her sheer strength. “It’s okay, Makarios of Kronos. You don’t belong here. I understand that.”

She offered me a small smile.

I arched my brow. “Was that a good-bye kiss?”

“Never.” She grinned now, giving me another kiss, this one much harder. Faster. And with quite a bit of tongue. My cock stirred, liking this. “You’re mine ‘til you’re dead, right? That’s a long time, Mak. Anything can happen.”

She moved away, out of reach, before I could argue. I didn’t like her words, and if we’d been in my quarters back on the Colony, she’d have been over my knee for it. She was fast, and the seat harness kept me in place when I tried to go after her.

Fuck.

By the time I got the buckles undone, she was in the ready area, helmet on, armed to the teeth with ion blasters, a larger rifle, a line of grenades attached to her belt and a very wicked looking knife strapped to her thigh. A small pack rested on her back, and I knew the Prillon, Vance, would carry an identical bag filled to the top with explosives.

Enough to take out a much larger ship than the small shuttle we’d flown up to the moon’s surface. Enough to take out a Hive communications array and dozens of Scouts or Drones. And my Gwen right along with them.

I wanted to tease her, to lighten the mood, but that proved impossible. Odds were, she would need all of the explosives, the weapons. We knew the Hive were out there. And we were stupid enough to be going out into that swirling fog to find them.

“Report.” That was Governor Rone’s voice coming through the helmet speakers, loud and clear.

“We’re exiting the shuttle now. We’ll arrive at the first mark in”—Gwen checked the navigation display in her helmet. I saw the objective clearly in my own after I put it on, but I had no desire to talk to Maxim Rone, the uptight Prillon who’d kept me a pseudo-prisoner on the Colony for far too long. He might have been governor, but that didn’t mean I had to like him—“about five minutes.”

“We’re listening, Lieutenant, tracking both teams,” he stated, making sure we knew she was being watched. One fuck up on Gwen’s part and I had no doubt he’d yank her back to base and ground her again.

“Figured you would.”

I raised a brow at her flippant tone, but she just smiled at me through her helmet and hit the control switch that lowered the ramp to the ground. A dense, swirling gray mist enveloped us both, wrapping around us like coils. Instantly, visibility went to just a couple of steps in any direction.

Right away, I was on alert. Not as a fighter, for I wasn’t one. Never had been. But as a mate. It might be a new thing, but the protective instincts I felt for Gwen were fierce.

I grabbed her by the arm as she took her first step toward the ground, not hard, just hard enough to get her attention. “Stay where I can see you,” I ordered.

My female tilted her head up at me and smiled. It wasn’t a sweet smile. “Check your in-helmet display, Mak. You can track me all over this rock. And you might like being bossy in the sack, but here, in this fucking fog, I’m in charge.”

Fuck, she was right. I was only here to keep her safe, not run the mission. So I did as she asked, already knowing what I would find. I could, indeed, see a small dot indicating her position relative to mine. Captain Marz and the Prillon Vance showed up on the monitoring display as well. In red, the areas we’d mapped out for ReCon were bright targets laid out over a grid between the two shuttle landing sites.

I didn’t care. Blips of color weren’t enough.

“No, mate. Stay where I can see you with my own two eyes.”

“Mate?” Gwen shrugged off my grip. “That’s ridiculous. That’s like, three feet.”

“I will not argue with you, female.”

“Female?”

I should have taken note of Braun’s earlier words about Earth females. I should have remembered that they had to be tricked into allowing for their own protection. But my body raged at me to protect her, to stay next to her, to keep her safe. I imagined her hurt, caught by the Hive once again, and my mind seethed. My fangs dropped and my voice was part growl, part hiss. “You will obey me in this. You are mine. I will protect you.”

Gwen patted me on the arm, her head tilted to the side, a look of seeming innocence on her face. “Get a grip, fang boy. Not gonna happen.”

Before I could argue, she was gone, disappearing into the swirl of fog, nothing more than a small green dot inside my helmet.

