Interstellar Brides® Program Boxed Set - Books 6-8

Chapter 2

2

Commander Grigg Zakar, Coalition Fleet, Sector 17

The Hive scout ship blazed by, just off my fighter’s right wingtip and I let him go, much more concerned with the larger, more heavily armored attack cruiser before me.

“Hive command ship in range. I’m going in.” I informed my command crew back on board the Battleship Zakar, my battleship, so they could coordinate the rest of the battle wings around my attack.

“Don’t do anything stupid this time.” The dry tone in my ear belonged to my best friend, and top-ranked doctor in this sector of space, Conrav Zakar. Rav, he’d always been Rav to me, was also my cousin. We’d been fighting together for more than ten years, and been friends longer.

I couldn’t help that the corner of my mouth tipped up into a wry smile. Even in the midst of battle, that asshole could amuse me.

“If I do, just be ready to patch me up.”

“One of these days, I’ll let you bleed out.” He chuckled and my smile spread to a grin behind the clear mask of my pilot’s helmet.

“No, you won’t.” I was shaking my head at that bastard’s sick humor as I targeted a known weak joint in the Hive ship’s underbelly and fired a sonar cannon that I hoped would rattle the fucker apart. On my right, flying in battle formation, two of my battle wing pilots fired ion cannons at the same time. The brightness of the attack was almost blinding.

A cheer erupted in my communications gear when the Hive ship exploded, breaking into pieces right before my eyes. There were a few more scout ships we’d need to chase down and take out, but I wouldn’t lose any more cargo ships or transport stations in this solar system. At least not for a while and never on my watch.

“Nice job, Commander.” I could hear the smile in Rav’s voice. “Now, get your ass back on this ship, where it’s supposed to be.”

“I belong out here, fighting with the warriors.”

“Not anymore.” The voice of my second-in-command, Captain Trist, rumbled through my head and he made no attempt to hide his disapproval.

Fuck. He was such a by-the-rules man that he had the entire regulations guide shoved up his ass.

“If I stayed on the command deck all the time, Trist, you’d be bored.”

“You take too many risks, Commander. Risks you should not be taking. You are responsible for nearly five thousand warriors, brides and their children.”

“Well, Captain, if I die today, they’ll be in good hands.”

Rav answered, “No. They’ll be begging General Zakar for mercy.”

“Noted. Returning to the ship now.” If I were to be killed, or worse, captured and contaminated by the Hive, my father, General Zakar, would most likely come out here and take command of the Battleship Zakar himself. I might be a bit adventurous, but my father was cruel and unforgiving. If he returned to active duty, the body count would double or triple, on both sides.

We worked hard to hold the Hive in place, to prevent their expansion into this sector of space. My father would try to defeat them, drive them back. The Hive response would be to send more soldiers, more scouts. Things would escalate quickly to what they’d once been. We’d managed to spread them out across multiple sectors of space, slowly weakening our enemy by denying them new bodies to assimilate while thinning their lines. My father’s aggression would undo years of careful Coalition strategy, years of planning and work.

My father was too arrogant and stubborn to listen to reason. Always had been.

I had two younger brothers, both still in combat training on the home planet of Prillon Prime. They were a decade younger than I, and nowhere near ready for battle. My death would force my father out of his role as advisor to the Prime, and back into active service here, on the front lines. The alternative, to retire the Zakar name, our battleship reassigned to another warrior clan, was unacceptable. My father would rather die than see his family dishonored. This battle group had been named Zakar for more than six hundred years.

Trist would hate having his command stripped away and the people on my ship would hate it because…hell, no one liked the general. It just proved I had to stay alive. I might not be warm and cuddly, but I did the f*****g job.

