Page 3 of Kazmyr: Molten for Her (Consumed by the Alien Heat #2)
KAZMYR
The Heartforge bucked under my palms as Jenna's whispered "yes" threaded into the Fire-Seal, my ship answering like a starving beast. Heat surged through the console, ember-veins throbbing in perfect sync with the scars etched across my skin.
The vessel knew her now… recognized her essence, and that terrified me more than the Voraxx signature pinging against our hull.
My people had legends about ships choosing their captains.
Never about ships choosing their captain's mate.
"What the hell was that?" Jenna's voice cracked, eyes wide as the console beneath her fingers pulsed with amber light. The ship's response to her touch sent an unwelcome surge of pride through my chest.
I moved behind her, reaching around to secure the safety harness across her chest. Her breath hitched at the proximity of my heat, the familiar flinch of a fire-survivor confronted with living flame. The scent of her skin, clean sweat and that strange Earth soap, flooded my senses.
"Heartforge recognized you as... authorized." Not the full truth, but we had no time for cultural translations about ship-bonds and fire-mates.
Jenna glared like a cornered spark, her jawline tight with defiance despite the fear rippling beneath her surface. "That's not an answer."
Another ping rattled the hull, sharper this time. My ember marks flared in response, the fissures along my forearms brightening as if sensing danger. The Voraxx signature was unmistakable… too deliberate to be random bandits, too small to be main fleet.
"Hunting party." I guided her fingers to the proper contact points on the navigation panel. "Likely hired. Six ships. Light armament, heavy engines."
"For me?" Her voice held no self-pity, just tactical assessment that resonated with the warrior in me.
I killed the main engines with a sharp gesture, the ship's power cycling down to minimal output. Our heat signature would bleed into space more slowly this way, leaving a confusing trail of thermal echoes.
"For us. An unbound match is valuable to certain interests." The words tasted ashen in my mouth. I should have anticipated this. The Vorthar-Terran treaty was too new, too fragile, and too profitable for those who trafficked in genetic rarities.
The asteroid field loomed ahead, a churning mass of carbon and silicate behemoths.
Each rock turned lazy cartwheels that could pulp my ship in a heartbeat…
a calculated risk better than certain capture.
I angled us toward the field, feeling the Heartforge's reluctance through the bond-connection in my palms.
"You're taking us in there?" Jenna's eyes tracked the massive rocks, her body tensing as understanding dawned. "That's suicide."
"So is capture by Voraxx." I didn't elaborate on what happened to pairs caught before official bonding registration. The Intergalactic Dating Agency claimed an inability to track missing matches. Convenient blindness that benefited those with credits to spend on genetic rarities.
The first asteroid rolled past our port side, close enough that its gravitational pull tugged at the ship's stabilizers. Jenna fumbled with the sensor array, fingers sliding across unfamiliar controls. The panel flickered erratically, responding to her erratic pulse rather than deliberate commands.
I covered her hand with mine, ignoring the jolt that passed between us. "Steady your breath. The ship feels your panic."
"The ship feels—" She broke off as the console stabilized, the chaotic readings smoothing into legible patterns. "Great, now even the spaceship knows I’m freaking out. Is it going to text my therapist too?"
"It can't contact humans on Earth on your behalf, no.
" I guided our joined hands across the thermal imaging display, revealing a maze of paths through the asteroid field.
The Heartforge hummed beneath us, settling into a balanced rhythm I'd never felt before, a duet rather than my solo command.
"The Heartforge is... responsive to compatible energies. "
Her free hand lifted, hesitating midair before brushing the cooling beads at my wrist. The touch sent a cascade of reactions through my system… marks brightening, core temperature spiking, the ship responding with a harmonious pulse that stabilized our trajectory between two tumbling rocks.
"Like that?" Curiosity edged past her fear, the scientist in her cataloging the reaction.
I nodded, not trusting my voice as the Heartforge calibrated to our combined touch. The sensation was dangerously intimate. My ship had never responded to anyone but me. Certainly, it never adapted its systems to accommodate another's bioenergy.
The proximity scanner chirped a high-pitched warning.
