Page 13 of Joven's Bride
Chapter Six
Suddenly, the starship quaked under Carly, nearly knocking her off her feet.
“Carly! What’s happening?” Joven asked frowning.
“I don’t know.” It happened again, and this time, Carly fell to the floor, and her com-tablet slid across the small room.
“Meomee, are you, all right?” Joven could no longer see her.
“I’m okay,” she called out.
Momentarily, a voice came over the ship’s com-system.“Your attention, please! All passengers, please return to your quarters, all crewmembers report to your work stations. We have been intercepted by marauders, who have disabled our ship. We will soon be boarded.”
“Carly?”
By then, she had been able to scramble across the deck and retrieve her com. “I’m here, Joven.”
His image was on the screen, no longer holographic.
“Meomee, if you are captured, don’t resist. They will most likely not harm you. They will either demand a ransom for you or take you to the slave markets on Se’nar,” he spoke in quick, clipped tones. “Your captain will have put out a distress signal. The Enforcers will track the marauders. Be brave, meomee. If the Enforcers don’t find you, I will!” Then she lost the signal, and Joven’s image became a still shot on her screen.
Carly hugged it to her, blinking at the tears welling in her eyes.
Joven roared his frustration like the feline he was. He had waited all his life to find hismeomeeor soulmate.Now she was in danger, and he was helpless to protect her.
Without even thinking, he morphed into his big-cat form. As a humanoid, he stood 6’6” as a big-cat he was larger than a Siberian Tiger but sleek as a Jaguar with dark blue fur, the same color as his humanoid hair. He paced back and forth the living room of his home, growling and roaring his frustrations intermittently.
Carly was still a month and a half away from joining him on Glasica and becoming his mate in every sense of the word. Now, her transport starship was being raided by unknown marauders, and he could only guess what they might do to her.
Utter fury ripped through him fed by the adrenaline pumping through his veins. It took him a couple minutes and considerable effort to vent his rage and calm himself enough to rise up on his hind legs to revert to his humanoid form.
Still growling to himself, he snatched his com-tablet up from the floor. He’d dropped it when he shifted. The star jumper wasn’t due back for another day, but he needed it now!
Using his cybernetics, he activated the com and signaled his team on theSentry Hawkstar jumper. Momentarily, the face of Lieutenant Thodai Icorax popped onto the screen. “Yes, Captain?”
“TheStar Travelerhas been intercepted by marauders as I was talking to my mate, and we lost contact,” Joven said. “I need the jumper.”
“Yes, sir. Kelbor, take us back to base,” Thodai told the pilot. “On our way, sir, we should arrive in about three hours.”
“Thank you, I got the coordinates where they were intercepted. We should be able to track them from there.”
“We’re on our way, sir.”
“I’ll see you when you get here.”
Carly hesitated after she lost contact with Joven, unsure if she should stay where she was or make her way back to her quarters. If she left the observation bubble, the invaders could find her. Or she could stay put, and what?
The ship was disabled. Life support systems could be next. She decided to make a run for it. Scooping up her tablet, she left the lounge and ran for the lift to the main passenger floor. Soon as she emerged from the lift, she broke into a run down the corridor to her cabin.
Her tablet was beeping the entire way. She answered it from the privacy of her room. Carly gave the command word, and Joven’s hologram appeared again.
“Carly, sweetheart, I contacted my team, and they are returning to base. Alliance Law Enforcement has received your ship’s distress signal, but they won’t reach you before the marauders,” he said. “We have your current location, but that will change as soon as they take your ship under their control. Then they will cut your interstellar com off.”
“Are they going to take us off the ship?” she asked, uncertainly.
“I don’t think so… At least not until you get to someplace, they can profit from you and the others. Then they will take the ship,” Joven said with a scowl. “My team is a few hours out, but I will be coming for you as soon as they arrive,meomee.I won’t stop until I find you.”
Joven stayed with her through the com-tablet until they were cut off just as he expected they would be. Before that happened, a strange voice came over the ship’s com, and he could hear it too.