As commander, I was not required to fly combat missions. But sitting in the commander’s chair, bellowing orders and watching other warriors die in my place was not my idea of honor. If I’d known how f*****g hard it would be, I would have turned down command of the battle group. I was the youngest commander in a century, and many argued, the most reckless. The elder generals labeled me rogue. But they didn’t understand. I needed to fight. I needed the rush. Sometimes, I didn’t want to think, I just wanted to fight…or f**k, and since I had no mate, fighting satisfied the restless rage I carried. Even now, with the mission successful, I should have been appeased. Eased. I wasn’t. Far from it.

Perhaps a warm, willing female with soft skin and a wet p***y could tempt me to give up these battle runs.

The Hive scouting teams had been infiltrating our space for several weeks, sending three- and six-man teams in, sneaking past our defense perimeters to surround and attack transport relays and cargo vessels. In short, they were making me look bad on the home world.

Every damn night I got a comm from my father, after he read the day’s intelligence reports. He said he was tired of seeing my sector losing ground in this war. f**k that.

If the uptight bastard commed me tonight, it better be to congratulate me on taking back this section of space.

My gaze shifted to the tracking monitor to my left as I turned my small fighter back toward the battleship, toward home. Yeah, the hulking metal spaceship was home. The small blasts on the screen and whooping battle cries in my ears assured me that the remaining Hive ships were being hunted down and destroyed.

I gave the command for the Seventh Battle Wing to return with me while the other two battle wings remained to track and eliminate the rest of our enemies. Taking prisoners was not an option. Once the Hive took a man’s life, we never got them back. Those who survived the Hive Integration Centers intact were lost forever, sent to The Colony to live out their final days as contaminated warriors, dead to the rest of our people.

No. I preferred not to take prisoners. Death was a kindness I was more than willing to offer.

“Commander, look out!” The warning came just as the proximity alarms on my scout ship sounded. The blast of sound had barely registered when my ship was torn out from beneath me.

In a flash of bright light, the ship exploded. My body was jettisoned into the blackness of space, the flight suit I wore the only thing keeping me alive. The intensity of the explosion, the force of my ejection into deep space was worse than any whiplash, any wild ride I’d ever taken.

“Commander? Can you hear me?”

I was spinning, too fast to get my bearings, too fast to track the large, orange-and-red star that anchored this planetary system. I had no way to regain control, to stop. The pressure on my organs was painful, had me struggling to breathe, groaning as I fought to remain conscious.

“Get him out of there!”

“Another ship!”

I lost track of the number of voices as an explosion of light and heat rushed over me from my left side. Debris raced past, traveling faster than my eyes could track as the Hive ship exploded around me.

A sharp, stinging pain erupted in my thigh and I gritted my teeth as the hissing sound of my flight suit losing pressure, and precious air chilled my blood. The suit’s self-repairing system began working immediately to close the seal, to maintain life status. But I was afraid it wasn’t working fast enough.

Still spinning, I closed my eyes and tried to block out everything but the rapid-fire chatter going on in my helmet. Nausea hit me, bile rose into my throat.

“He’s hit, Captain. His suit is losing integrity.”

“How long?”

“Less than a minute.”

“Transport, can you get a lock?” Trisk asked.

“No, Sir. The explosion damaged his transport beacon.”

“Who’s close? Captain Wyle, what’s your status?”

“Six new Hive fighters detected, heading straight for him.”

“Cut them off.” That was Trist.

“On it,” Captain Wyle said.

“No.” I groaned as Wyle then ordered the Fourth Battle Wing on a suicide run with the approaching Hive fighters.

“Damn it! Get him the f**k out of there. Now!” Trist’s bellow made my head ache.

The warning alarms of my body sensors were beeping, as if I didn’t f*****g know my blood pressure was dangerously high and my heart rate was too f*****g fast.

“Let me take a medical cruiser.” That was Rav.

“No time. Wyle, get a traction beam on him.”

“His suit might disintegrate under the stress.” Rav again.

“It’s that or let the Hive have him,” Trist argued.

I decided to chime in on that one. “f**k that,” I hissed. “Wyle, do it.” I’d rather explode into a million tiny pieces than end up part of the Hive’s cyborg collective.