“Gods be damned! Gwendolyn. Get back here!” I roared into the microphone, but that little green dot kept moving farther and farther away and at a pace too fast for a normal human.

The husky masculine laughter I knew was coming from base didn’t help my mood. Neither did Captain Marz’s amused chuckle in my ear.

“Shut the fuck up, Marz. Or I’ll remove your arms from your body,” I growled.

Now Vance was laughing at me, too.

“Fuck both of you.”

And my sweet, docile female’s voice chimed in last. “No, Mak, the only person on this planet you get to fuck is me.”

The laughter continued, completely at my expense and that only angered me further.

“Gods damn all of you, stay on task and shut the fuck up.” The governor’s order shut down Marz and Vance’s laughter, but I should have known it wouldn’t stop my Gwen. That female was too fierce and stubborn for her own good.

Again, advice I should have heeded from Warlord Braun.

“Sorry, Governor,” she said sweetly, almost too sweetly. “Just staking my claim on Mak’s magnificent cock.”

What. The. Fuck?

“Shut it, Lieutenant.” The governor meant it, but it was my mate’s distant laughter echoing in the background that made me grin. Yeah, that was my mate. That, and the fact that Gwen had just told everyone on the planet that my cock was magnificent. Which it was.

Giving up on taming the wildness out of my female, I followed her little green dot on the helmet display, determined to protect her, whether she wanted my protection or not.

Gwen

I couldn’t see a damn thing… but I could hear them. The Hive. In my head. The subtle vibration of multiple high-ranking Hive Soldiers moving over my flesh, under my skin, like the subtle stroking of a thousand mosquitos’ wings hovering over my body, ready to bite. The Hive hadn’t given me this technology to use against them, but that’s exactly what I was doing now.

They were here. Somewhere. And I had to find them, kill them, before they could hurt Mak again.

When I’d been a prisoner, I’d vowed to fight them until there was nothing left of me. I’d hunt and kill the Hive with my dying breath. But that was my choice. Not Mak’s.

All he wanted was his freedom. To get away from all this madness and forget, go back to his old life. To just… fly away.

I couldn’t do that, but he could. And I could help him. If I could take out the Hive communications center before he caught sight of them, the deed would be done. He’d be free, and he’d never have to face them again. He wouldn’t have to look one of them in the eye and remember what they’d done to him.

It wasn’t much, but it was all I could do to help. And I wanted to do something, to know I’d given him a gift, taken care of him in some small way. He might be the one wearing the bossy pants, but I could be in charge here, get shit done. For him.

The urge to protect him was stupid, and territorial, and didn’t make any sense, but my heart didn’t care. I needed to do this for him. One last thing.

“Gwen, stop. Wait for me. Don’t be foolish.” Mak’s order was easy to ignore.

I ran toward the buzzing, the almost imperceptible hum of my old tormentors. The signal wasn’t exactly like I remembered, but then, the specific Nexus Unit that had worked on me, tortured me and began the integrations, who’d made me part of his Hive mind, was far from here in another sector of the galaxy. The Hive Soldiers who were here on the moon must be under the dominion of another Nexus Unit.

Not mine. They called him Nexus 2.

I would never forget it. He’d told me his name as he worked on me, tortured me, changed me to his liking. His real name.

He’d wanted me to stay. To be his.

To have his children.

To be his queen.

My stomach churned as I ran toward my past, the horror of those weeks spent in thrall of Nexus 2, fighting the dark depths of his mind, the hypnotic pull of his dark eyes on my emotions. He wasn’t like the others the Coalition fought and killed every day. He was an alien race. His skin the darkest blue. His eyes like the black inky depths of a great white shark back on Earth. There was nothing human in those eyes or in his touch. He wasn’t a drone, wasn’t what the Coalition thought of as the Hive, the warriors from other worlds controlled by biosynthetic integrations and psychic frequencies. The ones who traveled in threes.

No. Nexus 2—my Hive nemesis—was something else. One of the Hive core. He controlled millions, perhaps billions of minds. And he’d wanted mine. He’d wanted me to give myself to him willingly.

