Page 8 of Her Alien Cyborgs (The Drift: Haven Colony #10)

Fyr’enth wasn’t sure what to expect now that they were ready to depart. His only experience with space travel had been in combat simulations and training to familiarize them with troop transports and dropships.

At first, it all seemed the same. The engine noise increased in volume, the deck beneath his feet started to vibrate, and then the ship rose off the hangar deck. If anything, it was smoother than the virtual experience.

Hezza was obviously an experienced pilot because she made it look easy to maneuver in the relatively tight space. He stared at the viewscreen as the massive doors slowly opened, revealing the unending expanse outside.

A shimmer of energy pulsed across the gap.

“What is that?” he asked and pointed at the viewscreen.

“A force field. It allows the hangar bay to stay pressurized even when ships are entering or leaving the area. It takes a lot of power to maintain, so most stations only activate them when the doors are open.

That made sense, though it made his scales tighten to think about the cold and deadly void beyond those doors. It was a clear reminder that freedom came with new dangers.

The three of them stayed silent as they passed through the energy field. Then Kalan exhaled sharply as if he’d been holding his breath. “We’re free,” he said in a voice tinged with awe. “We’re actually free.”

“Hold off on the celebration for a bit longer,” Hezza said. She was focused on her instruments, her jaw set and eyes narrowed.

The seconds stretched out as they waited for the next phase of the plan to kick off.

Fyr’enth tried to enjoy every moment. If things went badly, this might be his only taste of freedom.

“What’s taking so—” Kalan’s question was cut off as a cacophony of noise erupted around them. Alarms screamed, lights flashed, and the viewscreen lit up with dozens of red dots.

“And away we go!” Hezza whooped. “Ship, initiate Rapid Exit Protocol, and turn off those fraxxing alarms!”

He had no idea exactly what that protocol entailed, but apparently it included shutting down the ship’s artificial gravity.

Fyr’enth’s stomach lurched as the ship rolled down and away from its previous course.

It also felt like it was pulling away from him , with only his safety harness keeping his ass in the chair.

He grabbed the straps across his chest and looked over at Hezza. She laughed as she put them into a spin.

She thought this was fun? Their rescuer was crazy and a fraxxing good pilot.

The fleet of nonexistent enemy ships flooded the Gambit’s sensors, which was exactly what they’d hoped for. Barrios’s ships should have the same problem. The sheer number of potential targets made it possible for Hezza to slip away unnoticed.

It was the best plan they had, but it wasn’t without risk. Archer couldn’t be sure it would work on multiple ships at once. The device was a gift from someone Archer had claimed was a better hacker than the “pink-haired princess of chaos.”

He had no idea who that was or how something on board Archer’s ship could affect so many other vessels. They hadn’t had time for questions, and he suspected he wouldn’t have understood the answers anyway. He and Kalan had made the difficult choice to trust Hezza and her companions.

When he’d imagined a future where he was free to make his own decisions, trusting his life to a stranger hadn’t been on the list.

“Ship! More power to the inertial dampeners, or we’re going to need to scrape ourselves off the deck plating with a spatula,” Hezza said. Her smile didn’t waver, but her tone was deadly serious.

He looked at her again, this time seeing beyond her easy smile. Her hair was short and neat at the sides with bangs that swept across her forehead. He’d initially thought her hair was white, but now he saw there were still traces of red and copper in it.

Fine lines showed around her eyes and the corners of her mouth.

How much they showed changed according to her expression.

She was not as thin as some of the female techs he’d seen on the base, but the flight suit she wore made it impossible to judge much more than that.

He thought she was above average height for a human female, but compared to him, she was small.

He watched as she piloted. The ship’s movements were surprisingly agile and easy given it was a freight hauler. At one point, they doubled back toward the station and then dove beneath it, flying so close to the station’s hull he felt like he could reach out and touch it.

The radio was almost as chaotic as the viewscreen with various voices demanding sit-reps and explanations while others tried to provide information that was lost because they talked over each other.

“This is the vaunted might of the Interstellar Armed Forces? ” Kalan sent via their link. “ They can’t even manage basic comm discipline in a crisis .”

