ALIEN WARRIOR WITH BENEFITS

ALIEN MATES

AVA YORK

CELESTE KING

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

1

“Ah, space. My fellow pirates! To some, space is the final frontier, to be explored and understood. To others, it is the great yawning maw of annihilation, waiting to destroy them with a gamma ray burst, rogue asteroid, or black hole.”

Gothar spread his arms wide, then raised his fists.

“I, Gothar, the Scourge, feel something different when I gaze out the Leviathan’s periscope upon the field of twinkling celestial splendor. Anticipation, as I search for my prey. Exultation, when I find it.”

He swung, pointing to the screen before them. “There she is, boys,” Gothar growled in a low tone. “Our prey!”

Even though Gothar knew their prey couldn’t hear what transpired on his bridge across the vacuum of space, he reflexively kept his tone hushed.

The Leviathan was ‘running cold’ at the moment. Only the most essential systems remained online. Lights off, the Leviathan lurked in the shadow of an asteroid with only a periscope—actually a sophisticated array of sensors and not a literal periscope—peeking out.

“Freighter with two cruiser escorts, Captain,” said Utrial, Gothar’s XO. The spines along his back stood up in eagerness as he watched the display with hungry eyes. “The transponder code lists them as The Celestial Mule.”

“Feast your eyes, me mateys,” Gothar said, fists rasping in anticipation. “There will be plunder on that ship.”

Gothar turned to his munitions commander, Ylax. “Tactical assessment of those cruisers?”

His smirk showed Ylax had already assessed our foes and found them wanting. Ylax had a penchant for the dramatic, however. He made a big show of punching up the ship’s schematics on holo display for the entire bridge crew to see.

“Standard Confederation patrol craft, equipped with four ion cannon arrays, and two short range missile banks with an estimated payload of thirty.”

“They don’t even have lasers!” Nurag, the head gunner bellowed with laughter.

“The Mule itself has only minimal armament.” Ylax turned to Gothar with a sneering smile, his contempt for our foes palpable. “In short, Captain, they pose little threat.”

Gothar took in the eager, sadistic grins of his crew and smiled. “Battle Stations!”

The men cheered and readied for the assault. Gothar leaned back in his chair as his well-trained crew sprang into action. Systems came back online, lighting up the bridge.

Nurag’s eyes shone with bloodlust. He launched a volley of SRM’s, short range missiles, as a way of saying hello.

Jets blossomed to life along the hulls of the escort freighters as they strove to escape Nurag’s expertly aimed volley of missiles. The missiles’ rudimentary targeting software allowed them to home in on the escorts in spite of their evasive maneuvers.

The element of surprise combined with Nurag’s perfect deployment of their ordnance turned the escort vessels into blossoming orange spheres pushing a nimbus of angular detritus before them. The Leviathan shuddered as the shockwave washed over her. Their shields repelled the incoming debris field as The Mule fired up her thrusters.

“The freighter is attempting to open a hyperspace tunnel, Captain,” Utrial said.

“Well, that’s no fun at all.” Gothar snickered. “Nurag, target their hyperspace systems with the Ion cannon. Just a little love tap.”

“Love tap,” Nurag guffawed. “Love tap, indeed.”

His fingers danced over the keys on his console. A moment later, a pervasive hum echoed through the bridge as our ion cannon array powered up. Pulses of white light shot across the inky blackness of space. Our view ports polarized in response to the incredibly bright volley.

Explosions blossomed along the Mule’s starboard bow. The thrusters continued to fire, but Nurag’s cry of triumph was telling. “Enemy vessel’s hyperdrive system is down, Captain.”

“Nice shooting, Nurag.” Gothar stood up and eyed his prize. A freighter so large would have untold riches. Gothar wasn’t just interested in GC, galactic credits, or precious minerals. He knew cargo was the real prize. He once made millions of credits by selling Terran soybeans to the hardscrabble farmers of Felorus Eight. Soybeans! Yes, Gothar would kill for soybeans.

Yet, as he stood there staring at The Mule, Gothar was overcome with a pervasive sense of destiny. He felt as if his coming across The Mule, limping along at sublight speeds through a tricky asteroid field, had been staggeringly unlikely.

The floating hulk listed badly to port, the flames on its starboard side still spewing into space, fueled by a leaking atmosphere. Gothar saw The Mule’s own ion cannon powering up but felt little concern. His shields were more than adequate.

However, Gothar preferred not to let his enemy get off a shot in the first place.

“Nurag, use your laser to target their ion cannon. See if you can shave it off without damaging the hull. There are enough holes leaking booty into space as it is.”

“Making the calculations now, Captain…”

“Fire at will.”

A series of blue, sizzling beams lanced out through space, turning the ion cannon into debris with just a touch. Nurag’s targeting was superb, doing minimal damage to the freigher’s hull.

“Excellent work.”

“Shall we target their thruster array, Captain?”

“Do it.”

The main laser cannon powered up, creating a temporary drain on the bridge lighting. Gothar felt a tingle in his scales as the laser prepared to fire. A broad beam shot out and turned the thruster array into a drifting ruin.

“Utrial, find us a way in.”

“The port shuttle bay is our best bet, Captain.”

Gothar slammed his fist down on the armrest of his chair and leaped to his feet. “Prepare a boarding party, XO. But tell the men I have one irrevocable command.”

“Yes, Captain?”

Gothar squeezed his hand into a fist so tight his tendons crackled like thunder. “The enemy captain is mine.”

2

Relia huddled in a corner, arms wrapped around three children.

Murgo, captain of The Celestial Mule, had hired Relia to care for his children and be their nanny only a week ago. She had been on the Bam Thi station when she’d responded to his ad on the Bliq Employment Broker’s job board.

Relia thought Captain Murgo had seemed nice enough at the time, and his three children, Lel, Thǎlwe, Yahǎr melted Relia’s heart on sight. She felt how profoundly the children needed a caregiver when they had met.

Silent children had always worried Relia. This wouldn’t be her first nanny posting, but she’d hoped to make it last. She’d only taken short-term jobs, when she first began nanny work. While she’d always been good with children, Relia had lost her family a few years ago and her heart still hurt too much at the time to spend long enough with any family to get attached.

Lately, however, Relia’s grief had begun to fade and her innate need to form attachments had spurred her to accept a longer-term posting. When asked why he sought a nanny, Captain Murgo had informed Relia’s manager he’d recently lost his wife and, as a busy starship captain, he needed someone to mind and educate his children.

Relia had to admit to herself—while huddled around her three charges in a corner of one of the chambers of The Celestial Mule’s Captain’s suite—she wished she hadn’t taken the job. She realized, were she not waiting for space pirates to board her starship, the children would’ve been cowering here alone.

Relia sighed, stroking the children’s bulbous, Zasnuvian heads. She could never wish for them to be here, alone—not after everything she now knew about their father. Instead, she wished she and the children had avoided their current situation in its entirety.

The Celestial Mule shook. Lel, the youngest of Captain Murgo’s children, released an eep. The finger tentacles at the tips of one of her flexible arm tentacles wrapped around Relia’s arm.

“It will be okay. Shush, now. Remember to breathe.”

Captain Murgo’s eyes darted to the door. He froze in place, cases of credit chips wrapped in his arm tentacles. He turned his head side to side, trying to catch some auditory clue how far away the pirate’s boarding party had landed.

“They’ve boarded.”

He stacked the crates in the captain’s escape pod.

“Maybe it’s time to load the children into the escape pod. We all know Pirate Captain Gothar, the Scourge, takes no prisoners…”

Captain Murgo eyed Relia and the children. Captain Murgo and his children were the first Zasnuvians Relia had ever met, and that was just a week ago. She still struggled to read his expressions. Relia had, certainly, never before seen the expression on his face before.

The children had, though. She felt resigned resentment settle upon them. They knew their father far better than Relia, and Relia liked none of what she’d discovered about him since The Celestial Mule had departed Bam Thi station.

Deep suspicion settled upon Relia’s shoulders. Captain Murgo continued to pack his hoarded treasures into the escape pod. His large, liquid Zasnusian eyes flicked between Relia’s face and those of the huddled children.

“If you put much more in there, the pod won’t support the weight of five passengers…”

“Shut your mouth, you rieklik.”

Captain Murgo glared at Relia. She didn’t recognize the word he used, but she didn’t like it. Yahǎr, Murgo’s middle child, growled. Once The Celestial Mule had left Ban Thi station, Relia had quickly discovered Murgo had hired a nanny simply because he had no interest in his own children.

Relia soothed Yahǎr, stroking the short, cream-colored fur atop his domed head. She glared right back at Captain Murgo. He flinched, pulling a sack of goods from a pile.

“You’re the rieklik, Dad.”

“Thǎlwe! Don’t use such language.” Relia might not have known the word, but she knew it shouldn’t be coming out of Thǎlwe’s mouth. Thǎlwe glared at Relia, but only for a moment.

An explosion in the hallway, beyond the door to the captain’s lounge reverberated through The Celestial Mule’s walls. Relia began to sweat. The pirates only had one more door to open to breach the Captain’s Suite.

Relia rose from the floor. The children’s tentacles gripped her limbs, stroking them for comfort.

“Okay, they’re almost here. Time to load up. Come along, everyone.”

Captain Murgo clutched a crate to his chest in his arm tentacles. He stood between the Escape Pod’s open hatch and Relia. He refused to move. His eyes darted between Relia and the children.

Captain Murgo took a slow step back, toward the hatch. An explosion rocked the door to the captain’s suite. The lights flickered. The children squealed. Relia faced the door, chin high. She herded the children behind her, ready to face the most infamous space pirate to terrorize the galaxy.

The doors slid open. A cloud of dark smoke billowed in. A hulking shape moved in the smoke. The captain’s quarters’ dedicated life-support system whooshed to life, sucking the pollutants from the air.

The smoke cleared. A seven-foot-tall alien stood in the doorway. Shaggy black hair fell over his scaled face. Golden eyes peered out from under a heavy brow ridge. Deep red scales covered his body.

An exquisitely tailored, black leather cloak lined in a bright scarlet flowed from his shoulders. The icon of horned skull and crossbones blazed white on the black leather panel of his long-sleeved jerkin.

The brown leather belt at his waist crossed his gunblade’s thick, brown leather bandolier. A pair of tight black pants clung to the bulging muscles of his legs. The oversized cuffs of fine brown leather space boots covered his feet.

Captain Murgo leapt backward, landing in the only seat in the Escape Pod not filled with crates of credits. He slapped his hand on the Escape Pod’s big, red, launch button. Crash webbing swung down, pinning Captain Murgo to the chair.

Less than a second later, the Escape Pod’ hatch closed. A blast-shield door slammed down to protect anyone left in the starship from the Escape Pod’s launch. The pod launched, gently rocking The Celestial Mule.

A moment later, a voice emanated from a wristband on Captain Gothar’s arm.

“Bogey neutralized, Captain.”

3

Gothar’s eyes darted from the blast doors where the captain’s escape pod had been a second before to the people cowering before him. When his eyes fell on the human woman, his chest seized. He couldn’t make his lungs draw a breath.

Compared to him, she looked so small. Her long, wavy locks of hair glistened in the cabin’s lights and her sparkling green eyes glared at him over the heads of three Zasnuvian children who clung to her arms and legs.

Words failed to form in his mind or on his tongue. Gothar drew a deep breath, refusing to acknowledge the allure of the human woman before him. The youngest of the Zasnuvians popped their head out from behind the human woman to which it clung.

“Are you a pirate?”

“I am Gothar, the Scourge!”

The eldest of the children popped its head from around the human woman’s standard shipsuit-clad legs. Gothar refused to let anyone see him drool over the soft, shapely curves of her thigh.

“Never heard of you.”

Gothar’s eyes bulged. “Impossible! Every soul in the galaxy has heard of Captain Gothar, the Scourge!”

Gothar leaned over the human woman and the children, looming with the entire force of his ego.

“All fear Gothar. You, too, should quake in your boots at my name.”

The third child peeked from around the human woman. “We don’t wear boots. We have tentacles for limbs.”

“Then quake in your tentacles, children.”

The youngest piped in. “If I become a pirate, can I tell people to quake in their boots, too?”

“What? You’re not joining my pirates. I’m your captor.”

“I’d rather be a pirate than a captive. Look, I can tie up Yahǎr and Thǎlwe. They can be my prisoners.”

The middle child smacked the youngest, the would-be pirate, with an arm tentacle. “I am so not your captive, Lel!”

Lel smacked the middle child with her own arm tentacle. “Stop hitting me! When I get my pirate sword, you’re my first stop, Yahǎr.”

The eldest child tried to smack both of the younger children, but missed, slapping the human woman’s arm.

“Thǎlwe! Yahǎr! Lel! Stop hitting each other right now!”

“But, I’m not even hitting her anymore.”

One of Yahǎr’s arm tentacles had wrapped around one of Lel’s, using her arm to smack Lel’s face.

“Five. Four. Three…”

The children stopped before the human woman reached one, but only barely. Gothar huffed. “As I was saying, you should all quake in the presence of Gothar, the Scourge.”

The middle child stepped out from behind the human woman’s legs. He waddled a step on his lower tentacles.

“I don’t know what ‘quake’ means. Can you show me how?”

“What? I’m not going to show you how to quake. Gothar, the Scourge never quakes!”

Lel stepped up next to Yahǎr, holding another tentacle high above her bulbous, big-eyed head.

“Aaarrrggghh! Lel, the Scourge never quakes, either!”

“You can’t call yourself ‘The Scourge’. I’m the Scourge.”

“Then who can I be?”

Thǎlwe cut her eyes at Lel. “Lel, the Puny!”

“Shut it, Thǎlwe!”

Lel tackled Thǎlwe. They rolled across the cabin’s metal-grate floor, arm and leg tentacles slapping. The quarreling siblings rolled to a stop against Gothar’s fancy boots. Lel got a tentacle around Thǎlwe’s head.

“Take it back! Take it back, Thǎlwe!”

Thǎlwe stuck her finger tentacles in Lel’s mouth, trying to shut her up. Lel bit down with her needle-sharp teeth. Thǎlwe squealed, flailing her leg tentacles wildly.

“Never!”

“Gothar, the Scourge demands you get ahold of yourselves this instant.”

Gothar’s bellow stopped Lel and Thǎlwe’s vicious grappling. They untangled their tentacles and pulled themselves up from the floor. Lel stood as close to Gothar as she could, staring directly up at him.

“Why are you staring at me like that?”

“I’m going to need your cloak and gunblade.”

“What? Why?”

“How am I supposed to play Pirate Captain Lel, the Scourge, without the right accessories?”

“What do you mean? These are my clothes, not a costume. Besides, I already told you you can’t be a pirate.”

“Fine! I’ll be the captain of my own ship and I’ll board your ship and take you captive and be Lel, the Scourge at last.”

“That is not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.”

“Then how do I become a Pirate Captain?”

“We don’t call ourselves ‘Pirate Captain’…”

Yahǎr interrupted.

“But, Captain Gothar, you’re a pirate and a captain, right?”

“Yes, but just say ‘Captain Gothar’, not ‘Pirate Captain Gothar’”

Thǎlwe poked Captain Gothar’s holster. Gothar jumped a step back, covering the butt of his blaster with a hand.

“Don’t touch that. It’s dangerous.”

Thǎlwe sniffed, rubbing her wide, flat nostrils with a delicate finger tentacle.

“But, Captain Gothar, they call you ‘The Pirate Captain Gothar, who claims to be ‘The Scourge’ of the galaxy on the news feeds.”

“Aha! I knew you recognized me from the beginning. All have heard the name of Gothar! Aaaaarrrgggghhh!”

Gothar thrust his gunblade high in celebration. All three children lined up in front of him and raised their fists. The voices cried out as one.

“Aaaaaarrrrrrrggggghhhhhhhh!”

Gothar pointed the tip of his gunblade at the children.

“Stop aaarrrggghhhing! None of you are pirates. Only crew may aaaarrrgggghhh.”

Gothar shook the ornate basket of his cutlass at the children. He leaned down into their tiny faces and roared. All three children screamed, streaking around him in circles. Gothar roared again, arms raised in utter frustration.

He turned in circles, grabbing at the children, but Zasnuvian bodies remain vaguely gelatinous until adulthood, when they develop thick, leathery plates. Every time Gothar thought he had grabbed one, their flesh oozed out from between his fingers.

Lel grabbed the end of a nearby rope. She danced around Gothar’s legs, passing the rope through his legs to Thǎlwe. Thǎlwe grabbed her end. Within moments, the rope grew taught, tangled in Gothar’s legs.

For a short infinity, Gothar swayed, his legs now tightly wrapped in lengths of heavy rope. Then, Gothar fell. The children scattered. Gothar landed like a stone upon the floor. He roared, cutting himself free with the blade of his cutlass.

Gothar growled. The massive muscles in his shoulders and massive, red-scaled pecs flexed. He swung his face to the children. Gothar’s bared his teeth at them, upper lip twitching. He took a step toward them, cutlass raised.

Wavy, red hair and green eyes, harder than any jewel Captain Gothar had ever plundered, filled his vision. The human woman stood between Gothar and his prey.

And she looked pissed.

4

Relia stood between the growling, hulking Captain Gothar and her three charges. The captain’s quarters fell quiet. The three children’s big, liquid eyes darted between Relia and Gothar.

“You won’t touch these children.”

Gothar blinked. He tried to think of the last time anyone had told him what he would and wouldn’t do. He failed to think of a single instance. Since he was spawned, he’d dominated everyone around him. Weak Kroka didn’t survive childhood.

His eyes narrowed and sheathed his gunblade. “Defy me and taste the back of my hand, wench.” He raised a large, hard hand.

“Go ahead, brute. You won’t even be the first ass to do so today.” Relia pointed to her busted lip. “I didn’t exactly get this in the battle.”

Gothar froze for a moment. His eyes polled the children’s grim faces. “I’m not an ass.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

Gothar’s glare darted to Thǎlwe, who looked far too innocent for anyone’s good. He growled at the child. Relia growled at Gothar. His eyes darted to hers and he almost forgot who was supposed to be in charge of the situation.

“Who are you?”

“The nanny.”

“Nanny…?”

“It means I care for these children.”

“I know what ‘nanny’ means.”

“Then what are you asking me?”

“Your name?’

“Put your hand down and I might tell you.”

Gothar lowered his arm.

“Relia.”

Gothar glanced at the escape hatch blast doors.

“And who was that?”

“Their father.”

“Oh. Where’s their mom?”

“Dead.”

Gothar’s eyes darted to Yahǎr, but the child shrugged and looked away.

“He took crates of credits with him,” Relia answered.

Gothar looked at her and thunder rolled in the mind behind those green eyes. The unsaid part of Relia’s sentence rang through Gothar’s mind.

He took his galactic credits, but he didn’t take any of you with him.

Gothar almost felt bad for them, for a moment. Lucky for him, he quickly snapped out of it.

“I may let you live, yet, if you show me where the rest of the loot is stashed.”

“Why would I know? It’s not like that gichvǔ, Captain Murgo, was open about his business.”

Captain Gothar’s eyes grew wide.

“You speak Krokan?”

“Only the bad words.” Relia answered, then looked quickly at the children. “Don’t say that word.”

Lel piped in. “Which one? Gichvǔ?”

“Yeah, that one.”

“What’s gichvǔ mean?”

Yahǎr looked like he honestly wanted to know.

Relia knew he already knew it translated, more or less, to ‘fucker’, but wasn’t going to let Gothar know.

Lel took her brother’s arm tentacle into her own. Her finger tentacles petted her brother. “I’ll explain it later.”

“Thanks, Lel.”

Gothar roared. “Back to the point! Where’s the loot?”

Relia and the children shrugged. Thǎlwe pointed to the bags and crates near the escape pod blast door.

“He loaded a lot onto the escape pod. What he didn’t manage to load should be sitting right there.”

Captain Gothar spun to face the pile of loot. His big, red-scaled hands dug into the pile. Thǎlwe crossed her arm tentacles over her chest.

“That’s all Dad cared about, too.”

Gothar stopped pillaging the pile for a moment, refusing to admit the Zasnivian child’s words wounded his pride.

“I’m Krokan, child. We are a proud species descended from dragons. Our entire culture is based on hoarding wealthy and shiny things.”

Lel’s face lit up. “I love shiny things! Are all dragons pirates?”

“What? No. Quiet, child. I’m trying to count.”

“You sound like my dad.”

“Speak again and I shall run you through, you space louse.”

“That’s going to make it hard to answer your questions or tell you about any more loot.”

Relia quirked a brow. “You will do no such thing.”

Gothar sighed. He leapt to his feet from where he had knelt by the stacked loot. He spun to face Relia. Her soft contours and amazing eyes threatened to chase off the memory of why he yelled at her, frustrating Gothar even further.

“Why do you insist on defying me, human?”

“I don’t know. Why do you insist on being a dick?”

“I’m not being a dick.”

Relia realized the children had fallen quiet during her argument with Gothar because none of the children asked her what ‘dick’ meant. Her eyes darted about, searching for the troublemakers. Relia’s eyes widened when they fell on Lel.

The youngest of the three Zasnuvian children had nearly worked Captain Gothar’s blaster from its holster.

“You don’t want these children to say ‘gichvǔ’, but you don’t warn them not to say ‘dick’? What kind of nanny are you?”

“What do you know about it? When was the last time you were a nanny?”

“Nanny! I am Gothar, the Scourge! I’ve never been a nanny, how dare you…”

“When was the last time you ate a kid?”

Both Relia and Gothar looked at Lel, confused by the question.

“I don’t eat childr…”

Gothar noticed Lel had Gother’s blaster out of Gothar’s holster and pointed it right at Gothar’s head.

“Is it hard to see when your hair is over one eye? Does it affect your depth perception?”

Relia ripped the blaster out of Lel’s hand before she could ask any more questions. Captain Gothar ripped it from Relia’s hand. He turned his blaster on the children.

“Touch my weapons again and I’ll start eating children.”

Lel’s face lit up. “Did you bring more children? I’m tired of playing with Thǎlwe. She’s boring.”

“Screw you, Lel.”

“Children! Language!”

“You’re one to talk, Nanny.”

“My name is Relia. Use it.”

“Fine! You’re one to talk, Relia.”

“Put that blaster down and I’ll be happy to talk shit with you all day, Captain.”

“If I can’t kill them, I must, at least, punish them. I can’t let that go. She could’ve killed me. If a child killed me, I’d die of embarrassment.”

Relia didn’t point out the flaw in Captain Gothar’s statement. She wasn’t certain he’d understand the explanation.

“You’re ten times their size and outweigh them by a thousand pounds, brute.”

“But, I’m only three-hundred-seventy-five pounds. Your math is way off.”

“Don’t lecture me on math, and, if you must punish someone, punish me, instead.”

“So be it!”

Captain Gothar grabbed Relia by the arm. He dragged her over to a chair, sat down, and threw her over his lap.

“What are you doing? Unhand me, you gichvǔ patva núm shiepáp!”

Captain Gothar gasped.

“You do know the bad words. You’re taking their spanking and getting the first swat for calling me a ‘fuck man pile of shit’ in my own language.”

“Which one means ‘shit’?”

“Quiet, Lel, while I discipline your nanny!”

Gothar raised a big hand, Relia kicking and fighting on his lap.

5

Relia stopped struggling in Gothar’s lap. She turned her face back to him and he gulped. Relia was the most beautiful person he’d seen in all his years of pillaging. He wasn’t even really supposed to be out in this deity-forsaken Cutalian region.

Gothar didn’t see much point in deities. Gothar was only interested in what’d brought him greater treasure, more glory, and more shiny things to add to his hoard. Gods asked for a lot of work.

Worse, as far as Gothar was concerned, Gods always wanted a cut of the loot and Gothar just couldn’t bear to part with a single credit he kept. What had Gods really done for Gothar, anyway? Everything Gothar had, he was certain he had acquired through his own glorious, brutal, vitality.

Gothar’s XO, Utrial, burst through the hatch. He froze at first sight of Relia stretched across Captain Gothar’s lap, with Gothar’s blaster-filled hand raised high in the air and three Zasnusian children pulling shivs. Utrial had learned early on not to question what his captain got up to.

The previous XO had asked one too many questions one night about a certain brothel moon and a galactic standard ton of Flaflaxian squid. Utrial refuses to speak of what transpired that day, but he ended it as Gothar’s new XO.

“What kind of nanny lets children have shivs?”

“I don’t ‘let’ them have shivs, Captain. I don’t approve of the children fashioning or carrying shivs, but no matter how many of them I find, the children somehow always make new ones.”

“And you haven’t broken them of this?”

“I’ve only been with them for a week and navigating their late father has been a much greater concern, so far. Besides, what do you care if the kids have shivs? Don’t Kroka eat each other at birth?”

“Only the strongest Kroka survive!”

“Captain. Sensors just picked up a security patrol.”

Relia looked back at Gothar. “Maybe we can postpone the spanking till a more convenient time? When you’re not holding a blaster?”

Gothar glared at Relia, snapping at Utrial.

“What’s our window, XO?”

“The patrol will enter long-range sensor range in thirty minutes. LRM in twenty.”

Gothar nodded, lowering his hand and holstering his blaster. “Tell the men we leave in ten.”

“Aye, Captain.” XO Utrial slammed his chest with a fist in salute and jogged off.

“Want to let me up, now? It will take me at least ten minutes to pack the children’s things. Then I have to get them and all their stuff onto your starship and I’m going to need a hoverkart, too. Can you have one of your men assist, as well? Children! You have five minutes to pack. Move.”

The children scattered, stuffing their favorite things into nearby crates, bags, and pillowcases. Relia wondered where they’d hidden their shivs, but decided to ask later.

Gothar released Relia’s arm. Relia attempted to push herself up.

“Owww!”

Gothar looked down. Some of Relia’s hair had tangled around one of the buttons on Gothar’s jerkin. Gothar grabbed a handful of hair and pulled, trying to rip it from the button. Relia slapped at his hands.

“Stop it, just give me a minute…”

Relia’s fingers fiddled with the fiery strands tangled in the button. A moment and many grumbles and soft curses later, Relia pulled her head free. She glared at Gothar, rubbing her scalp, as despite her care several long, red hairs had been left behind.

She sprung from his lap to her feet in one, swift move. Both the graceful movement of her body and her surprising, athletic agility delighted Gothar and nearly distracted him from terrorizing everyone in sight.

Sudden paranoia gripped Gothar. His eyes darted at his XO. Gothar wondered if Utrial would think him weak for showing this red-haired, wolvǎz ták mercy. Gothar’s eyes darted to Relia. He wondered if she knew what wolvǎz ták meant, too.

His head spun. He didn’t appreciate all the furious thinking Relia had made him do with her mere existence. He stood and strode to the door. Now outside her, obvious to him, area of feminine influence, he turned to face her.

Gothar drew himself to his full seven feet, projecting every iota of menace he’d carefully nurtured inside himself over years of brutal raids. When he spoke, he spoke with the gravity of a Kroka who’d amassed fortunes upon the carcasses of his fallen prey.

“Utrial. Take these captives to the Leviathan’s brig. They’ll fetch a good price at the Slakak slave markets.”

Relia crossed her arms over her chest. She raised an eyebrow at Gothar.

