Loc (Untamed Warriors Book 2), page 13
I stared at the report and started working on a plan. We might be okay. I could probably make this work. Just when I was starting to think we might be catching a break, the proximity alarm went off.
I pulled up the radar. There was another ship out there and it was approaching fast. Stars. By the time we got someone in the gunner chairs they’d already be here.
Chapter Eighteen
Loc
The comm crackled and I adjusted the frequency. Wait! That was the frequency I used for the Nightfall. Could it be? I held my breath. The light had stopped flashing. It was a solid red. There was an incoming transmission. I opened up the channel.
“Loc!” Echo’s voice rang out over the comm. “That better be you.”
I blinked and stared at the comm for a moment. I must be dreaming. There was no way. The ship was close enough that I could see it now. I’d recognize that ship anywhere. It was the Nightfall.
I picked up the comm. “Echo?”
“Ha! I knew it was you. It’s so good to hear your voice.”
I laughed out loud. “You have no idea how good it is to hear yours.”
Echo’s laughter rang out over the comm. “I bet. Looks like you are drifting in open space. This is why I’m the one that does all the flying. I’m guessing you need a tow?”
“Yeah. And some med pods. We have some injured on here.” I didn’t know how she was here, but I wasn’t going to question it. Maybe the Gods were smiling down on me after all.
“I am going to dock with you. I’m initiating the sequence now,” Echo said.
I got up from my chair and hurried to the air lock. Echo had the ship’s docked and hooked up within a few moments. Once the area was sealed between our two ships, I opened our doors. Echo was already on the other side.
“Gods, it’s so good to see you,” I said as I hugged her. There had been a few times where I’d wondered if we’d ever be reunited again.
She squeezed me back. “We were so worried about you when we learned that you’d been abducted by the orion.”
“Me? I didn’t know what happened to you or Aurora after the crash. I didn’t know what to think.” I’d been worried they hadn’t made it or suffered the same fate as me and been captured. It took me a minute to realize that Aurora wasn’t here too. “Aurora?”
“It’s okay,” Echo assured. “She’s safe on Earth with Gray.”
“Gray?” I grumbled. The prince’s guard. That didn’t sound safe to me. The only thing I did know was that Aurora had liked him at least a little bit and the bastard had knocked her up.
“Trust me, I wouldn’t have left her there with him if I didn’t think she was okay.”
“I know.” That was the truth. Echo was protective over Aurora. If she didn’t think she was all right she would have made her come back on the ship.
“It’s safer for her there. The orion presence is not as profound and she’s at a compound of daemons that will keep her safe. Earth is Gray’s home world.”
“Daemons?” Were we talking about the fire wielding aliens that were the orion’s top warriors?
“Yeah. Turns out they aren’t as soul less as you’d think. Gray is one of them,” Echo said.
“Hmm, I still don’t like it.” And I didn’t not one bit. Maybe it was because I’d seen too much of what the daemons did to innocents. They’d just tried to kill Max and me. Speaking of, I had injured that needed to be attended to.
“We need to get to a spaceport. One that discreetly treats injured,” I said. I hadn’t really assessed the injuries when I’d checked on Max. I probably should have, but she was my priority.
The Nightfall only had one med pod, and it wasn’t the best.
“I can do you one better,” Echo said with a roll of her eyes. “I’ve been working with Kai. I’ll take you to Thooth. Your passengers can get medical care there. Let me get set up to tow you, and then I’ll call ahead and let them know we’ll need med droids on standby.”
“Let me tell everyone what is going on and I’ll give you a hand,” I said. I should let Strix and the scurcain know what was happening. Suzie too so she could prep the most injured.
I tried not to think about where we were going, or more importantly who was going to be helping us. Prince Kai of the Orion. This has to be a bad joke. Stars, Echo had to hate working with him.