“I doubt they sent their best on this mission. Barrios might have the rank of commander, but he seems like the administrator type. I think some of the sims we watched called them desk riders?”

Kalan barked out a sharp laugh before answering. “ Desk jockeys.”

“ Right . My point stands, though. He can’t be a top-tier officer. Archer is. Or he was .”

“ Agreed .”

The babble of voices finally stopped when Barrios spoke. He must have used some kind of override because everyone else went suddenly silent. “This is Commander Barrios. What is happening? Lieutenant Commander Heath, what is the status of the Bright Arrow ?”

A new voice entered the conversation. This one younger and female. “Sir, this is Heath. According to the Arrow’s sensors, there’s an enemy fleet in the area, but we’re not seeing anything on our viewscreens. They’re ghosts, sir. I can’t explain it.”

Hezza chuckled. “I would love to see how Barrios spins this in his next report. Do you think he’ll blame little green men?”

Fyr’enth frowned as he tried to make sense of her question? “I’m not aware of any alien species that fit that description.”

That made her laugh harder. “Sorry. Earth joke. Way back before humans left their original solar system, there were legends about alien visitors. Some of them were about little green men.”

Some of the vids and books he’d enjoyed involved the myths and stories of other cultures.

Mostly human, but some had been Torski and Pheran as well.

He’d wondered why they never let them view anything about Vardarians.

Now he realized it was to ensure they didn’t discover the gaps in their knowledge.

Another minute passed as they raced for open space, putting as much distance as possible between themselves and the other ships. Hezza used the ghost ships as partial cover, flying from one phantom image to another to avoid notice.

Even with the inertial dampeners at maximum, the ride was far from comfortable.

Every change in direction or velocity exerted a noticeable amount of force.

One second he’d be forced deep into his chair, and the next he was floating as the safety straps dug into his chest and shoulders.

The chair itself was not designed to accommodate his wings, so both he and Kalan had draped their wings over the back of their too-small seats.

Once they passed beyond the range of Archer’s light show, Hezza stopped the acrobatics and poured on the speed. She wanted to put as much distance as possible between the Gambit and any pursuers before engaging the FTL engines.

For reasons he didn’t understand, the calculations needed to navigate hyperspace included knowing the ship’s precise position the moment the engines activated.

If they were out of position by so much as a meter, they could pass too close to a star and be torn apart by gravitational forces.

Hezza explained the key points as they sped toward the coordinates chosen by the ship’s AI.

“Please begin deceleration. Failure to do so will result in our overshooting the coordinates.”

Hezza grunted in annoyance. “I don’t tell you how to do your job. You don’t tell me how to do mine.”

“You are incapable of performing the calculations required to carry out my function,” the AI replied. Its tone remained neutral, but there might have been a hint of sass in the response.

“That’s beside the point.” Despite her complaints, Hezza toggled the thrusters near the front of the ship in order to reduce its velocity.

“Ideally we’d come to a full stop before spinning up the faster-than-light drive, but these are not ideal circumstances.

” She patted the console in front of her.

“The AI doesn’t have much of a personality, but it makes up for it with raw computing power.

We’ll be fine. I’ve done this…” She chuckled. “More often than I care to admit.”

“You’ve rescued research subjects like us before?” Fyr’enth asked.

“Hells no. This is a first. I meant that in my line of work, it’s sometimes necessary to get gone in a hurry.”

“I thought you were a freighter pilot? Why would that require you to make escapes like this?” Kalan asked with open curiosity.

She turned to flash them both a wicked smile. “I said I flew cargo. Truth is, a lot of what I carry isn’t exactly legal.” She waggled one hand back and forth. “Not illegal, either. Usually. Most of my work is somewhere in the murky gray area.”

“You’re a smuggler,” Fyr’enth said without judgment. Everything she and the others had done to get them away from the IAF probably fell somewhere in that same gray area. All that mattered to him was that she had risked herself for them. It was more than anyone else had ever done.

“I am.” She shrugged and faced forward again. “It pays the bills.”

“And it saved our lives,” he told her. Instinctively, he placed his hand on her shoulder.

She leaned into his touch, and that small interaction filled him with a deep longing that eclipsed the lust he’d felt since the moment they’d met.