“You can’t keep children in a brig. If you don’t let me bring their stuff to play with, they’ll start playing with your stuff, like life-support systems and engines just to see what happens. And if you really want to sell us, we’ll fetch a much better price if we are in a decent condition when we get there.”

Gothar and Utrial blinked at Relia. Relia tapped her foot. Gothar cleared his throat.

“Fine. In five minutes, escort them to the empty guest suite with whatever they have packed and have some guys come collect the credits in those bags over there by the escape pod blast doors.”

“Aye, Captain.”

“And, Utrial?’

“Yes, Captain?”

“Keep an eye on the little one.”

Utrial turned his eyes on Lel. She froze, a large wrench half-way into a pillowcase.

“It’s a family heirloom.”

Lel stared at Utrial, daring him to refute her claim. He glanced at Yahǎr and Thǎlwe. They looked so innocent, the spines on the back of Utrial’s neck rose. A chill ran down his back.

“Aye, Captain.”

Gothar stomped into the hallway, grumbling.

“I have better things to do than deal with that…that…wolvǎz ták…that heart witch.”

Gothar quickly looked about to make certain no one heard him say those words out loud. Satisfied his suspicions had yet to be discovered, Gothar stomped his way through the freighter.

Gothar wondered what he’d do for a second, terrified himself with his own answer and decided he’d gotten ahead of himself. He decided he hadn’t any reason to even worry about Relia being his wolvǎz chár, his heart mate, yet.

He would have to have Relia tested first, to see if her genes resonated on the frequency of the Lashpi crystals in his heart. Gothar stomped onto the boarding shuttle. He sat in a chair, wondering how he’d have Relia tested without raising suspicions.

Gothar didn’t want any of the crew to know, yet. He wasn’t certain he even wanted to know, but his Lashpi crystals throbbed for her.

A few minutes ticked by and Utrial herded his charges to the shuttle.

“Utrial, you seem to have picked up an extra.”

Relia turned her fierce, green eyes on Gothar, but kept her arm wrapped around the other woman.

“She’s the chef and she’s coming with us.”

Gothar opened his mouth to argue, but Relia cut him off.

“Try me and I’ll unleash Lel on you while you sleep.”

Gothar roared. He stood, tossing the children’s things into the shuttle.

“Captain, we must launch. We’re losing our window.”

Gothar threw in the last of the luggage. Relia, the chef and the children found seats while Gothar and Utrial strapped in.

Captain Gothar sped off in his shuttle followed by a small flotilla of similar cargo shuttles piloted by his men. He had to smile when his men docked with the Leviathan like the well-oiled machine of a team they were.

Gothar landed his shuttle in the hangar bay, leapt from it, and ran to the Leviathan’s bridge. His boots rang off the onyx black deck plating like a funeral knell and he skidded into the bridge the second the interlocking blast doors flew open.

“Are the patrol crafts in sight?”

“Not yet, Captain, but we’ve detected the launch of multiple LRMs.”

“Then open a hyperspace window, helmsman. Let it not be said Gothar the Scourge is so rude as to get in the way of those missiles.”

The crew joined Gothar in a hearty laugh as a shimmering curtain of indigo-tinged red sprang up in front of the Leviathan. Gothar felt the same tingle in the back of his neck he always got when entering a hyperspace window. The stars vanished as they plunged into the wormhole’s kaleidoscopic tube.

Another successful sacking, Gothar thought to himself. Yet, he found his mind troubled. It seemed Relia and the children squatted in his brain like an ugly mud bug.

Gothar decided he was going to be utterly ruthless when dealing with them from now on. The last thing he wanted was for his men to think him soft.

Soft Pirate Captains had a shorter shelf life than Earth bananas.

6

Relia seethed as the burly crewman pushed them down the hallway. She kept the children in front of her and whenever she slowed down, the big guy behind her shoved her forward, almost making her stumble.

“There’s no need to be rude,” she muttered, knowing the words were in vain. They didn’t give a fuck. She couldn’t help trying to create a bit of breathing space for her and the children, though. You never knew which alien would have a soft spot she could take advantage of.

He grunted, shoving her. She sighed, catching herself so she didn’t trip over the kids. Relia took a deep breath and held it, hoping to calm herself down. If she acted soft and compliant, she might be able to win some special treatment. At this point, Relia didn’t know if she should pray they’d take her to the slave auctions where she’d roll the dice on her fate, or stay here, with…Gothar.

They weren’t taken to the brig, so that was a definite plus. It was too much to hope they might get a bedroom, but at least they weren’t going to a cell. One of the guards pointed at Chef Dana.

“You. You cook?”

The chef nodded.

“Come with me.”

He led the chef down an adjoining corridor. I didn’t worry. On spaceships, a good chef was worth more than their weight in any precious substance.

A few corridors later, the big guy we followed gestured down the hall.

“This will do,” the mate snapped as he stopped by a door. “Gothar doesn’t think you need much security.”

Relia entered the room curiously, hoping to see a bed or couch, something soft to sleep on. She’d even consider a decent mat the height of luxury.

To her dismay the room was simply full of crates and boxes. The kids charged in immediately, climbing and jumping all over the towers of storage. She whirled around to ask the guard if there’d be food or water, but she was only in time to get the door slammed in her face.

“Some guest suite…”

She felt cold and numb, but not completely hopeless. The happy sounds of the kids playing touched her heart like it always did and she sighed as she turned back to them.

“Are we going to eat soon?” Yahâr asked, hopefully. She shook her head.

“I really don’t think so,” she said, reaching out to give the child a quick hug. “They might not feed us until we go to auction.”

The kids looked at each other with wide, bright eyes. She could tell they were scared—well, Yahâr and Thâlwe were. Lel crawled around the edges of the room, looking behind boxes and in corners.

“What are you doing, Lel? Come back here, right now!” she snapped. She laughed, a weird, disembodied sound that made her shudder. She was determined to get into mischief and she already had quite enough problems to deal with.

“Lel, get over here.”

She heard her giggles and hurried over behind the crates. There was a faint clanging sound and she rushed around the last tower of boxes to see the scampering tentacles of Lel disappearing into the wall.

“No!” she cried. “Don’t! You little monster—”

She reached through the duct, hurling herself bodily into the opening and stretching out her arms. All she caught was Lel’s giggle as she disappeared around the corner.

She struggled in the opening for a few seconds, cursing. She could lean in a small distance but there was no way she’d fit her hips through that gap. At first, she felt a wave of anger, but it was quickly followed by fear.

If she gets out into the ship, they will kill her, she thought. For a few seconds, terror flooded her, and she was certain she’d never see Lel again. She screamed down the dark tunnel, then realized the pirates might hear and come to check on her.

She staggered back from the wall and gathered Yahâr and Thâlwe to her, taking comfort in their hugs. All she wanted was to keep them safe. Why did her life have to be so full of bad luck that it spread out to touch everything in her life?

Even though this might go down as one of the worst days of her life, she had to admit she didn’t regret meeting Gothar. He was much more interesting than any male she had encountered before. There was something about the flicker of his eyes, the tightness of his mouth when he looked at her.

There were unknown depths to him, she was sure of it. He had shown absolutely no sign of mercy and yet she felt like he wouldn’t let any harm come to her. She shook her head, frowning. She was being ridiculous. This was a delusion she was using to cover the fact that Lel had disappeared, and Relia couldn’t get her back.

They will probably shoot her, she thought in despair. Before the thought could fully form in her mind, the door clicked and she looked up, ready to face the worst.

Instead of a guard holding Lel’s battered body, it was Lel, herself. She wore a wide grin and twirled a set of keys in her hand.

“So.” She laughed. “Anyone want to get out of here?”

Relia leapt to her feet, throwing her arms around her. She hugged Lel so tight she made her eyes water.

“I’m so relieved to see you safe!”

Lel shrugged. “I’m just talented, I guess.” Her grin was slightly more bashful now, under her attention. “Should we go?”

Lel’s words sank in and Relia nodded emphatically, grabbing Yahâr and Thâlwe’s hands.

“We should. Let’s see if we can find a way off this boat.”

Lel’s grin widened even further.

“If we find a shuttle, can I fly it?”

She grinned and shushed her. She was amazed by how quickly kids adapted to hard situations. A little kidnapping was nothing compared to the thrill of adventure.

7

Gothar stomped through the Leviathan’s corridors. Thoughts of Relia swirled in his mind. His Lashpi crystal, the special, crystalline chamber in a Krokan’s heart, longed for Relia. Gothar’s mind ran circles through the same circuit of thoughts.

My Lashpi aches for her.

How can that be?

Does my heart truly ache or do I simply wish it out of desire for the fire-haired human?

Desire for Relia eats at my soul.

Gothar, the Scourge can’t fall for a puny human woman!

Yet, my Lashpi aches.

Memory of her dances through my mind.

Gothar sighed. He slowed to a halt, rubbing his eyes with one big hand. Gothar fought through the chaos inside. He realized he had but one option. Gothar would have to test Relia’s DNA.

He scanned the corridor, hoping none of his crew had noted his moment of weakness. Gothar had won the Destroyer-Class Leviathan by right of conquest and had made her the crowning jewel of his fleet.

Designed to support a thousand lifeforms while dedicating sixty percent of its tonnage to weapons platforms, Gothar had modified her extensively. He had paid a small fortune to convert most of the life capacity to cargo and hangar bays.

The Leviathan now ran on a fifty-man skeleton crew with the capacity for one hundred additional life forms. Sixty of those life forms were the fiercest fighters of all Gothar’s pirates.

Yet, no eyes turned his way. Gothar continued to the bridge. He didn’t need to be on the bridge; the bridge crew knew perfectly well what was expected of them. Gothar halted.

He realized he only walked to the bridge out of habit. The bridge wouldn’t help him determine if Relia was his mate.

I will need a sample of her DNA to test my theory.

Gothar spun on his heel, returning to Relia. He needed to obtain a sample of Relia’s blood or hair. Gothar halted again, grinning.

He looked down at his jerkin. Relia had left those hairs tangled in one of the buttons. With all the complaining she did while unsticking herself, she must have pulled out at least a few by the root.

Gothar examined the hairs, careful not to touch them. He saw a few had roots and a small amount of blood. Gothar spun on his heel once again. This time he walked as fast as his long legs would take him to the lab.

Grateful to find no one currently in the Leviathan’s lab, Gothar slipped in, locking the door behind him. He retrieved a pair of locking hemostats from a drawer. With care, he closed the locking, scissor-like clamps on the long, red hairs tangled in his button.

He tugged, but the hairs remained firmly attached. Gothar sighed and retrieved a scalpel from a different drawer. With breaths as careful as a sniper’s, he cut free a tiny clump of Relia’s hair.

He held the hemostats to his face, examining the clump. Certain the collected sample was sufficient for a definitive comparison, Gothar chuckled.

He crossed the lab to the DNA sequencer, stuffing the entire sample into a small tube then stuffed the tube into an awaiting rack. He jabbed the START button.

The sequencer whirred to life. The rack retracted into the console And a cover slipped over the hole. The sequencer emitted a sequence of beeps and flashing lights. A LOADING icon flashed on the screen.

Gothar tapped his giant toes. The DNA sequencer fell silent. He rushed to the display.

ANALYZING…

Gothar glared at the display.

ANALYZING…

He sighed, resigning himself to be patient.

The DNA Sequencer beeped.

Gothar held his breath.

SELECT COMPARISON SAMPLE.

He jabbed the NEW SAMPLE option. A small, thin device extended from the DNA sequencer. Gothar placed his thumb on the little pad at the end. Something sharp jabbed him.

He felt a collection nozzle suck a drop of blood from his tiny wound.

RETRACT THUMB.

Gothar licked his thumb, waiting for the DNA sequencer to provide confirmation, or denial, of his fate.

ANALYZING…

He growled. His hands gripped the edges of the console, resisting the urge to rip the entire piece of expensive machinery from the wall.

FREQUENCY CONFIRMED.

Gothar’s knees threatened to collapse. His heart raced.

Confirmed…

Relia… Relia was Gothar’s wolvǎz chár. He’d found his heart—the one being in the galaxy who’d synchronize with his Lashpi.

Gothar gripped the console. The world spun around him. The weight of the ramifications of finding Relia nearly brought him to his knees.

Gothar fought to push all thought aside, to wall away the abyss of emotion surging into him. Relia and all thoughts of her came to him from a realm of possibilities he had rarely explored.

He locked away the chaos, determined to deal with it later, after the shock had time to fade.

Don’t think of…her, Gothar. Think of other things. Think of hearty meals and frothy tankards of beer. Think of the treasure room. Yes, Gothar, that’s it.

Gothar locked access to the test results and left the lab. He stomped his way through the corridors. He wanted to look at his booty. The glistening treasures of the captain’s hoard always soothed him.

“Captain Gothar?”

Gothar lifted his arm, responding to XO Utrial’s voice on the personal comms device built into his greave.

“Yes, Utrial?”

“The prisoners have escaped.”

“Shiepáp!”

“Captain?”

“Sound the alarm, Utrial. I want them taken alive and unharmed.”

“Uh… Aye, Captain.”

Gothar ran. His long legs carried him through corridor after corridor. His heart pounded. He couldn’t let anything happen to Relia.

He skidded to a halt at the cargo bay where Relia and the children had been taken. Every crate had been opened and random items were missing

“How did they get out?”

A young pirate pointed to the open ventilation hatch. “Looks like one of the kids climbed through the vents and opened the door.”

Gothar ground his teeth. “The little one. It was the little one.” Sneaky creature. He couldn’t help but be impressed.

He ran for the shuttle bay, certain Relia and the children planned to escape as soon as they dropped out of hyperspace. That was the only real chance of escape.

Gothar wished harder than he’d ever wished before.

He wished to reach Relia before any harm could come to her.

8

Relia crept down a dark, black metal corridor. Lel, Yahǎr, and Thǎlwe followed her, waddling along on their leg tentacles. Lel gripped her heirloom wrench in one of her arm tentacles. Yahǎr and Thǎlwe carried pillowcases filled with their few, prized possessions.

Early into this very short assignment, Relia got the distinct impression none of these children had been given much of anything since their mother passed.

Relia couldn’t stand the thought of taking away what little they’d managed to collect over their short lives. Relia also wanted to know more about the children’s mother but decided to wait until the children opened up about her on their own.

“Lel, don’t get too far ahead.”

“But, Miss Relia, I’m scouting.”

“Good point. Just don’t let yourself get spotted.”

“Aye.”

Yahǎr tugged on Relia’s hand. She looked down. He flashed his shiv at her.

“Don’t worry, Miss Relia. If any pirates come, I’ll protect you.”

“Thanks, Yahǎr, but it’s supposed to be my job to protect you.”

Thǎlwe smiled up at Relia. She dug into her shipsuit, pulling out a well-crafted shank.

“Here, Miss Relia. I have an extra.”

“…Thanks, Thǎlwe. I appreciate that.”

“It should fit in your bra.”

Relia eyed the children and decided not to question their good luck. The children had survived life with their father before Relia came along. Relia knew she’d alienate them immediately if she tried to pretend they hadn’t already seen too much of the world.

Lel stopped at a T-junction of corridors, peeking her head around. She jumped back, flattening herself against the wall. She looked back, waving an arm tentacle.

Relia’s head whipped around, searching for cover. She saw no alcoves large enough to hide the children. She saw a door nearby and ran to it. Relia pulled at the door, but it didn’t budge. She jerked the handle, angry at life.

One of the children tapped her shoulder. She looked around and saw none of the three children. Confusion and panic boiled her brain. Then a tentacle tapped the top of Relia’s head. She looked up, shocked eyes wide.

“Give us your arms, Miss Relia. We promise to be careful.”

The children clung to the ceiling in the dark recesses between the corridor’s support ribs by their suction cupped tentacle feet. Relia reached for them. Six arm tentacles wrapped around her arms, pulling at her with careful, gentle pressure.

They pulled her up, repositioning tentacles to hold Relia up, against the shadowed ceiling. Heavily booted footsteps rang out through the metal corridors, growing louder with each step. Relia’s heart pounded in her ears.

She heard one speak in a rough tongue she didn’t recognize. His companion’s laugh rolled down the corridor. Relia panted, putting all her effort into relaxing though adrenaline flooded her veins.

Delicate little finger tentacles soothed her arms. She smiled. She knew on sight these children needed her and, she suspected, she needed them as much as they needed her. Relia wished, with her entire soul, to find these children safety…as soon as she could.

The pirates crossed the T-junction, coming into view. Relia held her breath and watched them pass, enjoying their conversation. An entire second later, the pirates passed out of sight and she sighed in relief.

“Am I too heavy?”

Thǎlwe shook her head.

“No, Miss Relia. Zasnusians are strong.”

“Okay. Before we get down, we need to find a terminal. I remember the route we took to get here from the shuttle, but it was a very busy area. I’m too big and inflexible to go in the air vents with any of you. We need to find a map of the maintenance shafts and see if we can’t find a way around.”

The children nodded.

“Good, okay, let me down. Be quiet. Be careful.”

Lel shrugged.

“If Dad couldn’t find us on The Mule, these pirates have no chance.”

Relia’s heart threatened to break. She nodded, lips compressed.

“Okay, let’s go.”

The children lowered Relia to the ground. Thǎlwe and Yahǎr followed her down.

“Lel, let’s go.”

Lel shook her bulbous head.

“Miss Relia, I can move up here faster than you. Let me scout ahead.”

“Okay, but don’t be too long. I’ll worry.”

Lel scampered off, flowing from one ceiling shadow to another. Relia counted in her head to calm her nerves until Lel returned. She stopped when she got to one hundred-fifty and started peeping around the corner.

A moment later, Lel popped down from a shadow, startling Relia.

“Follow me.”

Lel plopped down from the ceiling, took Relia’s hand, and the four of them took a left. At the end of that corridor, they took a right and scrambled through a door. Relia scanned the small room Lel had led them to.

Maintenance supply crates filled shelf after shelf. The children began to rummage immediately. Relia locked the door before settling in front of a maintenance terminal. She tapped a few keys, navigating to the maintenance schematics.

She scanned the schematic files, trying to plot a route. Relia realized she’d never remember the entire route this way. There were just too many turns. She searched the maintenance desk, finding a portable computing device.

“Yahǎr. I found the schematics. Can you transfer them to this PCD so I don’t have to try to remember all this?”

Yahǎr’s head popped out of a large crate.

“Sure, Miss Relia.”

Less than a minute later, the four of them rushed through the maintenance shafts headed for the shuttle bay.

“Okay, listen. When we get there, we’re going to hide in a shuttle until this starship exits hyperspace. Then we make a run for it. Any questions before we get there?”

“No, Miss Relia.”

Relia smiled at the three children’s combined voices. Relia was proud the children were all on the same side, for once. Soon, they peeked around the hangar bay’s maintenance door.

Relia blessed her luck. The hangar was devoid of pirates, but full of a small flotilla of shuttles. The four of them closed the maintenance door and sprinted for the nearest open shuttle. They scrambled to the back, away from the front windows.

The children cuddled up with Relia, relaxing, waiting. Ten minutes later, Lel slept in Relia’s arms. Yahǎr and Thǎlwe leaned against her arms, snoring softly. Relia’s eyes drooped, threatening to send her off to sleep as well.

A loud crash brought Relia fully awake. Another flood of adrenaline coursed through her. Her breath came fast. Her heart pounded. She looked at the front of the shuttle, hoping no one entered and found them.

Another, closer crash, and Relia’s heart sank. She pulled the children close.

Captain Gothar rushed into the shuttle.

Relia gulped. He looked livid.

9

The giggling drove Gothar out of his mind. The shuttle wasn’t that big, and he didn’t understand how the three kids kept escaping him. Of course, they were much smaller than he was and that meant they could hide in very creative places.

Even though he was comforted by the thought of being the one to locate them—sparing him the embarrassment of another crew member finding them—he wasn’t assured of his own strength and cleverness while the tiny, frustrating creatures continued to outsmart him.

“Get out of there!” he roared, bending down to look into a small cavity behind one of the switchboards. The giggling echoed through the walls, cascading around him like a mocking theme song. He clenched his fists and tried to control his breathing. When he realized he sounded like an angry bull, he shook himself and examined the panel to try to get it off.

Relia entered the hallway hesitantly. She clearly didn’t want to draw his anger, but she wasn’t about to let him take out his frustration on the kids, either.

“Gothar, they’re just children.”

“Of course, they are!” he snapped. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“They don’t understand. They think it’s a game.”

“Game! My reputation, my leadership, is no game. They must be returned to the ship and this time, all of you are going to the brig.”

“Please,” she begged. “Don’t lock them up. It’s not right.”

“I’ll tell you about what’s right—” He turned to yell at Relia when one of the kids reached out through the gap in the wall and quickly tugged on his pants. They slipped off his waist, almost falling down to his knees. He grabbed them quickly, before Relia or the kids had too much of a look at him.

Not that I’d mind Relia having a nice, long look at my package, he thought. He might have grinned for some time if the clanging in the walls hadn’t suddenly started up at a new, ear splitting volume. He realized the kids were moving through the shuttle wall.

“No!” he yelled, reaching into the tiny gap. Giggles rang around him again and to his dismay, something hard and cold clamped around his wrist.

“What the fuck,” he whispered, trying to pull his arm out. There was a solid clank and Gothar realized his arm was stuck.

He roared, fighting the blockage. The loud bangs accompanying each tug of his arm suggested they’d locked something around his wrist that didn’t fit through the small gap in the wall.

“Gothar, you’re going to hurt yourself,” Relia said, gently. He shot her a glare as he kept fighting with the wall.

“It doesn’t matter, just as long as I get out of here,” He kept pulling, cursing, and swearing at the same time. He was fully aware the cuff wasn’t coming off and his struggles were useless, but he didn’t stop trying.

The laughter of the children faded, and he swore, knowing they were taking off further into the shuttle. Relia called out to them but they weren’t listening to her, either. He tried again to free his arm, feeling the metal inside bending and groaning as he set his full strength against it.

He heard the laughter getting close. Too close. The tallest kid came running down the hallway full tilt and yanked on his pants on the way past. With a roar of fury, Gothar realized he was now standing in the middle of the shuttle with one hand trapped and his trousers around his ankles.

He knew a fury now that went beyond anything he’d ever experienced. With a fierce scream, he put one hand against the wall and wrenched his other hand free. Metal screamed as it buckled, and his hand flew from the hole. The thing they had trapped him in was just a simple tool vice and he opened the screws easily.

After pulling up his pants, he chased the giggles down to the control area, finding the kids leaping all over the console. Relia tried to catch them all, but they moved with super speed. With shock, he realized there weren’t any key locks engaged.

“Get off there!” he screamed. The kids laughed and danced harder.

Soft red lights began to flash. The shuttle trembled.

“Launch sequence initiated,” a soft, sexless voice announced. Relia’s face went completely white.

“Get down, now!” she yelled. She reached out for the kids, but they obviously knew that tone. They jumped to the floor and actually managed to look a bit apologetic.

“Fuck, fuck,” Gothar muttered, stepping up to the controls. Relia had done the same and watched with trepidation.

“Can we stop it?” she asked.

“No,” he answered. “We don’t have much time—”

The shuttle bucked and twisted. The kids were thrown across the room and Relia grabbed them, pulling them close to her body as the small ship hummed with a terrible vibration.

For a few seconds, everything went white. There was a brief sense of weightlessness and Gothar felt pain flash through him, like a very powerful electric shock. It was over quickly, but when he opened his eyes to try to orient himself, the first thing he saw was the shuttle practically falling apart.

“Shit,” he muttered, reaching for the controls. Sparks flew and alarming noises came out from behind the walls and switches. There weren’t any familiar formations nearby that he saw and basic navs were out. They had hyper jumped without a set course and now they were nowhere, utterly dead in the water.

One of the kids started to wail. The other two took it up quickly. Gothar smiled and shook his head.

At least they’d stopped giggling.

10

Relia watched Gothar step up to the control panel, her mouth brick dry and her muscles trembling. The jump had been rough and she had an odd, coppery taste in her mouth. The kids were starting to freak out and she hugged them, knowing there wasn’t much comfort to offer.

Gothar ignored her, typing furiously at the main monitor and throwing switches. Lines of electricity traced across the panel but he didn’t stop, only grunting occasionally as he got a shock. The air began to get thin and Relia felt a slight turning in their momentum.

I feel the shuttle spinning! she thought, panicking. If the buffers were gone, they hadn’t any hope of jumping again or getting far. She hoped the life support failure wasn’t terminal, but her luck lately—and for most of her life—suggested that hope was entirely in vain.

She stood up, pushing the kids into a corner.

“Hold on here,” she said, pointing at some support struts. “Just hang on as long as you can, okay? Close your eyes and don’t let go of each other.”

They whimpered, clinging to her, but she disengaged and hurried to the console. She noticed a flash and a crack, and jumped away with a scream.

“Get back,” Gothar muttered. “You’ll just get in my way.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m trying to restore basic controls. Right now, we’ve got nothing. The air will be gone in minutes if we don’t get some power up.”

Relia’s heart pounded up into her throat. Panic streaked through her. She still felt the shuttle spinning under her, the direction impossible to guess because the stars outside were completely foreign to her. There wasn’t anything out there hinting at their location.

Not that it matters, she thought. We’re all about to suffocate.

“What do we need to do?” she asked. “Let me help.”

Gothar growled, typing fast. “All right. I have no choice now. Take over here and enter these command codes. I have to run to the engine and use the manual override switch.”

“Okay.” Relia stepped in beside him, taking over the keyboard. He gave her lines of code and then ran down the hall. Relia felt the moment power surged through the shuttle and as she typed in the command codes, life support switched back on and the death spiral slowed.

“You did it!” she cried in relief as Gothar hurried back to the console. The tightness in her chest eased as she let the rest of their problems trickle into her mind. She turned to the kids, ready to hug them and tell them everything was fine. Then she’d sort out the next set of disasters.

Suddenly the shuttle groaned and clanged alarmingly. Gothar cursed but he didn’t look surprised.

“What the fuck?” Relia screamed. “I thought you said it was fixed.”

He shook his head. “I never said that. The power is running down so fast because there’s a breach in the fuel line. All we did was buy ourselves a little extra time.”

Relia had no words, and she was too terrified to speak even if she had any. She watched Gothar pounding the console, wondering what the point was. She thought about their fate, if they might blow up first, or have time to suffocate.

The little shuttle began to spin again and Relia was thrown against the wall. The kids screamed and Gothar rocked on his feet.

Then a huge colorful shape spun by, filling the front window. The shuttle was falling so fast that the planet disappeared quickly, only to return as the front window spun around again.

“We’re getting caught in its gravity!” Gothar yelled. “If we’re lucky, we might suffocate before we get there.”

Relia felt fury streak through her. She hadn’t come through everything in her life to die here. She fought to her feet, clinging to the control panel to keep her balance.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, grabbing the stick. “We can aim for one of those moons.”

“We’ll crash,” he said in disbelief. “It’s suicide!”

“And staying on course is murder!” she shrieked. “Help me!”

Gothar grabbed the other stick. Usually, one person controlled both engines with ease, but with power failing, the controls and the shuttle locked up. Relia had to use all her strength to force the stick sideways to point them roughly at the nearest moon.

