Page 2 of Sheltered in the Storm (The Fortusian Mates # 1)
CHAPTER 1
FIVE YEARS LATER
CALLA
One of these days, a deep space raider would be the death of me.
“But not today, you soulless bastards,” I said aloud over the reassuring hum of my long-range fighter’s single remaining engine. “Not today.”
At least I’d kept both myself and my ship in one piece, despite the raiders’ best efforts to blow me to atoms. I might be limping back to Outpost 60 on less than half power, with no comms, minimal shields and weapons, and life support hanging on by few frayed wires, but I was in better shape than the three raiders who’d attacked me. They were, I assumed, currently in the presence of whatever gods they worshiped, explaining how one lone human pilot managed to kill all three of them and live to toast their deaths.
I raised my flask of moonshine once more to their memory, took a swig, coughed, and screwed the cap back on so I didn’t drink too much. Need to stay sober enough to get myself back to base. One of my squadron mates came from a long line of Probytian moonshiners. She knew how to turn a few ingredients into liquid fire that could strip the coating off my fighter’s hull and had a kick like a Gandarian mule ox.
With a groan, I rolled my stiff neck, returned the flask to its hiding place under my seat, and tried to let the adrenaline rush seep away. Even for a pilot with more than a hundred missions under her belt, that was a tall order after a prolonged battle.
Not that long ago, routine patrols along this stretch of frontier rarely turned out so exciting or potentially deadly. Local raider squads had recently instituted a bounty system for killing Defense pilots and destroying or capturing their ships. The bloodthirsty attacks had turned our quiet zone into a shooting gallery. To pilots in our squadron, the bounty system meant patrols should consist of two ships instead of the customary single pilot per mission, but the Alliance Defense brass had yet to approve that measure. They reacted slower than a Foridian slug these days.
And since Epsilon Squad Captain Proos wouldn’t take a shit without orders from one of the Alliance Defense admirals, I’d had no backup when these raiders showed up. I planned to get in his face about it the minute I got back to Outpost 60.
“Pompous little green asshole,” I muttered, and pictured my fist making contact with the center of Proos’s eminently punchable face.
Even for a Raxian, Proos was particularly insufferable. The fact he’d managed to achieve Squad Captain rank despite his utter lack of courage or initiative made me think he had some kind of blackmail material against one or more of the admirals. I would have put money on it. No other explanation made sense. Now his refusal to double up patrols in the wake of the raiders’ bounties had damn near gotten me blown to bits .
A quick check of my navigation system revealed I was approaching the planet Jakora. While the planet wasn’t part of the Galactic Alliance, its neutrality and location near the edge of Alliance space allowed for pilots of various allegiances to land for shore leave and maintenance as long as they followed the planetary laws.
Hmm…I could at least get my comms, shields, and weapons systems repaired and send a report to Captain Proos about the attack. I didn’t like the idea of having neither defense nor offense and no way to call for help if I ran into another raider on the way back. Those mangy sons of bogworms had gotten brazen and turned up even in strong Alliance systems.
Come to think of it, I had some leave saved up. I recalled a particularly nice resort near the Jakoran port where the drinks flowed freely, the lavender ocean offered safe swimming day and night, and pilots of all sexes and genders could easily find bedmates to ease the stress and loneliness of the job. After all, Captain Proos could hardly complain about the delay if my ship couldn’t make it all the way to Outpost 60 on one engine. All I’d have to do was bribe a mechanic to report my ship as not space-worthy and claim a backlog would delay repairs, and I’d be free to enjoy some well-earned rest.
Decision made, I slowed to near-planet cruising speed and prepared to enter Jakora’s thick atmosphere.
The universe, of course, had no intention of letting me off that easy today.
An impact sent my ship careening off course and spinning away from the planet. Alarms blared and red lights activated. Icy shards of terror ripped through me from fingertips to toes.
My training kicked in, shoving my fear aside as I fought to regain control of my ship using the manual control joysticks. Through the cockpit’s windows, I caught whirling glimpses of stars and Jakora’s purple-white atmosphere through a shower of sparking chunks of debris I recognized as parts of my ship. Half of my starboard wing had sheared off. I must have clipped something floating in orbit around the planet.
And then my ship’s main power flickered and died, leaving me in darkness and silence.
“No,” I said, my chest tight with horror. “No, no, no .”
No one answered my pleas. I’d learned long ago that space had no mercy—not for me, and not for anyone else.
My ship spiraled away from Jakora and veered directly toward one of the planet’s many moons. Without navigation, I had no idea which one. Not that it mattered, I supposed, other than it would likely be my unmarked grave.
