Marauder Ramses (5 page)

“I mean,” I say, “we’re a bit stuck together in this whole situation. In this ship. Maybe it’s just that? Or maybe it’s not.”

“When you’re trying to get information from a witness, are you always this vague?” He beams at me, and his ears flick up and down.

I feel heat rush to my cheeks. “You know what I’m talking about,” I say.

“I’d rather hear you say it, though,” he says.

“I just think we make good partners,” I say, blushing.

“You’re being vague, again.”

Ramses unbuckles his straps and pulls them off. The thrust is still going, and with the way the seats are positioned, it feels as if we are both laying on the floor. Ramses sits up, which makes it look as if he is sitting above me while I lay beneath him.

He leans closer to me. “I think I know what you are afraid to say.”

And I am afraid to say it. My cheeks are still burning and my heart is thumping loudly, and as much as I want to look away from him, I’m entirely lost in his eyes.

He starts to lean closer to me, but then the engines cut off.

With the acceleration gone, Ramses begins floating away from me. Instinctively we reach out and grab hands, and he pulls himself all the way into me. Right into me, lips first.

Without thinking about it – about how dumb and reckless an idea it is – I kiss him fully, deeply, intensely and completely. Our tongues meet, and the warmth of his mouth overtakes me. His masculine scent is overpowering, and I feel drunk on it as our tongues dance together wet and warm. I close my eyes and forget that I’m on a tiny ship flying toward oblivion – chased by killer robots and evil aliens – and I exist only as that kiss. With Ramses, a man who risked everything to protect me.

And suddenly the screen cuts on, and the Tsar’s face fills the entire wall. I react by pulling away, as if he could actually see me. As if he’d actually care?

“Ramses,” Aegus says. “I’m sorry to hear about your...partner’s...illness. There may be hope for her where I’m sending you. This is a high-level secret that we never told the humans about. When our fleet reached the solar system, we deep-scanned everything. There was a gravitational anomaly between Earth and Venus...it looked like a planet, but there was nothing there. We sent probes there, and they all went dead. When we sent manned shuttles, they never came back.”

I look at Ramses, and I can still taste him on my tongue, but now my chest is tight with fear.

“This sounds like a solid plan, huh?” he says.

I roll my eyes.

Aegus continues. “Finally we took a low-tech Martian clunker, stripped it of all advanced electronics and microprocessors, and made sure it could be piloted one hundred percent manually. You can’t even
see
this planet until you’re deep in its atmosphere.”

“Planet?” I ask, though Aegus can’t hear me.

“The humans used to think there was a lost city. They thought it was much more advanced than everywhere else in the world at the time, but one day – overnight – it disappeared. Some say it sank into the sea, others say it was buried by a huge erupting volcano. These stories were taken somewhat seriously, but after humanity developed satellites and other advanced scanning techniques, it was put to bed as a baseless rumor or myth.”

“Is he talking about….” I start to say, but he cuts me off.

“Atlantis is real,” Aegus says. “But it was never a city. It was a planet. It
is still
a planet.... ”

A
fter the message cuts out
, I see Elise’s face is totally white.

The news kept getting worse. Atlantis was more advanced than Earth – so advanced that they cloaked themselves and scrubbed the records of their existence from Earth as best they could. They existed isolated and independent of Earth for millennia, but by the time the Marauders found them, their planet had frozen over and their civilization was all but destroyed. No surviving Atlanteans had ever been found, and the entire planet shut off any human and Marauder technology more advanced than the simplest of rockets – which meant finding potentially hidden Atlanteans extremely difficult. Marauder research had continued on Atlantis, but the Marauders decided to keep it secret for fear that Darkstar would find it.

But Darkstar did find it, and now they want it for themselves.

“I know I said no more surprises,” I say to Elise, “but this one surprised me, too.”

Though it wasn’t half as surprising as that kiss. It felt right to do it, but I still expected her to shove or slap me away. I worry still that she may not really be my mate – that the situation is pushing us together and deceiving me – but each minute I spend with her makes me feel more and more certain that she
is
my mate.

“So it’s going to be cold,” Elise says. “Too bad you can’t shift into a bear, huh?”

“Even if I could,” I say, “It wouldn’t help you. The real pity is that it’s a barren ice planet and not a jungle. I grew up in jungles and could easily survive in one with no tools...but I’ve never even felt snow.”

“You’re not missing much,” she says. “I’m sure your skills will come in handy either way. I’ve never done anything but buy food….”

“It will be difficult to survive there,” I say. “But I will provide for us both.”

Five days. That’s how long it will be until my cousin Sara arrives from Mars with reinforcements. My father said the Darkstar doesn’t know the “trick” for getting onto Atlantis, which should buy us some time. But five days? It will be hard enough to protect Elise from the elements. Adding on Marauders and Seraphim hunting us makes things much worse.