As if.

“Lieutenant, where are you going?” Governor Rone’s voice was in my ear now. “You are off the grid.”

“We were wrong. They’re here. I’m close. I can hear them.”

Radio silence, then all of them were yelling at me at once.

“Stand down, now! Wait for backup.”

The governor. Yeah, ummm, no on that.

“No, Gwen! You will not. I forbid it.”

Forbid? Sorry, Mak. I don’t know that word.

“We’re twenty minutes from your location. Wait for us!”

Marz. Wait? That might be smart, but then they’d all want to play, and I wanted to kill every single one of the Hive bastards myself. To be done with them, until the next mission. To keep Mak safe on this one so he could be free.

“What the fuck are you doing, female?” That was Vance, and he was the only one who said anything worth responding to.

“I’m going to kill me some Hive, that’s what I’m doing.” I checked my timer, took stock of the level of buzzing inside my head. “You should arrive in time for clean-up, boys. I’ll try not to make too big of a mess.” Lie. I was going to stain the ground with their Hive blood like a warrior goddess. “I’m out.”

“No!”

I turned off my radio. Seriously, did not need to hear all the shouting or have them pick up on anything I said or did.

I had an advantage, something none of them knew. Not Marz, not Vance, not Mak and not even the governor. Something I’d never admitted. Not when the Intelligence Core questioned me for days after I showed up alone in that Hive ship. Not when the doctors poked and prodded me for hours, running hundreds of tests. Not when I looked into Mak’s eyes and felt the urge to reveal the truth I carried to someone I trusted.

But I kept my secret, because Mak wasn’t mine. Not really. We’d made a bargain. Fucked and agreed that we would go our separate ways. He was leaving the Colony. Leaving me. Therefore, he didn’t need to know.

Shoulders set, I did the one thing I hadn’t let myself do since I escaped the Nexus who tried to own me. I went full Hive. Yeah, it was a thing, a thing I had a feeling others on the Colony couldn’t do. It was like being Bruce Banner and going all Incredible Hulk. No one—at least no one but those from Earth—would understand that reference. In alien-speak, it was like going Atlan Beast, but better. I was already ridiculously strong. I didn’t need to let the beast out. I needed to let the Hive out. Or, let them into my mind. Into my body. I could use their technology, their plans for me against them. I’d connect to the Hive Soldiers I now knew I’d find over the next rise on the lunar surface.

The buzzing in my head went from dull ache to chainsaw scream in a matter of seconds, but I just gritted my teeth and didn’t fight the flow of information they were giving me. I was like a moving super-computer, processing on-the-fly data and information. Running toward them, I filtered out what I could around the massive migraine making my eyes feel like they were literally about to pop free from their sockets.

A warm dribble of liquid slid from my nose to my lip and I tasted blood. My brain was literally full. Overflowing.

So be it.

I ran faster, as fast as the bio-synth fibers in my new body allowed. And I was fast, rocks and dust flying under my feet as I passed the landscape in a complete blur. The faster I got to them, the faster the pain would stop, the mission would be finished. I’d take the fuckers down.

Just as I’d anticipated, the Hive were waiting, lined up, three-by-three in triangle formation. Nine in total, they all had their weapons pointed at me as I came to a dead stop a few steps before them and cleared my throat. I wasn’t winded at all, yet adrenaline coursed through my veins, making me shake, making my heart race too fast. I would have worried about it bursting, but it wasn’t wholly human anymore either.

I didn’t need to say any words aloud, knew they were linked to me telepathically, just as I was now linked to them. But I spoke regardless, needed the sound to ground me to reality, remind myself that I was more than just a Hive integration.

“We are Nexus 2. Report. Why have you not finished here?” I was careful to speak as a true Hive even though it sounded ridiculous. As part of the complete entity known as Nexus 2, as part of my supposed Hive master, I never would have referred to myself as singular. No Hive did, except the solo Nexus units that controlled the entire Hive collective. The Hive ‘bosses.’ The dark blue creatures were terrifying, and so powerful with their telepathy they could convince a woman she was standing in a field of butterflies and wildflowers while she was undergoing surgery. Could make her feel affection, even love, with no basis or knowledge that it wasn’t real. Yeah, that had been fun. Not.

