Page 60 of Into Orbit
The Pod slipped through the larger ship’s shields without difficulty, buffeted by the continual shockwaves. It latched onto the Roth hull a short distance from where I needed to be. It was further away than was ideal, as I didn’t like being exposed in space for longer than was strictly necessary, but I’d make it work.
‘Suit,’ I said gruffly.
Tirians didn’t need much when it came to space. Our bark armour was enough to protect our bodies, as it regulated both temperature and pressure, and prevented damage from solar rays and moisture loss; given our arboreal ancestry we were less susceptible to low temperatures and changes in air pressure than most organic species, anyway. My armour grew down to cover my hands and feet, forming gloves and shoes that were made of a flexible, slightly sticky, leaf-like fibre. The same substance encircled my neck, allowing the close-fitting helmet descending from the Pod’s roof to settle over my head and fix itself to my armour.
At the press of a final button, the Pod’s roof slid open. I got out slowly, hating how unnerved I felt by open space. Looking at it was one thing;beingin it was another entirely. I took a deep breath and deliberately ignored the black stretching behind me, narrowing in on the waste chute as the silent battle played out between the two ships. Feeling too exposed, I crouched down and elected to crawl across the hull, the sticky fibre on my hands and feet anchoring me with each slow movement.
‘Willow would laugh at me,’ I muttered to myself. I let myself think about how he looked onhisknees as a distraction. Whenever he knelt, he took me all the way down his throat, an action which made stars appear behind my eyes; he would look up at me as he did it, his own eyes glowing until I splintered into a million pieces.
I wondered if Maeve got to her knees for Elswyth.
Thatimage made me uncomfortably hard; my cock throbbed against my armour as my mouth watered at the memory of her taste. At the first touch of my tongue to her lovely pink folds, my body had shuddered through a wave ofelyaand my blood had heated as the core of my very being shifted. There was no going back; where before my hearts had held two, there was now three. I was hers. Mykaria. My human.
‘We will be together.Allof us,’ I told to myself.
I allowed my mind to wander into new territory; territory that still seemed blasphemous, but was almost within reach. I imagined waking up next to Maeve, of kissing her rosy lips as Elswyth stretched out beside her and gave Willow a sleepy smile. I imagined parting my human’s folds and thrusting inside while her head fell back on Willow’s shoulder and his hands worked between her legs, imagined us pushing her to a climax that would make her scream. I imagined her pleasuring Elswyth as we watched, imagined Willow pressing inside me as our Hamadryad begged and whimpered beneath Maeve’stouch. I imagined us sharing each other, so fluidly that it didn’t matter whose fingers or tongue or cock was where, just that theywere, until all four of us were gasping, floating messes in our shared bed.
I’d never imagined anything I wanted so badly.
‘Get Willow first,’ I reminded myself as I reached the chute. I reached out and traced the faint line where the cover joined the hull.
Its system would release at scheduled times, but I couldn’t wait for that to happen; it could have been moments, or it could have beenhours. I tapped the control panel on my forearm. ‘Can you open the waste chute?’
The Pod’s computer thought about it while it meshed with the Roth ship’s outer systems. ‘Negative,’ it said eventually. ‘Cannot override waste disposal settings until fully bonded with internal systems. Can override waste disposal security feed. Proceed?’
‘Proceed,’ I told it, hoping the lack of surveillance might buy me a few extra minutes.
I hadn’t expected it to be easy. Roth defences were thorough. I’d have to damage the hull to open the chute, which could trigger some kind of alarm, although I was counting on the ship’s guards being engaged elsewhere and assuming that the damage had come from the other ship, not a rogue Tirian breaching their defences through the spaceship equivalent of a sewer.
I flicked a switch on my armour’s vambrace and got to work with the laser cutter.
As I’d hoped, when I cut through enough of the chute’s cover for the ship’s system to register it as damage, it opened by itself. I waited as the waste was ejected – only half-frozen, which was disgusting to see, but it iced over once it left the relative warmth of the climate-controlled ship – then inched closer to peer inside.
Down a deep, dark hole.
I sighed. ‘You’re lucky I love you, Willow,’ I grumbled, and crawled inside.
The chute wasn’t overly long, and a few minutes later I was pulling myself into a small engineer’s bay. Tirian systems worked their way into other species’ tech like a virus, so I inserted a small chip into the waste system control panel and let it do its work. A moment later, the Roth symbols flashing on the control screen changed to Tirian characters, and I brought up the ship’s schematics. I was pleased to see that they matched the blueprints I’d already studied, meaning our intelligence was up to date, but less thrilled to see the thing I’d been dreading – that most of the beings on board were gathered in the control room, the exact place I wanted to be.
The ship shuddered with another missile blow as I considered my options. I’d hoped to reach the control room so I could activate the time delay on the ship’s self-destruct sequence, which was accessible only from a separate system localised to the captain’s control panel. By doing that, I’d be able to give myself enough time to escape.
However, Willow’s voice said wryly in my memory.
‘However,’ I conceded aloud.
Fighting my way through the twenty-five highly trained Roth warriors currently in the control room would be brave but ultimately extremely stupid; more importantly, it would taketime. And Willow might nothavetime.
From here, I could still do damage. I could dismantle the shields and let the opposing ship’s weapons do their work, while crawling as fast as I could manage back to the Pod, praying desperately to the green gods with every awkward shuffle that no critical hit occurred during those precious minutes. If I delayed the shield commands from here, though, it gave the Roth in the control room time to override my instructions.
I sighed. Taking down a ship from its waste disposal bay might not be glamorous, but it would get the job done, and that was the point.
I tapped the control screen. ‘Deactivate all sight and defensive shields,’ I said.
‘Deactivating,’ the system agreed. ‘Please wait.’
I examined my armour, counting my heartbeats. As I waited, I studied the control panel; one button blinked at me like a large red eye, reminding me of Maeve’s Earth story about princesses and dragons.
I considered the control panel. ‘You could be a dragon,’ I said to it.