The gas giant exerted a heavy pull on their trajectory. Relia threw her full weight on the stick and Gothar followed her movement, instinct guiding them into a synchronized pattern. Just as their trajectory hit a wide arc, the shuttle slid slowly towards the huge planet.

Relia screamed, fighting the controls. She knew once the planet had them, there was no getting free. They’d spiral down until they crashed. Gothar set his arm against the stick, matching her movements.

“Hold on!” he yelled, reaching out and flipping some switches. The shuttle lurched towards the moon, breaking the grip of the gas giant’s gravity. Relia breathed a sigh of relief as they moved smoothly towards the moon. They were free.

The lights flickered and went dark. Relia looked up in alarm, hearing a faint hissing sound. She knew it was the life support and other power systems shutting down.

“What did you do?” she asked, softly. He shrugged.

“I used the last of our fuel to shove us out of the grav field. It was the only way.”

Relia looked at the barren surface of the moon, slowly getting closer and closer. She looked at Gothar and she knew he was working as hard as possible to save them all. She felt a trickle of admiration for him.

He never gives up, she thought. That was true of his chase of the kids and his handling of the craft falling apart around them.

She watched him sit down in the main chair, grabbing both sticks. His muscles rippled. Relia gasped as she realized he was about to put his own body on the line in an attempt to land safely.

“Sit down,” he growled. “And hang on to something.”

11

“Weeeeeeeeee!”

Lel, Yahǎr, and Thǎlwe strapped themselves into the shuttle’s passenger seats. They delighted in the excitement of riding a dead shuttle through the atmosphere of a random moon in order to avoid the gravity of a gas giant.

Gothar couldn’t decide if it was really better to crash on the moon than be crushed in the heart of a gas giant’s gravity well. He fought the shuttle’s flight sticks, fuming. He had been hijacked! Captain Gothar, the self-proclaimed Scourge of the galaxy, kidnapped by three Zasnusian children and their human nanny.

The HOT human nanny… Focus, Gothar!

He glanced at Relia. His loins would’ve stirred to full attention had he not been hurtling through the atmosphere. Gothar considered letting the shuttle crash in one last noble display, defying the embarrassment of having been bested by children.

Unexpected pride swelled in Gothar’s chest. The children screamed and squealed as the shuttle bumped and shook. They dangled from arm tentacles stuck to the shuttle’s ceiling. Stretched between their crash webbing and the ceiling, the children jiggled with each of the shuttle’s shudders.

These Zasnusian children were as fierce as any Krokan child crawling out of his spawning pit. Gothar had to give them credit. The children, and their nanny, had proven themselves formidable opponents.

Even mortified by the prospect of the humiliated shredding his reputation would receive after this, Gothar decided to attempt survival. He simply couldn’t bring himself to surrender –under any circumstances.

To his shock, Gothar realized he also couldn’t stand to see harm come to Relia or the children. Gothar found the children admirably fierce. Relia…well, Relia was his heart mate, his wolvǎz chár. He had found her—the one soul in the universe whose DNA resonated with his Lashpi crystals.

The rollercoaster of emotions which had inundated Gothar since he first laid eyes on Relia’s perfection took a back seat as the mountains of this lost moon loomed in the shuttle’s viewscreen.

The shuttle had lost fuel to the main thruster, but Gothar noted the maneuvering thrusters remained half-full.

If only I can…

“Children! Which one of you is good with mechanics?”

Yahǎr unstuck a tentacle and waved.

“Me!”

“Can you get the maneuvering thrusters powered up without unbuckling? If you get me thrusters in the next sixty seconds, I’ll let you be a pirate.”

Three children and six arm tentacles exploded into a ball of screaming activity. Forty-five seconds later, all three children screamed with one voice.

“Make us pirates! We’re pirates now! Aaaarrrggghhh!”

Power flowed to the maneuvering thrusters. A wild grin overtook Gothar’s face. He may no longer be on the Leviathan, but he was still a pirate captain with a brand-new crew to save and break in. Gothar added his voice to the chorus of ‘aarrghs’.

With a heavy sigh, Relia threw her arms above her head like the children and aarrgghed, too. A mad cackle escaped Gothar’s gigantic mouth. The shuttle shuddered and rattled.

Gothar shouted over the thundering noise of their flaming reentry.

“Use the thrusters to slow us down, Nanny.”

“I’ll show you ‘nanny’.”

Relia punched a complicated sequence of buttons, using the maneuvering thrusters to slow their descent and correct their course in little ways. Gothar fought the flight sticks bucking in his gigantic fists.

The flight sticks threatened to rip from his grip every moment. The compressed, flaming atmosphere before the shuttle’s nose ripped at the shuttle’s hull. Rivets rattled, loosening.

“I’m no pilot, but this seems like a really bad reentry angle…”

“Hush, Nanny. Gothar, the Scourge, has survived far worse. Fear not.”

“If only the hyperbolically-powerful force of over-inflated ego could cushion our landing.”

“What did you say?”

“Never mind. Just drive. I’m about to blow the last of the maneuvering thrusters. They’re not meant for such heavy use, so we only have one shot left. After that, Captain, we are all in your hands. May any deity listening, take mercy.”

Relia hit the button. One, long, continuous burst of the thrusters cut their momentum nearly in half. She gripped the straps of her crash harness. They could make out individual trees now, and Gothar saw on Relia’s face that the terror had managed to outrun the adrenaline which had carried her thus far.

A desert expanded in the main viewscreen. He pulled a manual control lever. Atmosphere flaps near the shuttle’s tail flared, increasing the shuttle’s drag. The shuttle lost momentum, but also lost altitude.

The moon’s horizon swung into the viewscreen. The shuttle hurtled over the tops of towering columnar, cactus-like plants. Gothar pushed the shuttle’s nose down, gaining a small amount of lift and picking up a little speed.

Gothar knew it wouldn’t last long. This shuttle hadn’t been designed with unpowered atmospheric flight in mind. He knew the shuttle could accomplish little more than a weak glide. Gothar preferred to avoid the giant cactus columns, but had little control over what came next.

The shuttle dropped lower and lower. They hurtled through the tops of the columns. Each hit jarred the shuttle, slamming the passengers. Relia clung to her crash harness. The kids bounced, jiggling and squealing in delight.

The shuttle’s nose lodged in one of the columns. For a moment, no one moved. Relia and Gothar panted hard. A tortured creak squealed through the shuttle’s hull. Gothar looked at Relia and each child, in turn.

“Fear not. You are all pirates, now. Go fiercely to your destiny!”

Relia rolled her eyes. A tortured squeal reverberated through the shuttle’s steaming hull. The cactus column they were stuck in leaned. Another squeal and a loud pop later, the column fell, taking the shuttle with it.

Everyone in the shuttle screamed. The column fell against others, spinning. The shuttle dislodged, slipping free. The shuttle fell, spinning in slow circles. Gothar saw the ground spin into the shuttle’s viewscreen.

With nothing left to do, Gothar gripped his crash harness, too. The shuttle hurtled to the desert sands below. A large jagged rock cracked the cockpit’s windows. Relia threw her arms in front of her face.

The shuttle bounced down the jagged rock’s long slope. Sparks flew from ruined consoles and holes rent in the metal. Finally, the shuttle slid to a stop.

Gothar looked around to check on Relia and the children. He never saw the piece of wreckage that fell through the hole above his head, knocking him out.

12

Relia cringed back from the wreckage that bounced off Gothar’s tough, red-scaled head. She saw he was still breathing. She unbuckled her harness and checked the children.

“You all okay? Did anyone get hurt?”

The children wiggled in her hands, giggling. She checked every inch of them she could reach.

“Stop tickling! We’re okay, Miss Relia.”

Relia gave them one last hard look before nodding. She released them and turned back to Gothar. Relia decided it was her best chance of ridding herself of the giant pain in her ass named Gothar.

She grabbed the blaster from his holster, aiming it at his head. Lel dropped from the ceiling between Relia and Gothar.

“What are you doing, Miss Relia?”

“I’m rid of our captor.”

“But, Miss Relia, Captain Gothar made us all pirates.”

Yahǎr waddled over next to his younger sister.

“Yeah. Shooting the pirate captain is mutiny!”

Thǎlwe joined her siblings. Relia lowered the blaster.

“We don’t want to have to give you the black spot for mutiny, Miss Relia.”

Relia sighed. She lowered the blaster.

“Fine. But we need to get some distance from this shuttle. I have no idea what all is damaged, what chemicals we’re breathing right now, or if anything is going to blow up.”

The three children turned to Gothar’s snoring form. Lel pointed at the captain.

“So, we need to move him.”

Relia nodded.

“Yeah. And he mentioned he was three hundred seventy-five pounds earlier.”

She returned the blaster to Gothar’s holster. She lamented it’d just be too much trouble to keep ahold of it while trying to move the massive alien. She removed the wreckage from Gothar.

“Lel, can you get a tentacle in there and unbuckle him?”

“Yes, Miss Relia.”

Lel snaked an arm tentacle under Gother’s slumped form. Relia tried to pry his massive shoulders up to give Lel more room, but Gothar was just too big. Relia couldn’t find enough leverage to move him.

Thǎlwe and Yahǎr added their tentacles to the endeavor. Yahǎr ended up hanging from the ceiling when they finally pulled Gothar’s torso out of Lel’s way. A few seconds later, Lel had the crash harness buckles free.

Working as a team, Relia and the three children worked Gothar’s arms out of the crash webbing. His giant, red-scaled body slid from his seat, plopping onto the floor of the shuttle.

Random sparks flared from a pulverized console. Relia and the children flinched. Yahǎr looked into Relia’s eyes.

“Miss Relia, the captain is too big. We’re going to have to find another way.”

Relia nodded, looking around the shuttle. Thǎlwe pulled a length of rope from a pack the children had assembled when they first crashed.

“Perfect, Thǎlwe.”

Thǎlwe handed Relia the rope. Relia, Thǎlwe, and Yahǎr worked together to secure one end of the rope to Gothar. They managed to snake the rope around his torso below his massive arms and shoulders.

“Lel?”

“Yes, Miss Relia?”

“Take the other end of the rope and find something sturdy out there, okay? We’re going to have to wrap it around something and pull to get the captain moving.”

“There are a couple of extra bottles of engine lube stored back there. Want me to grease him up?”

“That’s…actually a great idea, Yahǎr. Do it.”

Yahǎr scampered away. Lel swung out into the bright, fierce light outside the dark cave of the shuttle. Yahǎr returned with a bottle of engine lubricant. With a quick twist of the finger tentacles on one hand, Yahǎr had the lid off.

With pure glee, Yahǎr upended the bottle of oil over Gother’s leather-clad body. Relia winced, wondering what the oil would do to the fine outfit. She shrugged.

Hopefully he’ll agree it’s better to live in ruined clothes than die in a fiery explosion.

“Found it!”

Lel stood in the shuttle’s doorway. Relia had no idea where the door had gone.

“Great. Yahǎr, Thǎlwe, you two stay here and push. Keep him aimed for the door. Lel, you come with me.”

Three children saluted Relia, replying in unison.

“Aye, Aye, Miss Relia. Aaarrrghhh!”

Relia thrust her fist in the air.

“Aaaarrrggghhh!”

Relia and Lel walked out of the shuttle. Relia blocked the harsh light with an arm, blinking. Lel grabbed her free hand, tugging her over to a column of hard rock. The rope snaked around the rock’s base.

“Perfect, Lel. Help me pull.”

“Yes, Miss Relia.”

Lel scampered off to the rope, Relia trudging along the sand after her. Relia wished she had the Zasnusians’ tentacles, and raw strength, right now. She and Lel grabbed the end of the rope and pulled.

Nothing happened. Even wrapping the rope around the rock column didn’t help. Panting, Relia looked down at Lel.

“I think we need back up.”

Lel nodded, loping back to the shuttle on all four tentacles.

“I’ll get the others.”

A moment later, Lel returned, siblings loping along behind her. All four grabbed the rope.

“One. Two. Heave!”

Relia and the children pulled that rope with all of their might. After a chorus of groans, Gothar finally moved.

“Heave!”

The four pulled again. Gothar slid across the shuttle floor.

“Heave!”

They pulled Gothar’s body head-first into the shuttle’s wall next to the door frame. Relia cringed. Yahǎr and Thǎlwe loped up to Gothar, rolling him on his side and away from the door. They returned to their places on the rope.

“Don’t worry, Miss Relia, he’s only bleeding a little.”

“Good. He’ll be fine. He’s Kroka. Krokans are tough, right? Ready?”

The children nodded.

“Heave!”

The four pulled the rope as one. Gothar slid out of the shuttle and across the sand. Two more heaves, and Captain Gothar’s new crew had him dragged behind the large column of rock.

Relia and the children slid down the rock next to him, panting.

“Quick kids, get your things.”

The three children loped to the shuttle. Two minutes later, a small stash of random supplies lay stacked around them. The children cuddled up to her. They passed around an emergency canteen of water, giggling and talking about the day’s excitement.

Relia’s thoughts drifted to Gothar. She decided he’d be useful out here, stranded on a lost moon. She had no idea what to expect, but a big handsome warrior would make survival easier.

And easier on the eyes. Focus, Relia!

Her heart slowed to a more reasonable pace. The children had settled into a drowsy, drifting quiet. Behind them, the shuttle exploded.

13

Gothar grabbed his spinning head. He groaned. His head felt like it had found a hammer the hard way. Gothar didn’t remember fighting or drinking. He also couldn’t stop the world from wobbling.

He rolled and discovered a strange pain in his armpits and across his chest. Gothar bellowed, pushing himself to his feet. He felt his scalp, sand-encrusted drool stuck to his face. His fingers found a gash matted with hair.

“What’s going on here? What happened?”

He spun, looking for an attacker. Instead he saw four sleepy faces blinking at him.

The nanny…the children…the shuttle…crash. Heart mate!

The events of Gothar’s recent past flooded through his mind. His head began to clear. He was stranded on a random moon with three Zasnusian children and their human nanny, no pirates, no ship…

Gothar wiped the gritty sand from his face. He looked down. The three Zasnusian children looked up at him. They saluted Gothar.

“It’s a shame you three survived the crash.”

“Be nice, they saved you after the crash.”

Gothar glared at the children. Lel smiled.

“We didn’t let her shoot you, Captain. You made us pirates and shooting the captain is mutiny and we didn’t want to give her the black mark for mutiny.”

Gothar patted his holsters, finding all his weaponry in place. His eyes darted to Relia’s face. He raised a questioning eyebrow. She shrugged.

“Let’s not worry about who was going to shoot who. There are more pressing matters.”

He growled. The growl reminded him his head felt like it’d explode. He groaned, grabbing his giant head in his giant hands. Relia sighed and approached him. She reached for his head.

“Come here already. Let me take a look at your head wound.”

Her arms were too short to grab him, even on the tips of her toes. Relia tried to wave him down, but he pulled away from her like a seven-foot tall five-year old. Relia put her hands on her hips, tapping her foot.

“Get back, you ták!”

Relia glared. Her neck bowed in a terrifying way. Gothar remembered seeing the same motion, with the same attitude, on a mama graalp preparing to defend her young. Gothar gulped, hoping no one noticed.

“If you don’t get your ass over here so I can sew it up, I’ll show you ‘witch’, Dick.”

“Don’t call me ‘dick!’”

“Don’t call me ‘ták’!”

“Don’t act like a ták!”

“Don’t act like a child and I won’t have to treat you like a child.”

Gothar froze, mouth open. He attempted to think, but his head throbbed so hard, he felt certain everyone noticed his head swell. He sighed, dropping to his knees. He rocked back on his haunches and waved Relia over.

“Fine. It hurts too much to think. Make it stop and we’ll see if we can get out of here.”

Gothar bowed his head, closing his eyes. He felt delicate fingers explore his head. He heard sandy scrambling. Moments later, thirty delicate finger tentacles soothed his arms.

He tensed on his first instinct. Lel, for lack of a better word, flowed onto his lap. Gothar opened his eyes. Lel’s huge black eyes looked up into his.

“It’s okay, Captain Gothar. We may be a small crew, but we are a clever crew!”

He blinked. His instinctual reaction to most stimuli at that point in life involved roaring, growling, smashing, slicing, or a fist.

Yet, he hesitated. None of his usual responses felt right this time.

Gothar realized the children made him feel better. He didn’t know why their little finger tentacles soothed his inner turmoil and pain. The ball of rage which usually roared in his gut had calmed to glowing coals.

He breathed and closed his eyes again. Gothar let himself drift into the comforting peace which seemed to permeate their little group.

Our little…family?

Panic pierced him. The concept terrified him. Gothar, the Scourge, had never felt the impulse to care about others before. He had no idea what to do with any of these feelings, or the thoughts they’d spawned.

He decided none of his thoughts meant anything and chased all the terrifying feelings back to the dark recesses of his Lashpi heart crystal. The Lashpi crystal is destined to resonate at the same frequency as Relia’s DNA.

Maybe it’s time to start thinking about that ‘family’ word, after all.

Relia made little noises of disapproval while she cleaned his wound with a handkerchief and a little water.

“Thǎlwe, open the emergency med kit for me.”

“Yes, Miss Relia.”

Thǎlwe rummaged through one of the crates the kids had salvaged from the shuttle. She returned a moment later with an open med kit. Relia grabbed a can of insta-bandage, shook it, and sprayed his head.

The thick insta-bandage foam stung at first. Then it hardened and his headache faded. Gothar took a deep breath. He grabbed Lel around her round belly, lifting her from his lap. He set her on her tentacles to the side and stood.

“Where’s the shuttle?”

Relia sighed, gesturing at the rock next to which they sheltered.

“It’s on the other side of the rock.”

Gothar scanned the world around them, now that he could see straight and think again. A vast desert stretched out before them. A few columns of red rock streaked with dark bands jutted forth from the sand.

He saw smoke billowing tall into the sky.

“Oh, no. No, no, no…”

He rushed around the rock column. A debris field, where the shuttle had once been, greeted him. Frustration fanned the coals inside him. Rage roared to life.

Gothar threw his head back, shaking his fists at whatever meddling deity was fucking with his life. A primal roar ripped from his throat. His ferocious howl echoed from the walls of the canyon in which they’d crashed.

A deep rumble rolled through the sands under his feet. The sand shook, shimmering before him. Two mounds formed in the shimmering sand. Two pits opened up. Long, segmented bodies shot out of the holes.

Vicious, toothy maws snapped at him from the ends of the long bodies.

Fuck.

14

Relia grabbed Lel’s arm tentacle, jerking her away just in time. What looked to Relia like a giant crocodile’s head on an armored, segmented worm snapped the sand where Lel recently stood.

Relia looked around, searching for safety. These weird-ass worms seemed to travel through the sand, so that left… “Yahǎr! Thǎlwe! We have to hide in the rocks.”

“Die, foul creature!”

Relia risked a glance back at Gothar’s bellow. One of the monsters had followed her and the children on their mad flight to the closest semblance of safety.

The segmented sand crawler whipped its body, propelling a gaping mouth at Relia and the children. Gothar grabbed the monster from behind. The crawler’s toothy jaws snapped shut six inches from Relia’s backside.

“Get away!” Lel kicked the crawler’s nose for good measure. Relia kept running, Lel clutched in her arms. Thǎlwe and Yahǎr made far better time than Relia. Their tentacles moved far more efficiently over the sand than Relia’s feet.

“Keep going!” Gothar bought them enough time to reach a pile of boulders.

Lel jumped out of Relia’s arms and all three children scampered up and over. Relia tried to follow, but her boots slid on the rock face and she couldn’t grip the sand-smoothed rocks with her fingertips.

Thǎlwe grabbed Relia’s wrist in an arm tentacle. Yahǎr grabbed the other and they hauled Relia up the boulder. “Come on!” Wincing at their grip, she scrambled to the top. She scanned the boulder for hiding places, glancing behind her every few seconds.

Oh no…

The crawler had escaped Gothar’s grip. It zigzagged after her on thousands of tiny, spiny legs. She waved the children ahead.

By Relia’s estimate, the creature could still reach them if it reared up on the boulders.

And surely, it would.

“You can catch your breath at the top, kids!” The children climbed boulder after boulder, fleeing in the only available direction. She scrambled to keep up, glancing over her shoulder. The galloping sand crawler had nearly caught up.

Breath burning in her lungs, her arms and legs were on fire. She couldn’t remember the last time she had to go rock climbing. Relia doubted she had ever wanted to rockclimb, in the first place.

Seriously, who did that? For fun?

Suckered tentacles grabbed her by the arms and the back of her belt, hauling her over a jagged boulder. Gasping for breath, she saw a small cave entrance

“That’s where we’re going, kids.” She sucked in another chest full of air. “One, Two—”

A mouth full of dagger-like teeth opened wide, ready to snap closed on Relia’s waist.

“Shit!”

The children jerked her away and the monster’s jaw snapped on empty air.

The children bounded toward the cave, pulling her along. Relia made it back to her feet and ran faster than she had ever run in her life.

They reached the mouth of the cave and Relia dove, sliding through the shallow entrance. The children used their momentum and the low entrance to swing up to the ceiling by their tentacles.

“Good job, kids.”

But without tentacles of her own, she scrambled around a forest of tall stalagmites jutting from the cave’s floor.

I can do this. I can do this.

She squeezed her eyes shut. This wasn’t anything at all like before.

She had been a teacher on a space station years ago.

One freak ion storm later, the station’s engine shielding had failed, the station blew up, and after a month of drifting in an escape pod, tight spaces weren’t exactly her favorite thing.

But this wasn’t like that at all. This was a hideous monster trying to kill her on a barren rock.

Totally different.

She backed into the tightest space she could find.

“Is everyone okay?” Relia looked into the shadows overhead, searching for hints of the children. She cursed herself for leaving the blaster with Gothar.

“Yes, Miss Relia.”

The three children’s sweet voices rang out in unison.

Mind whirling, she wondered how they’d so easily synchronized. She suspected they shared some kind of telepathic link.

It would make sense, really. Explain more than a few things she’d noticed since she’d started to care for them.

She’d really rather wonder about that, than rember that she was still running for her life.

But the monster had other plans.

It scrambled at the cave’s entrance, its armored body blocked out the harsh sunlight. Toothy jaws snapped and spittle flew, streaking into the cave.

Sharp, segmented legs stabbed at the cave, scratching, trying to widen the entrance. Relia held her hand over her heart.

What can I do? What can I do? Do I even have any options?

The crawler stuffed the end of his muzzle as far into the cave as it could. It snuffled, scenting for prey. Two, long tentacles snaked from between the crawler’s chest panels.

Relia cringed back in horror. The crawler’s feelers were covered in spiky, black hairs, and the tip looked like a frog’s tongue. A thick, viscous goo dribbled from globular glands encircling the end.

She gulped and prayed that those feelers behaved nothing like a frog’s sticky tongue.

The children climbed out of the shadows towards her. She tried to wave them back, but they refused to listen. “Miss Relia, let us help!”

The children stretched their arm tentacles out, reaching for her.

“Stay back!” She dragged herself across the cave floor by her elbows. She didn’t want to pull the children closer to danger. She’d could manage this.

She could—

A sticky tentacle explored her ankle and her skin crawled. “Get off me!” The panicked need to flee the monster’s touch drove her to reach for the children, but it was too late.

The tentacle around her ankle jerked her toward the entrance. Relia shrieked. She grabbed a large, loose rock, filling her palm.

She struck at the feeler gripping her ankle. The skin where the feeler touched stung and bubbled. Relia hissed, slamming the rock at the feeler over and over.

The crawler shrieked, jerking her through the entrance. It pulled her close. She dangled upside down in the monster’s grip. Her heart beat so fast she feared it’d burst.

Blood rushed to her head. Her ears felt thick. Her face burned. She heard the children scream her name. Relia screamed, writhing in the monster’s grip.

You should’ve never set foot on another ship, Relia. You should’ve settled on the nearest planet or moon after the escape pod fiasco. But, no. You had to fall for these kids.

The monster lifted her into the air and she sobbed big, bitter tears for the children.

She’d just convinced them to trust her.

Now, Relia feared she’d die, and the children would be left to fend for themselves on this lost moon.

The crawler opened his massive, crocodilian-shaped jaws, dangling Relia over the pit of its dark gullet.

15

The sand crawler lunged at him, six-foot long jaws gaping open,

Gothar roared, grabbing the creature’s mandibles, muscles straining he willed himself to hang on.

The sand crawler tried to clamp down on his body but he refused to give in.

“I will kill you here and now!” he roared.

Rolling his shoulders, he wrenched the jaws wider still.

Then a terrible scream rent the air.

Relia!

She was in danger.

Looking wildly for her and the children, finally he spotted the other sand crawler pulling Relia from a tiny cave mouth, her wide-eyed look of terror lashing through his soul.

His heartbeat once, and then time seemed to stand still.

The fire which had burned inside of him for as long as he could remember…transformed.

Gothar’s Lashpi crystal throbbed with searing energy and a pulse of rage fueled fire burst from his heart chamber, activating long dormant Krokan genes.

Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew what was happening to him, but he didn’t care, even as his body began to change.

He roared as a new surge of Lashpi energy seared his veins, soaking into every cell of his body.

His muscles thickened and bulged as fire wove around his bones, reinforcing his skeleton.

The sand crawler twisted his grip, but he refused to let go.

Energy pumped through the inner pulp of his horns, and they thickened, twisting and lengthening, until they were double in size.

Special cells on his red-scaled hide swelled, thickening and armoring his form and he howled as yet more power coursed through him.

Time finally returned, his heart beat again.

Gothar ripped at the sand crawler’s jaws with all of his might, but only one thought ran through his mind.

I must save my wolvǎz chár.

The sandcrawler’s growls changed to a wail as he ripped the creature’s lower mandible from the socket. Still, the monster refused to retreat.

Gothar held on with one hand, dangling from the crawler’s ruined mouth as the creature with its head from side to side trying to shake him off, flinging spittle and thick viscous fluids in sickly yellows and greens.

“I have no time for this, monster!” He drew his gunblade, aimed for the crawler’s gaping throat and fired.

Soft flesh vaporized and what was left of the crawler crashed to the sand below.

He didn’t bother to look behind him, leaping through the air until, within seconds, he was only a few feet from the crawler that held Relia, dragging her screaming away.

Without hesitation, he thrust his gunblade between two of the crawler’s segments and fired.

Two shots down, ten left.

The crawler dangled Relia over its gaping mouth and shuddered, whipping its long jaws around to face this new enemy, roaring in pain.

Gothar roared back, pulling his gunblade out to fire one more time.

Nine.

Finally, the crawler went limp, dropping Relia to the stony ground below.

“No!” He sprinted faster than he’d ever moved in his life, sliding the last few feet until he caught her in his arms.

Scrapes marred her delicate cheek, and her panting breath came in shaky sobs.

But she was unharmed.

As Relia looked up into his eyes, he saw his reflection in her gaze, saw his own eyes burning with red fire.

He swallowed hard.

He looked just like the legendary Krokan and from the stories that were painted upon the walls of the oldest caves on Zhutie, the Krokan home world.

For a heartbeat, images of ancestors long dead flashed through Gothar’s mind, fleeting away faster than he could possibly understand them.

Then Relia flung her arms around his neck, and nothing else mattered. “Thank you.”

