Rocky (Tales of the Were) (17 page)

by

Bianca D’Arc

© 2012 Bianca D’Arc. All Rights Reserved.

Chapter One

She
saw the incoming fire too late to save her ship. The one-man fighter was going down, and if she didn’t pop her canopy in the next five milliseconds, she was going with it.

Lisbet realized she had no choice. Hitting the
CATASTROPHIC FAILURE
button, she checked herself out of her ride split seconds before it blew into a million little weightless bits. Out in the nothingness of space near the galactic Rim, she was in no man’s land where rescue was hard to come by. She had either a long wait or a slow death to look forward to in the next few hours.

The enemy jits had won this battle, though hopefully
not the war. Skirmishes on the Rim had escalated in recent years as the jit’suku empire looked for ways to gain a foothold in the Milky Way galaxy. The expansion from their home galaxy was fueled by the comparative ease of travel via an inconvenient wormhole and several jumpoints that had been created before humans had realized how the jit’suku truly viewed the human race.

Inferior. That’s what the jits thought of humans. Inferior in every way to their war-mongering race. Though they looked very human in appearance – if built on a bit larg
er scale than most humans – jit’suku society was one that most humans had a hard time understanding.

They prized warriors and seemed to scoff at diplomats or anyone who wanted to negotiate peaceful coexistence. The only thing the jits understood was conquest, it seemed.

Which was why they’d been fighting so long and so hard out here, on the Rim of the Milky Way galaxy. Lisbet was just the latest in a nearly endless rotation of human fighter pilots who had drawn the dreaded, but vital, duty of patrolling the Rim.

Vast reaches of emptiness between nearly lawless stations, dangerous jumpoints, and the occasional star system, Rim duty was enough to drive anyone crazy. But she welcomed the emptiness of space and the loneliness of her own thoughts after this humiliation.

She’d been on this patrol for over a week with nothing to report. Then this.

A jit’suku battle cruiser had appeared as if from out of nowhere, and blasted her before she could even get a message out. He’d been lying in wait behind an asteroid. Lisbet had known to be cautious, but honestly, her thoughts had been elsewhere. As soon as she spotted the giant ship lumbering out from behind cover of the asteroid, it had already been too late. Her signals bounced back – jammed. A moment later, a blanket of weapons fire appeared on her screens – sent the distance between the two ships in all her possible trajectories. She was blown already, and she knew it.

Popping her canopy and stranding herself in the middle of nowhere in the emergency pod had been her only choice. Not a great one, but there’d been no other way to get clear of all the incoming fire. The bastard giving orders on that battle cruiser hadn’t been taking any chances that she’d get clear and report back. He’d thrown everything but the kitchen sink at her and she hadn’t stood a chance.

“Human, this is
Captain Fedroval of the battle cruiser
Fedroval’s Legacy
. Warrior to warrior, I give you the choice. Would you prefer the fast death of missile fire or the slow death of suffocation when your air runs out?”

For a moment,
Lisbet thought of ignoring the short-range communication from the cruiser. He was still blocking her long-range transmitter, but he’d allowed her enough bandwidth to broadcast to his ship. Big of him. Damned jit’suku bastard.

“How do you know I’m not the advance scout of a much larger force? Could be my battalion is on my heels and will pick me up after they blow you to kingdom come.” Oh, how she wished that were true. She’d get a lot of satisfaction right now at seeing the jit’suku ship blown into a million pieces.

There was a slight delay in the answer she’d expected would come back right away. He probably knew she was bluffing. If he’d been hiding out behind that asteroid for any length of time, he had to know hers was merely a patrol craft on a regular route.

“Who is this? What is your name, rank and gender?”

He sounded mad now, for some reason she couldn’t imagine. And why would he ask her gender? That seemed odd in the extreme. But she’d play along. She’d be alone out here for a long while – if he let her live after this encounter – and she was going to have a lot of time, alone with her thoughts, before her air ran out. Might as well talk to someone while she had company, even if he was a damned jit.

“
Lieutenant Lisbet Duncan of Earth. And I’m female, not that it should matter to you. I’m a qualified pilot who graduated top of my class from pilot training.”

While there had always been a lot more males drawn to military life than females, Lisbet wasn’t too much of an oddity. Many women had the natural skills needed to fly shuttles and other spacecraft. She was unique in that she’d requested fighter duty. She liked shooting at things and would’ve tried for a gunner position on one of the big battleships if she hadn’t qualified as a pilot.

“Prepare for retrieval.” The order was brusque and his harsh voice sounded even angrier.

“Now just wait a damn minute!”

A moment later she saw two small craft launch from the battleship and head straight for her. The bastards were going to pick up her pod. She was going to be a prisoner of war.

Dammit!

Although… it was probably better than dying alone in the vastness of space. At least if they picked her up, she might have a chance to do some damage to them before she died. She didn’t like the idea of being tortured, but she’d trained for it, like all the other pilots, and thought she was mostly prepared. She didn’t know much anyway. She wasn’t privy to any battle strategies or troop deployment information. She only knew her current mission and those she’d been on previously.  Not much of value to the jit’suku empire.

Sure enough, the two craft flanked her and deployed sturdy microfilament netting that encompassed her pod. As soon as she was secure, they flew her back toward the cruiser. The ship was even larger than she’d thought. It had the latest in jit technology, from what she could see of its outboard arrays. This was no battered old warhorse. This ship was battle ready and gleaming, though she could see a few spots where repairs had been made after engagements with human forces, no doubt.