A micro-drone blinked on the tactical display…
a metallic mosquito designed to lock onto thermal signatures and report positions back to its masters.
The Voraxx favored these devices, programming them to follow heat trails like the predators they were.
"We're being tracked." Jenna's voice remained level, her gaze fixed on the tiny blip circling our aft shields.
I dumped energy into the hull, feeling the familiar burning sensation as my connection to the ship deepened. The ember-lines across the Heartforge's exterior brightened like rivers of molten stone, buying us precious seconds of camouflage against the larger heat signatures of the asteroids.
"Steady," I rumbled as the ship shuddered, responding to both my deliberate energy transfer and the involuntary flare of my heat phase beginning to build. The cooling beads at my wrists dimmed as they absorbed excess temperature, a temporary measure at best.
Jenna's jaw set, determination replacing fear as sweat beaded at her hairline. She tracked the navigational display with unexpected competence, fingers dancing across the controls with increasing confidence. "Thirty degrees starboard, narrow gap but cleaner exit."
Her assessment matched what I felt through the ship's sensors… a thread-the-needle maneuver that required perfect timing.
Collision klaxons screamed as we angled toward the gap, proximity warnings flashing angry crimson across the displays.
"Fuck!" Jenna's curse echoed my own thoughts as a smaller asteroid fragment spun toward our path. Then she surprised me, hands steady as she called out adjustments. "It feels like we're being hunted by a cosmic Roomba with murder issues. Five degrees down-angle."
I executed her suggestion without hesitation, feeling the Heartforge respond with unusual precision. The fragment scraped our dorsal shielding, sending a shower of sparks across the viewscreen, but we slipped through the gap with room to spare.
"You've done this before." Not a question.
"It's not that different." A bitter smile twisted her lips. "Fire inspector. I navigate burning buildings for a living."
The irony wasn't lost on me… A woman who survived flames now bound to a man composed of them. The universe had a cruel sense of humor.
The drone's signal strengthened, its tiny engines pushing it to match our erratic course.
I slewed us behind a tumbling slab of carbon-rich rock, killing all non-essential systems and ghosting our thermal signature.
My Heat Phase nibbled up my spine like hungry teeth, the familiar pressure building at the base of my skull.
Soon I would need to vent excess energy or risk damaging the ship's delicate systems.
Jenna felt it. Her free hand brushed my forearm where the ember marks pulsed most visibly. "You're burning up."
The ship sighed at her touch, systems stabilizing as if soothed. My temperature dropped three degrees, not enough to matter but enough to notice. Impossible. The cooling beads were designed to be the only external method of regulation.
"The ship—" I began, then broke off as the tactical display lit with multiple contacts. The drone had called its masters, and they had answered.
We slingshotted around the carbon slab, grazing against space-gravel that sparked like fallen stars.
Each impact transferred kinetic energy to our shields, bleeding into my connection with the ship.
Pain flared along my marks, but I channeled it into the engines, using the excess heat to boost our thrust.
Jenna's eyes widened as she watched the marks brighten. "You're using your own body heat to power the ship."
"The Heartforge and I are... connected." An inadequate explanation for a bond forged in catastrophe, when my flesh had merged with the ship's systems to contain a reactor breach. The price of heroism… becoming neither fully man nor machine, but something uncomfortably between.
We bled into the shadow of a carbon mountain, a planetoid-sized asteroid that offered momentary shelter from pursuit.
The drone's ping sharpened, more insistent now.
Its reinforcements flexed on the edge of sensor range—six ships, just as I'd predicted, spreading into a search pattern that would flush us from cover within minutes.
I tasted iron and choice, the metallic tang of decisions with no good outcomes. My lungs burned as I fed the reactor with deliberate pulses of heat, whispering to the ship in the ancient language of my people. Words of courage and fire, of defiance and protection.
The Heartforge fluttered beneath my touch, then steadied…
alive, listening, hungry for harmony. Its systems recalibrated, adjusting tolerances I'd never been able to fine-tune alone.
With Jenna aboard, the ship operated at almost twenty percent greater efficiency.
