Page 24 of Her Alien Cyborgs (The Drift: Haven Colony #10)

The fun didn’t last long. Hezza knew they were screwed before they left the planet’s gravity well. The moon’s orbit had it on the same side of Taza Four as the approaching IAF ship, and by happenstance, its rotation also had it facing toward the Falcon .

The ship chasing them was already close enough for a target lock, and no amount of fancy flying would change that.

“We need a new plan,” she said before explaining the problem. Then she turned to look back at them, her stomach tied in knots and her throat thick with fear. She could not and would not lose them.

“Any suggestions?”

“That female is from the Bright Arrow , which means she’s been after us since the beginning,” Fyr’enth said.

“And despite all the course changes and tricks you pulled, we never lost them,” Kalan said.

Fyr’enth finished the thought. “Which means they’re tracking us.”

She’d come to the same conclusion. “Someone on the Bright Arrow slapped a tracker on the Gambit while I was parked on their flight deck. Those fraxxing sneaky sneaks!”

“Sneaky sneaks?” Kalan chortled. “That’s the best you can do?”

“I’m busy trying to think of a way out of this,” she protested. “I’ll come up with something better before we tell anyone this story. If we live that long.”

“We’re not dying today.” Kalan’s tone was raw and edged in defiance.

“No, we’re not.”

While they talked, she continued to fly them away from the incoming ship. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it bought them more time to come up with something else.

After three frantic minutes of brainstorming, they had only one idea. It was horrible, dangerous, and desperate, but it was the only shot they had.

“You’re sure you can do this?” she asked them for the third time.

Kalan bared his teeth in frustration at her question. “Yes. We spent hours in the sims learning now to spacewalk. Will it be the same doing it for real? No, but it will be close enough.”

She’d muted the AI for this conversation. She didn’t need tactical updates or another reminder that they were being hailed by the Falcon .

Sending the males she loved into the void in badly fitting suits that could barely accommodate their wings felt like the wrong call to make, but none of them had any choice.

“Do it.” She undid her safety harness and stood up so she could face them both. “One of you will need to stay inside and manage the tether. Do not leave the fraxxing airlock until the ship’s AI has found the tracker. No sense in risking yourselves until we know where the bastards hid it.”

“We’ll suit up and stand by.” Fyr’enth unstrapped, stood, and pulled her into his arms for a sizzling kiss that made her wish they could just go to bed instead of dealing with this mess.

“You do that,” she held him longer than she should have before slipping past him to do the same to Kalan. “And don’t you dare get yourself hurt. Do you hear me? I’m tired of facing the universe on my own. If I can’t do it with you at my side, I’m not doing it at all.”

Kalan hugged her so hard she heard her ribs creak. “We’re not going anywhere without you. Not even into whatever lies on the far side of death.”

“I’m holding you to that.”

When she finally let them go, she waited until they were out of sight before she allowed a few tears to fall. She hadn’t felt like this since she’d first held her tiny daughter in her arms and realized that she would die before letting anything happen to her.

Anya had been the center of her universe once. She still was in some ways, despite being a grown woman with a life and mates of her own. What she felt for Kalan and Fyr’enth was different but also the same. They were her everything, and she wasn’t giving them up to anyone.

She’d die first.

With that upbeat thought at the front of her mind, she sat down and buckled in. Then she got to work.

The Falcon was still far enough away that they shouldn’t be able to intercept her communications. Especially not if she used a tight beam to relay the message directly to her intended recipient.

The downside? The receiver would be easy to identify. Or they would be, if Flek wasn’t good at his other profession.

“Ship, you’re off mute. Please locate one of Flek’s data buoys. You have the list of codes and transponder keys in your database. I need one close enough to hit with a tight beam communication, and I need you to find it fast.”

“Scanning now.”

While the AI did its thing, she composed a quick letter summarizing the situation and asking Flek to grant her another favor. If he came through, she’d owe him more than she was comfortable with, but it would be worth it.

She read through it once, corrected a couple of misspelled words, and called it good enough. “Hey, ship? When you find the buoy, send the message I just encrypted and saved to memory.”

“Confirmed.”

“Alright. Then it’s time to start the show.” She took a deep breath and composed her features into what she thought of as “serious captain mode.”

“Ship, is the Falcon still hailing us?”

“They are.”

“Then open the channel. It’s time Lieutenant Commander Heath and I had a chat.”

The officer in charge wasted no time with pleasantries. Not even a hello. Her voice came through even before the visuals were established. “Who am I speaking with?”

Since the entire point of this conversation was to stall for time, Hezza didn’t answer until saw the other woman’s face on her screen.

She was young for her rank, which immediately made Hezza wonder if talent had earned her the promotion or something else.

The military claimed it was immune to nepotism and bribes from the corporations.

She’d be more likely to believe them if they claimed the heart of every star was filled with chocolate.

“This is Captain Bratt of the Desperate Gambit . I don’t think we met while I was traveling on the Arrow . What can I do for you, Lieutenant Commander?”

Heath’s ice-blue eyes narrowed, and Hezza could swear she saw one eye twitch slightly. Good. A high-strung young officer looking to make a name for themselves was something she could work with.

“Captain Bratt. You are under arrest for the illegal transport of restricted alien weapons and the attempted sabotage of an Interstellar Armed Forces vessel. I am ordering you to shut down your engines and prepare to be boarded. Any resistance will be met with lethal force. Do you understand?”