Her scent filled his nostrils and his head spun in an entirely new way. His heart beat in time with hers. He breathed the same breaths.

She filled his mind.

She resonated with his soul.

Gothar almost floated away into a world entirely defined by Relia, until suddenly she stiffened in his arms.

“Are you hurt?”

“Look!” Relia pointed behind him, and in her wide eyes, he saw dark shapes creeping up behind him.

Gothar spun as a fresh pulse of Laspi energy surged through his veins. A swarm of what looked like giant black beetles rushed over the rocks.

He surged to his feet, setting Relia down with care.

The first beetle reared at him, thrusting a pair of sharp mandibles at his neck. Lashpi energy surged through Gothar and he blocked the beetle’s segmented legs with his gunblade. With the other hand, he punched a giant, red-scaled fist through the sand beetle’s face.

He pulled his fist from the mush, which he assumed had once been the beetle’s brain. He grabbed the dead beetle’s body, swinging it in a wide arc, smashing it into several more.

The beetles fell from the rocks and their black-shelled bodies smashed into the boulders, snapping flailing segmented legs.

A beetle scrambled over a boulder on Gothar’s right. He spun, aiming his gunblade with practiced ease and fired. The beetle fell from the rocks, a smoking hole through its thorax.

Eight.

Gothar heard the chitinous sound of the beetle’s movement behind. He dropped to a knee, spinning. He slashed through three of the beetle’s six legs in one slash of his gunblade.

Gothar saw a beetle streak toward Relia. He shouted. Time seemed to slow.

No, time isn’t slowing. I’m moving so swiftly it only seems everything else is standing still…

He leapt, spinning through the air. He spun directly over the beetle, gunblade slashing out with each rotation. Gothar landed solid on his feet between Relia and the beetle.

The beetle slid apart in pieces. Blue ichor-like fluid ran from the butchered beetle. He scanned the rocks. Pieces of dead beetles lay everywhere.

He unbuckled his blaster belt and handed it to Relia.

“Put it on. I should’ve never left you unarmed.”

Relia snatched the blaster belt from his hand, looping it twice around herself. She pulled the blaster, looking around.

“Gothar, that was incredi…”

A shadow fell over the rocks. A long, loud, deep sound rolled over them. Gothar and Relia both crouched. The children poked their heads around a rock. Relia shouted.

“Get back! It’s not over!”

The children ducked for cover. A black sand beetle popped out from between two boulders and ran for the mouth of a cave. A mouth the size of the shuttle swept out of the sky. It scooped the beetle up in a tangle of long, diaphanous threads.

The mouth turned Gothar’s way, tendrils outstretched. In a single gulp, the sky whale swallowed Gothar whole.

16

THAT…THAT…GIANT, ALIEN…CLOUD MONSTER…THING ATE GOTHAR.

Relia’s jaw dropped. The sky whale undulated through the air, casting a massive shadow as glided over thermals. The harsh sun of the desert moon shone through a section of the creature’s translucent body.

The opaque internal organs and digestive system blocked the light, casting the creature’s shadow. It flapped wide translucent wings that looked to her like a manta ray. Long thick tendrils anchored to the ground, keeping the monster from floating away on a stiff wind.

The monster banked, gliding around for another pass. Gothar lay trapped somewhere inside the sky whale’s opaque internal systems.

“Oh-Hell-No.”

Relia raised the blaster Gothar had given her before he was swallowed by the sky whale and fired.

Bolt after orange bolt burst forth from the blaster’s smoking tip. Relia screamed her rage—her defiance.

The bolts ripped through the sky whale’s diaphanous wings and it screeched.

The blaster’s bolts left small holes trailing wisps of gas which mixed with the desert air and turned a bright yellow.

“Get back here!”

Relia fired off a second volley of blasts, opening the hole further.

Yellow streaked the sky behind the massive creature. It shuddered. The damaged wing deflated.

The sky whale listed and the tip of the damaged wing hit the ground.

The creature rolled, throwing up large gouts of sand.

“You might be a giant bag of gas, but you’re solid enough down here!” Even as she screamed, Relia wondered if perhaps she’d finally cracked.

Pirates.

Crocodile worms.

Sky whales.

That would do it.

She’d figure out her sanity later.

For now, she dodged behind a boulder as the downed sky whale’s body rolled across the sand, flinging streamers of foul-smelling yellow gas. She covered her mouth with an arm but still nearly wretched.

Eyes streaming, she fired another burst at, what she guessed was probably its brain. It seemed like the right area, and she doubted Gothar was stuck inside of that particular organ.

She hoped.

The creature flung one of its long anchor tentacles at Relia’s current boulder. She ducked, covering her head with her arms as the sky whale’s anchor slammed into the boulder.

She didn’t think a bag of air should be so destructive.

Why not? Humans are basically destructive bags of water.

She told her mind to shut up with the inappropriately deep thoughts. She needed her full capacity to figure out how to save Gothar.

Not that she understood why she wanted to save him so badly.

Later, brain. Later.

Eyes. That’s supposed to be a weak spot on everything, right?

Springing up she got a glimpse of the—she decided to call it the foot—of the anchor. Heavily armored and bristling with claws designed to grip features of the landscape, she easily understood now how the anchor foot had so easily busted the boulder.

Relia didn’t want to be anywhere near it and dashed behind the wide shaft of one of the giant cactus things. She rushed around the trunk and fired another volley of shots, until ayellow light on the blaster’s handle flashed.

Shit. Running low. Don’t think one is supposed to take down an entire sky whale with a single blaster.

She dashed around another cactus, trying to lead the creature away from the cliffs where she hoped the children still hid. She fired another volley of orange bolts. The tip of her blaster glowed and smoked.

The light blinked red.

Shit, shit, shit…

The whale swung an anchor foot at the cactus and she ran, doubling back to the boulders, searching for a new weapon. She panted, her heart pounded in her ears.

She noticed a nasty-looking piece of metal pipe with wickedly sharp shrapnel fused to the end and smiled. Probably from some other unlucky fool who crashed here.

She altered course, grabbing the pipe as she ran by. Relia doubted she’d be able to keep ahold of it though, considering how sweaty her hands were and how smooth the metal was.

She used it to help tear the bottom of her shipsuit top, then pulled, wrapping it around the pipe as a handle.

Pulling some Galactic Supreme ponytail holders from her pocket, she stretched one over the handle until the hair tie auto tightened. She secured the handle with a few more.

“I just need a minute. Just one more minute.”

Finally, she was done.

She glanced over her shoulder just as an anchor foot sped her way.

Relia dodged to the side, and the anchor limb missed her by a hair’s breath. Swinging her improvised weapon, she sunk the sharp shrapnel at the end into the flesh of the sky whale’s anchor foot.

Several large, clawed toes flew in all directions. The sky whale shrieked, snatching its damaged anchor away from Relia’s attack. The sky whale lunged in to scoop her into its thread-like mouth tentacles.

Relia spotted a row of eyes on long stalks under the sky whale’s chin. She screamed again, swinging her makeshift mace up into a nest of them. Eyes burst, and severed bits of stalks fell to the sand.

The sky whale shrieked, snapping its large jaws at Relia. Foul, yellow ichor billowed from the monster’s wounds.

“Spit him out!”

She screamed at the sky whale, bashing her shrapnel mace into the sky whale’s mouth over and over. She smashed its eyes and face and the wiggling little thread-thin mouth tentacles.

“Fuck you! Give Gothar back! He’s not yours to keep!”

The compounded rage of the collective events of the preceding week fueled her arms. The rage overwhelmed all sense and time.

Relia struck the monster for every blow the children’s violent father, Captain Murgo had given her, every insult, every exploded station, every moment she was stuck in that escape pod…

She never saw the incoming anchor foot. It thudded only a foot from her, crushing the boulder next to her. Relia fell. Her mace skidded across the rocks and out of reach.

The sky whale swung another anchor foot at Relia. She cried out, throwing her arms over her head.

Please let the children survive.

17

The thread-like tentacles pulled Gothar into the sky whale’s wide mouth. He drew in a huge breath, then was pulled into the darkness. The tough-walled esophagus of the sky whale squeezed him like a gigantic fist.

His Lashpi crystal pulsed. Lashpi energy surrounded him, insulating him from the harsh esophageal secretions and sharp spurred lining. Gothar tried to bring his gunblade to bear but couldn’t fight the power of the tube of muscle.

Its throat squeezed Gothar, moving him ever closer to the next digestive organ along the track. Frustrated, Gothar realized he’d have to wait till he could find some fighting room.

He jerked his head back, trying to pierce the sky whale’s throat with the tips of his horns, trying to convince the sky whale to vomit him back up, but not even his horns could pierce the tough esophageal lining.

Gothar growled.

Gothar the Scourge can’t die in the stomach of a sky whale! Death by ingestion is far too ignoble a death for the first legendary Kroka to exist in a thousand years. My ancestors would weep!

Its throat pushed him further along. It shoved his head against the dead beetle the sky whale had eaten before eating Gothar. He pounded his fist against its throat muscle. Its esophagus squeezed him again.

This time, a not-so-dead beetle got shoved up against his legs. The beetle grabbed at Gothar with desperate mandibles. He kicked over and over until the mandibles stopped twitching. He kicked a few more times, for good measure.

Its esophagus squeezed again, pushing Gothar and the two dead beetles though a giant sphincter. They flew into a vat of digestive juices. Gothar swam to the stomach’s wall. He dared not yet breathe.

Who knows what a mouthful of sky whale digestive juices would do to a Kroka.

Gothar thrust his gunblade into the thick lining of the stomach. The entire organ shuddered. Gothar grinned fiercely, then pulled the trigger.

Seven.

The stomach quivered. Digestive juices poured forth into the membranous sac surrounding the sky whale’s organs. Gothar was sucked along with the flood of acidic fluids.

He landed on the inside of the monster’s equivalent of abs. The vicious digestive fluid steamed on the creature’s abdominal muscles and tendons. The tissues darkened under the wave of acid which flowed where digestive fluid was never meant to flow.

The abdominal muscles clenched, nearly throwing Gothar to his giant, red-scaled ass. He thrust his arms out, balancing. His lungs burned and spasmed. His head grew light and his muscles demanded air.

Little bright spots sparked in his vision and hard pains shot through his straining chest. Gothar slashed at the abdominal wall. His gunblade sliced through, smooth and clean.

Digestive juices flowed out of the hole in the whale’s abdominal wall and foul gasses rushed in. Thin blue, slimy sky whale blood spurted from the wounded abdominal muscles, mixing into the foul morass.

The steaming half-digested carcass of a sand beetle floated out of the hole on a waterfall of stomach acid. Gother jumped atop it and rode it over the fall.

After an interminable three seconds of freefall from the sky whale’s abdominal muscles down to the skin of its belly, he landed heavily. He pushed himself up to his feet, slashing and stabbing at the skin, hacking a hole.

When the digestive fluid drained from the skin in the whale’s belly, Gothar raised his gun blade. He fired off a shot, striking something that could be a heart. He spun on his heel and dove through the hole.

Six.

Gothar drew in a deep, deep breath of…sky-whale-gas-fouled air. The breath provided the oxygen required to further sustain his life—and smelled so disgusting, he vomited before he hit the ground.

He landed heavily on the puddle of stomach fluid, blood, and vomit soaking into the sand. He groaned. His eyes darted everywhere, trying to orient himself in his new, new reality.

There’d been so many reality changes lately, Gothar swore never to take reality for granted, again. He didn’t know what that meant, but thought he should start applying it before that sky whale landed on him.

Gothar spotted Relia scrambling to a boulder surrounded by shards of other, recently destroyed, boulders. He wondered what she’d been up to while he’d been inside the whale’s belly.

He glanced up and saw the sky whale sinking to the ground. Air blew through the tattered remains of one of its massive wings, creating an ear-piercing whistle.

Gothar caught up to Relia, then swooped her up and spun her around him until she clung to his back. His arms and legs were so much longer than Relia’s. Now that he’d thought about it, his arms and legs were longer than usual.

They were stronger, too. He leapt atop a boulder, fleeing the sky whale’s impending crash. Gothar leapt from boulder to boulder with ease. His Lashpi energy flowed through his veins, his mind, his essence.

He leapt further than he’d ever had. With each leap, he flew through the air. Gothar felt an instinctual recognition of his body moving through the atmosphere.

Relia tensed in his grasp.

“Cover! Here it comes…”

Gothar dove between two, tall boulders. He drew Relia into his arms, curling himself around her. Their hearts synchronized. His Lashpi reached out to Relia, wrapping them both in a nimbus of resonance.

Her delicate, human hand lay across Gothar’s scaled chest. He drew a sudden breath. The sky whale struck sand. Billions of tiny grains shot into the air. Its body slid across the sand, crackling with the buildup of potential energy.

The friction heat of the monster’s slide fused the sand below its massive bulk. Static electricity sparked along its hide. The thunderous shockwave of the initial crash reached Gothar and Relia, rolling over the rocks and sand.

Gothar crouched over Relia, using his tough, Krokan hide to shield her from the scathing, dust-choked winds. The last of the sky whale’s carcass landed, covering the rocks between which Gothar and Relia sheltered.

18

Relia panted. Most of the sky whale’s body had looked translucent, when the thing was still full of gas. Now, however, compressed above them, it blocked most of the light. She curled in on herself, Gothar wrapped around her.

Why does that giant pain in my ass make me feel so much better? Is this some cosmic joke?

The two rocks between which Relia and Gothar had sheltered, held aloft the sky whale’s compressed body. Just enough light trickled through for her to make out the hand still wrapped around the spent blaster.

The blinking low charge indicator had died after the last blast. When the ground ceased to rumble, Gothar unwound himself from around her. To her shock, Relia missed him. Her face burned. She blamed her flaming cheeks on all the recent excitement.

She sat up, removing herself from his lap and glanced at his face. She gasped. Gothar had…transformed. His golden eyes flickered with red light. His horns spiraled back twice as long as before.

Heavy armor plates covered his red scales from head, down his back, over his shoulders, arms, and legs. His scales seemed to glow where they peeked out from between the dark gray armor.

Gothar loomed taller than she remembered. His musculature looked cut from marble. She gulped. Energy radiated from him. She felt a presence suffusing every cell of his body.

Desire flared in those flickering eyes. The intensity nearly scorched her. At that moment, she believed in all those old starsailor’s tales of the Krokan.

She forced herself to pull her eyes away. Her heart raced in her chest. She waved a hand in the vague direction of the sky whale tent around them.

“Gothar, we have to get out from under this stinking monster.”

Gothar remained silent. She risked a glance back. Gothar stared hard into her.

“Gothar…”

He shook his head. His luminous eyes took in their membranous prison.

“Stand behind me and hold your breath until we’re out. Trust me, you don’t want a lungful of sky whale gas.”

Gothar shuddered. Relia sheltered behind him. She drew a deep breath and tried to pat his shoulder but only reached his back. So, she patted that. The armor plates felt hard and rough under her fingertips, like rough-hewn stone.

Gothar thrust his gunblade high into the membrane walls. A vicious mixture of sky whale ichors splashed to the floor. Relia’s hand flew over her mouth and pinched her nose. Her eyes stung and ran with tears.

Gothar sawed the gunblade down, opening a gash in the tissue. He grabbed both sides of the hole and heaved them apart. He grunted, arms spread wide, holding back the sides of the hole.

“Quick!”

Relia dived through, crawling through the slick exit and into the open air. She clawed away from the hole, sliding along the sky whale’s body, scrambling as far as she could before she dared breathe.

She heard a wet squelching behind her and really hoped it was Gothar. She pulled a rag from a pouch on her shipsuit and tried to wipe the sky whale from her face.

She coughed, spit and gagged, but did not puke and she was proud of that. She collapsed onto her back, her arms flopping to her sides, and just breathed.

She opened her eyes. Gothar stood above her and he offered a hand to her. Relia took it and he pulled her to her feet. She looked up into Gothar’s smoldering eyes.

“Thanks.”

A high-pitched shriek pierced the air. They spun to look for the source. Some sort of kite glided in circles overhead. She gripped Gothar’s arm.

“Gothar, scavengers…”

He nodded, sheathed his gunblade and swept Relia into his arms like a groom carrying a bride over the threshold and into their new life together.

“Don’t fight me, human.”

“I’m too tired to argue. The children were hiding over there, the last time I looked.”

She pointed to a small, dark cave opening on the side of the valley. Gothar nodded and ran. He leapt from boulder to boulder, again. Relia squealed with each leap. She marveled at his speed, his grace…his power.

Don’t go falling for the first pirate captain to kidnap you, strand you on a moon, and carry you away from every desert scavenger attracted to the downed sky whale.

Her eyes searched the valley wall. A flash of reflection drew her eye. Yahǎr waved an arm tentacle her way. She pointed at them.

“That way! Follow Yahǎr.”

Gothar sprinted at Yahǎr’s location. Relia knew she’d never have been able to keep up had he not carried her. She looked back over Gothar’s shoulder. One of the flying monsters who’d been circling dove directly for them.

“Duck!”

Gothar held her to him, and crouched around her.

You are dodging some weird-ass, flying alien scavenger bullshit and you want to go all gooey over the hot alien holding you in his arms right now—protecting you…

A rush of air passed over them, and Gothar threw her over his shoulder. Before she could even take another breath, he ran.

Relia braced her elbows on his back, holding herself up, watching behind while Gothar ran. With him so much larger than her, his bulging, muscular shoulder supported her core and ribcage. His arms wrapped around her legs provided leverage, allowing her an easy, if bumpy, view.

She had to stay low anyway to keep his horns from poking her arm. She looked up and shouted.

“Jump left!”

Gothar jumped to his left without hesitation. Another one of the pteranodon-looking flying things rushed past. Another pinned its wings and dove.

“Jump right!”

He jumped to his right as a third flying, alien monstrosity zipped past, screeching at them on the way.

“Are we there, yet?”

“Almost, human. Must you complain?”

Relia smacked Gothar’s back, knowing perfectly well she had no chance of denting the rock-solid mass.

“I’m not complai—duck!”

Gothar pulled her into his arms, once again, shielding her with his body. He looked into her eyes and…

Did he just grin? And…wink?

Relia glared at him.

I bet you just think you’re hot stuff, now…

Air swooshed over them. Gothar plopped her back on his shoulder and ran towards the children’s waving tentacles.

19

Gothar ran through a river of shelled, insect-like scavengers streaming from crevices among the rocks. He estimated each of these new beetles was about the size of his foot where the last beetles had been big enough to wrestle. The skittering little bugs streamed toward the sky whale carcass.

He knew every civilization who escaped their planet of origin had some theory about why life in the universe trended toward certain, familiar, physical configurations.

Brains were strange things. He made a note to think more about this later, when those familiar phsical configurations weren’t trying to kill him and his human.

High on Lashpi energy, he felt alive and vital. The energy coursing through him erased all thought of exhaustion or fatigue. He felt higher than the time he accidentally ingested a flarx on Ryjax VI.

One of the flying monsters landed nearby, and he had to sweve hard to stay out of the range of the long, bony beak. The flyer opened the beak wide and hissed, and Gothar froze. The flyer turned its crested head side to side, regarding him with each of its large eyes.

One of the segmented, many-legged insect things streaming by tried to crawl up the flyer’s leg. The long beak picked the pest off, cracking its shell and swallowing it whole. Three more mounted the flyer’s leg.

The flyer jumped, flapping its thin leathery membranous wings, shaking its long leg violently. One of the insect things flew into the air. The flyer caught it and swallowed it, too. Six more swarmed. The flyer picked the insects off, frantic. More insect things swarmed faster than the flier could eat them.

And then the insects turned towards Gothar and Relia.

Gothar started running again, leaping over the frenzied scavengers.

After his third long stride, a crashing boom shattered the desert air.

“What the fuck?” he shouted, shaking his head. “Why do you let the children play with grenades?”

“Let them? Gothar, those children do what they want. I just try to stay on their good side.”

Gothar barked a laugh.

“Jump left!” Relia commanded.

Gothar bounded to a boulder left of him, skirting an exploding grenade. Bits of unidentifiable alien creatures and shards of rock pelted Relia and him.

He saw the children’s bulbous Zasnusian heads pop out from behind various boulders. They retreated as he approached, leading him, he assumed, to safety.

But were they?

He decided to trust them, for now.

He didn’t have much choice at the moment, and besides, the children loved Relia and would save her, even if they plotted to kill him later.

Gothar didn’t really think the children were out to kill him. He liked the children more with each lobbed grenade.

Until he realized the children must have looted the grenades from his own stores.

Stinking little thieves. Perhaps they’d be good pirates, one day.

Gothar grinned. A few more bounds and he’d reach them. An open crate half-full of grenades floated in the air behind her. Gothar drew in a lungful of air and shouted, his Lashpi energy boosting the volume. His voice boomed, blowing small detritus through the air.

“Everyone in the crate!”

The children scrambled aboard, Lel talking nonstop.

“Miss Relia! We stashed the rest of the supplies deeper in the cave. We have a bunch of crates down there. I can’t wait to show…”

The floating crate rocked but held them all. Gothar stepped up, interrupting Lel.

“Here, hold this.”

Gothar tossed Relia into the children’s tentacles. Relia squeaked, then hugged and cuddled the children. Tears welled in her eyes, but he decided it must be a happy human thing. He didn’t really have time for anything else.

“Listen, you swabs, hold onto me and don’t let go. Throw a couple of grenades at the entrance. We’ll collapse it behind us to keep those little bugs off our backs.”

Gothar felt a couple of Zasnusian’s tentacles wrap around his belt and ran. The children’s tentacles on his belt anchored the floating crate to him, pulling the entire thing along. He glanced behind him every few seconds, making certain he lost none of his new crew.

A couple of the children’s other tentacles held Relia secure. They’d flopped on their backs to bring all their tentacles into play. A couple secured the entire tangle of Zasnusians and nanny to the crate. The remaining tentacles and Relia’s hands held grenades.

Relia pulled the grenades’ pins with her teeth, spitting them to the cave floor. Gothar heard her shout.

“On my mark!”

She and the children drew back their arms and tentacles.

“Mark!”

A volley of grenades sailed down the cave tunnel behind them. The children wrapped their tentacles around Relia, pulling them all as far into the floating crate as they could. Lashpi energy surged through Gothar’s veins.

Energized, Gothar ran faster than he ever had. His long legs ate the ground so fast, he felt like he flew. A distant rumble rolled through the tunnel. A massive blast of sandy wind hit his back, pushing him faster.

A cloud of dust filled the tunnel behind them, rolling over them. For a moment, Gothar ran blind, holding his breath.

He burst through the dust, into clear air. His heart beat with the last wisps of fresh Lashpi. His Krokan body burned through the remaining molecules.

Gothar continued to push, legs pumping, running as far as he could before the crash he felt coming arrived. His flickering eyes lit the tunnel ahead.

He felt drained. His breaths came more ragged. He wasn’t certain what he saw ahead, but it felt like safety. He wondered if he really saw safety but he feared his drained body had simply decided that spot ahead looked like the place his body was destined to fall.

Gothar’s steps slowed. His legs felt leaden. He shook his head, trying to clear his vision. The tunnel had grown dark.

Except for that light.

A hand on his arm drew his eyes. He saw Relia. Her mouth moved, but none of the sounds reaching Gothar’s ears made any sense.

Gothar smiled anyway.

My heart mate is so hot. Look at those lips! Those magnificent breasts! What does she taste like? She smells exquisite. I just want a taste…to lose myself in her…

Something bumped Gothar’s waist. He looked down. He saw the floating crate.

That crate had the kids in it…but now it’s empty.

Gothar asked Relia where the children went. With a giant sigh, she waved. Gothar felt tentacles wrap around his ankles. He tried to wave off his attacker, but Relia pushed him.

He fell, belly-first over the floating crate. He felt a gentle hand stroke his hair and passed out.

20

“Let go of his eyelid.”

Yahǎr looked up at Relia. His finger tentacles pulled back Gothar’s upper eyelid. Gothar’s eye only showed the bloodshot whites. Yahǎr let go. The eyelid snapped against the globe then slid closed.

“Do you think he’s dead?”

Relia shook her head. Gothar couldn’t be dead.

She wanted to believe she would know, deep down, if Gothar ever died, though she didn’t understand why.

She feared, though, that the tingly feeling which had crawled inside of her soul, was simply wishful thinking.

“No. I don’t think he’s dead. Tickle his nose. Sneezing is a reflexive response. If he’s alive, he should sneeze.”

Yahǎr shrugged. He stuck a finger tentacle up Gothar’s nose.

“I kinda meant find a stick or something…”

Gothar sneezed a giant glob of snot on Yahǎr’s face.

“Eeeeeewwww.”

“Shut up, Lel.”

Yahǎr pulled a rag from a pocket of his shipsuit and wiped his face. Relia sighed and kept on walking. Thǎlwe elbowed Yahǎr —or as close to elbowing as a tentacle could come to elbowing.

“See, he’s not dead.”

Relia decided to change the subject before Yahǎr and Thǎlwe started fighting harder.

“Good job with the supplies.”

Lel bounded around Relia, happily over-explaining.

“Well, you and Gothar were busy playing with the wildlife…”

‘Playing with the wildlife’…is one way to put it…

“So, we gathered everything up we ‘found’…”

Relia suppressed a laugh. Everyone here knew the children pilfered relentlessly.

“The mag lev units and the grenades we thought would be most useful after food and water, of course…”

Relia sighed. The children impressed her more each day. They were so resourceful and so quick to find solutions.

While she and Gothar had fought their way to safety, the children had secured back-up, food, water, lamps which now hung from the crate over which they had draped the unconscious Krokan.

The children had even snagged a train of floating crates. Now, they walked along, pulling the supplies behind.

“Ooooooh…”

Lel’s sweet voice brought Relia out of her memories. Ahead of them, the tunnel opened up into an enormous shadow.

That cavern must be huge.

With each step, the cavern entrance loomed. In the darkness, Relia saw a light green glow. Relia focused on that glow like a beacon in the night.

The light from their lamps sparkled across the facets of crystalline walls. The crystals seemed to drink in the light; feeding it, growing it. Soon, the walls glowed with a low ambient light.

Relia smelled water and heard the soft burble of a stream flowing by and her exhausted limbs demanded they rest. She didn’t bother to argue. She halted at the edge of a clear space in the center of the softly glowing crystals.

Relia dropped to her knees upon a mound of soft, deep moss. She dropped the strap of the blaster belt, too tired to even jump when the strap whapped the crate’s side. She had used the belt as a handle to pull the crate train.

The mag lev units attached to the crates not only levitated them, they also negated the majority of the cargo’s weight. The crate supported the six remaining grenades and the three-hundred-seventy-five-pound Krokan with ease.

“Just give me a minute to rest, then I’ll help set up camp.”

Her body slowly sunk to the side, regardless of what she had to say about it. Relia had always been an active, energetic woman, but this had been one hell of a day and her limbs hung heavy.

Before she knew it, Relia lay on her back looking up into the shadow which denied sight of anything beyond the combined glow of their lamps, the crystals, and the bioluminescent moss. She felt like they had found their own little timeless world for a moment.

The shadow engulfed not only the light, but most sound beyond their tiny new reality. Relia realized the cavern in which they rested must be huge. Stalagmites the width of trees, studded with crystals in amethyst and peridot sparkled like giants at the edges of their cocoon of light.