“Yes, Sir.”

The energy of Captain Wyle’s traction beam hit me like a brick wall, the force slamming my forehead into my helmet. Hard.

Stars danced before my eyes and I couldn’t stop the scream of agony as it felt like my entire left leg was being ripped off at the knee. Explosions sounded all around, I used counting them as a means to hold on to consciousness.

When I reached five, everything went black.

Doctor Conrav Zakar, Battleship Zakar, Medical Station

“Is he dead?” The new medical officer’s voice trembled and I didn’t have time to ask his name. Nor did I care.

“Shut the f**k up and help me get him out of his flight suit.” The standard Coalition flight suit was made of nearly indestructible black armor, generated by our ship’s spontaneous matter generators, or MGs, as we called them. I used a laser scalpel to cut away one sleeve before the young officer’s next suggestion slammed me back to reality.

“Why don’t we put him on the MG pad and ask the ship to get rid of it?”

Genius. Didn’t mean I had to like the little s**t. “Let’s move him.”

I grabbed my cousin and best friend beneath the shoulders and lifted with all my Prillon warrior’s strength. I could have carried him myself, but my assistant stepped forward and lifted Grigg under his knees.

He wasn’t dying now. He’d done his f*****g job out there in battle and it was my turn to do mine. It wasn’t the time to realize if he hadn’t left his command post, I’d be celebrating with the others instead of bringing him back from the f*****g brink. Stupid, hardheaded fucker.

We moved him as carefully as we could to a pitch-black pad where the faint green grid-lines of the MG’s scanning sensors quickly went to work examining Grigg’s armor, so we could remove it in stages. The outer layer of Grigg’s armor had so many micro-cuts it looked fuzzy, instead of smooth and hard. Blood dripped from his left boot to hit the floor with a spattering sound that made me grind my teeth. His helmet had been warped to the point that I could not release the locks and remove it. The helmet’s visor was shattered, a thousand tiny cracks obscuring my view of Grigg’s face.

If the bio monitors hadn’t insisted he was still alive in there, his heart still beating, I would never have believed anyone inside this destroyed armor had survived.

I placed my hand on the activation panel and ordered the ship to remove Grigg’s armor. Impatient, I didn’t look away as the faint green light glowed around his body.

When the light faded at last, leaving Grigg naked and bleeding on the pad and my heart stuttered.

“f**k, Grigg. You’re a mess.” Grigg was covered in blood, his normally dark, golden skin a strange smear of orange and red almost everywhere. His left leg was cut through to the bone halfway between his knee and thigh, blood rushing to the floor with each beat of his heart.

Dropping to my knees I placed a bleed blocker over the wound. It wouldn’t heal him, but it would stop him from bleeding out while I carried his stubborn ass to the ReGen pod.

“I need more help over here!” I shouted. Aides and other techs came running.

“Help me. Careful of his leg.” I lifted him, once more under the shoulders, trying to keep his head from flopping like a loose doll’s. Other hands joined mine and he was quickly lifted from the table.

“ReGen pod?”

“Yes. Immediately.”

We moved as a unit, shuffling quickly to the large, full-body submersion unit used for the most critical wounds.

“Shouldn’t we sedate him first?”

“Shut up or get out,” I growled.

“Yes, Sir.”

The door to the medical station slid open and Captain Trist strode into the room, took one look at Grigg and came to a dead stop. “Is he dead?”

“No. But he will be if we don’t get him into ReGen.”

Trist stepped forward between two techs and helped lift Grigg under his hips. If Grigg had been an average Prillon warrior, we wouldn’t have needed five of us to move him, but he was a f*****g seven-foot giant. Grigg, like all members of the warrior class on Prillon Prime, was a big motherfucker at close to three hundred pounds of hard, lean muscle. Built for war, the Prillon race was bigger and stronger than almost any other race in the Coalition. And the Zakar family? Well, Grigg and I belonged to one of the oldest warrior clans on the planet. He was genetically predisposed to be one big motherfucker.