“Fuck that,” I stated, just to hear something other than the ominous silence of my cockpit. “I’m not dying today.”
Far from a lifeless sphere of rock, this moon appeared to be almost entirely purple ocean surrounding a few dark, irregularly shaped masses of land. I glimpsed enormous swirls of thick clouds that indicated multiple massive hurricanes all happening at the same time. The moon wasn’t nearly as hospitable as the planet it orbited, that was for damn sure. Jakora rarely experienced hurricanes.
Still, I’d still take a hurricane-riddled ocean moon over barren rock and no atmosphere any day.
With the manual control joysticks, I fought like hells to gain some control of the ship’s flight, but even my emergency power system had apparently taken severe damage and left the joysticks next to useless. I could do little to slow the out-of-control spin or manage my descent.
All too soon, my ship reached the moon’s gravitational pull and began its fall toward the surface with a sickening lurch. Gravity—never around when I needed it, and always showing up when I didn’t.
The ship bounced, shook, and screamed its way through the atmosphere. I clung to my manual controls with a white-knuckled grip, for all the good it would do if my battered ship broke apart, and held my breath until I made it through to open air.
Wind and rain buffeted my ship as I fell. Far below, on land, I could just make out small clusters of lights sparkling in the night. So this moon was at least sparsely populated.
Nausea twisted my insides, but hope sparked in my chest. If I could level off my trajectory and manage to end up on land instead of the middle of the damn ocean, I had a chance to survive. A very slim chance, but a chance.
My life had been nothing but a series of slim chances. I supposed I shouldn’t have expected anything different today.
“Stay in one piece, baby,” I coaxed through gritted teeth, my palms sweaty on my controls. I even fired up my landing damper in an attempt to slow my fall, but it had only minimal power and couldn’t do much this far off the ground. “Just get me down alive—that’s all I ask. Please get me down alive.”
The ship—what was left of it—groaned and shook. I couldn’t tell if that was just the strain of the descent or a reply to my plea. In any case, the moon’s surface continued to approach all too quickly.
Fate had offered me one favor, at least: I seemed to be hurtling toward relatively shallow water just off the coast of a large land mass dotted with lights. Some of the impact might transfer to the water, increasing the possibility I’d survive. I’d take all the odds I could get at this point.
Some part of me was screaming in terror, but all my Alliance training—and really, all the combat training I’d received since the age of three—allowed me to keep that fear at bay and think clearly, even as I faced the grim reality and sickening feeling of plunging from the moon’s upper atmosphere all the way to its surface.
I’d faced many opponents in the arena, and many more since I’d become a pilot. I went into this battle with the same attitude as if I were facing any other adversary: you’re not taking me out. If it’s going to have to be one of us that goes, it’s not going to be me.
I squared my shoulders, tightened the harness that held me in my pilot’s seat, and glared out the front window of my fighter. Fuck you, pretty purple ocean moon, and whatever the hells I hit up in space. Lieutenant Calla Wren wouldn’t go down that easily.
Miraculously, some of the ship’s main power flickered on about five hundred meters from the surface. I yanked on my manual control joysticks and used my landing damper to almost level off and slow my descent. With the wind and rain, only one functional wing, and a sparking instrument panel, I didn’t have much control over the ship’s trajectory, but I did my best to aim for that shallow water, a safe distance from a small cluster of lights. No sense taking out one of the moon’s few settlements with my crash landing.
My heartbeat thundered in my ears. What were my chances of survival if I hit water at this speed? One in ten? One in a hundred? Not good enough to even be a sucker’s bet.
My front window showed nothing but dark water now. “Come on, come on.” I pulled on the manual controls again. The damaged landing damper whined and sputtered, straining to soften the impact. That was all I could do to give myself a chance to survive.
Everything grew hazy as my calm and training gave way to fear. An overwhelming sense of helplessness turned my gasps fast and shallow.
Fighting against adrenaline and instinctive hyperventilation, I forced myself to breathe more slowly and deeply so I didn’t lose consciousness. I wasn’t helpless—I was still fighting. I would fight until the very end. My will had been forged in the arenas of Ganai, and I didn’t break for anyone or anything.
If I were to die today, I’d at least do it sitting upright in my pilot’s seat, facing forward with my eyes open .
And with that, peace and calm settled over me like a mantle.
As the water rushed up to meet my ship, I chanted my flight instructor’s mantra: “Land like a bird, not a rock. Land like a bird, not a rock. Land like a?—”
Unfortunately, the ship struck the surface of the water very much like a rock. Then all was darkness and silence.