She fell silent at the breathtaking perfection surrounding her. Thǎlwe leaned over Relia. Her round face blocked Relia’s view of the cavern.

“Are you okay, Miss Relia?”

Relia’s breath came soft and low. “Thǎlwe, Miss Relia is very tired. I know I promised to help set up camp. I’m trying to get up.”

Relia blinked slowly. Her mind relaxed and became fuzzy, drifting somewhere between awake and sleep. She heard, but failed to respond.

She saw, but failed to comprehend.

The next half hour passed before her eyes with the soft quality of vintage Earth movies. The children patted her and stroked her hair. They mumbled sweet, soothing sounds.

She watched tentacles unpack supplies from various crates. Soon, Yahǎr passed by Relia’s eyes, carrying a collection of shuttle wreckage wired together. It looked like junk to her, but the craftsmanship was admirable.

Relia made a note to herself to commend the children on their work later when she could move, and she had figured out what the thing was supposed to be. Yahǎr set it near her and pushed a button.

The device hummed. Comforting warmth radiated from it, warming her.

Funny, I didn’t even notice I was cold…

Thǎlwe appeared in Relia’s vision next. She read from the back of a ration pack.

“Rations for carbon-based, omnivorous Group 512 Species. Yahǎr? Do you remember if humans are Group 512?”

“Uhhhh…let me look.”

The heat soaked into Relia, reviving her somewhat. She pushed herself to an elbow.

“Yes, I am Group 512. Pass that over.”

Thǎlwe smiled and handed Relia the ration pack. She tore into it, eating the “Beef Stroganoff” first. Feeling far better, having put some calories in her stomach, Relia sat up.

The children gathered around, finding comfortable tufts of moss. They opened their own Group 297 ration packs. Lel waved her biodegradable space spork in Gothar’s direction.

“What about Captain?”

Relia glanced back at the heap of Kroka snoring over a crate. She pushed a bit of “beef” out of between two teeth and shrugged.

“Krokan are tough. He’ll be fine. He just needs a nap.”

21

Gothar floated in…an amorphous nothing. For once, he felt emptied of the everpresent, fiery rage he’d held inside since he’d spawned. He looked at his hands. They looked normal again.

He patted himself from his head to his knees, checking to see if any of the transformative changes he’d recently gone through remained. Gothar discovered his body had gone back to the way he’d always known it before the transformation.

Am I dead?

Gothar turned, looking for anything. He looked down. A single stair awaited his foot. He stepped down on it. When his feet touched the ground, rings of shimmering light rippled out from each step.

The empty space before him parted, like a huge curtain. Brilliant golden light shot out, blinding him. He grabbed his cape and drew it up before his face, blocking the light.

Gothar blinked his eyes ‘til they came into focus. From the depths of the light piercing the darkness around him, stepped a creature of legend.

A humongous clawed draconian foot stepped toward Gothar. A wedge-shaped head wreathed in thin layers of shimmering golden fins emerged from the light. Dramatic shadows lent the contours of the scaled face depth.

Ancestor…

The Ancestor’s eyes burned with a golden flame. Massive, twisted horns spiraled back, arching graceful lines over his long, rippling neck. Long, thick fangs dripped with golden Lashpi power.

Lashpi energy dripped from the Ancestor’s long tongue and powerful jaws. Thick leathery plates, the texture of rough-hewn mountain stone, armored the Ancestor’s muscles. The next powerful clawed front leg stepped even closer.

The Ancestor’s massive rib cage swelled. His long golden-scaled body curled into the light. Ivory-hued, jointed, leathery wings unfolded from the Ancestor’s shoulders. Massive flight muscles overlying the Ancestor’s pectorals flexed.

The translucent wings spread wide, filling the sky. The Ancestor stopped one step before him. Gothar looked up. In the center of the Ancestor’s chest, a jewel pulsed with golden light. Gothar looked further up.

The Ancestor towering over Gothar looked down at him…and into his soul. The Ancestor’s gaze pierced Gothar, pinning him where he stood. The Ancestor leaned down, bringing a muzzle the size of Gothar’s shuttle within inches of Gothar’s face.

The Ancestor sniffed. After a moment, the Ancestor snorted the essence back in Gothar’s face. The Ancestor leaned back and laid down like a tired old jorv. The giant spirit cupped its large clawed hands, corralling Gothar between them.

The Ancestor cocked his head to the side, long neck undulating behind. “What are you doing, Dragonspawn?”

Gothar scratched his head.

“Can you ask a less vague question? I can think of too many answers to the first question, but none of them are good answers.”

The Ancestor sighed, propping his head on an upturned palm. “Why, Dragonspawn, do you insist on wasting your legacy playing pirate?”

Gothar spluttered, offended.

“Wasting? My time? Gothar, the Scourge is the most feared pirate in the galaxy! My crew and I have plundered more booty in this galaxy than any other.”

The Ancestor snorted his derision and shrugged a massive shoulder. He stretched his leathery wings, then tucked them away. The Ancestor raised a spiked brow ridge at Gothar.

“Noble pursuits, indeed, Dragonspawn. I dare you to be more.”

Gothar fell silent. His brow ridges drew close together as he tried to think his way through that dare. His personality screamed at him to take the dare, regardless of his chances. A small, rational part of his brain decided to take the suspicious route, instead.

Gothar glared at the Ancestor.

“That’s what you came to tell me?”

“I didn’t come to you, Dragonspawn. It is you who has come to me, as all Dragonspawn come when their Lashpi is awakened.”

“Is that what happened?”

“Has all the knowledge of we Ancestors been lost, after so long?”

“Well, there are old stories…”

The Ancestor sighed. He rose to his feet and pierced Gothar with a second stare. The Ancestor looked through all the illusions Gothar had woven about himself over the years. He gasped, not that he needed to breathe here in the nothing between worlds.

The Ancestor’s golden Lashpi energy seared away reality, replacing it with flashes of history. Gothar lived in the dimension filled with Lashpi energy which intersected with the world in this dimension.

Where the two dimensions collided, gardens of Lashpi crystals grew. The Lashpi energy leaking into Gothar’s dimension crystalised. An ancient, animalistic Krokan walked up to the crystals. With a touch, the Lashpi energy streaked into the primitive proto-Krokan, transforming her.

Gothar watched generation after generation of Krokan spawn, grow, and die. He saw Lashpi energy streaking through the hearts of each generation for thousands upon thousands of years. A red streak of Lashpi energy pierced Gothar’s breast.

Genetic memory from every generation of Krokan, since Krokan first merged with Lashpi, flashed through him in an instant. Gothar bellowed, overwhelmed. Reality swirled around him, wrapping around him.

Gothar blinked. When his eyes opened, a figure stood before him. The figure looked almost like a mirror image of himself, but the figure’s eyes burned gold flame. Gothar’s eyes scanned the figure from head to toe in horror.

The figure looked like all of his insecurities. He roared, punching at the Ancestor mockery of him, but the Ancestor transformed before him. Gothar gasped, halting his punch before it connected.

Relia stood before him, peering into his eyes as Gothar’s heart pounded in his chest.

“Don’t you want a chance to be a better man?”

Gothar scoffed.

Why would Gothar, the Scourge, want that?

Relia’s face sunk into sadness.

“Don’t you want to be a better man…for me?”

Gothar reeled, pinwheeling his arms.

Yes? No? Do I even know what I want?

Gothar felt himself fall back into the dark, into the nothingness in which he woke. He felt like he fell a long way, as if he fell from a long cliff.

Is this death’s embrace, at last? Are these visions simply the last sparks of a dying mind?

22

Gothar’s body shuddered, a rough exhalation rushing from his throat. Relia looked up in alarm, dropping her ration and gesturing for the children to stay back.

This can’t be good.

She didn’t know much about Krokan physiology—not enough to perform any kind of complex medical treatment anyway—and her fear grew sharply the closer she got to him.

She touched his arm but there was no reaction, not even a ripple across his scales. She leaned over, looking at his face, afraid of what she would see.

“Gothar?” she whispered uselessly. Of course, he wasn’t going to answer her. He was still unconscious.

Worry built in her, progressing towards full on panic. She rested a hand on his chest, not feeling it rise. She sat up quickly, looking into his face.

“He’s not breathing!” she shrieked, her emotions catching up to her in one big rush. She slapped his chest with one hand, shaking his head with the other.

The children gathered around, but Relia barely noticed them. She turned Gothar’s head towards her, staring into his face.

“Do something!” screamed Thâlwe. “Relia, help him!”

“Please!” Lel yelled. “Don’t let Captain die.”

Relia certainly wasn’t going to let him die if she could help it, but she had no idea what to do. Her hand on his chest didn’t feel any hint of a breath but there was a very faint drumming, possibly his heart. If his heart was still beating, then maybe there was still time.

While the kids cried and started jostling her in their panic, Relia took a deep breath, bracing herself against Gothar’s body, planting the fingers of each hand across his nose and chin. She had no idea if it’d work, but there wasn’t anything else to try.

She exhaled slowly, leaning forward and taking another deep breath. She pressed her lips to Gothar’s and gave him her air.

His chest rose a little. She’d expected more, but she’d take what she could get. The kids continued to clamor but she let the repetitive movements take up all her attention as she breathed in, then out into Gothar’s mouth.

The moments dragged on into eternity as time seemed to slow. There was only the continuous drawing of air and then pressing her lips to his, sharing her life with him. His chest rose when she breathed into him and his flesh stayed warm, but he didn’t stir or begin to breathe on his own.

The clamoring of the children reached a fever pitch. It was right at the edge of her hearing, like the blaring of an alarm. It was almost as if she and Gothar were in some kind of alternate dimension, just slightly out of place with everything else.

Please, she murmured in her mind, too tired even for thoughts. Please live.

Her head spun and her vision blurred. She sat up quickly, taking a deep breath for herself. The oxygen rushed into her lungs. For an instant, she thought she might pass out.

Lel’s screaming cut through her disorientation, a horrid wailing that sounded like it heralded the end of the world.

“He’s dead!” she wailed.

Reality returned with a harsh slap, returning her to the present moment with the force of a lightning strike. The sand under her fingers, the rough floor under her knees, as well as Gothar’s cooling body were so tangible she felt overwhelmed by sensation.

I’m alone. He’s gone. He left me here and now we’re going to die.

“No!” she screamed, her own horror drowning out the voices of her children. She leaned over Gothar, trying to shake him, but he was far too heavy. Fury ran through her like a flood of lava, galvanizing her and filling her with rage.

“Don’t you dare!” she roared, getting up on her knees and looking into his face. “Don’t you leave me here you gichvǔ patva núm shiepáp! You’re the reason we’re stuck here!”

She slapped his face, hard. His face snapped to the side, but her fury didn’t waver. If anything, she was even more angry than before. With a great, wailing cry that would’ve made any warrior tremble, Relia slapped him again, as hard as she could.

“Ow!” she cried, falling back on her knees. Even though he wasn’t conscious, he was vexing her. Her hand stung and her rage wound down into despair.

Tears ran down her face. Her hands trembled as she reached for him. Just as she was about to lose control again Gothar shuddered, a cough shaking free of his lungs. Stunned, Relia watched as his chest heaved and his eyes opened.

She saw his pupils dilate when he looked at her, the frantic look in his eyes as he drew in his first deep breath. It didn’t matter to Relia though—she had once again slipped out of time.

She leaned forward, the cries of the kids fading just as the color in the room slipped away from her. Something surged within her. There was relief, certainly, but also something deeper that she refused to name.

She threw herself on him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. She felt her lips on his, his hot mouth opening for her. Their bodies seemed to melt together and as he wrapped his arms around her, Relia felt complete for the first time in her long, hard life.

It made no sense at all, but here on a desolate moon in the arms of the roughest pirate known to the galaxy, she had found a place that felt like home.

23

Warmth.

Something was very warm, soft, and sweet. He tasted it on his lips, down his throat, as if a lifesaving elixir had been poured into his mouth, fragrant as fresh, wild honey.

He moaned, his arms reaching out instinctively. The warmth spread into other parts of his body as he pulled something soft and curvy into his arms. He felt a strain in his body as he sat up, but the flex was welcome as it reminded him he was alive.

For a moment, he didn’t try to understand. Maybe this was heaven—surely it wasn’t hell? Either way, he didn’t wish to question the flavor on his tongue or the reason his lips tasted so sweet. He felt well, better than he had ever felt in his life.

I’ve been transformed.

He blinked his eyes open slowly and couldn’t help a jump of shock when he realized he had Relia in his arms, almost across his lap.

Her hands were clasped behind his neck and her lips were pressed against his. After a few seconds, he became aware of the children, standing around them in a circle.

“Eewww,” the tallest one remarked.

Gothar couldn’t remember all of their names at this particular moment. Almost dying and being woken to kisses would scramble the brains of any man.

Suddenly, Relia froze in his arms. She tried to pull back, but it was difficult when she was lying halfway across his lap. He saw her wide eyes and the look of confusion in her face.

He was struck by the thought he’d never seen anything so alluring, especially with her mouth so red from kissing him.

“How dare you kiss me!” he thundered, grabbing her upper arms. He pulled her close to him and then kissed her, even harder than she had kissed him.

“Get a room,” one of the kids said.

“Where, dumbass?” one answered. He made a mental note to reward that child later for the prompt and very observant answer.

Relia struggled back, taking a breath. Her eyes glinted with fury.

“Let me go!” she demanded.

“You kissed me, now I kiss you!” he laughed, pulling her close again. Even though she protested, as he pulled her against his chest she softened and bent towards him, begging for more.

He moaned softly, enjoying the soft feel of her in his arms. What an insolent creature she was. Utterly infuriating.

So why am I still kissing her?

She pulled back for a breath and he grinned, ready for more kissing. Instead, she slapped him smartly across the face, wincing as she inspected her red palm. He loosened his grip momentarily and she wriggled free.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she yelled.

He shrugged. “You kissed me first.”

“I did not!” She put her hands on her hips, staring at him.

“I’m pretty sure you did,” he said, grinning.

“She totally did,” Lel said, nodding at Gothar.

He grinned in triumph and nodded to Lel.

“Aye, Matey.”

Lel swelled with pride. Gothar looked over at Relia as she stomped her foot.

He found it adorable.

“Earth women are very strange creatures,” he remarked, rubbing his chin. “Kissing one minute and slapping the next. Is this a common custom?” Gothar figured he should learn the specifics of it if it was something that’d happen regularly.

“Of course not!” Relia said, exasperated. “I just—and then I—I mean, do we have to talk about this?”

Gothar leaned back on his hands, crossing his ankles casually. “I think we do. I mean, it could be a big deal. You kissing me and all.”

“You kissed me,” she hissed, defiant.

“Guys?” one of the kids spoke, but Gothar didn’t turn his eyes from Relia.

“I was unconscious,” he said as a matter of fact. “I was… Well. I don’t know where I was. Dreaming, I guess. But I woke up with your lips on mine.”

“Guys…” The voice came again, but no one noticed.

“I was giving you mouth to mouth,” Relia sighed, exasperated. “You took advantage of my lips on yours and that’s all that’s going on here.”

“I don’t really know what you were trying to achieve, but—”

“GUYS!” roared Yahâr. “It’s getting hot in here.”

“Tell me about it,” Gothar quipped, winking at Relia. She turned her head away, refusing to look at him. It certainly was hot, with fury as well as passion.

“No, I mean really hot,” the kid said. Gothar looked up in surprise.

To his shock, the air in the cave had gotten very warm. Even though they were underground, it felt like they were in an oven slowly being brought to its maximum temperature. It rose swiftly, too.

He stood up in a hurry, looking around. The kids all shuffled over to stand next to him, as if they already saw him as the safest place to be. Relia hesitated, but she soon moved over to stand next to him as well.

As tempting as it was to kiss her again and continue this little exchange about who kissed who, he realized they’d have to leave it for the time being.

It certainly didn’t matter who kissed who if they all died.

And from the way the temperature was rising, it appeared that could be a very real possibility. Gothar put out his arms and gathered the children to him, reaching for Relia’s hand. To his surprise, she took his hand easily, gripping it tight.

They both seemed to know something with their hearts that their heads couldn’t yet accept. Hopefully, they’d live long enough to discover what that was.

24

The crystals surrounding them pulsed with energy, glowing brighter and brighter with each throb. Relia’s eyes darted about, her mind working furiously. Thankful for the distraction from her conflicted feelings for Gothar, she dropped to a knee and looked at each of the children in turn.

“You have five seconds to pack. Crate train time. Go!”

The children moved faster than Relia had ever seen. A flurry of tentacles and ten seconds later, the crate train was packed and ready to go. Relia decided to ask what all the children had managed to gather later when things calmed down.

Does anything ever calm down?

Relia shrugged off the thought and turned to Gothar. She nodded at the lead crate, lifting her arms with a resigned sigh.

“Put me in the cart, Gothar.”

“Captain.”

“What?”

“Captain Gothar.”

“How about I call you Scourge, the Bane of my Existence.”

“Acceptable.”

Gothar slid his big hands around Relia’s waist. She tried to pretend like him lifting her with such strength and ease didn’t have her gasping. She fanned herself. If anyone asked, she planned to blame it on the ever-brighter crystals.

Relia slipped her legs over the crate’s side and Gothar set her inside. She drew her knees under her and gripped the crate’s side. Yahǎr crawled in behind her and checked the knotted rope connecting the train of floating crates behind them.

Lel scampered into Relia’s lap and looked up into her eyes.

“Why are the crystals doing this?”

Thǎlwe climbed into the crate too, wedging her gelatinous body between Relia and the front of the train.

“I think it’s our tech, honestly. The crystals have glowed brighter since we showed up with lamps and things. Without us here, it looks like the crystals feed off the light this bioluminescent moss produces.”

“Oh. So, it’s like when I eat too much chocolate?”

Relia chuckled.

“Yes, Lel. But these things look like they’re about to do something far more dangerous than a stomachache.”

Lel nodded. Thǎlwe wrapped an arm tentacle around the back of Gothar’s belt as he counted heads. Relia’s heart melted just a little at the care he took with his new crew of children and nanny.

“Ready, Mateys?”

Relia added her voice to the children’s chorus.

“Aye, Captain!”

Gothar smiled, turned, and ran. The children held up any tentacle not currently busy and they all screamed in unison.

“Aaaarrrgggghhh!”

Gothar led the charge as they all ran into the darkness. But the cavern was too vast and their glowing train of lamps far too dim for any of them to see the edge of the chamber.

Relia leaned over Thǎlwe’s shoulder and shouted at Gothar as they sprinted.

“Do you know where you’re going?”

“Yeah. Away from the crystals that really remind me of bombs.”

“Good point.”

Gothar shouted back over his shoulder. “I can smell fresh air.”

“Really?” Relia tried to peer into the darkness around them but only saw the glow of the crystals behind them.

“Where?”

Gothar sniffed as he ran, pulling the train of crates behind him. He dodged around a series of stalagmites reaching for the cavern’s ceiling. The kids bobbed to the sides as the train whipped around behind the weaving Gothar.

“This way!”

Gothar pointed ahead but Relia couldn’t make out anything. She wasn’t helping anyone straining her eyes to see past the little bubble of light created by their lamps. She huffed, then turned to Lel.

“Lel, do you have anything in the crates to recharge this blaster? We may need it.”

Lel grinned, pulling herself from crate to crate, digging about. She stopped at the third crate, digging to the bottom of it.

“Aha!”

Relia smiled, even though the packed crate muffled Lel’s triumphant cry. A note of the sheer joy of accomplishment rang through Lel’s tone, warming Relia’s heart. Lel walked herself back over the crates with three tentacles, clutching a small arms-compatible power pack.

Lel wrapped an arm tentacle around Relia’s neck, stroking comfortingly with little finger tentacles. Relia breathed a little easier. Lel pulled the blaster from the holster belted to Relia’s waist.

A few seconds of finger tentacles working in ways that made Relia’s brain hurt and Lel had replaced the blaster’s battery. Lel slipped it back into the holster.

A low, rhythmic throb pulsed in Relia’s ears. The glowing crystals lay far behind them now, but brilliant light shone through the cavern. Relia gasped as the light shone brightly enough to expose the cavern’s dimensions.

She guesstimated the brilliant crystals lay nearly a mile behind them. She whipped her head around, leaning this way and that, to look past Gothar’s massive bulk. A grunt of frustration escaped her lips.

“Lel? Think you can climb up on top of Gothar’s head and tell me what you see?”

Lel quivered in excitement.

“Aye, Miss Relia.”

Lel crawled atop Thǎlwe and across the tentacle Thǎlwe had wrapped around Gothar’s belt. She slid her tentacles over Gothar’s shoulders. Relia suppressed a chuckle when Gothar jumped at Lel’s touch.

Before Gothar uttered his what the fuck, Lel rode on his head between his six-inch horns. She reported to Relia.

“There’s an exit ahead!”

The crystals’ thrum, throbbing from the brilliantly shining crystals behind them, turned into a high-pitched whine. Relia whipped her head behind, then a tentacle nudged her hand and she looked down.

Yahǎr handed her the crate’s lid. She wondered where the hell it’d come from but decided to ask later. Relia and Yahǎr held the hard, durable lid above their and Thǎlwe’s heads.

Just in case…

The crystalline whine reached an ear-piercing volume. Relia felt the heat emanating from them over a mile away. She glanced at Lel, worried she’d be exposed to the inevitable explosion.

Lel no longer rode Gothar’s head, clinging to his horns. Relia’s eyes darted over Gothar, searching for any sign of the precocious and precious Lel, until she saw tentacle hands and tentacle feet wrapped around his torso.

She sighed in relief.

“Hang on!” Gothar shouted.

With no further warning the crystals blew and cascades of explosions rocked the cavern behind them. Stalactites cracked, falling from the ceiling like giant fangs. A wave of light rolled over them as the cavern shook.

Another series of explosions ran across the cavern. Smaller crystals scattered throughout the cave appeared to have been charged off the energy of the first explosions and a large crack ripped across the cavern floor.

Stalagmites fell with horrifying groans as a chunk of the cave ceiling crashed down. Ceiling and floor crashed into a cave deeper below just as Gothar dove through the exit.

A blast of rock and debris rolled from the cave mouth, engulfing the bizarre pirate train. Yahǎr and Relia held tight to the crate-lid shield as it was pelted with exploding-crystal-cave shrapnel.

Relia held her breath, her heartbeat in her ears.

After a short eternity, Gothar leapt free and Relia breathed fresh air in deep.

She pushed the crate lid aside and raised her fist. Triumphant joy burst from her throat.

“AAAARRRGGGHHH!”

25

Gothar ran in long-legged bounds. Lel clung to his chest. Thǎlwe clung to his belt by a tentacle, pulling the train of crates behind her. Gothar glanced behind. Relia and Yahǎr still occupied their open crate, carrying the lid as a shield.

Gothar ran so fast, Lel’s gelatinous body rippled back in the wind. She screeched joyful arghs, face and round belly to the wind.

Relia laughed behind him, a full-throated celebration of survival. Gothar felt alive. Flashes of his…

Vision? Dream? Nightmare? Epic-level trolling? What does trolling even mean? Earth phrases are so strange…

Gothar shoved the thought aside to join all the others he never bothered getting back to. He scanned them, running across a wide swath of rough scrub. The scrub opened up into a wide valley between high cliffs.

On the horizon, the cliffs framed rippling dunes. Gothar searched the cliffs on each side for cover. The open desert didn’t appeal to him at all. He banked to the right and ran for some promising boulders.

Lel crawled her way back atop Gothar’s head. She anchored her tentacles under his horns and brushed the hair out of his eyes.

“See? Isn’t that better?”

Gothar huffed and considered slowing down.

Gothar, the Scourge may be Krokan, but not even I can run forever.

Then Gothar heard a deep rumble. He risked a glance back. The mountain containing the exploding cavern trembled. He snapped his head forward and ran for the boulders.

The mountain released a thundering roar and shuddered. Gothar dodged around the back of a particularly sturdy-looking boulder. The crate train whipped around behind him.

He spun on his heel, wrapping his arms around Relia and the children. He squeezed, he thought, gently. They all squeaked. Gothar picked them all up in one bundle, certain the children’s rubbery bodies would cushion Relia.

He dove under the levitating crates, covering Relia and the children with his body. Relia oofed. Gothar suspected she landed at the bottom of the pile for the half second before the cavern they had blown up collapsed.

The ground shook. Omnidirectional shockwaves blew past, carrying sand, scree, and small sharp detritus past their huddled forms.

Larger, heavier rocks followed, but the mag lev devices levitating the crates held them aloft and off Gothar, Relia, and the children. The wind died down. Dust and small particles trickled down from the atmosphere.

Gothar dared not yet move. He felt tremors rumble beneath his body. The ground shook. The children jiggled.

Relia’s perfect, full bosoms jiggle, too. Get a hold of yourself, Gothar! This…this…human woman has put some spell on you.

Gothar pushed the insidious voice in his head aside.

Captain Gothar, the Scourge, has no time for this. Pirate Captain, Gothar, the Scourge, is too busy avoiding death for the fortieth time today. In fact, Gothar has been avoiding imminent death since he met that…that…Heart Witch!

Captain Gothar, the Scourge decided he didn’t have time for that thought either.

Who has time for thoughts when there are so many ways to die?

The tremors passed, leaving behind a deafening silence. His ears rang. He looked around. A wall of rock and debris surrounded them. He pushed on one of the debris walls, collapsing it out.

After a few more pushes, and some digging from the children, Gothar slid out into fresh-ish air. Relia coughed behind him. He turned and offered her a hand, but stopped himself.

That heart witch had already put some crazy, hallucinogenic spell on him. He dared not touch her again. He turned, pretending he still couldn’t hear. Lel crawled up to him and atop his head before he stopped her.

He sighed.

Gothar doesn’t need to get attached to these children either.

The air cleared. He waved the remaining dust away, digging the crates out of the rubble. Lel ‘helped’. They worked in silence for a while, digging the crates free.

Fifteen minutes later, the air had mostly cleared and the carts bobbed high atop a pile of pulverized mountain. Relia, Thǎlwe, and Yahǎr climbed aboard the lead crate. This time, Thǎlwe made Yahǎr hold on to his belt.

Gothar stepped around the boulder, taking care with his boots on such loose terrain. Mountain dust floated over the valley. Where the cavern must’ve been, he saw a newly formed valley.

A waterfall jutted forth, filling the bowl left behind when the cavern collapsed. The collapse had exposed an underground river and diverted its course.

Gothar imagined soon this new valley would form a lake—if the desert sun didn’t bake the water away before the waterfall filled the valley below.

He blocked the relentless sun with a forearm. The sky filled with circling flyers Gothar suspected took flight during the collapse.

The flyers swirled into a flock and he squinted up, trying to make out details. The flyers circling overhead looked…different than the ones on the other end of that cave system.

He stared, trying to determine what quality these flyers possessed to alarm him so. The lead flyer swung his way and the flock behind it followed. He gulped.

He searched for cover. Finding none nearby, he turned and ran for the rocks they had just left. The lead flyer was upon them before he could reach any sort of safety.

It swooped, grabbing Lel in its taloned feet and Gothar realized the difference between these new flyers and the ones he had seen before.