I let Strix and Suzie know what was going on and that we’d have medical help soon and then made my way over to the Nightfall. Echo had almost everything ready to go and we just needed to put the coordinates into the system.
“It’s a short trip through faster than light,” she said. “Are your injured critical?” she asked.
“The most severely injured are in the med pods. There are others who could use one as soon as possible.” No one was in danger of dying from what Suzie said. But some were in a great deal of pain and their sedatives would be wearing off soon.
“What happened?” Echo asked.
“I was captured almost immediately after we crashed along with a human female, Max. Together, we were able to take control of this orion cruiser and we made a landing on Drexxus to avoid going to the palace. But once we were in orbit, some scurcain shot us down thinking we were the orion. Once they figured out who we were they offered us sanctuary. They are a small faction living in the tunnels within the Drexxus mountains.” I drew in a breath and let it out. “We were safe there until the orion found us. They were relentless in their search. The siege on the caves injured many and killed even more. We barely made it out and our engines were blown right before we hit faster than light.”
I didn’t even know what had happened to the first ship. Did they make it out? Or had they suffered a similar fate or worse? Marsden was a pilot who had been trained on simulations only. I had no idea how he would react in a real life scenario.
“It sounds like you were lucky to get away. I wish I could have found you sooner,” Echo said. “We might have been able to avoid the siege all together.”
“Echo, I’ve been broadcasting on our signal for too many rotations to count,” I said with a frown.
“You have? I didn’t get anything until about two hours ago,” Echo said. She sighed and shook her head. “The orion. They were probably blocking communication from the planet.”
“You’re probably right.” It sounded like something they would do. If they thought refugees were living on the planet that would start an uprising, they wouldn’t want to let them get the word out to anyone else. It was how they kept their control.
“If I’d known I would have come for you in a heartbeat. You know that, right?” Echo asked. Her violet eyes met mine. Emotion swirled in her irises, and she swiped at a tear. “You and Aurora are my family. I don’t know what I would do if I lost either of you.”
“How are you holding up?” I asked. Echo put on a rough exterior, but she was a softy inside once you got to know her.
“It’s been hard.” She sniffled and then wiped at the corners of her eyes. “Kai is...he’s something else and he drives me insane. He knows I need him, and I hate it.” I could hear the venom in her voice. “But he’s my best shot at maybe finally finding Elodie. I can’t...I can’t lose that. She’s out there somewhere. I don’t know if she’s safe or fed or if she has clothes or a roof over her head. It tears me up every day.” She put her hand on her chest.
“I promised Max I’d get her home, but then I’m coming back, and we’ll find her together. You don’t have to do this alone.” We’d looked for Elodie as best we could over the years, but we didn’t have the resources that Prince Kai did. Echo might have a chance to find her daughter this way.
“Thank you, Loc.” She cleared her throat and blinked her eyes a few times as she pulled herself together. “Tell me about Max? You two must have grown close then?”
I knew what she was asking. I looked down at my wrist where a mating mark would be. But we weren’t mates. “I love her. But she doesn’t belong in this world. Her home is safe, and she has family there that I’m sure are missing her. I won’t ask her to live in this world, and she’s already made it clear that I would not fit in on Earth.”
“She is right about that. We learned quickly that Kai drew attention to us. Humans are the only humanoids on that planet, aside from the daemons but they can pass for human.”
I hated that Echo was agreeing with Max’s assessment. I’d been holding on to hope that I would be able to somehow stay there. That we would be able to find a way to make it work.
“It doesn’t mean that you can’t find a way to make things work. If you love her, you should tell her. Let her make her own decisions,” Echo said. She was quiet for a moment. “She was injured in the siege, wasn’t she?”
“It’s my fault. I hurt her.”
“You?” Echo said with a laugh. “I doubt it. You might be a brute, but you are the nicest one I know.”
“I did.” I gritted my teeth as anger raged through me. I was responsible for what happened to her ear drums.