A coincidence that couldn't be a coincidence.
"Why are they after me?" she asked, voice thin but unbroken. Her fingers hadn't left the console, maintaining contact as if instinctively understanding the ship's need for connection.
"Because unbound mates sell," I answered, hating the truth but respecting her enough to speak it. "The chemical markers of compatibility are valuable to certain research facilities. And the Intergalactic Dating Agency has... gaps in its ethics protocols."
Her mouth tightened, something dark and knowing passing behind her eyes. "The agency that supposedly matched us."
"Yes."
The drone's pulse quickened, its signal strengthening as it locked onto our position. We had minutes, perhaps less, before the hunting party converged.
I scanned the tactical display, seeking any advantage in the asteroid field's chaotic pattern.
Only one option presented itself. A magma-vent cavern yawning in the side of the carbon mountain, its interior temperatures high enough to fry standard sensors.
For a normal ship, suicide. For the Heartforge, piloted by a man whose blood ran with liquid fire. .. merely dangerous.
"You're not seriously considering going in there." Jenna had followed my gaze to the cavern's heat signature, pulsing angry red on the thermal imaging.
"The drone can't follow us inside. Its components will melt." I adjusted our course, feeling the Heartforge respond with unusual eagerness. "The hunters will assume we've found another exit or hidden ourselves elsewhere."
"And if there isn't another exit?"
I met her eyes, seeing the calculation there. Not just fear, a tactical assessment, weighing risks against certainty.
"Then we make one."
Her fingers tightened on the console, knuckles whitening. "With what? More of your... whatever this is?" She gestured at my ember marks, now pulsing visibly through my cooling suit.
"If necessary." I wouldn't lie to her. The energy required would push me far beyond safe limits, but the alternative was capture. "The ship can protect you from most of the heat."
"Most of it." Her voice held a bitter note of recognition. "And what happens to you if you overload yourself?"
The question surprised me. Her concern, however pragmatic, was unexpected.
"Uncertain." I redirected power to the forward shields, preparing for the cavern's intense heat. "My condition is... unique."
The drone's signal intensified as we broke cover, abandoning stealth for speed. The hunting ships accelerated in response, their engines flaring bright against the darkness of space.
"Your condition being what, spontaneous combustion?" Despite everything, a hint of that dry Earth humor colored her words.
"Essentially." I set our course directly for the magma vent's gaping maw, feeling the Heartforge tremble with anticipation. Heat called to heat, fire to fire. "The cooling beads suppress excess energy. Without them—"
"You go boom." She finished my sentence with grim understanding. Her fingers slid across the console to the environmental controls, adjusting the cabin temperature without prompting. Lowering it to compensate for what was coming.
Smart. Observant. The Heartforge purred beneath my hands, responding to my grudging approval.
The cavern loomed ahead, its entrance surrounded by streams of superheated gas and particulate matter. Sensors screamed warnings about structural integrity, radiation levels, thermal maximums exceeded. I silenced them with a gesture.
"If we survive this," Jenna said, gripping the harness as the first waves of heat battered our shields, "you're explaining exactly what you meant by 'unbound mates' and why anyone would pay for that."
The raw honesty in her voice sparked something dangerous in my chest—not just heat, but respect. She deserved better than cryptic half-truths and cultural euphemisms.
"When we survive this," I corrected, pouring energy into the shields as we plunged toward the furnace mouth, "I will answer any question you ask."
Her eyes met mine, challenge and determination burning there. "Count on it."
The Heartforge screamed as we breached the cavern's threshold, alarms blaring as external temperatures soared beyond measurable ranges.
I embraced the pain, channeling it through my essence and into the ship's systems. Through our shared connection, the vessel accepted my offering, converting raw heat to usable energy.
Behind us, the drone disintegrated in a flash of melting components, its signal dying mid-ping. The hunting ships veered away, unwilling to follow where we had gone.
Ahead lay only fire… a crucible that would either forge us stronger or reduce us to ash. I set our course deeper into the inferno, the Heartforge singing a song of heat and harmony beneath our joined hands.