I exhaled in relief as we lowered the commander’s body into the bright blue light of the Regen Pod. The clear cover slid over Grigg’s bruised and battered body automatically, the sensors beginning to work immediately. We stood back and inspected the raw burns and lacerations on his face that were clearly visible.

“He’s lucky he didn’t lose his right eye.” The medical officer who’d assisted me moved by rote over the control panel, adjusting the settings to ensure Grigg would heal at the maximum speed his body would allow.

“He’s lucky he’s not dead.” Trist slammed a blood-covered palm down on top of the clear casing.

He turned to me and I shook my head. “Don’t look at me.”

“You’re his second. Family. Can’t you f*****g control him? He can’t keep doing this.” Trist’s rage colored his pale yellow skin a dark gold. “He’s the commander of this battle group, not infantry or a fighter pilot. We can’t afford to lose him.”

“He inspires the men.” The medical officer on the other side of the ReGen pod spoke reverently, awe in his tone. “They talk about him in the cafeteria. Hell, everywhere. They talk about him everywhere.”

“Do you need to be here?” Trist asked.

The medical officer looked at the monitoring panel. “The commander is healing properly. All protocols for his regeneration have been set.”

“Do you need to be here?” Trist repeated.

“Technically, no.” The young recruit looked shocked, his fear of Trist causing his skin to pale to a sickly gray nearly the same color as his uniform. With good reason. The captain was nearly as big as Grigg and twice as mean.

“Leave us.”

In seconds, I was alone with the captain, who slumped into a seat on the edge of the room. “How do we stop him? It’s like he’s insane. Hell, it’s like he’s turned into a raging beast, like a f*****g Atlan berserker.”

Now that the danger was past, rage mixed with relief as I took a seat next to Trist where we both could keep an eye on the commander’s unconscious body. Blood coated our hands, our uniforms.

“We can’t stop him.” Staring down at my bloody palms, I wanted to strangle Grigg. I loved him like a brother, but he’d allowed his father’s rage to push him too far. He took too many risks. He was playing a very dangerous game and he was losing. He was alive, so it wasn’t a complete failure, but next time? And the next? Eventually the odds would catch up to him. Next time he really might die.

I’d had enough. Trist’d had enough.

I’d given it a lot of thought, and just one solution presented itself, I just hadn’t mentioned it before. There were no secrets between Grigg and me, but this one, I’d kept. Considered it. Ruled it out in the past. But now, now that he was in a ReGen pod healing a f*****g severed femoral artery, broken femur, severe concussion and who knew what the f**k else, it was time.

“We’ll never convince him to stop, but his mate might.”

Trist straightened his legs out in front of him. “He doesn’t have a mate.”

Slowly, I turned to face him. “Then we need to get him one.”

Trist glanced my way. “How do we do that?”

I stood then, pacing. “Right now, you are in command.”

Order of succession was taught on the first day of fighting school. This was not something I had to explain to Trist. “And?”

“He’s a commander in the Coalition Fleet. He’s eligible to request a matched mate through the Interstellar Bride Program. Order me to process him for a matched mate. Order me to put him through the matching protocol.”

Trist’s eyes widened at the very idea. He didn’t live life on a hair trigger like Grigg did. He thought things through, clearly and methodically.

“And when he wakes?”

I grinned. I’d thought this through clearly and methodically, too.

“The processing is subconscious. It’ll be like a dream. He won’t remember a thing until it’s too late. He won’t know what we’ve done until his mate arrives, in the flesh.”

Trist smiled. Holy f**k, the man smiled. I’d never seen him do that before, thought his face was broken or permanently fixed in a benign gaze.

“And then he’ll be too busy f*****g her to care—or get into any more f*****g trouble.” Trist stared at me for a count of five before he burst out laughing.

I was too shocked by the sound to process his words.

“Do it, Doctor. Get him a mate. That’s an order.”