“How could you have hurt her?” Echo asked. She frowned at me, and I could tell she expected an answer.
I still wasn’t entirely sure what had happened. I’d never done anything like that before and I’d been in fights to the death. “The orion had her and a group of scurcain. They were going to execute them. I...I saw red. I charged in there and I made this noise kind of like a roar but not. It shook the whole cavern. It knocked everyone down. Suzie said Max’s eardrums were ruptured and that she won’t be able to hear for a few rotations.” Heat flooded my cheeks as I recounted the story. I’d hurt my love. Her injuries were on me.
“It sounds like you saved her life. I didn’t know that you could do something like that,” Echo said. “We could have used that a few times in the past.” She lifted her eyebrow at me.
I knew she was trying to make light of the situation, but it just made me madder. “How can I ask her to love me....to stay here with me when I hurt her?”
“Loc,” Echo said her voice going soft. “It was an accident. And it more than likely saved her life and all the scurcain. If she loves you, she won’t hold that against you.”
She had been happy to see me when I’d picked her up. But she might not have realized I’d been the one to hurt her too.
“Mating marks or not, it sounds like something inside of you has already claimed her as yours,” Echo said. “I bet if you gave her the chance, you’d find she feels the same way.”
I shook my head. Maybe, but my world was too dangerous. I wouldn’t ask her to be a part of it. Not when it could cost her her life. She’d be safe on Earth with her family.
“We’ll get her all fixed up and then I hope she tells you what an idiot you are being,” Echo said. “We are getting ready to land.” She sighed and set the controls initiating auto pilot for the landing sequence. “Kai is something else, just to give you fair warning. And I swear if he makes one more pass at me, I’m going to kill him.”
“I can only imagine,” I said. I wasn’t keen on the idea of letting an orion help us in any capacity. Kai was a prince. He’d lived at the palace with King Nequal after his father’s uprising. How did we know he wasn’t a double agent? “You trust him?”
Echo rolled her eyes and shook her head. “I do. As much as I can trust anybody who isn’t family that is. Everything he has said has been true though. Prince Kellan on the other hand, I do like him.”
“Prince Kellan? I thought he was dead.” Prince Kellan was Kai’s father. He had tried to lead a rebellion around the time my family was taken to the gladiator arena. It had been all the guards had talked about for a while. That was until he had fallen in battle and the rebellion was crushed.
“He faked his death. They didn’t have the numbers or the strength to win the war yet. His death bought them some time to build up their resources and army. They are working on it now.” Echo pointed out the window. “Look at their fleet.”
“Gods,” I whispered. There were at least a hundred battle cruisers and even more warships on the ground. I’d never seen so many in my life. The design was different too. Unique from the typical orion battleship. These ones looked like they could do serious damage.
“Impressive huh?”
“It’s something else.” They were planning for all out war. If the ships were as fancy on the inside as the outside, the rebellion had a real chance. What would the world be like without King Nequal? I couldn’t imagine. His rule was all I’d known, and it had been cruel. Would Prince Kellan be any better? I didn’t see how anyone could be any worse.
It would be best not to get my hopes up. Change wasn’t something that would be easily accomplished. But where there was hope, there was a way forward. I had to believe that.
Chapter Nineteen
Max
I snuggled into the comforter more and pulled it up over my ears. The bedding was soft and so warm. It reminded me of my bed back home. I hadn’t been this comfortable in months.
Had I been dreaming this whole time? My eyes popped open. Okay. It definitely wasn’t a dream. I had no idea where I was. It was not the spaceship. The baby blue walls had ornate paintings on them and there was a vase of flowers on an end table by my bed. The smell coming from them was fragrant and unlike anything I’d ever smelled before.
I sat up in the bed and looked around. Loc was in a chaise lounge a few feet away sound asleep. I was glad this hadn’t been a dream. Loc was too good to be true though. It wouldn’t surprise me if I dreamed up a man that couldn’t exist. I pinched myself just to make sure I wasn’t still sleeping. Nope. I was awake.