These flyers were far, far larger.

The flyer took Lel with it, and the four tentacles Lel had wrapped around his head took Gothar along for the ride. Yahǎr refused to let go of Gothar’s belt, so he came too, binging the entire crate train with him.

Relia and Thǎlwe held on for dear life and in less than a second, the flyer dragged the entire train of crates, Gothar, Relia, and the children into the sky.

Air rushed by Gothar’s ears. His heart pounded. He grabbed Lel with both hands.

Time to Avoid Death #41…

26

Relia gripped the sides of the crate in which she rode. The gigantic flyer pulled them along through the air, but the crate train’s drag prevented the flyer from gaining much altitude. She glanced down. They skimmed the surface twenty feet below.

Gothar gripped Lel’s body, not letting the flyer take off with her.

“Captain?”

“What, Lel?”

“Do you have a good hold of me?”

“What? Yes, why?”

“I’m tired of this overgrown núm shiepáp grabbing my head!”

Lel unwound a tentacle and dug around in her ship suit. Her tentacle whipped back, ready to attack the flyer. She held three shivs and two excellent shanks in her finger tentacles.

With a cry Relia felt certain even Gothar should celebrate, Lel’s hand tentacle turned into a whirling weapon of razor-sharp blades.

Lel didn’t need to be able to see when the flyer’s foot gripped her entire head. Instead, she stabbed and sliced at anything not Lel.

The flyer shrieked, dipping in the sky. Relia looked down. The ground seemed so close. The flyer banked. The crate train trailed behind. The flyer swooped over the new waterfall quickly filling the valley.

That underground river must have been huge.

The flyer swooped through the fall’s misty spray. For a split second, Relia thought she saw a couple of giant, pale fish flopping in the river’s water falling past the train of crates.

Giant alien fish-equivalents… That’s silly… There are better things to worry about right now. Like the flyer sinking toward that cliff…

“Yahǎr! Let go when we’re over the clifftop. Gothar will have a better chance of saving Lel if we’re not dragging behind him by his belt.”

“Aye, Miss Relia!”

“Thǎlwe, let’s put that crate lid right in front, here.”

Relia and Thǎlwe fitted the lid at the front of the crate, holding it like a shield.

The flyer rushed toward the top of the cliff. The wide, leathery wings stretched between long bones. A massive ridge rose from its sharp-beaked head. Relia thought it looked like an old, Earth dinosaur.

The flyer banked over the edge of the cliff.

“Now!”

Yahǎr released Gothar’s belt at Relia’s scream. The entire train of crates flew. They glided for a second, then plummeted to the scrub of the cliff top. Thǎlwe and Relia braced the crate-lid shield.

The crate train landed. It slid along the cushion of the anti-grav bubble created by the mag lev devices. The train plowed through the scrub. The tough, drought-resistant plants slapped Relia’s knuckles where she held onto the crate-lid shield.

Relia held on and screamed her defiance. She had not survived a lifetime of tragedies just to die here. She worried for Lel…

…And Gothar?

The scrubby brush slapped at the crate-lid shield, slowing the crate train. Relia drew in a relieved breath. The train bumped to a stop. She took four good breaths of fresh air, to clear her head.

“Is everyone on this train okay?”

“Yes, Miss Relia.”

Relia nodded, climbing out of the crate. Her foot slipped and she tumbled onto the ground. She rolled onto her back, pressing her arms into the solid steady ground.

“You saved me, again. I’m the nanny, the adult… I’m supposed to be saving you, not the other way around.”

Yahǎr and Thǎlwe’s sweet faces appeared over Relia’s blocking the harsh, desert light. Thǎlwe cocked her head to the side.

“You did save us, Miss Relia.”

Yahǎr nodded his bulbous head.

“Thǎlwe’s right, Miss Relia. Zasnusian children are very tough.”

Thǎlwe nodded.

“Yeah. You and Captain Gothar saved us from Father. Keeping you alive is the least we can do.”

“Yeah. What she said.”

Relia almost cried. Her heart squeezed in her chest. She took a steadying breath and pushed herself to her feet, dusting the knees of her shipsuit bottoms.

She doubted she made them any cleaner but commended herself on the cloud of dust she created in the process. Giving up on that futile pursuit, she grabbed the handle of the lead crate and hiked back to the cliff’s edge.

She raised an arm, shading her eyes with a hand. She scanned the air, looking for Gothar and Lel. Yahǎr and Thǎlwe rode in the crate. They shaded their eyes with hand tentacles while the other tentacles secured the crate’s lid to the side.

Relia smacked a dry tongue on the roof of her mouth. She called back over her shoulder.

“Do we still have any water?”

Relia heard a scramble behind her. A canteen slid over her shoulder. She took it, drinking greedily. She felt the dry tissue of her tongue and throat plump as the water revived her.

“Thank you.”

Relia slid the canteen back over her shoulder and one of the kids took it off her hands. Yahǎr shouted at her ear causing her to jump.

“There!”

Relia looked the direction Yahǎr’s arm tentacle pointed. Gothar and Lel swung from a flyer’s feet. The flyer swooped close to the cliff and out of sight.

Relia sprinted to the cliff’s edge, dragging the train behind her.

“No one has permission to fall.”

“Yes, Miss Relia.”

Relia grabbed a handful of tall, rough grasses and peered over. Below her, Gothar and Lel clung to the cliffside below. What Relia saw of the flyer before it fell out of her sight looked like it had stepped in a giant garbage disposal.

“Lel! Gothar!”

Gothar looked up at Relia. Lel waived. Relia whipped her gaze to the crate train.

“Yahǎr. Thǎlwe. Rope.”

The siblings scrambled through the crates. Relia searched for an anchor point, deciding on a sturdy-looking bit of stalagmite jutting from the jumbled pile of, what was only a few hours ago, a mountain cavern.

Yahǎr ran up and handed Relia a rope.

“Thank you.”

Relia wrapped the rope around the jutting stalagmite a few times, then securely knotted it. She ran back to the ledge. She looked over and shouted.

“Look out!”

Relia tossed the rope over the edge.

27

Gothar clung to the face of the cliff. Lel clung to his head. He wiggled his foot, looking for a toe hold. He’d never say his fingers were tired of bearing his weight, he’d say he was just trying to climb up.

Gothar’s questing foot found a toe hold, allowing the other foot to search. Lel tapped Gothar’s forehead with a tentacle and laughed.

“That was great, Captain!”

Gothar felt…happy.

The strange occurrence terrified him. He was almost grateful the Zasnusian clinging to his horns survived. Luckily, he caught himself in time and remembered to be the impenetrable Scourge of the Galaxy.

Gothar grunted.

“Look, Captain, a rope!”

Gothar looked up. The end of a rope lowered to them from the top of the cliff. Unfortunately for him, the rope stopped twenty feet short of his outstretched hand.

Lel pushed herself up on one tentacle, stretching the opposite tentacle as far as it’d go.

“Lel, you can’t stretch twenty feet. I have a better idea. Ball up in my hand. I’ll throw you, you catch the rope. Ready?”

“Wait…but Captain, what about you?”

“Don’t worry about it, I’ll crawl out.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes! Get. In. My. Hand. Child.”

Lel crawled over him, down his face, across his arm, and into his hand. He glared at her. Lel smiled. Gothar knew perfectly well Lel took the scenic route.

Gothar wanted to complain about the taste of Zasnusian tentacle sucker he hadn’t gotten out of his mouth since Lel ‘accidentally’ stuck one in his mouth. Instead, he threw the Zasnusian ball as hard as he could in the general directions of the rope.

Lel unfurled as she spun into the air. She caught the rope with her leg tentacles and scampered up. Gothar breathed, searching for the second foothold on the cliff again.

His toe slipped. He caught himself by his fingers. The rock under the one foot Gothar had on the mountain gave.

He fell.

Avoid death #42? #43? Who cares…

Gothar bounced down the slope of the cliff created when the cavern blew. He knew he was rolling too fast to stop his descent.

He curled into a ball and let himself roll to the inevitable stop, trusting his tough scaled Krokan hide to keep him in one piece.

Any moment now, I’ll reach the bottom.

Gothar’s roll slowed.

Ah! Soon, Gothar, the Scourge, will be back on his feet!

Grinning the whole way, Gothar rolled right into the new lake and sank like a stone.

A moment later, his new, watery reality dawned on him. He flung his limbs wide and swam for the surface.

To his horror, Gothar’s reality changed again. Something had attached itself to his boot. He looked down, trying to tread water.

A pale fish-thing with gigantic eyes and even more impressive, sharp fangs tried to swallow his foot. He wanted to roar, but remembered he was under water and needed what air he had.

So, Gothar punched the fish creature in the eye. His fist sunk into the dark orb. The eye popped. The fish thrashed, needle-sharp teeth snapping. Gothar kicked viciously. The wounded fish darted away, trailing dark fluids from its ruined eye.

Two more of the pale fish darted from the dark depths, tearing into the wounded fish. Gothar swam to the surface, wanting no part of the impending feeding frenzy.

His head broke the surface. He drew in a deep breath and pulled himself onto the rocky shore, arms heavy. He flopped onto a smooth rock. He lay there for a minute, gasping.

Gothar looked up. Somehow, Relia and the kids had managed to get themselves and the crate train down the side of the cliff. They’d soon be reunited.

Gothar’s heart soared seeing Relia again. Deep relief she survived washed through him.

Oh no! This human, this heart witch has made Gothar soft! Captain Gothar can’t be…soft…and caring about some squishy woman and some random kids!

Lel leapt from the crate train and bounded over. She leapt onto Gothar’s face, staring into his eyes from a mere inch away.

“Captain! We’re so happy you survived.”

Lel kissed Gothar’s forehead. He liked it. He hated that he liked it. He grabbed Lel with both hands and pulled her away. She hung above him, grinning.

Gothar sat up, grumbling. He set Lel to the side.

Lel jumped on his face, and he moved her aside again.

Gothar can’t be soft and happy

Gothar pushed himself to his feet. He shook water from his head. Relia and the other children waved at him from the lip of the basin.

He waved at them, wanting them to turn back. He didn’t want that train of crates down here. They waved back as if happy to see him.

No, don’t be happy to see them! Don’t be happy, Gothar. Be hard.

“Lel, go tell them to wait there. If they bring those crates all the way down here, we’ll just have to take them back.”

Lel nodded and galloped off, climbing over the rocks with ease. Gothar wished he still had the energy of youth…and maybe a few tentacles of his own. Those kids made tentacles look useful.

Stop thinking of ways the kids will make pirating easier.

Part of his dream flashed by. The face of the Dream Relia looked into his soul.

“Don’t you want to be a better man…for me?”

Gothar shook his head, trying to clear it. He followed Lel up the rocks.

Yes. No. What does it even mean to be a better man? Does she want me to…change? Stay home? Stop pillaging?

Gothar panicked at the thought of Relia making him retire. The thought of sitting around the bridge of a freighter, punching a corporate clock, living a quiet life with Relia smacking Gothar in the face.

Terror bloomed in his chest.

But Gothar the Scourge isn’t ready to retire like some used up old starsailor!

Gothar wasn’t made to take up… What do retired pirates even do? Collect pirate stamps?

There was only one solution.

Gothar must get off this planet and sell Relia and the children before it’s too late.

28

The sand was getting deep under Relia’s feet as she walked, dragging the energy out of her step by step. They’d refilled their empty canteens and struck out along the edge of the remaining mountain range hours ago.

It’d been a long day, made even longer by the constant attacks they’d suffered.

She held Thâlwe and Lel’s hands, Yahâr walking up ahead with Gothar. She watched them, thinking about how easy it would’ve been for Gothar to simply leave them and strike out on his own. He had a great chance of surviving by himself.

But he didn’t, she thought in confusion. This caused a trickle of an uncomfortable feeling deep in her guts.

With great relief, she saw the jagged edges of a structure ahead. Now, she didn’t have to think about her feelings for Gothar and there was some hope in her heart that this could be a respite from the constant danger gnawing at their heels.

“Gothar,” she called, pointing. “Do you see that?”

He nodded. “It looks like a downed space station.”

“What the hell is it doing here?” she asked, mystified.

He shrugged. “I certainly have no idea, but it could mean our salvation. Let’s push on as fast as we can.”

Yahâr hurried up to Gothar and took his hand. To Relia’s surprise, Gothar allowed this, even looking down on the child with an indulgent, almost affectionate expression.

Relia shook her head.

Its just the heat, getting to me.

Gothar, the Scourge, wouldn’t look kindly upon a child. It’s impossible. Right?

Just as she began to drag her tired feet forward again, the sand around her shivered. She stopped, worried it was a patch of quicksand, but her instincts screamed at her to run. She gathered Lel in her arms and dragged Thâlwe forward, both of them starting to scream as the earth was ripped out from beneath them.

Gothar turned just in time to see Relia go down, face first, as the desert shook beneath her feet, ready to swallow her.

He roared, charging towards them. Relia screamed, reaching out for him. She thought it had to be an earthquake of some kind, maybe an underground cavern opening up. She couldn’t believe that after all this, she’d go out in the equivalent of a natural disaster.

Then, a massive roar behind her shook her to the bone. Even as she scrambled with her hands, trying desperately to throw the children ahead of her onto solid ground, she looked fearfully over her shoulder.

Her screams became so loud they tore her throat. She flailed on her belly, her eyes locked on the horror rearing out of the sand. It was huge, its head a dull gray with a vicious maw lined with rows of sharp teeth. It appeared to be some kind of worm and Relia knew its body must extend far underground—the head was so big, the body likely miles long.

She couldn’t move or think. All she could do was stare as the thing dropped towards her. Sand showered around her, pelting her with the tiny specs. She saw the reality of her own death echoed in the darkness of the thing’s great maw and she knew beyond a doubt this was truly the end.

Strong hands gripped her wrists. She was dragged clear of the sand. The huge head plunged down, missing her, diving deeply back into the loose grains of its home without claiming her. The firm hands kept a hold of her, dragging her back while her eyes stayed fixed on the place where the huge beast had disappeared.

“Relia!” roared Gothar. “Move, now! RUN!”

His voice shook her free of her panicked haze. She found her feet, seeing he had already gotten the children clear. They turned and ran for a nearby pile of rocks, clambering up as quickly as they could.

Relia burned her hands on the sunbaked surface, but she didn’t even care. She kept climbing, desperate to get away from the sand.

By the time they reached the top, even Gothar was breathing hard and looking tired. It seemed like a day this difficult was hard even on a Krokan constitution.

For a few minutes, no one spoke or even moved. The kids clung to Relia as they watched the sand. Occasionally small puffs rose around the rocks, showing the thing was still there. Relia’s heart settled somewhat but didn’t return to normal. She had to wonder if it ever would.

Gothar stood up and strode to the edge of the outcrop. He held a hand over his eyes to look towards the nearby wreck, his gaze shrewd and calculating.

“There are piles of rock scattered in this direction,” he said. “We can move in this direction, safely. At least for now.”

Relia nodded, standing up with great effort. Her joints hurt and her muscles burned. Every inch of her was strung tight with a tension so great it felt like it’d crack her bones. She was stunned to find tears trickling down her face. Gasping for air, she gathered the children close to her and followed Gothar.

The small piles of rocks were gathered close to each other and for the most part, were easy to navigate. One particularly scary patch was utterly flat, making Relia feel vulnerable and exposed, but the creatures couldn’t get to them.

They burrowed nearby, sending up spouts of sand as they passed, as if trying to scare them into a misstep. When they climbed on to a higher section, Relia breathed a sigh of relief.

Until they reached the top, and she saw there wasn’t anything but a stretch of soft, shifting sand between them and the ruins of the space station. She looked at Gothar in despair.

He looked frustrated and angry, glaring at the sand as if it had personally defied him. Relia felt a bubble of stress rising in her chest as she looked at the distance which lay between her and relative safety.

Now what?

29

Gothar looked across the expanse of sand between them and the ruins of the space station. The thing looked big and heavy, with plenty of rooms intact. He knew it’d provide adequate shelter from the creatures and possibly enough resources to keep them alive for some time.

He also knew they wouldn’t make it, though. There were at least three of the worm things gathered around them now, obviously anticipating their moves.

He would have made it on his own. He might even manage to kill one of the things by punching his way out of its mouth, but Relia and the kids would be wormfood.

Gothar steeled himself, realizing that the best course of action would be to lead the worms away from the station so Relia and the kids could reach it safely.

He’d take his chances against the creatures. It was the only thing to do.

“Okay,” he said. “We’re going to—”

“Hey,” Thâlwe said, reaching into his pockets. “I’ve got an idea. I’ve still got these grenades. Do you think the worms would chase them?”

“You still have those?” Relia asked. “What were you planning to do with them?”

Thâlwe shrugged. “I hadn’t figured that out yet.” She grinned. “But it’s useful, isn’t it?”

Gothar snatched a couple of grenades from the child’s tentacles.

“Very useful.”

He doubted he’d get the creatures to swallow the grenades, but he could stagger them. To the creatures, they’d sound exactly like footsteps.

“They won’t buy us much time,” he said, heading to the edge of the rock pile. “I can throw them pretty far, but once the animals hear us running, they’ll turn back towards us. Get ready to jump when I say so.”

Thâlwe climbed into the first crates and grabbed Gothar’s belt. He looked down on the child, realizing he was smiling with genuine admiration. The little scamp almost reminded him of himself at the same age.

“Climb in and hold on.”

Lel climbed up atop Gothar’s head. Gothar almost complained, but realized he didn’t mind so much. Of all three kids, Lel most reminded Gothar of himself.

“Okay, be ready on my mark.”

He pulled the first grenade’s pin and hurled it as far as he could, quickly followed by several more. The second the grenade hit the ground trails of sand streamed around it, showing the creatures eagerly chasing down the noise.

“Go!” he roared, turning to run. Relia jumped into the lead crate and grabbed Yahǎr. Gothar sprinted across the sands, his train of crates filled with his bizarre crew trailing behind.

She is some woman.

He shook the thought away, focusing on running. Far behind them, the grenades began to go off in a series of booms. Gothar prayed it would keep the creatures away long enough for them to reach the station.

Perhaps my Ancestor really is watching over me. Either that or the fucking bastard is cursing me.

He threw a glance over his shoulder, realizing that it had to be the latter. Even though the grenades were still going off, two of the creatures had turned to chase them. He was amazed by their speed.

Sand rose in great cresting waves as they cut their way through the ground, speeding towards them. He looked ahead to the ruins, then behind again and he knew with utter certainty, they wouldn’t make it.

With a roar of effort, Gothar surged forward. He stared at their goal, not daring to look back. He heard the rustling of sand getting closer and closer behind them but refused to give up.

He heard Relia yell and forced more speed from his legs, ignoring the breath tearing his throat and the burn of his already tired muscles.

The wreck grew closer, details springing out at him with each step he took. He screamed with effort as they got close.

Gothar leapt across the final distance, then grabbed the tentacle Thǎlwe had wrapped around his belt. He wrenched it free, pulling the crate train beside him.

He swung his arm, launching the entire train of crates onto a higher portion of the downed wreckage. Relia, the children and the crates sailed overhead.

Gothar grabbed the edge of the station’s deck, dangling from his fingertips, craning his head to look up.

Thank the Ancestors. Relia, the children, and their little supply train breached the distance safely.

He smiled, hanging by one hand, ready to pull himself up the final distance when he noticed his gun belt had snagged on a jagged bit of wreckage.

Fine. No problem. It’ll just take another minute and…

Relia’s scream startled him. Gothar’s eyes darted to her. Relia pointed at the sand behind them. Waves of sand streaked his way.

Gothar unbuckled his favorite belt, one handed. He grumbled about losing his favorite weapon, but let the belt fall. No longer around Gothar’s waist, the belt slid from where it was caught, falling to the sand below.

Lel leapt from Gothar’s head. Swinging from tentacle to tentacle down the wreckage, chasing the captain’s blade. Relia stared down from the ledge, her face panic stricken.

“Lel!” she screamed.

Gothar looked down and saw Lel loping along the sand at the base of the wreck. The creatures closed in on them fast. He didn’t know what to do, but his body obeyed before he thought through the next move.

He dropped down knowing this time it’d most likely be his final battle. That didn’t matter—the only thing that mattered was going out in glory and taking as many of the things with him as he could.

30

“No!” Relia shouted as Gothar jumped.

He grabbed Lel, taking the gunblade’s belt from her, then drew back his arm and launched Lel as hard as he could, sending her sailing through the air.

She landed against a wall a few feet below Relia, sticking with her tentacles.

Lel yelled back at Gothar. “Captain, come back!”

Lel climbed up the wall and threw her arm tentacles around Relia’s legs. Relia’s hand flew to her mouth.

As infuriating as Relia found Gothar, she didn’t want giant alien sand worms to eat him.

And maybe, probably, there were other reasons…

All three children clung to the edge, watching Gothar with big eyes as he wielded his gunblade, the gun belt dangling in the wind.

One of the colossal worms thrust its dull gray head high in the air. It opened the four lobes of its maw and roared. Spittle and a fine mist of sand spackled Gothar.

He wiped the glob of sandworm mucus from his face and roared his defiance. He raised his gunblade and fired.

A red, globular ball of crackling energy streaked from the barrel of Gothar’s gunblade. The bolt struck the sandworm, blasting a sizzling hole through its head.

The sandworm shrieked a deafening cry as it reared back its ugly head. Electric-green ichor streamed from its wound, but another burst from the sand. Relia wondered how many shots he had left in the gunblade’s charge.

She pulled her blaster, adding its orange bolts of energy to the fray. The sandworms seemed unimpressed, but she couldn’t think of how else to help. Then, Yahǎr turned to Thǎlwe.

“How many grenades do we have left?”

In lieu of an answer, Thǎlwe sprinted to the crate train and dragged it to the edge. The children immediately crawled into the crate with the last of the grenades. Thǎlwe grabbed grenades with all four tentacles.

She turned to the edge. A third sandworm roared at Gothar, openmouthed. Thǎlwe pulled the pin with her needlelike teeth and threw a grenade right down the monster’s gullet.

Relia and the children waited, holding their collective breath. Two seconds later, the worm shuddered, vomiting a wave of electric-green fluids, then collapsed.

Its large, gray head smacked against the wreckage as it fell, lodging below them. One of the dead worm’s compatriots screeched in her direction and Relia and the children filled it with grenades.

Relia didn’t count how many grenades they fed the tooth-lined maw, they just kept going until the thing exploded in a fountain of green goo. Finally, Gothar jumped atop the head of the dead sandworm directly below Relia.

He leapt as high on the wreckage as he could, determined to climb his way to them, but without tentacles of his own, he couldn’t make it up the wall.

Relia rifled through the crates. “Rope! He’s close, we just have to reach him…”

Thǎlwe pulled out the rope and she tied it to a sturdy-looking metal bar and threw the rest over the side. Gothar jumped again…

His hand missed the rope by mere feet.

“Oh, no! The rope isn’t long enou…”

Lel dashed down the rope, her tentacles climbing down like she was born to move through tangled environments. She reached the end of the rope, wrapping a tentacle around it and stretched the others out.

Gothar leapt on more time, hand outstretched, and this time Lel caught him, swinging him up until his fist gripped the rope.

“Yes!” Relia thought her heart would burst in her chest.

Gothar climbed, strong arms moving swiftly upward. Lel climbed atop Gothar’s head, wrapped her tentacles around his horns, and laughed. As they reached the top, Gothar threw his upper body atop the ledge and the children’s tentacles pulled the rest of him up.

He flopped onto his back, gasping for breath and the children mobbed him, running their little finger tentacles over his filthy face.

Relia wanted to run to him and join them.

Gothar has put himself in danger over and over again to save us.

He grumbled under their attention, but Relia noticed he didn’t remove any of the children. Relia suspected their little finger tentacles released some sort of soothing excretion. She decided to look up Zasnusian Biology—if she ever made it back to civilization.

For now, she simply enjoyed three Zasnusian children getting the better of a proud Krokan. She wiped sweat from her brow.

Relia peeked over the edge. The worms contented themselves with the bodies of their fallen brethren. Now, that the emergency was over, her body reported every complaint she’d been too busy to notice.

Relia’s stomach rumbled and thirst clenched her dry throat. She dug canteens out of the crates. Draining one on the way, she passed out the canteens, rescuing Gothar from the euphoric effects of the children’s finger tentacles.

Gothar staggered to his feet and guzzled the contents of the canteen she’d handed him. He dug through the crates and drained two more canteens before turning to Relia. She looked up at him.

His eyes, now devoid of the transformative flicker of red energy, shone a brilliant gold. Relia gulped.

You know, if one just hosed off all the alien gunk, Gothar is… Don’t start lying to yourself now, Relia. Gothar is fucking HOT and you know he makes you all gooey.

Shut up! Why am I arguing with myself when I could be looking for a shower, anyway?

“Relia?”

Relia spun around, facing Gothar. Even if he couldn’t read her mind, she knew she was trying to guesstimate the size of the package wrapped in those tight leather pants of his.

Her cheeks burned. She bit her lip to keep herself from saying something she had no chance of taking back or blowing off.

“Yes?”

“Let’s get out of this sun and see if we can find a good spot to camp in the station wreckage?”

“Excellent idea. And a shower.”

“Huh?”

“A shower, Gothar. We’re covered in more aliens than I care to remember and if I don’t get this sand off of me, I’ll go stark raving mad and kill us all.”

“Then a shower you shall have.”

A smile tugged at the corners of Relia’s mouth before she suppressed it. The way Gothar’s gaze caressed her face surprised her. A tingle ran down her spine and she gulped.

She couldn’t be thinking about this. She just couldn’t.

And yet… somehow he was all she could imagine.

“Thanks. Lel, Yahǎr, Thǎlwe, let’s find a way inside.”

The kids galloped off, exploring the wreckage of the crashed station. Relia glanced at Gothar. He held out his hand to her and her heart melted.

She slid her sand-encrusted fingers into his proffered hand. He stepped close, towering over her but somehow, she knew he’d never hurt her. He dropped to a knee to look her in the face.

Gothar slid his hands around Relia’s cheeks. Her heartbeat thundered in her chest. He brought his nose within an inch of hers. He spoke in barely a whisper.

“I’m sorry I was a gichvǔ patva núm shiepáp.”

Relia flung her arms around Gothar’s neck and kissed him for all she was worth.

31

Relia and Gothar followed the children, hand in hand. They didn’t speak. Relia’s body tingled anywhere Gothar drew near, and she wondered what had come over him.

They made their way through the ancient station. Whichever star-faring species had built it must’ve been huge. The tunnels and corridors could have accommodated an entire shuttle.

Their footsteps echoed through the cavernous spaces. To Relia’s amazement, they found an intact section filled with precisely manicured plants. Small, ancient gardening bots zipped to and fro through the fields.

She breathed deep. The cool, earthy air was perfect. This deck didn’t even lean over like so many they’d crawled through.

The robots paid them no mind as they completed their automated tasks, curating a garden for a people long dead. Relia wondered if any of these plants were edible. Then she wondered if the children had packed any organic analyzers.

“Yahǎr? Are there any analyzers in these crates?”

“Yes, Miss Relia.”

“Find it and nobody better eat or touch anything until I test it.”