Until later. Waking up with Nexus 2 out of telepathic range had been an agony of self-hatred that I never wished to repeat. In fact, seeing the nine Hive Soldiers before me made my skin crawl and my stomach churn with acid.

While I’d been afraid of the Nexus units, these Hive were underlings to me. To them, I was their superior. Confirming this, all nine dropped to one knee before me and I took advantage, scanning their minds for intent, orders, anything I could glean from them. And sad as it was, I touched their minds with my own, looking for one of them still fighting, worthy of being saved. A Coalition fighter who still fought the Hive mind control and just hadn’t been lucky enough to escape, to exist on the Colony.

The highest-ranking Soldier was once Prillon. Covered from head to toe, not one inch of skin remained untouched by silver Hive technology. He looked like an android, nothing biological or natural left. He spoke aloud, as I had done, and I realized the Hive hadn’t been able to hear me through my closed helmet. I couldn’t hear his voice above a soft mumble. But I heard him inside my head.

“My queen, we are to protect the communication array until Nexus 4 is complete in his task.” Complete? I’d heard that term used before. That was Hive code for stealing a female, forcing her to endure Hive implantation and breeding, Hive Nexus mind control, and becoming ‘one’ with the Nexus who tormented her.

“And what of the transporter resources? Have they been secured?” I’d been in on several meetings where the possibility of the Hive stealing the mineral mined on the Colony, the substance used to make our transport systems work, had been discussed. If the Hive took enough to cripple Coalition operations, they would win the war. Despite months of searching, we hadn’t been able to find them—led by Nexus 4—in the network of caves beneath the planet’s surface. Didn’t even know if that was, in fact, what they were doing sulking around like sewer rats underground. And we knew they were there, just like Krael, the traitor, who was with them.

“The first shipment was received. The second shipment is scheduled to depart as soon as Nexus 4 gives us the command.”

Great. So they’d already stolen enough mineral from the mines on the Colony for a full shipment with another ready to go. “And what is the delay? We are not pleased with the delay.”

The Hive Soldiers shuddered at the tone of my voice. As a female linked to a Nexus unit, I could torture them with my mind alone. I was a queen bee in a hive of soldiers and drones. I could quite literally kill any one of them on a whim if the mood struck… and I was definitely in the mood. Everything personal might have been stripped from these Coalition fighters when they were turned, but they did know fear. They still had an instinct for survival. Not even the Hive programming could drive that primal instinct from their bodies. And fear was an emotion that served everyone well if they wanted to remain alive. Or at least functional to the Hive.

“Nexus 4 has not been successful in securing a female.”

I swallowed down the bile that had crept into my throat. I knew very well what it was like to be a secured female. Nexus 2 had taught me well. The dark blue alien creature had wanted me as his mate, his queen. And I’d nearly lost my mind, all sense of self, under his control. A mile-wide stubborn streak, the same one that got me into so much trouble when I was a little girl—hell, still got me in trouble with the governor—had saved me. I simply refused to stop fighting until finally, my chance came, and I stole a ship and escaped.

“We demand the exact location of Nexus 4. We will speak to him directly,” I said, continuing with my use of plural-speak.

I’d kill these nine, then return to the planet surface and take out the rest of them. And Nexus 4, the telepathic Nexus unit who’d tried to murder CJ’s and Rezzer’s twins a few months ago? Tried to take Caroline Jane for himself? Kill Rezzer’s Atlan children already growing strong and healthy in CJ’s womb? He was still down there. Hunting for another female. There weren’t too many women on the Colony—the Nexus wouldn’t care if she were single or mated—which meant bad things for my Earth friends. And I knew Rezzer would most likely go into beast mode if given the chance to join me in a little payback.