“We’ll be there in a few hours,” Elise says. “Let’s do an inventory of our equipment.”

We’re both floating about the small cabin. There’s barely room for the two of us to stand up to our full height, and much of that room is taken up by my emergency supplies packed into every nook and cranny.

We start pulling everything out and taking stock.

“One box of jerky,” Elise says. “Enough for two days, maybe.”

I pull open a panel and find a vacuum-packed bag with cloth inside. “Some thick coats,” I say, reading the label. “Rated for Mars.”

“Atlantis is colder than Mars, isn’t it?” Elise asks.

I nod. “Let me see your stun rod.”

Elise pulls it off her belt and hands it to me. I activate my bioglove and interface with the rod’s computer.

“How strong is full power?” I ask.

“Enough to knock out a Seraph,” Elise answers.

I set the rod to full power, but the glove’s senses tell me it’s artificially limited by some type of regulator. I remove the regulator, set the rod to simply draw directly from its power cell when activated, and then I destroy the computerized parts entirely.

When I’m finished, I let the glove sink back into my skin.

“What did you do?” she asks.

“I’m hoping I made it so that this thing will still work on Atlantis. Made it a dumb shock stick. But I overcharged it, so don’t touch the zappy end...it would probably stop your heart.”

“And I’m guessing that fancy glove is no good on Atlantis?” Elise asks.

I shake my head. “Even if it was, I wouldn’t have enough food to keep it powered anyway. I’m running on Chicago dog fumes right now. We won’t starve to death in five days, but if we have to fight Grius and his Seraphim on empty stomachs, it will be rough.”

It’s well past midnight on Earth, and I can feel the exhaustion taking hold of me. Elise is nodding off every few moments.

“Let’s get some sleep. We’ll need to be fully rested when we make planet-fall,” I say.

We look at each other, realizing that we are going to sleep together. Well, not
sleep together
, but sleep in the same small space. The only way to sleep is to strap ourselves back into the chairs, and they are not close enough to each other for anything to...spontaneously happen.

“We, uh,” Elise stammers. “Should get some sleep now then, yeah.”

I nod and strap into my chair. I need to keep a clear head and to protect Elise on the hostile planet, I will need to rest. I can’t risk going further with her. Not yet. If only for the calories we’d burn doing it.

“Good night, Ramses,” Elise says, and she kisses my cheek. Then she straps herself into her seat before I can react. My first instinct was to pull her into me and kiss her back, for real. And judging by my hardening cock, I know exactly what
that
would have led to.

“Good night,” I whisper, closing my eyes. I focus on my breathing and not on my cock. I try to count backward from thirty to clear my mind, but sleep takes over before I even finish counting down.

* * *

I
awake
to the beeping computer.

“It must be time,” I say.

“Do you know how to pilot the ship?” Elise asks.

“I
can
,” I say. “And I’m usually pretty good, but I’ve never tried to fly into an invisible planet with no electronics.”

“May I make a suggestion?” the computer asks.

“Yes,” Elise and I both respond in unison.

“I can do the calculations now,” the computer says. “I have all the data stored for our approach to Atlantis. If you leave the entire maneuver to me, I can put you onto an entry course that will not likely burn the ship up and kill you both. I’ll leave you just enough fuel for a few micro adjustments as you begin entering the atmosphere.”

“Go back to the part about not burning up and us dying,” Elise says. “You said
not likely
. How
not likely
are we talking here?”

“Depending on Ramses’s skill as a pilot, between forty and eight-five percent,” the computer says.

Elise widens her eyes at me.

“You think Harmony could do a better job?” I ask, laughing and twitching my ears at her.

She punches my shoulder, but it looks like it just hurts her hand.

“What if you do the whole thing manually?” she asks me.

Before I can answer, the computer interrupts. “Well, Elise, your chances of death would be greatly increased...but at least your fate would be entirely in your own hands. Or in Ramses’s hands, in this case.”

“God!” Elise says. “I
hate
Marauder computers.”

“They can get a bit philosophical,” I admit. “We think it stops them from becoming murderous assholes. Maybe you should make Harmony read some Plato instead of teaching her how to play
I Spy
.”

She goes to hit me again, but looks down at her hand – which I assume is still sore from the previous punch – and decides against it.

“We will go with the forty to eight-five percent chance,” I say.

“If your piloting ability is as good as your father’s, your chance will be much closer to eight-five percent,” the computer says.

I swallow, and try to remain calm. The computer will handle all the engine burns, propelling us onto a course that ideally will plant us right into a shallow entry into Atlantis’s atmosphere. My job at that point will be to keep the nose up so that the heat shield on the bottom of the ship stops the insanely high temperature of atmospheric entry from burning the ship apart. Even on the lowest-tech human craft, this is done with computer assistance, which keeps the craft essentially stable, leaving the pilot to do only minor navigation corrections.