The two patrol craft deposited her inside a gleaming hangar bay, bumping her only once as they set her down. The nets retracted and they parked on either side of her ship. She waited patiently inside her pod, gathering what little information she could. Her instruments told her the hangar bay was pressurized with a breathable atmosphere, and she saw big jit’suku men working on various craft parked nearby without breathing gear.

The hangar bay had a giant force field at one end, keeping the air in. Nice. On human battleships, the hangar bays were kept at zero atmosphere. Pilots loaded into the canopies above and were dropped down and secured to the fuselages below via a small chamber that was sealed and then evacuated of its precious air before opening to the hangar deck below.

The pilots who had caught her pod climbed out of their cockpits and moved closer to investigate. One made a sign for her to pop her lid and she shook her head, refusing. They went on like this for a few minutes, arguing via sign language through the window until suddenly everyone on the flight deck jumped to attention.

At the far end of the long deck, Lisbet could see a giant of a man – even among the very large jit’suku warriors – coming toward her at a fast pace. He looked absolutely furious. And handsome.

Damn. Why did she have to notice how handsome he was? She should be completely immune to men after what she’d been through. But this guy – this angry guy – flipped her switches in all the right ways.

He grabbed a piece of equipment as he went, nearly tearing it out of a tech’s hands. It had to be magnetic because it clamped onto her canopy the moment he touched the device to her hull. He held something on a wire up to his mouth and suddenly his voice boomed through her internal speakers.

“Stop playing games and come out of there now or I’ll have you cut out.”

Lisbet sighed. She’d have to open the hatch sooner or later. She admitted, if only to herself, that she was scared. These jit’suku were all massive and everyone she could see so far was male. She had no idea what they had in mind for her, but she wasn’t looking forward to finding out. Still, she couldn’t hide in here forever. The time had come to take her punishment. Whatever that might entail.

Releasing the hatch, the canopy popped with a hiss of equalizing air. Whirring gears indicated the hatch was rolling up and back the way it had been designed to do. As it cleared, she got her first really good look at the glowering man with the captain’s insignia on his uniform.

Oh, boy. The captain himself had come down to get her. No wonder the crew had all jumped at his entrance. Lisbet wondered what she’d done to rate the captain’s attention.

Pushing herself out of the seat, she stood within the canopy. She should have been taller than anyone on the deck from where she was, but she hadn’t counted on these giant jit’suku.

The captain’s eyes met hers and time stood still for a breathless moment.

His eyes were dark. The dark of space with a hint of golden brown that made them somehow warm. His molten gaze would have been inviting in another setting. As it was, she could see the flare of gold in his gaze as his expression tightened.

He held out one impatient hand and she took it before she could think better of it. He assisted her in the big step over the canopy lip and down onto the deck of the cruiser. She was truly in enemy territory now. Goddess help her.

Maiden Flight

by

Bianca D’Arc
Copyright 2006 Bianca D'Arc. All Rights Reserved.

C
hatper One

Belora tracked the stag through the forest. Carefully chosen for this hunt, the stag was older, past the prime of his life, and would feed her small family of two for more than a month if she and her mother used it wisely. On silent feet, she followed him down to the water, a small trickle of stream that fed into the huge lake beyond.

Taking careful aim with her bow, Belora offered up a silent prayer of hope and thanks to the Mother of All and to the spirit of the stag that would give its life so that she and her mother could live. She loosed the arrow, watching it sail home to her target, embedding itself deep in the stag’s heart. Her aim was true.

As expected, the stag ran off, pumping away the last of its life in a desperate attempt to escape. She followed, saddened by the poor creature’s flight but knowing it must be so. The old stag ran into a clearing, flailing wildly. He was nearing his end, she knew, and again she prayed to the Mother of All that it would be swift.

The stag faltered in its running stride, a shadow seeming to pass over from above. A moment later, the stag was gone, clasped tightly in the talons of a magnificent dragon winging away toward the far end of the small clearing.

Belora took off as fast as her tired feet would carry her, following the dragon who had stolen her prize.

Coming out of his swooping dive, the dragon pinned the stag's quivering body between the long talons of his right foreleg. He’d made a clean kill, stabbing the beast through the heart with his sharp-edged digit even before lifting it into the air. It struggled for a few moments more, then lay dead in his grasp. The dragon rejoiced in the skillful kill, chortling smoke into the air above him.

He came to a neat landing at the far end of the small clearing and dropped the dead stag to the ground with satisfaction. That was when he noticed the little stick protruding from the other side of the beast. It was an arrow. Drat.

"Oh no, you don't!"

The irate, high pitched human voice made the dragon shift his gaze upward to look quizzically at the small female now facing him with her hands perched in tight fists on her hips. A
longbow was slung over her shoulder.

"I shot that stag well
before you swooped down and picked him up. He's my kill. What's more, he will feed me and my mother for a month or more. For you, he's just a snack! You leave him be. He’s mine."

She shook with indignant anger and it was truly a sight to behold. Luminous green eyes sparkled in her pretty, flushed face. She seemed to have no fear of him, mighty dragon that he was, with blood on his talons and fire in his belly. She clearly had courage, and it impressed him. Few humans, much less small females, dared to deal with dragons directly.

He could feel her anger, and a rudimentary channel of thought opened between her mind and his. She was one of the rare humans then, who could communicate with his kind. This intrigued him even more, and one thought kept running through his mind—Gareth had to see this.