I’d give that dark blue asshole a female, all right, just not the easily tortured variety he was counting on. A taste of his own medicine was in order.

The Hive Soldier before me stood, slowly. “Nexus 4 has agreed to meet with you. He will petition you to ally with him, as Nexus 2 is not here to oversee your care.”

It took me a moment to understand what he was saying. That Nexus 4 wanted to be my Hive protector. What a load of bullshit. Breeder was more like it. Jesus.

Were the damn Hive no different about females than the aliens on the planet below? Since my so-called mate, Nexus 2, was in another sector of space and not standing beside me, Nexus 4 felt the need to steal me for himself? For my own protection? To oversee my care? To keep me… what, safe?

Torture was more like it. Forced breeding of more little blue sociopaths. No.

But then I knew one thing that I had told the Intelligence Core doctors. The Nexus units weren’t friends. Hell, they hated one another, saw each other as a temporary yet necessary evil, allies and bodies needed to defeat the Coalition Fleet and conquer the galaxy.

But once that was done, they’d turn on each other like starving monsters fighting over meat. Each Nexus unit controlled a specific sector of space, their own Scouts and Soldiers. They were in a race to assimilate every biological being into their personal armies for when the real war started, the war between the Nexus units themselves.

For centuries, everyone in the Coalition of Planets believed that the Hive was an organized collective of cooperative thinkers. The Intelligence Core, and the few who knew the Nexus units existed, had believed they were brothers in truth. Aliens bound to a single cause, under one banner.

They were wrong. The Nexus units were singular. Selfish. They cooperated because they had to in order to survive an organized Coalition Fleet. A united resistance. Cooperation was expedient. Nothing more. Nothing less.

The Coalition worlds? Raw material. We were supplies to be acquired. Warriors to be added to the Hive tally. Bullets in a gun. Bodies. Expendable.

And the Nexus units would not hesitate to steal another’s Soldiers or Scouts, or me. As far as I knew, I was the first fully integrated Nexus mate.

I couldn’t wait to kill Nexus 4. They were all the same to me. Pure evil. Without a conscience. Without a soul. I just needed to remember not to look into his eyes before I got the job done. One look into those dark depths, and I’d be done. Trapped. Completely under his control. Because while I was balls-to-the-wall tough thanks to them, I had one weakness, one way they could gain control over me against my will.

Connection. Mind to mind connection.

If I let Nexus 4 in, I was done. Mind fucked. It would be o-v-e-r.

“Send us the coordinates,” I commanded. “We will go to him now.”

“Yes, my queen.” The information streamed into my head like a data upload and I pushed deeper, gaining access to more information than he intended to give me. Like taking candy from a baby. I received the location of the ship on the lunar surface. Maps of their hidden dens on the Colony. Coordinate numbers. Mining sites. Positions of Hive Soldiers and Drones. I had all of it in seconds, including the location of their waiting Nexus cargo ship and the amount of stolen mineral in the ship’s hold. In a matter of two seconds, it was all mine.

“Thank you.” Smiling now, I walked to him and grabbed his head, helmet and all. Twisting with all the rage I’d held in check the past weeks, I cracked his neck and dropped him, dead, at my feet. I felt nothing in the action. There was no Prillon left in that body. Had I met him in the past, I was sure he’d want me to kill him, to end him, knowing he’d never want to be like this, his mind gone, nothing left but a shell forced to do evil.

Shocked and surprised, the others hurried to rise from their kneeling positions and fire their weapons.

The first ion blast stung more than I thought it would, but not enough to stop me from cracking the offender’s ribcage, forcing the bones inward until his heart stopped beating. He’d been Viken once. Now, he was a monster. A dead monster.

Two down, seven to go.

Pulling out the knife strapped to my thigh, I cut the throat of the integrated Atlan closest to me. He was still on his knees. His eyes glazed over and I swear I saw gratitude there. He didn’t fight or try to stop me, which broke my heart, hurt in a million different ways. He looked too much like Mak. Too big. Too strong. Too noble.