Hezza had to repress the urge to laugh out loud. Was the lieutenant commander’s bun so tight it had cut off blood flow to her brain? Sabotage? Alien weapons? Was that the best they could come up with on the long flight here?

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’ve done nothing to any IAF vessel.” That much was true. Archer was the one who’d somehow managed to convince the entire task force they were under attack.

“Are you refusing to comply?” Heath demanded.

“I’m not refusing anything. I’m just stating my innocence for the record. I assume you are recording this.”

She flicked her gaze to the small screen that showed an outline of the Gambit and a progress bar. The scans were underway, but so far there was no sign of the fraxxing tracker.

Hezza held up her hands. “Look. I’m willing to let you come aboard so we can have this discussion face-to-face.

I’m not willing to shut down my engines this close to Taza Four.

If we drift too close, gravity is going to make this difficult for both of us.

Plus, if I’m adrift without engine power, traffic control will designate me as a hazard.

That comes with a bunch of paperwork I don’t think you want to deal with. ”

“No one else is out here,” Heath protested.

Hezza shrugged and tried to look innocent. “Rules are rules.”

Heath pointed to someone off screen and asked. “Is she right?”

Hezza scoffed at the woman’s confusion. Of course she was right. That was the whole reason she’d chosen this flight path.

A male voice confirmed what she already knew, and Heath’s expression turned sour. “Get yourself into a stable orbit, Captain. Then my team is coming aboard to secure you and the cargo you stole.”

Hezza cocked her head to one side and tried to look puzzled instead of pissed off. “What stolen cargo?”

“The weapons,” Heath hissed, her eyes suddenly filled with a vicious coldness Hezza did not like at all. “You’re transporting restricted weapons that belong to the IAF.”

That was it . “I’m doing no such thing. If by weapons you’re referring to the two Vardarians on board the Gambit , they are living beings free to make their own choices. The last time I checked, the IAF didn’t sanction slavery. Has that changed?”

To her credit, Heath wasn’t stupid. She realized her error and backpedaled immediately.

“Of course not. But they are dangerous, and it’s our stance that they need to be put into protective custody for the time being.”

She was about to let loose with another volley of snark when the screen with the progress bar flashed green. A message appeared where the progress bar had been.

“Unknown device located on panel JX17-9.”

Yes!

According to the scan, the tracker was on the starboard side of the ship near the midsection.

Fortunately, her mates were already on the starboard side airlock.

A quick tap of her fingers called up another view.

This one showed Fyr’enth and Kalan in the airlock.

Or it should have. Instead, all she saw was a lone figure spooling out a tether line.

That would be Fyr’enth. Which meant Kalan was already on his way.

Be safe, she thought and wished she had their ability to communicate through internal channels. It was possible but only if she took the nanotech treatment. It was one more reason to add to the growing list.

Everything she’d done after her mates left the cockpit was part of the plan. Hezza was the distraction, and like every street magician or hustler she’d ever met, while she drew the mark’s attention, the real work was happening somewhere else.

“Sorry for the delay, I was getting my ship repositioned so I can move it into a high orbit.” What she’d actually done was ensure the starboard side of the ship remained out of the Falcon’s line of sight while setting them up for a fast exit.

Heath’s eyes narrowed even further. “Where are your Vardarian guests?” She uttered the last word with distaste.

Hezza gestured around the small cockpit. “My ship is not large. If I tried to cram my crew into this tiny space, I wouldn’t be able to fly the ship.”

“That is not an answer. If you’re trying to get them off your ship…”

“To go where?” Hezza asked. “It’s not like I’m going to shove them out an airlock and hope they find someone else to give them a ride.”

She decided it was time to change tactics. “They’re struggling to deal with everything that’s happened. Your approach isn’t helping the situation. Why can’t you show a little empathy?”

The woman’s response sent a chill down Hezza’s spine. Her expression hardened, not from anger but from something worse—hatred. “I will not feel sorry for a machine. If you’re not in orbit in five minutes, I will give the command to fire on you. Heath out.”

The screen went blank.

“ Fraxx you, too,” Hezza muttered as she pulsed the thrusters in the general direction they were supposed to go. When it was time to get gone, she’d need every bit of acceleration she could get.

With time running out and no way to contact her mates, she was left drumming her fingers on the console as she watched Fyr’enth in the airlock. At least he was pulling the tether in, which meant Kalan was on his way back.

She was about to break radio silence and risk being overheard just to get a status update when Kalan flew through the open airlock.

Fyr’enth dropped the tether and slammed his hand down on the “seal hatch” button.

They both raised their hands and shook them at the camera so hard they looked like oversized Jeskyrans on a ja’kreesh bender.

She got the message. Mission accomplished.

“Ship, increase the inertial damper field in airlock one and give me full power to the standard engines with no safety checks. Once we’re clear, we’ll transition to hyperspace.”

She’d already had the AI make the calculations on the best place to make the jump based on a specific set of criteria she’d given it.

Every maneuver since then had been intended to put them on the best trajectory to reach that point in one piece.

The orbital path she’d chosen put them in the Falcon ’s line of sight, but only by a few degrees.

Once she throttled up, they’d vanish behind the curve of the planet in under twenty seconds.

Heath really wasn’t very good at her job. She hadn’t seen what Hezza was up to, and now it was too late to stop her.

Well, it was almost too late. And that almost made the next twenty seconds feel like an eternity.

She considered hailing the Falcon to say goodbye, but rejected the idea. Taunting an enemy with more guns than you was never a good idea.

Instead, she throttled up the engines and flew like her life depended on it… because it did.