“Yes, Miss Relia.”

Yahǎr opened a crate at the back of the train. He fished out a small handheld device and handed it to Relia. She tested plants as they walked, harvesting the edible ones and packing them into the crate that previously held grenades.

The children made quick work of climbing plants and gathering various fruits and nuts. Relia pulled strange vegetables and harvested beautiful greens. Gothar even helped.

Crate full, they pulled to a stop near a water tank filled with crystal clear water. Relia tested it, first.

“It’s perfect water. Fill all the canteens, then baths for the three of you!”

“Yes, Miss Relia.”

The children filled all the empty canteens, stashing them in one of the crates Gothar had pulled around their little campsite.

Everyone grabbed arm and tentacle loads of rations and foods they’d pilfered from the garden. After the feeding frenzy slowed down, Relia led the kids to the water tank and got them as clean as she could.

Lots of splashing later, the kids had crawled into crates and passed right out. Relia glanced at Gothar.

“Our turn to get clean…”

Gothar smiled and to Relia’s shock, didn’t bother to argue. She took his hand and they strolled quietly to the far side of the water tank.

What am I doing?

Gothar tugged Relia’s hand, and she turned, falling into that golden gaze. He brushed her hair back from her cheek and leaned forward. “I’d be happy to wash your back. If you’d like me to.”

Her heart pounded in her ears and she gulped.

Did she want him to? Her body answered for her.

“Yes,” she answered in a breathy whisper. “I’d like that.”

Gothar slid the hand stroking her hair over her collarbone. His finger stopped at the hem of her tank top, sliding his thumb along the shirt bottom, grazing her belly, and suddenly all her doubts fell away.

Relia placed a hand against his muscular red scaled chest, breathing hard, then attacked the buttons holding his jerkin closed.

I’m not waiting another minute. It’s been way too long, I almost died, over and over again.

Naked Gothar. Now!”

His mouth fell on hers, tongue pushing at the seam of her lips, demanding entrance.

As his arms tightened around her, she forgot everything that had held her back from this, from him.

“Relia,” he groaned as his big strong hands pulled at her tank top. Relia’s hands unbuttoned his jerkin and went to war with his pants. Eventually clothes flew everywhere and they kicked off their boots, arms entangled.

Finally naked, Gothar grabbed Relia and fell back into the water tank, taking her with him, only releasing her as soon as they hit the water. They bobbed to the surface.

“You goof,” Relia splashed him in the face, then kissed him again, hungry for more.

Hungry for him.

Their hands ran all over each other, washing away the filth of their adventure, but they never stopped kissing for long. Gothar had started with her arms, but soon moved onto stroking his hands over every other inch of her.

His masive hands cupped her breasts, thumbs flicking her nipples until they turned to tight swollen buds. He dropped his head to her neck and drew in her delicious, aroused scent.

Relia groaned, throwing back her head. Gothar ran one hand through her tangled locks and pulled a hard nipple into his mouth, making her moan deeper.

Her hands ran through his hair and over his horns, and Gothar shuddered under her touch as Relia ran her hands over every inch of his scaled hide, washing away the horrors of the day. For a moment they floated, his arm wrapped around her waist, Gothar’s other hand cupped Relia’s ass, squeezing and kneading.

She rolled over to whisper. “So, I was thinking…” Her lips brushed the curve of his ear and suddenly she wanted more.

Needed more.

And Gothar was happy to oblige

He grabbed her by the waist and lifted her out of the water tank to a patch of soft moss and in an instant he pushed himself up, surging out of the water to stand next to her. Glancing around quickly, she took his hand and led him over to a field of soft, green groundcover.

Gothar swept Relia into his arms again, and as their lips met, heat flooded through her belly.

Suddenly Gothar pulled away, sniffing the air.

“My Relia,” he smiled, then wrapped his hands arounds her waist to lift her up, sticking his nose right into her dripping pussy.

A low growl of pleasure rumbled low in his chest as he nuzzled into her.

“What are you, wait, you can’t…”

Gothar dropped to his knees, keeping Relia firmly pressed to his face. He flicked out his tongue, tasting her.

“Oh!” Relia grabbed at his horns for balance as his thick tongue pushed at her dripping folds, seeking entrance.

She writhed, toes barely brushing the ground, balanced on his mouth. She gripped his horns in her fists, stroking them from base to tip.

Gothar’s fingers tightened on her hips as he drove his tongue into her tight tunnel, impaling her, thrusting again and again.

Sparks of pleasure ripped through her as he licked at her, alternating fucking her with his tongue with sucking at her clit until her head spun and all she could do was hold on as the wave swept over her.

She barely noticed as he lay her back on the soft carpet of green vegetation and crouched between her legs. His thick fingers spread her labia, exposing her clit. He wiped a thumb through her dripping juices and placed it on the swollen, sensitive nub.

“Gothar!”

Relia spasmed, rocking her hips on Gothar’s face as his thumb drew circles over her throbbing clit. Her inner walls began to clench as his tongue pounded her G-spot harder, and with quick motions, he rubbed her clit back and forth.

He slid a finger on his other hand through her juices and rubbed circles around her dark star, pushing her over the edge.

And all the while Gothar kept his gaze locked on hers.

With a gasp, Relia came, explosive shocks richoceting through her.

And from the look in his eyes, he wasn’t done yet.

32

Gothar smiled, smug as he withdrew his tongue from her quivering tunnel, running the entire length over Relia’s sensitive nub.

Her honey was the sweetest thing he’d tasted. He already hungered for more.

But for now he gathered Relia into his arms, feeling her tremble through the aftershocks of her orgasm.

His cock bobbed, throbbing, demanding to fill her, but he was oddly content just to hold her, watch her breathing, the pulse at her throat.

Finally, her gaze cleared, and with a wicked look in her eyes, Relia pushed at Gothar’s shoulder. Happy to oblige, he rolled onto his back.

Relia climbed on top of him, draping her perfect, soft curves across his chest. He wrapped his arms around her waist and Relia kissed him, deeply, her tongue carressing his own.

“I want you…”

Her breathy words unbound Gothar, and he drew in a quick breath. He took a full breast in his hand, his fingers playing with her hard, peaked nipple tweaking and rolling and tugging at it.

Relia moaned as she lay atop the shaft of his thick, hard cock. Nestled between her soft, wet folds, Relia ground against his cock’s crests.

Gothar growled, groaning.

Relia felt incredible.

How could he have resisted her? She was so strong and brave and never gave up. Gothar loved being with her, even when she slapped him.

He lifted her hips, fitting the big pointed head of his cock at the entrance of her slick tunnel, easing the broad tip between her folds, letting her body take him in.

Gothar felt his head spreading her, preparing her for the thick crests ringing his already huge shaft. He finally breached her tight pussy. Relia gasped, arching her back. She rocked her hips over the head of his cock, pulling up and settling back down, feeling it enter her over and over.

He pulled her hips down slowly. The first ridge of his cock slid into her, stretching her even wider.

“Oh, Gothar,” she moaned, her mouth forming a perfect, wet O.

“You feel so good,” he panted, holding himself still, waiting for her to adjust.

He wanted to let go and pound into her, but feared he might hurt her.

He was a big, tough Krokan and Relia was a soft, beautiful, delicate human. Gothar stared up into her perfect face, waiting for her to relax, then pushed the next crest past her entrance and into her pussy.

Relia’s breaths came sharp and short. Gothar felt her tunnel pulse around him.

“Still good?” He manged to ask.

He froze, waiting, until she nodded, her eyes wide.

He fought his desire to fill her up immediately and slid the last cock crest into her. Relia cried out, writhing on him, sliding up and down his hard length.

Now only the twin bulges at the base cock pressed at her entrance.

Larger around than any of the crests he’d filled her with so far, Gothar carefully worked the first bulges in, then the next.

“Oh, oh,” Relia muttered soft nonsense words as he filled her completely.

The bloodiest battle he’d ever fought was nothing compared to this. Remaining still, letting her adapt to him, waiting until she moved on her own, rocking on the Krokan cock that stretched her wide.

Finally, she smiled and nodded.

Gothar panted, then thrust. She panted as she bounced on his cock, riding him. Over and over, Relia slammed her hips down over his thick head and thicker crests and even thicker bulge.

Close now, Gothar slammed himself up into her, holding her to him. His bulge swelled, throbbing.

“Oh, Gothar! I’m…I’m…gonna…”

Fingers buried in her hips, Gothar slammed her down on his cock. She screamed, spine arching, head thrown back. Her inner walls clenched on him.

Relia felt so good, he lost himself, lost the last vestiges of control.

He thrust hard and came, shouting her name.

She screamed again, then shuddering, collapsed against him. For a moment, no one moved, they simply panted, wrapped in contentment.

Then a strange fire ignited in Gothar’s hide, blooming so quickly he bit back a yelp. Streaks of light flashed, tracing complex patterns on his scales in gold.

Gothar’s vision flashed with Lashpi fire. His new, golden markings flashed brighter, then faded, the burning becoming nothing more than a dull ache.

Relia gasped. “Gothar! What happened?”

“Relia, you are my wolvǎz chár. My heart mate.”

Relia traced the lines of his new markings. “I don’t understand.”

Gothar sighed. “For the first time in a thousand years, a Krokan has found his heart mate—the one soul in the universe with whom a Krokan’s heart crystal can perfectly resonate.”

He looked deep into her soul. “And you, Relia, you are mine. With these markings, you have claimed me.”

Her face softened. “What’ll happen when we leave this planet, Gothar? What do you plan to do with us when you can return to your ship?”

Gothar blinked. “Well, I’m not going to sell you.”

Relia slapped his chest. “You better not even try.”

Gothar chuckled. He stroked Relia’s cheek. “Even with all the trouble I’ve been through since we met, I think I’ll keep you. Those children are handy.”

Relia slapped his chest again, not that she’d do much of anything to Gothar’s rock hard muscles. He laughed, catching her wrists.

“Even though I slap you?”

“Especially because you slap me before giving me the most fantastic kisses.”

Relia smiled, melting into his arms. She slid to one side, snuggling deep into his embrace.

“We’ve got to get dressed and move back over by the children. We can’t fall asleep here.” She punctuated her point with a huge yawn.

Gothar chuckled. They cleaned up their outfits the best they could, and decided given everything that had happened it was good enough.

Five minutes and another kiss later, Gothar and Relia dressed and walked back to the camp.

“After I transformed and passed out, I had a dream.”

“Really? What about?”

“I… An Ancestor visited me.”

“Wow! That must’ve been amazing.”

“Uh, yeah… Anyway, he asked me a question.”

Relia took Gothar’s hand and squeezed it. “What question?”

“The Ancestor…transformed into a vision of you and asked me if I’d be a better man.”

“Damn. That’s some fucked up shit right there.”

“Right? Like, what a thing to do to a descendent!”

“What a jerk.”

“Thanks.”

“What did you tell him while he wore my face?”

Gothar stopped, pulling Relia’s hands in his. “I didn’t answer him. I tried to run away from the thought. I’m not running now. Yes, I want to be a better man for you. And the children.”

Gothar drew in a deep breath, determined to finish before she’d stop him from saying the things he should’ve said since he tested Relia’s DNA.

“Those three are Krokan at heart and this time, wandering through the desert with you—even with all the ways I’ve nearly died or been eaten—have been the best of my life.”

33

Exhausted, they fell asleep in each other’s arms.

Far too soon Lel’s tentacle poked her awake.

“Miss Relia? Are you ok? We heard you screaming, but Gothar was with you, and we thought he’d take care of you.”

Oh.

Hell.

“I’m fine,” she said hurridly, wriggling out from Gothar’s grip and brushing her hair back from her face.

“Let’s go see what we can find for breakfast, alright?”

Gothar woke up and distracted the children while she looked for plates.

The children recounted and attempted to reenact the adventures of the previous day.

“Show us how the whale crashed again! Again!”

Full bellies and a lot of laughter later, Relia, Gothar, and the children packed their crate train.

They set off, seeing what other glorious things were left to pilfer. As they walked, the children roamed, adding random interesting bits of things to the crates. Relia wondered what they’d found so interesting but decided to ask later.

Or never. Never might be safer.

They slid down slanted corridors and climbed up and down the crashed station’s layers. The station had been built to accommodate thousands of their giant creators. They passed rooms filled with cryo containers so old, all but the metal hulls of the pods had long since crumbled to dust.

Dusty racks of perfectly preserved glass test tubes lined the walls of one room. All manner of samples filled the tubes, perfectly preserved in stasis fields. Some of the tubes were large enough to accommodate beings as large as Gothar.

Relia shuddered.

These samples, creatures, hung there suspended between life and death while all they ever knew died long ago.

“What’s in there?” Lel asked, peering around her.

“Nothing we need.” Relia hustled the children on. Some questions didn’t have good answers.

Soon, they entered a large gallery filled with strange giant sculptures. The children climbed all over the sculptures, swinging from the faceless forms contorted into bizarre configurations.

Gothar searched along the walls and doors of each room as soon as they entered.

“What are you looking for? Maybe I can help.”

Gothar looked at Relia as if he had never even considered the concept, and Relia didn’t need to be an empath to see it on his face.

“I’m looking for some sort of communications terminal. Surely whoever this species once was, they needed to communicate. There are only so many ways to design comms equipment, so we should be able to figure out how to use it.”

“If we can find it. Right.”

Relia scanned about them, looking for entirely different things this time. Before, she took in whatever she saw and put a label on.

Now, she looked for conduits, wires, crystal electronics, and all the other familiar ways star-faring life used to communicate over the vast distances between planets.

Gothar drew in a deep breath, cupping his hands around his mouth and he bellowed.

“Avast, ye Mateys!”

The children swung down off the ancient artwork and galloped over. Lel crawled up Gothar’s leg until Gothar got her by the back of her shipsuit and peeled her tentacles off. Lel giggled the entire time.

Gothar tried to place her in line with the other children, but she wrapped her tentacles around his arm and inched toward his head, giggling mad glee.

“In line, swab, or you’re on latrine duty as soon as we rejoin the Leviathan.”

Lel plopped to the floor and waddled off, lining up next to Yahǎr. Gothar gripped his wrists behind his back and paced with peak officiality in front of the three young pirates.

“Listen up, swabs. Being a good pirate is more than simply murdering, pillaging, booty, and romantic entanglements at seedy brothels.”

Gothar’s eyes darted at Relia. She crossed her arms over her chest and raised an eyebrow, but failed to stop the little smile from tugging the corner of her mouth.

“Uhhh… Getting to the point, you swabs are new to piracy and will have to work your way up the ranks. No matter how much I may—or may not, depending on the situation—personally like the three of you, you’ll have to work hard to earn the respect of the rest of the crew.”

The children saluted, though Relia doubted most space pirates saluted. Saluting seemed more like a military thing, but she kept it to herself. The children looked so happy and engaged. Space piracy was their newest game. They responded in unison.

“Aye, Captain!”

“Arghh. Therefore, you lowly swabs, I offer you the opportunity to grasp personal, pirate glory! I challenge you with a vital mission. Should you succeed, we’ll talk about assigning you a cabin when we return to the Leviathan and I might even throw in a few blankets.”

The children thrust tentacles wielding shanks and shivs into the air.

“Aye, aye, Captain!”

Gothar stopped before them. He drew himself to his full height and stared down at the children with the full force of pirate captain arrogance and gravity.

“We seek communications equipment with which we shall call the Leviathan. The first one to find it, without getting lost, gets a pillow.”

The children scattered. Relia and Gothar laughed. Relia crooked her finger at him. Gothar raised a brow ridge and leaned down. She grabbed his face and planted a kiss on his lips. He returned her kiss.

For a moment, Relia and Gothar lost themselves in each other. Luckily, Lel returned.

“Eeeew.”

Relia broke the kiss with a sigh. “Let’s get back to that later.”

Gothar stood tall, arm around her shoulder still holding her tightly to his side.

“Report, swab.”

“Found it.”

“That was fast.”

Lel beamed with Gothar’s compliment. Relia gathered up the other children and they all followed Lel to a comms room. This section of the station tilted enough so they couldn’t easily walk. Lel discovered it was easier to slide.

Several weeeee’s later, Gothar managed to reach Utrial on the Leviathan’s bridge. Utrial’s face appeared on the ancient monitor, the picture slightly distorted, as if for a different kind of eye.

“Utrial! Trace my signal. We’re marooned on a desert moon. How quickly can you get here?”

Utrial looked angry. “Captain Gothar, you’ve failed us. You’re too weak to command! Enjoy your life marooned on that moon.”

The comm system shorted out. Sparks flew everywhere.

That was our one phone call… What now?

34

Gothar threw his fists in the air and bellowed. His inner fire roared to life, filling him. He smashed his fists into the comms terminal on which he stood. He punched through the monitor where Utrial’s face had been moments before.

Anything which could still spark did, showering Relia and the children. Gothar reared back and smashed everything within reach. Relia’s voice called to him from outside his rage.

“Gothar.”

Gothar roared, grabbing the edge of some random piece of equipment.

“Gothar.”

He ripped the equipment from the wall and smashed it against the already smashed comms terminal.

“Gothar…”

He bashed the chunk of alien equipment against the comms terminal over and over, demolishing both. An orange blaster bolt hit the floor next to him. He froze, twisted hulk of warped metal raised two-handed above his head.

He looked at Relia.

She looked… he’d guessed, “impatient.”

Was that the right word?

Gothar’s eye darted between Relia and the pile of metal and electronics which once was the comms.

Relia tapped her foot.

Gothar might not be the best at interpreting human facial expressions, but he thought her eyebrows sat far too high on her forehead for his own good. Relia might be small, but those children were natural assassins.

Gothar lowered his arms, dropping the chunk of metal to the slanted floor. It rolled away in awkward, metallic thunks. The mere sight of Relia soothed the kind of rage which demanded Gothar’s smash.

Relia’s smile set his Lasphi aflame, instead. He stroked her shimmering red locks.

He shrugged and smiled. “Maybe it is not so bad. We could make a nice home here. Become moon pirates.”

Lel waddled up.

“Captain, we could steal a few of the flyer eggs and tame some and be sky pirates and then we’ll steal a starship and be space pirates again.”

Relia chuckled. Gothar patted Lel’s bulbous head.

“Excellent plan. Keep this up and I might give you a bowl of your own too.”

Lel beamed up at Gothar. To his surprise, he loved putting that look on Lel’s bulbous little face. He glanced at Relia, seeing her smile. He realized he loved putting smiles on Relia’s face, too.

Gothar’s heart sank.

Why now? Why did I have to find her now? Find a family now…? After losing my ship…

Gothar sighed. The rage inside quieted to mere burning embers. Resigned peace fell over him like a cloak.

Thǎlwe looked up at him. “Well Captain, if we’re stuck here, let’s see what else we have to work with.”

Yahǎr quivered where he stood. “Yeah! Let’s explore more. Who knows what we’ll find!”

Gothar nodded. “Aye, little swabs. Let’s see what else we can find.”

Relia holstered the blaster and stepped up to Gothar.

She took his hand in hers. “Then, lunch.”

“Weeeee!” The children scattered, scouting ahead. Gothar and Relia strolled after them, hand in hand. Relia pulled the crate train along behind them by a bit of rope.

To his surprise, Gothar loved watching the children swing along the ancient alien moon-bound space station. The children moved with such glee. Envy of the easy way these children expressed joy, even after their father’s cruel hand, flickered inside Gothar.

For a moment, he wished he could be so free. As admirably vicious as these children had turned out, they retained a freedom Gothar had never known. He’d become a space pirate in the first place because he’d always yearned for freedom.

Gothar had never expected to find the freedom he’d always sought in a human woman and three Zasnusian children.

The tragedy is I’ve found them too late.

Gothar sighed. He decided to make the best of the day. He chose to face the Krokan consequences tomorrow.

They’d found a great rent in the station where entire sections had been cleaved in twain. Yahǎr carried a rope up and they worked as a team to get the crate train up the gap.

They crawled up into a room filled with tall glass columns filled with some strange cobalt fluid. Bubbles wafted up lazily from the base without a sound, taking their time to traverse the viscous fluid. The columns lined the walls of the chamber like stalwart sentinels, lit from behind by weak amber lights.

“What is this place?” Lel asked, her mouth open in awe.

“My guess is some kind of algae farm,” Relia said. “Like the green belt on a starship, this produced breathable air for…whatever species created this relic.”

“Cool.”

They walked on, coming to another green space. The children gathered various plants and fruits. Relia dug out the organic analyzer and tested everything.

They found a comfortable hill near a stream which flowed through the greenspace and made camp. They pulled the carts into a semicircle and dug out rations.

Gothar needed far more protein than the others and ate three Group 042 packages before he even sat.

After such a long day of trekking, not to mention all the excitement before that, the children had crawled into their respective crates. As they snored softly, Gothar and Relia picked up camp and refilled the canteens.

With satisfied sighs, they settled in to watch the plants stir in the artificial winds. Gardening bots zipped back and forth about their tasks. Small strange lifeforms zipped through the air, going about the business of pollination.

“There are worse lives to live…”

Relia’s soft words brought Gothar out of his ruminations. “This is a beautiful place,” he nodded.

Relia smiled. “I just bet you and Lel could tame one of those flyers…”

Gothar chuckled.

“I’m sure I can find a way to fashion a harness. You might have to kill me a few sandworms to skin for leather.”

Gothar chuckled harder.

“What? I’m serious. We have food, water, shelter…each other.”

Gothar drew Relia close, afraid to speak. He couldn’t bring himself to tell her, to explain to her what a Krokan captain who’d lost his ship must do.

Instead he kissed Relia, ending the conversation.

35

Relia washed her face in the stream near their camp, grumbling. She fell asleep in Gothar’s arms last night and woke to find him gone. At first, she thought he had maybe simply found a private place to pee first thing, but he should’ve returned by now.

Relia’s suspicions rose. She wondered if he had wandered out, gotten lost, was lying hurt somewhere. She stopped her thoughts there.

Nothing on this moon had killed Gothar, yet.

She sighed. Knowing Gothar the way she did, Relia suspected Gothar went off to do something dramatically foolish. The children ran up to her.

“Miss Relia, Miss Relia. You have to see what we’ve found…”

Relia whistled over the three shouting children. They fell silent.

“Has anyone seen Gothar?”

The children looked at each other. Yahǎr spoke for the group.

“Not since last night, Miss Relia. We thought he was out scouting or something.”

“Maybe… Anyway, let’s get packed and see if we can track him down.”

They cleaned and packed anything worth saving, buried the compostable trash, and filled any canteens emptied during breakfast.

“Hmm. Miss Relia?”

“Yes, Lel?”

“There are canteens missing.”

Yahǎr popped his head out of a crate.

“And some Group 042 rations.”

“That gichvǔ patva núm shiepáp.”

Thǎlwe stroked Relia’s cheek with her finger tentacles, soothing her.

“What’s wrong, Miss Relia?”

“I think Captain Gothar went off to do something really ‘noble’.”

“By ‘noble’ do you mean ‘foolish’? Because, you said that like you meant ‘foolish’.”

“Yes, Lel, I do.”

“Maybe he explained it in this note he left you.”

Lel handed Relia a Group 042 ration wrapper. Relia held it up to her face and read.

TO MY DEAREST RELIA, and the best swabs a captain could ask for,

I, Gothar the Scourge, being of sound mind and powerful body, now go on the final journey. I have lost my ship and my honor. Krokan tradition demands that I take my own life so I may find honor in the next one. So, I have gone back to the desert to fight the largest monster I can find.

Gothar….

THE WRAPPER HAD a large blot of an unknown substance Relia decided to call ink. It appeared Gothar had written something, then scratched it out, then written something else, and scratched that out as well until it was illegible.

…TOLERATES your presence without too much effort. May we meet again in the next life.

Gothar, the Scourge

RELIA STARED AT THE NOTE, unbelieving.

What the fuck? Finally find happiness just to run off and die? Sounds like something Gothar would do.

“Miss Relia?”

“Yes, Yahǎr?”

“What did the note say?”

Relia crumpled the note in her fist.

“It says, and I quote, “I’m Gothar and I’m doing something ‘noble’ again, all on my own, without talking to anyone first so no one tells me I’m a fool doing foolish shiepáp.”

“That one means ‘shit’, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, Lel.”

Lel whispered to Thǎlwe. “You owe me 20 credits.”

Thǎlwe pushed Lel with a tentacle. One long sigh later, the sisters rolled across the floor smacking each other with their tentacles. Relia thought furiously while the children entertained themselves.

“Okay. I have a plan.”

The children stopped wrestling and lined up in front of Relia. All three saluted Relia.

“Aye, First Mate.”

“Obviously, we have to find Gothar.”

Lel tugged at Relia’s hand. “Miss Relia?”

“Hold on, Lel, I’m thinking out loud.”

“Okay, Miss Relia. Can you follow me while you think, though? I have something to show you and I promise it’s important.”

“Sure, Lel.”

Relia took hold of the crate train’s rope handle and pulled it along behind her, lost in her thoughts. Lel slid a tentacle into Relia’s hand and led her down the hall.

Thǎlwe and Yahǎr climbed aboard the crate train, looking about as they walked. Relia let Lel lead her, mind drifting back to Gothar.

Two passionate encounters and he runs off to go sacrifice himself in some foolish Krokan tradition.

How did the Krokan ever survive as a species? Find love, go throw yourself into the mouth of a monster.

What about that is even noble? What glory is there in dying?

The more Relia thought about it, the angrier she felt.

Gothar has no right to do this to me! He has no right to play with my heart like this. How can he kiss me like that, make love to me like that…and walk away?

Gothar abandoning her and the kids stabbed more deeply than any knife wound. This pain sliced into her, past her skin, and into her soul. Relia demanded to know what the point of struggling so hard to survive all this was if this life were so easy to throw away.

Lel tugged at Relia’s hand.

“Give me a second, Lel.”

Relia spoke more out of reflex than anything. Pain, frustration, and a deep, aching hurt boiled inside of her, filling her with a familiar fire. The fire had a—for lack of a better word—flavor she recognized.

Gothar.

A strange energy thrummed inside Relia, filling her. Through it, she detected Gothar’s presence. A huge smile spread across her face.

I can find Gothar.

“I can find Gothar!”

Lel patted Relia’s hand.

“That’s great, Miss Relia. Now, can you climb down just one level?”

“Oh! Sure. Sorry, I should’ve paid better attention, Lel.”

“It’s okay, Miss Relia. Don’t worry. We’re almost there.”

Relia and the children worked the crate train down to the lower level. Panting and sweating after the climb, Relia insisted on a water break. Refreshed, she took Lel’s hand again.

“Okay Lel, how much further?”

“Just around the corner, Miss Relia.”

Lel led them to a set of doors three stories tall and pushed a button. The doors slid open. Relia threw her hands in front of her face. She spoke in a soft voice.

“Oh, Lel, it’s beautiful!”

Relia turned to Lel, scooping her up and kissing the top of her head.

“Do you like it, Miss Relia?”

“It’s perfect, Lel. With this, I bet we can get the captain to even give you a treasure chest of your own. Now, Let’s go save the captain from himself.”

36

Gothar had disentangled himself from Relia’s arms hours ago while she still slept. He stashed a few canteens and some Group 042 ration packs in his coat, buckled on his gunblade belt, and walked.