I shoved back the covers and made to get out of the bed when Suzie whirled to life from over in the corner. She came over to me and pulled out her scanner. “Max, you are awake.”
“I am. How long was I out?” I felt well rested. I touched my head where I’d been bleeding just a bit ago. It didn’t hurt anymore either. And I had no recollection of how I got to wherever it was that we were.
“Max?” Loc asked. He stirred in the chaise. When he saw me sitting up, he shot out of the chair and hurried over to me. “How are you?”
I smiled at him hoping to ease the worried look off his face. “I feel good.”
“Her hearing has returned I see,” Suzie commented.
I briefly remembered everything sounded like I was under ten feet of water before Suzie had given me the sedative. My hearing was crystal clear now.
“All other injuries have healed properly. She should avoid any more injuries to the head. Too many concussions can be bad for humans,” Suzie said.
The orion had jacked me up during the attack a little bit. It was nothing too horrible though. I was just glad to be alive.
“I’ve been so worried about you.” Loc took my hand in his and kissed the back of it. “It’s good to see you awake.”
“How long was I out?” I asked realizing they hadn’t answered me before.
“Four rotations,” Loc said.
The equivalent of four days pretty much. No wonder I felt so good. “Where are we? What happened? There is no way you fixed the spaceship up this nice,” I said with a laugh.
“Echo found us after we escaped Drexxus. We are on Thooth at Prince Kellan’s residence,” Loc said as he looked me over.
I was missing a few things. How had we ended up here? And what? I opened my mouth to ask what was going on, but Loc beat me to it. I listened as he explained everything that had happened after we boarded the ship and left Drexxus. I’d missed a lot it seemed. He’d found his family. I couldn’t be happier for him.
“I’m glad you found your sister, what about Aurora, is she here?” I asked. I knew how important it was for him to find them.
“She is not, but she is safe on Earth,” Loc said.
I grinned. “That is good news. I’m happy you found them.” I threw my arms around him and hugged him. “I know how much that has weighed on you.”
“Echo is working with the engineers now. We are outfitting our cruiser with weapons and supplies. I’ll be able to get you on your way home in the next few rotations,” Loc said in my ear. He sighed and hugged me a little tighter.
The news should have made me ecstatic. Instead, a feeling of dread filled me. I would have to say goodbye to Loc once I got home. I wanted to see my family, to let them know that I was okay. I wasn’t so sure that my place was on Earth anymore. Things had changed the past few months.
I enjoyed teaching dance but helping the scurcains had been fulfilling in a way that I’d never known before. The question was, was there a place for me in Loc’s world? I knew it was dangerous. Hell, I’d almost been executed, but it felt like I was home. I could see a future here teaching refugees how to dance and helping them defeat the orion regime. It was crazy but true.
It took me a minute to realize that he hadn’t said anything about our future. Was this it then? Did we only have a few more days together? I didn’t know what to make of it. Loc was so much more attentive to me in so many ways that Doug never had been. And unlike with Doug I felt like I could come straight out and ask Loc what was going on.
I drew in a deep breath and pulled away from him. I offered him a smile, but I only saw sadness on his face. “Where will that leave us then?” I asked. My bottom lip trembled. Now that the words were out, I was nervous of what his answer would be.
“Max, I promised I’d get you home. I’m doing that. I hurt you.” He stood up from the bed and pulled away from you. “You had temporary hearing loss and it’s possible I caused your concussion too. I’m dangerous for you.”
I reached out and grabbed his hand. “Loc, you saved my life. I was going to be fricking executed. I can come back from a few ruptured ear drums and a minor concussion. I can’t come back from a laser to the brain. That banshee scream thing you did was amazing. You took out all of their men.”
“Max, I don’t want to be the reason you have permanent injury. I would never forgive myself,” Loc said as he shook his head.