He could have killed me, but he’d fought the conditioning, held himself still for the killing blow. Yes, this was what I had expected. Some hint of life, of the original being within.

The relief in his eyes would haunt my dreams forever. He was finally at peace.

The injustice of his sacrifice made me want to scream and cry my eyes out. But that wouldn’t do any good. He wanted to die, to have dignity. Honor. He deserved no less.

An ion blast hit me from behind and I turned into the line of fire with a smile.

I was Nexus now, thanks to their own masters. They would need a lot more than their ion blasters to take me down. They were shooting a pellet gun at an angry bear.

Evidently figuring that out, three of them rushed me and I took them down with an arcing roundhouse kick that would have made Chuck Norris proud. The kick broke the first Soldier’s skull, shattered the second’s ribcage and took off the bottom half of the third’s leg. He fell to the ground with a scream of pain, which went silent as I stomped on his neck.

I faced the others, striking without mercy until I stood alone surrounded by the dead. The entire encounter had only taken a couple of minutes, but I felt like I’d been fighting for years—because I had. I’d wanted to go on missions, to destroy the Hive one at a time, but it was never easy. Never without personal pain. Emotional destruction.

I needed a valium. Xanax. Something to make me forget.

Mak had accomplished that; for a few stolen hours I’d been something other than a broken thing, a Hive queen, a mate of the blue Nexus bastard who’d wanted me to carry his children. Mak made me feel alive. Beautiful. Sensual. Me.

But not wanted. Sexually, definitely, but not completely. Not the way my broken heart needed. He refused to bite me, refused to even consider staying with me and living on the Colony. Once the Intelligence Core figured out the truth I’d kept from them—and what I’d just collected in my head—they’d want to use me to lure and capture the Nexus units that controlled the Hive. They’d want to transport me all over the galaxy. I’d be bait to lure the Nexus to them, over and over. It made sense; I couldn’t fault them for the plan. Hell, it was a good idea, although I wasn’t excited about being the lure at their whim. I wasn’t sure I’d survive it, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

I’d just be… living. Surviving. Fighting. No happiness. No joy. No connection other than through the minds of other Hive. And that wasn’t the connection I craved.

Without Mak, I’d be just like the Atlan I just killed. A former shell of myself in a body that was no longer my own. Used for battle, for fighting. For strategy and nothing more. I would be a pawn in the fighting cog that was spread out over the entire galaxy.

I couldn’t live with that. Not for long. Not if I couldn’t have the only male I wanted. It had only been a day since I’d chosen him, since we’d made the bargain. But so much had happened since then. The connection—yes, that word kept repeating in my head over and over—was powerful. Intense. It was as if we had been matched through the Brides Program. Or were marked mates from Everis. The bond was real, and he hadn’t even claimed me. I had to wonder what it would be like if he did make me truly his.

Powerful. Intense. Just… peaceful.

Yet Makarios of Kronos was a wild thing, a free spirit. He had not promised anything. Had not gone back on his word, nor behaved dishonorably. I couldn’t fault him for anything except hooking my emotions in a way I never anticipated. But that was my problem, not his. I would not be a shackle around his ankle. I would honor our bargain.

But I knew nothing would help except striking at the heart of the Hive itself. At their core. At the Nexus minds that controlled them all.

And Nexus 4 hiding on the planet’s surface like a snake? He’d know I was coming. Which was just fine with me.

Walking toward the Hive ship I intended to pilot to my meeting with Nexus 4, I allowed the Hive tech that nearly covered my body to return to its original color—the better to tempt the Nexus unit with—a dark, vibrant blue. I’d learned to hold it off, but now, like a dam breaking, the color washed over me. I looked just like him now. The way Nexus 2 had made me.

Blue. Feminine. Strong.

Perfect for breeding.

If there was one urge as primal as survival, it was the urge to fuck. And as far as I knew, I was the only female in the galaxy custom designed to tempt the blue bastards. If I could get him thinking with his cock instead of his head, I’d have a chance. And instead of touching him with lover’s hands, I’d rip his head right off.