He walked through corridors and climbed down sections, hopping from one crack to another. He slid down slanted rooms, passing through sections sealed for thousands of years.

He saw painted depictions of a thousand worlds in one gallery and rack after rack of massive ancient weapons he’d no hope to even lift. Gothar wondered about this ancient species of giant for a second, but then his feet finally found sand.

The valley and sky whale carcass which had been such a busy hive of activity the day before had entirely cleared.

This desert is efficient. Even if I cannot find a creature to kill me, the sun will take me eventually and I’ll finally be free of this failure…this shame of defeat.

He’d left so early because he knew Relia would try to stop him or Lel would trap him with her big eyes.

Lel is more likely to hold me at shank point, honestly.

Gothar trudged out onto the sands, hoping to attract something to fight soon. All of these new…feelings overwhelmed him.

Joy? Happiness? Contentment? Gothar had no idea what to do with that.

Gothar knew what to do in a fight. He’d welcome a fight any day, no matter how much he complained about how many times he’d been forced to avoid death since landing on this deity-forsaken moon.

That old, familiar rage inside roared to life, banking hotter with each step. Gothar looked about. Yesterday, he couldn’t spit without running into something trying to eat him. Today, all he saw was sand.

He stopped in his tracks. Dunes waved to the horizon in every direction. Gothar spun, arms out to his side, and screamed into the world of sand, light and wind.

“Ancestor! You came to me in my dream. I call on you to come to me now. I, Captain Gothar, the Scourge of the Galaxy, have lost my starship. I’ve lost my pride. I’ve lost my treasure hoard. I call on you to come to me and sit in judgement of my soul.

“May you find my soul worthy to join you. Test me, Ancestor! Give Gothar the chance to prove myself worthy of your illustrious company.”

Gothar waited. He heard only silence. He dropped his arms back to his sides, sighed heavily, and continued further into the desert. Two sandy steps later, the sand trembled under his feet.

Aha! Mine Ancestor begins the test of my soul!

Gothar ran for stable ground, pulling his gunblade. The ground under his feet shifted, sand running to the sides. A massive flat head broke the surface of the sand. The large, flat, leathery head held a row of three eyes on each side.

A hard-shelled back pushed up from the sand next. Gothar leapt from the monster’s shell. The creature roared, blowing sand dunes flat. Gothar hit the sand feet first, tucked his shoulder and rolled.

There was one problem.

Gothar was so unaccustomed to dying, or letting himself get killed for that matter, that he entirely forgot he wanted the creature before him to eat him.

A shell wider across than some villages Gothar had seen rose into the air, supported by four stout, scaly legs.

The shelled creature turned a head nearly the size of the shuttle they’d crashed when they arrived on this moon, Gothar’s direction.

An armored creature the size of a small village wasn’t what Gothar had hoped to fight. This thing would take forever with that shell. The creature huffed at Gothar, turned, and trundled away in thunderous strides.

Well, that wasn’t really much of a fight…

A head popped up from where the shelled creature had lain. Needle-sharp teeth filled the new creature’s four-foot-wide jaws. A row of glowing, blue eyes ran across the front of its face. A large frill rose on its neck and shook. It pushed up on it’s taloned back feet, standing fourteen feet tall.

Now, this is a foe! Those teeth! Those huge talons!

Gothar drew his gunblade, chuckling gleefully.

“Come on, you núm shiepáp! Take my life and restore my honor!”

The creature charged. It streaked across the sands. It leapt at Gothar, bringing its sharp rear talons to bear. Gothar dodged the vicious attack, swinging his blade. The frilled creature hopped, avoiding Gothar’s blow.

It shook its frill, hissing at Gothar, who bellowed and charged. The creature snapped its massive jaws at him. Gothar leapt to and fro, dodging each strike.

Busy dashing about, he never saw the second frilled monster sneak up behind him. The second beast attacked from behind, snapping him up in its jaws.

Gothar laughed defiantly, firing the gunblade down the monster’s throat.

Four.

The monster’s neck exploded, showering both Gothar and the still-living frilled monster with a hot pink goo. Gothar roared his defiance, leaping out of the path of the dead creature’s falling body.

He rolled to his back. The still-living frilled monster’s gaping maw streaked towards Gothar’s face. Gothar gritted his teeth, raised his gunblade and fired.

Three.

This frillhead, as Gothar decided to call them, fell to the ground. A sizzling blaster hole the size of Gothar’s fist smoked through the frillhead’s skull.

Gothar stood there, panting. He screamed into the desert.

“More! Ancestor, more! Restore my honor!”

The ground beneath Gothar shook hard, as it had when the cavern collapsed. He grinned.

Now, this feels like my glorious death.

Gothar’s mouth watered at the prospect of a truly epic battle. The sand slipped under his boots. He jumped to more solid footing, looking back.

A colossal creature thrust the first of a series of bony ridged arms up through the sands. A massive shoulder pushed the creature’s torso forty feet in the air. A mouth twenty-feet wide opened, showing teeth as long as Gothar’s legs.

Oh, beautiful glory! Take me!

The monster roared in Gothar’s face and he laughed. Gothar thrust his gunblade into the air.

“Aaaaarrrrggghhhh!”

Something grabbed Gothar by the arm and flew off with him.

37

Relia struggled to bring the air speeder under control on a hard swift turn. She couldn’t believe Gothar was arguing, let alone actively trying to free himself from rescue.

“Stop!” she cried, almost taking her hands off the controls. The speeder lurched and tilted towards the ground, making her and the kids slide towards the wall. Yahâr cheered, wrestling with the controls at the other end of the console. The kid made a very happy copilot.

“Relia!” Gothar roared. “Release me this instant! That creature and I have business to finish! My glory is waiting for me.”

“Are you out of your fucking mind!” she screamed, leaning out of the nearby port. Sand pelted her face as they swung by in a deep curve, the momentum kicking up the desert floor.

“I am completely sound,” he yelled back. “I have chosen my destiny, and this is it.”

Tears pricked at Relia’s eyes and even though she tried to stop them from falling, they ran down her cheeks anyway. Her hands gripped the stick so hard her knuckles turned white. If Gothar had been standing right in front of her, she might have slapped him.

He’d gone quiet. She leaned out of the side window again, horrified to see him attacking the ropes with a sharp knife. He’d fought with the grapple since she snared him, but now he was actually going to cut himself free.

“Stop,” she wailed. “Please stop. Come on board.”

Come back to me.

“I cannot.” His face turned up to hers and she almost fell into his eyes. His voice resonated louder than the engines and his expression was wrought, but determined.

“I am dishonored,” he said. “This is the finest death I can hope for.”

To her horror, he returned his attention to the ropes. She watched his thick muscles strain against the pressure as he fought to drag the sharp blade through the tough lines.

Relia let go of the stick to grip the window’s edge, letting Yahâr take control. The kid whooped loudly, clearly having a great time. Who knew he was a natural pilot? He’d taken to flying like he was a bird.

For a few seconds, Relia’s life of horrible luck rolled over her like an endless wave. It was loss, grief, and hardship, forcing her to rock bottom. She had nothing—she’d never had anything. Her entire existence was being hurt, being taken from, and being abused.

A low wail burst from her throat, an echo of denial. For the first time in her life, she’d believed she had something. Not just a warm touch in the night, something that kindled and satisfied her deepest fire. No, she had believed she had more than that.

A hand to hold.

Strong shoulders to bear her when she had no strength left. Someone to watch her back. It’d been more valuable to her than anything in the universe and now, it was lost, right before her eyes.

Her fingers gripped the port edge even harder and she leaned out the window, seeing Gothar almost done with the line.

“Don’t!” she wailed. “I need you. The kids need you. You can’t do this, we won’t survive without you!”

He looked up, eyes haunted and dark. “I can’t do you any good, Relia. I’m a failure. A weakling. I can’t help you. You are better off without me.”

Another wail slipped from her and she shook her head violently, denying everything. Rage rose in her to meet the despair and obliterated it, burned it to ash, leaving her with a determination burning brighter than any emotion she had ever had.

I will not lose him.

“You fucking coward!” she screamed. Gothar looked up in surprise. He opened his mouth to speak, but Relia didn’t stop.

“You think dying shows your strength? You’re going to give up, just like that? How dare you leave me alone, stuck out here on this ridiculous moon. You’re trying to run from your problems, not face them.”

She paused, taking a deep breath.

“Your Ancestors would be ashamed,” she sobbed. That one caused a complete change in him. His face dropped, his eyes widened. He was shocked and clearly insulted, but she liked the strength in his eyes.

“I love you!” she screamed. “I love you, you hardheaded, stupid gichvǔ! So, don’t you dare leave me here alone, do you hear me? I love you.”

He looked up at her, their eyes meeting even over the distance, through the swaying of the ship. His face softened and she knew he loved her, too.

He nodded, just briefly and her heart soared.

“Punch it, Yahâr,” she cried. “Get us out of here!”

“You got it!” He leaned on the controls, whooping as they swung away from the sand pit where the creature writhed, looking for the prey she’d just stolen from it.

No meal for you today, she thought. This one’s all mine.

38

The words fell from Relia’s lips, tumbling through the air to land in Gothar’s heart. It was like dying in a way. His heart collapsed in on itself and then exploded, filling his entire being with a singing joy.

“I love you,” he mouthed, knowing the words were too soft for her to hear, but unable to keep them in. From the way she smiled, he knew she’d understood him.

The speeder held steady in the wind while Relia drew in the grapple ropes, helping Gothar climb up. He realized one of the kids had to be piloting and was surprised, but not by much.

In a short time, he’d learned these kids were smart and resourceful, more than he’d expected any children to be.

His muscles burned with a healthy exertion as he hoisted himself up, hand by hand. He kept his eyes on Relia’s face, focusing only on her. She was his world, his future, his everything. What a fool he’d been to not see it.

How could I have imagined leaving her?

The answer was easy—without her declaration of love, he thought she didn’t want him. He had thought no one could love him, especially after losing his ship.

He reached up for the final grab and her hand clasped around his forearm. Just the warm touch of her palm sent shivers through him.

They were made for each other and his body knew it. Even more amazing was the fact that she loved him with her heart and soul, not just her body. He braced a foot on the edge of the doorway and thrust himself inside with one hard bounce.

Relia threw her arms around him, pressing her cheek to his chest. His arms went around her shoulders, cradling her against him. Thâlwe and Lel hurried over to grab his legs.

Gothar had never felt like this in his life. It was a feeling of being utterly complete, comfortable, and accepted. There wasn’t anything to prove and nothing to fear, and only one thing to fight for.

My family, he thought, in wonder. My family.

“Hey, guys,” Yahâr called from the deck. “I could use a hand here.”

Gothar turned quickly, sitting in the other chair to help Yahâr. The kid had done well, angling them back on course towards the crashed space station.

Only a few brief moves were needed to bring the small speeder back into a stable position. Gothar was proud.

“Good job, kid,” he said, reaching out to tousle Yahar’s hair. The boy smiled and his cheeks darkened with pleasure.

Relia’s soft touch on his shoulder startled him. He covered her hand with his own and looked up at her. He’d never seen her face like this—showing a kind of peace and contentment that made her appear almost angelic. He was used to seeing her distressed, frightened, running… and full of despair.

Now, she smiled with an ease, showing the peace in her heart. Her eyes burned with an eternal fire he admired fiercely as it held the same passion of his own kind.

“My love,” he whispered. She beamed and he loved how her eyes lit up and how her red lips curved in an easy smile.

She leaned down and kissed him. He heard the kids making noises of joy mingled with disgust—as if they approved of the bond but didn’t need to see the display. He kissed her back, his body aching to take hers in the most primal way. Now that he knew his purpose, he’d never be deterred from it again.

“Okay,” Yahâr said, “We’re there.”

Gothar looked up to see the kid landing neatly at the edge of the crashed station. Anxiety built in his guts as he realized that now, he had to decide what to do next.

“We found a shuttle,” Relia said, softly. “One that has hyper-speed tech. It’s pretty much functional too.”

Gothar’s heart leapt. He tried to contain his reaction.

What should he do now? He’d just decided to devote his life to his mate and family, but here was a chance to get his ship back. He didn’t know if he cared that much about his old life anymore.

His Ancestor had told him that it wasn’t his true calling. Maybe, he should just stay here and make the best life he could with them, but something about that felt wrong.

“Interesting,” he said, buying time. Suddenly, he realized the truth. He didn’t care about his life as a pirate, and he didn’t give two fucks about his traitorous crew.

However, he cared about his ship. It was his and he wanted it back. He just didn’t know if it was worth risking his family to do it.

Relia’s hand squeezed his shoulder. He looked up to see her laughing, a quick toss of her head sending her fiery hair cascading over one shoulder. He’d never seen anything so beautiful in his entire life.

“So, big guy,” she whispered, leaning down to kiss him. “How about we kick that old shuttle into gear and go catch ourselves a pirate ship?”

Gothar’s heart soared. He jumped to his feet, grabbed Relia around the waist and lifted her, slamming them both against the wall. He kissed her, feeling her legs wrap around his waist and her hands wrapping around his neck as she kissed him back.

Behind them, the kids had gone from ‘aww’ to ‘ew’ but neither Relia nor Gothar cared. The kids would have to get used to seeing much more of it, because Gothar planned to kiss this woman every available moment for the rest of his life.

39

Silently, Gothar pulled their ancient shuttle into an approach vector. The Leviathan hung, glittering, suspended in the familiar blackness of space. He’d caught up to his ship and his mutinous crew inside of the Naholo system close to the swirling, red planet of Imastabi.

The ancient shuttle’s cloaking system thoroughly impressed him. He hoped to have someone reverse engineer the device to install it on all his ships.

Gothar slipped their shuttle into the space they’d left empty when they accidentally launched into hyperspace when this entire debacle began. Gothar smiled.

Glory! Glory, at last! Glory awaits me.

Gothar looked at his crew. Relia’s beautiful red hair flashed in the light of the console. Lel, Yahǎr, and Thǎlwe, strapped into their crash harnesses, quivered in anticipation. He called to him over his shoulder.

“Listen up, swabs!”

“Aye, aye, Captain!”

“As much as some people like to plan things, on my own starship…yeah, I’m probably just going to run in there and kill anyone that doesn’t join me.”

Gothar landed the shuttle and turned to the children.

“You three have the most important job. Keep Relia safe.”

“Aye, Captain! Aaarrrggghhh!”

A sweet smile which begged to be kissed stretched Relia’s delicious lips. Gothar sighed, happily, then drew his newly charged gunblade. Relia threw off her crash harness and gave Gothar a big kiss. She pulled away and Gothar gave her a huge grin.

“Time to take back my ship, Love.”

“Well, don’t let me stop you. You already have volunteers gathering.”

With a chuckle, Gothar opened the shuttle’s hatch. Gothar stepped out. His boots rang out in the hangar like a death knell. The gathered pirates gasped as one.

“Captain…Gothar?”

A dangerous smile stretched Gothar’s face. The other pirates gulped. Captain Gothar nodded. The pirates looked at each other.

“With me? Or against me?”

“With you!”

“Fall in, Mateys.”

Gothar strode on; Relia, the children, and the pirates who decided Captain Gothar led the winning side following.

The children bristled with shanks and shivs. Relia pulled the shank from her bra with one hand and wielded her fully charged blaster in the other.

Gothar couldn’t have felt prouder. He stepped into the corridor with a roar, swinging his gunblade. He sliced through the legs of a pirate rushing to the hangar. He fell, screaming, gripping the bleeding stubs below his knees.

Gothar’s gunblade struck with each step into the corridor. Pirate after pirate fell to his blade. He left those behind him to their own devices. He had his sights on the bridge and the mutinous Utrial, and nothing was going to stop him.

The next pirate in line swung a short, wide blade at Gothar’s head. He slid low, under the pirate’s swing, thrusting his gunblade home in the pirate’s chest. The pirate dropped his short blade and fell to his knees. Gothar pulled his gunblade from the pirate’s chest.

Gothar smiled, blood spattered and giddy to be reunited with the Leviathan, his honor, and his glory, at last. He roared and charged into a crowd of pirates flooding in from a connecting corridor.

A blade landed on his scaled thigh and ricocheted off. Gothar laughed and smashed his pommeled fist into the pirate’s mouth. Blue blood spattered the corridor’s wall. A few teeth flew from the pirate’s mouth. His eyes rolled in their sockets, and the pirate fell to the black metal floor.

Gothar sprinted down the clear corridor before him. He took a left, throwing his shoulder into the four-armed pirate in front of him. The pirate flew across the corridor, slamming into the wall. Gothar didn’t bother to stop.

Utrial should have known better…

“Executive Officer Utrial, present yourself! The time of your judgement has come!”

Gothar slammed his fist into the corridor’s wall as he stormed through the Leviathan’s corridors. At last, the door to the starship’s bridge lay ahead. A low growl rumbled in his throat.

The last door between he and his prey slid open. Gothar strode onto the Leviathan’s bridge.

“Utrial.”

The spines on the back of Utrial’s neck stood high in alarm. He backed up.

“Gothar…”

“Captain Gothar, scum.”

Utrial growled. Also Krokan, Utrial promised to be a formidable enemy. The two had trained together many times, and Gothar knew them to be a close match.

But, I fight for my heart mate and my family, while Utrial only fights for his own selfish honor.

Utrial roared. He charged Gothar, arms wide. Gothar sidestepped. Utrial rushed past. Gothar slammed his elbow down into Utrial’s spine, knocking Utrial face first into the floor.

Utrial rolled to his back and swept a leg at Gothar’s ankle. Gothar leapt back, out of Utrial’s reach.

“Captain Gothar!”

Gothar’s eyes darted to Ylax’s voice. Ylax had an arm around Relia’s throat and a blaster to her skull. Alarm rang through Gothar’s entire essence.

Time seemed to halt. A profound surge flooded Gothar’s veins.

He shifted again, horns lengthening, scales thickinging, turning to armor around him as his golden eyes burned red with the power of Lashpi.

Gothar roared. This time, a tail sprouted from the base of his spine. Wings erupted from his back. The rage of Gothar’s ancestral line roared in his heart. His fingernails thickened and elongated into sharp claws.

Thin, undulating fins made from the throbbing Lashpi energy saturating Gothar’s body flowed back from his head and cheeks where his shaggy hair had been. Spikes jutted forth from his spine from his neck to the tip of Gothar’s red-scaled, spiked, fin-tipped tail, shreding his coat.

Time returned.

Gothar, transformed with the spirit energy of his Ancestors, roared in Ylax’s face. Flickering, red Lashpi fire dripped from Gothar’s elongated jaws.

Faster than he’d ever moved, and with a grace he’d never before experienced, he streaked through the bridge.

Tearing Ylax away from Relia, he ripped out the traitor’s throat, kissed Relia’s cheek, and held Utrial in the air by the throat before Utrial had even blinked.

“Time to walk the plank, Mutineer!”

Gothar clamped his great claws on Utrial’s head. In one powerful jerk, he ripped Utrial’s head from his shoulders, then marched down the corridor to throw Utrial’s body into the nearest airlock.

He slapped the VENT button and Utrial’s body shot into space. Captain Gothar, the Scourge, Legendary Krokan turned back to the silent bridge.

“Anyone else want to mutiny?”

Captain Gothar looked each man in the eye. All fell to their knees.

“Relia, join me.”

Relia ran up to Gothar, wrapping her tiny hands around his.

“Relia is the new executive officer and my heart mate. The Zasnusian children are her bodyguards. I, Gothar, the Scourge, declare these four my family and under my protection.”

The bridge rang out in chorus, “Aye, aye, Captain!”

“Good! Now get this mess cleaned up. We have pirates to hunt.”

Relia smiled. “Come here and kiss me, already, gichvǔ.”

Gothar gasped. “Looks like it’s time to get back to that spanking I promised you so long ago.”

Relia giggled and whispered every dirty Krokan word she’d ever heard in his ear.

40

Relia watched the kids wrestling Gothar on the gym floor. She offered Gothar no help. He’d came up with the idea of attempting to instruct the children in the art of combat. As far as Relia was concerned, Gothar had asked for his current humiliation when he’d put himself in their tentacles.

Lel tickled Gothar’s face with her soothing little finger tentacles and he really couldn’t get away. Eventually, the children would move onto a different game and let Gothar free.

Since retaking the Leviathan, Gothar had given up on the silly notion that anyone would think him weak for the children having gotten the better of him.

The last crewman who’d tried to complain about them quietly disappeared one night, never to be seen from again.

Relia still wondered who’d done it, but she suspected the rest of the crew.

At least, she hoped so.

The children had quickly charmed most of the pirates, proving themselves infinitely useful. Relia smiled at how the entire Leviathan had transformed since their glorious return.

Apparently, Utrial had been a complete prick after he took charge, and most of the crew were happy to welcome Captain Gothar back. They had all forsworn piracy that day, dedicating themselves instead to pirate hunting.

It took only a moment to convince the children, who’d really enjoyed the pirate game, that pirate hunting was even more fun than pirating. Pirate hunting was legal, for one, and they still got to pillage.

Chef walked up and whispered to Relia.

“Hey, there, XO.”

“Hi, Chef Dana. How’s life?”

“Oh, it’s great. Thanks for getting me off The Mule with the kids. That place was such a drag.”

Relia laughed.

“Listen, with your skills, you were easy to save. Every ship needs a chef.”

“No joke. The Leviathan has good people, though. They escorted me right to the kitchen when I got here. I love chef perks.”

They both laughed.

“Anyway, when you’re ready, lunch is ready.”

“Lunch!” All three children cried out in unison. They released Gothar and swung over to the chef.

“What’s for lunch, today, Chef Dana?”

“Is it more ukokalip? Cause, I think it gave me spots the last time you made me eat it…”

Chef Dana clapped her hands. The children quieted.

“Fried chicken. Now go wash your tentacles. Lel, save some drumsticks for me or you don’t get gralp fruit cobbler.”

“Awwwww…”

The children raced down the walls to the head. Relia and Chef Dana laughed while Gothar gasped on the grappling mat.

“What is in those finger tentacles? Those children may be the deadliest lifeform in this galaxy…”

Chef Dana waved at Relia and Gothar, turning for the door.

“See you later. The children talked me into reenacting ancient Earth myths. Thǎlwe apparently wrote scripts and has booked the galley for our performance. I set up a nice charcuterie board in your quarters and stocked your fridge. Bye.”

An arm tentacle pulled Chef Dana through the door.

“Come on…”

Gothar managed to push himself to his feet. He walked over to Relia and wrapped her in his arms, laying his scaly cheek atop her hair, breathing in her scent as she wrapped her arms around his thick chest.

Gothar’s belly rumbled. Relia giggled. She looked up at him, nearly falling into the depths of his golden eyes.

“Let’s get you fed.”

Gothar smiled as he scooped Relia up into his arms. She wrapped her legs around his torso and her arms around his neck, and they kissed all the way to their cabin.

He refused to set Relia down, so she fed them both thin slices of whatever delicacies Chef Dana had arranged in a scrumptious celebration of Group 042 and Group 512-safe preserved foods from across the galaxy.

Gothar’s fingers stroked her thighs while she fed them morsels. His hands roamed, exploring her curves. Relia giggled. Refusing to let him distract her, and hoping he would try, Relia fed him a juicy lump of something on a cracker.

Gothar released an appreciative, “Mmm…” and stroked a finger over her slit. Relia gasped. The touch tickled just right through the ship suit. Relia looked at him, trying to look bored, and ate a slice of fruit with baby blue flesh and bright red skin.

His big hand cupped her ass, kneading her soft cheeks. Gothar backed into the big chair where he liked to sit for hours, talking to Relia.

Now there was no time for talking.

Now there were other things to do.

He pulled her tight into his lap and she felt his thick cock harden beneath her.

Her hips rocked as Gothar pushed a lock of hair from her face. He slid his fingers into the hair at the base of her scalp and Relia panted, anticipating his next touch. Gothar curled his big, red-scaled fingers into a fist.

He pulled Relia’s head back, exposing her neck. He leaned down and breathed in her heady, aroused scent. She ran her fingers lightly over his horns as his cock twitched underneath her and Relia smiled.

Gother ran his tongue from the base of her neck to her ear. Relia shuddered, running her hands over every available inch of Gothar’s flesh. He lifted Relia to her feet. In a frenzy, they shucked their clothes.

Luckily, they’d gotten quite a bit of practice.

His fat crested cock bobbed in the air before her and Relia smiled, wrapping her fingers around his big shaft. She had no hope of fitting much of that monster in her mouth, but she licked it anyway, drawing patterns up and down the ridges.

Gothar gasped, thrusting his hips at her as she played with the big, pointed head.

“Patience…” she chided.

Gothar growled, picking her up by the waist and drawing her down into his lap.

“Pirate captains are not known for their patience.”

He lifted her until her slick folds hung right above his broad tip, then lowered her slowly, teasing her.

Sparks flew from her core, shooting through her chest, tearing the breath from her. All of her playfullness was gone, burned away by need.

“Please, Gothar…I want you…”

Her hands stroked his chest, his face, his horns. She wiggled her full ass, begging for his cock.

“And I can never tell you no,” he answered.

Slowly he pushed his thick head inside her pulsing pussy. She gasped as it spread her and popped inside. He worked her up and down over his head then pushed his first thick crest past her slick folds.

Relia moaned as he carefully filled her, triggering a wave of pleasure that threatened to overwhelm her.

“Please, Gothar…”

He slowly worked his second, thicker crest into Relia, growling.

Relia began to cry out, over and over.

“Please…plea…”

Gothar thrust, and Relia felt his full length stretch her wide. She drew in a deep breath and came, throwing her head back and screaming. Gothar thrust again. His crests popped into her one after another and with each stroke, it was like he entered her five times.

Electric tendrils of pleasure flooded her veins. Gothar drove into her over and over, and Relia’s orgasm refused to end. Time stopped and her entire reality was filled with her body entwined with Gothar’s.

He pumped into her harder and harder, his golden eyes trapping her gaze, penetrating her soul as deeply as he touched her body. Another orgasm slammed into her, and she clenched on Gothar’s perfect cock and he roared, pushing himself in as deep as he could go.

Together they collapsed, tangled in each others arms, hazy exhaustion making their limbs leaden.

“I love you, my fierce pirate captain,” she whispered.

“And I love you, my wolvǎz chár,” he answered.

And as he drifted off, Gothar would have sworn that he saw the Ancestor nodding proudly.

CELESTE KING LOVES to write about naughty aliens and sassy humans. When worlds collide, there’s sure to be humor and romance, and that’s what gets her in front of the keyboard every day.Telling the stories that are in her brain. Most people would be worried if they couldn’t stop thinking about imaginary voices, but since she started writing down the crazy “what ifs” that occur to her, it’s an exciting adventure.Her cat, her keyboard, and her husband keep her busy and happy alongside a nice mug of green tea. She doesn’t enjoy them in that order… necessarily.

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READER, dreamer and frantic scribbler, Ava York really does believe that love conquers all… and make terrible things for her characters to survive to prove it! (insert evil laugh here)

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Copyright © 2021 by Ava York and Celeste King

All rights reserved. These books or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the Author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This book is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters and situations within its pages and places or persons, living or dead, is unintentional and co-incidental.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Copyright