The other possibility is that the computer itself messes up, and we hit the atmosphere at too-steep of an approach, dying instantly. At least then it won’t be my fault. I keep that little nugget of optimism to myself, though.

“Strap yourselves in,” the computer instructs. “This is going to be uncomfortable.”

We both make sure we’re securely fastened in our seats, and then the engines burn. The ship flips all the way around so that we’re now pointing away from the planet, then it burns again, giving us the familiar feeling of being slammed back into our seats again.

There is another jolt, we start shaking, and then we’re flipping back around again.

“Jesus!” Elise curses. “You’re going to make me throw up!”

“Just wait until
I’m
driving,” I say, reaching out and taking her hand.

She looks up at me with a nervous smile, and then she squeezes my hand back. “I really don’t feel like dying today, Ramses. So I’m trusting that you are going to give us an eighty-five percent chance of survival.”

The engines are still jostling us around as the ship makes repeated microbursts and adjustment burns. I can see they are making Elise nervous as hell, so I continue holding her hand in mine and think of something to talk about that will keep her mind off how bad things are getting.

“I was born in Sankt Petersburg,” I say. “Venus’s biggest and most glorious floating city. I was literally born in the shadow of my father...well, technically the giant Marauder statue towering above the palace is just ‘The Marauder Statue,’ but no one can deny it looks just like my father. I don’t have any memories of Sankt Petersburg from those early years. As soon as I could walk, I was sent to live with my aunts – who aren’t really my aunts – Irena and Yulia in one of Venus’s floating rainforests….”

I notice Elise is staring at me, waiting for me to keep talking. I’m definitely succeeding at calming her down, though I notice that the engines have already stopped and that we are only about ten minutes away from me needing to take manual control.

“So the tribe raised me. Of course, my parents visited as often as they could – almost every week – but I grew up almost entirely in the jungle.”

“Don’t the tribespeople walk around naked?” Elise asks.

“Yeah,” I say. “I went from diapers to naked. I didn’t wear underwear until I was fourteen.”

Elise laughs. “Must be difficult to get used to.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Especially during puberty –.”

“Oh my God!” she says, cutting me off. “Are you trying to brag about –-?”

“No,” I say laughing. “I’m not
bragging
. It’s just a fact of Seraphim anatomy –”

“You’re ridiculous, Ramses. You’re supposed to be calming me down, not humble-bragging to me about how big your cock is.”

“Well,” I say, “if I’m bothering with that, it must mean I believe we’re going to make it through.”

“So,” she says, “if we do make it out alive, you want me to know that you have a big cock?”

“It is Seraphim anatomy,” I say. “But you should know that Marauder DNA is dominant, and we definitely measure up to –”

“Okay,” she says, “Got it. We’re not going to die, and you believe it, that’s all I needed to know.”

I grin. “So you’re not scared anymore?”

“I appreciate the effort,” she says. “But if someone as cocky as you thinks he’s going to succeed...it just proves you’re cocky.”

“All right,” I say, “but when I land this baby on Atlantis, you’ll owe me some serious shame debt for saying that.”

“I’m human,” I say. “I don’t believe in shame debt.”

“I do,” I answer, pulling out the manual controls. “So you’ll still owe me.”

“Ah,” the computer says, “I think it’s time I bid farewell to both of you. I will go into stasis so that Atlantis does not kill me. But I have to wonder, if the ship stays on that planet, and I’m in stasis forever, how is that any different than the cold embrace of death itself? Though were I an organic individual, would I ask myself that very same question every night before going to sleep? What if, for example, I go to sleep and never wake up again --?”

“Computer! Stop! Calm down!” I shout. “We’ll try to get the ship off the planet once Sara brings backup,” I say. “And if you stop talking about sleep and death, I promise we’ll try even harder.”

“Deal,” the computer says. “Goodbye! And good luck!”

When the computer shifts into stasis, the advanced screen shuts off, and the outer hull opens up to show a thick window with poor viewing angles. I hold tight to the control stick and look through the window, but there’s still just total blackness.

“What if the planet doesn’t really exist?” Elise says. “Or it’s not really here, or –”

“That’s why we only have an eighty-five percent chance,” I say.

The sound of her voice keeps me calm, even when she’s deathly nervous. Normally I’d feel annoyed that someone was talking to me while I’m trying to pilot, but it doesn’t seem as if Elise can ever annoy me.

Suddenly and without warning, the ship goes from total calm zero-g to violently shaking.

“Is that supposed to happen?” Elise asks, clutching the arms of her chair so tightly that her knuckles turn white.

I look out the window and see the first signs of the heat from our entry – a red glow pulsating across the small window. On my training runs I’d see Venus below, but now I see only empty blackness.