He wanted her, yes. But he wanted more , even if he didn’t understand what that meant.

“This female…” Kalan didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to.

“She has the heart of a warrior,” Fyr’enth sent back.

Kalan’s reply carried a tinge of amusement. “Her heart isn’t what concerns me. The life she lives, the way she flies. Do you think she’s sane?”

He turned to smile at his brother . “I hope not. I, for one, do not wish to be mated to some soft, gentle female who could never understand who and what we are.”

It took several long seconds for Kalan to reply, and when he did, his words were uncharacteristically measured and thoughtful. “ Do you really believe she is our mate? ”

“ Maybe. How else do you explain what is happening to us? She believes it, and her physical reactions to us cannot be denied. I can smell her desire .”

“ So can I,” Kalan agreed. “ And it’s testing my will far beyond anything they did to us back on Orio .”

“ Same for me. I have never craved a female like this before. My cock aches. My scales are tight and tingle in the strangest way. I want to hold her in my arms, bury my head in her hair, and drink in her scent. ”

“ Me too, brother. And so much more than that. Do you think she will say our names when we make her come? I would like that .”

A mental image of that scene made his cock twitch and his balls tighten. He’d like that too. Very much.

The seconds ticked by too slowly, but eventually they made it to their destination. Hezza pulsed the thrusters again, slowing them down as much as she could.

“Ship, activate the FTL drive when ready,” Hezza ordered.

“Activating.”

He’d experienced this many times in simulations, but the transition to light speed still caught him by surprise. Total darkness encompassed the ship. In the lightless void, there were no visual references at all, which made it impossible to judge their speed or even tell if they were moving.

“Weird, isn’t it?” Hezza said. “I know we’re moving faster than light right now, but I bet your senses insist we’re stationary.”

“It is unsettling. In training sims, it always felt like we were in motion.”

“They probably do that to make it feel more realistic, even though it’s not accurate.”

Hezza glanced over the instruments and then exhaled deeply.

“No one followed us in. That’s good. We’ll have to drop back into normal space, change course, and then jump again a few times over the next twenty hours or so.

That should make it difficult for them to follow our trail.

They’ll probably find us eventually, but I won’t make it easy for them. ”

Now that they were safe, she relaxed. Not by much but enough for her mask to slip.

He saw the signs of stress and fatigue. Her voice was softer now, and the lines around her eyes seemed more defined.

The adrenaline must be wearing off. His nanotech kept his body’s chemicals carefully balanced to avoid the kind of crash Hezza was experiencing.

“Do you need to rest?” he asked.

She shot him a look that made him wince. Apparently, he’d said the wrong thing.

“I do not need a nap. I’m not that old.”

“Why is your age relevant? We have all been under stress. Now that the threat level has lowered, your body is purging itself of the chemicals that kept your senses elevated. We have nanotech to manage that sort of thing. You do not.”

“Ah.” Her expression softened. “Sorry. I thought you were implying…” She trailed off and shook her head. “Never mind. I was wrong, and I apologize. It has been a long fraxxing day.”

Her words stunned him into silence. No one had ever apologized to him before. He stared at her. She stared back, not with judgment but with understanding. It made him feel seen in a way he’d never experienced. Like he was more than an object to be used. Like he mattered .

Eventually, Hezza undid the fastenings on her chair and got to her feet. “I think it’s time I showed you two to your new quarters. Ship, run continuous sensor sweeps and inform me if anything, including a fleck of space dust, appears somewhere it should not be.”

“Affirmative,” the AI responded.

“And now I’ll give you the grand tour. It won’t take long.

Most of the Gambit’s interior is dedicated to cargo space.

” She eyed them for a moment before nodding to herself.

“Since I don’t have much cargo at the moment, it should give you both somewhere to stretch your wings and fly.

I bet that’s not something they let you do very often. ”

“It was not,” Kalan said. “Thank you. That would be…” He paused before finishing his sentence. “Nice.”

Hezza laughed and raised both hands, palms out. “Don’t start saying things like that. I have a reputation to protect. I’m a veteran of the void with a cold heart and a bad attitude.”

Then she winked at them. “If you think otherwise, kindly keep it to yourselves.”