Taming the Wildcat (Sargosian Chronicles) (7 page)

He couldn’t let her go. He wouldn’t. She not only completed him, she made the Wildcats a true family.

A hammering on the door pulled them out of their trance. He groaned. He didn’t want anything intruding on his time with Summer. Even though he knew it had to end—already they were a day over the time he’d allotted for his team’s downtime—he couldn’t bring himself to tell her they had to leave for a while.

“I’ll get it.”

She dropped another kiss on his lips and levered herself off the bed. She was halfway across the room before his eyes bugged out of his head.

“Put some damn clothes on.”

She stopped so fast her bare feet squeaked on the hard deck plating. Turning slowly in a way that had his gaze following her every move, she made a face and looked about for something to put on.

Of course she grabbed his clothes again. Secretly, he loved seeing her in his clothes…and not so secretly, out of them. He watched as she shimmied her way into his pants and struggled to tighten the belt. Smirking, he chuckled as she gave up for a moment to pull on his t-shirt. She barely smoothed it into place as she crossed to the door, but not before she impishly stuck out her wicked tongue.

He shuddered with freshly remembered pleasure of just what that clever tongue was capable of. He would have fantasies for months based on her mouth.

She glanced one last time over her shoulder to look at him, probably to see if he were covered. She obviously didn’t realize there was no such thing as modesty or privacy on a ship like this. Hell, he had nothing to be modest about, period.

She pulled the door open to reveal Jei, his second-in-command.

“Morning, Jei. Did you need Roz?”

The tall, dark-haired warrior looked over the top of her head right at Roz before looking back at her.

“No. I came to get you.”

Roz sat up, instantly alert. What the hell could be so important that anyone would dare to risk his wrath by disturbing his last day with her?

“Me?”

“Yeah, you’ve got a comm call waiting for you,” Jei informed her as he swept his arm out, indicating she should go with him.

She glanced at him briefly before disappearing out into the corridor, without another word. He had a bad feeling about this. Off the bed in an instant, he yanked drawers open until he found a pair of pants to shove his long legs into. The combats had barely made it up over his ass before he strode out of the room to follow her.

He zipped up his fly en-route, his long legs eating up the distance between them. He was right at her shoulder as she reached the single console in the barracks. Why was she getting a comm call? From whom? She certainly seemed in a hurry to get to it.

“Summer?” he asked, flicking a glance over as she activated the comm. Surprise ran through him as he got a look at the screen. “That’s a Fleet Ident code.”

She gave him a distracted glance before looking back at the screen. “Yeah, I know. I had to let them know where I was in case I needed to be recalled for duty.”

A uniformed officer materialized on the screen, looking stern and worn out. His watery brown eyes flicked over her before he spoke.

“Lieutenant King, I regret to inform you, Commander McCarron was killed in the last patrol the Talons made. We’re running a heavy rotation right now, but we need every pilot we’ve got to keep up with the hit-and-run tactics they are using. Congratulations, Lieutenant, you’ve just been promoted. Now get your ass back to the ship. Is that understood, King?”

A look he hadn’t seen before fell into place over her features. Cool and professional.

“Yes, sir, understood. I’ll be in my bird and space-side immediately. King, out.” She reached forward and ended the comm call.

Roz blinked. His little human was a pilot. A Fleet pilot. Talk about the universe tilting on its axis. He must have misheard about hit-and-run tactics, though. He’d seen Fleet pilots—they flew fast, played harder and rarely made it to retirement. They were the flying equivalent of the Wildcats.

“Summer?”

Her eyes closed for a moment as she dragged in a deep breath. When she opened them to look at him, he got a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. She gave him a weak smile and a half-hearted waggle of her eyebrows.

“I didn’t want you to find out like this…about what I do. That I’m a fighter pilot, that is.”

She morphed in front of his eyes into a different person. It was her, but he saw something he had only caught momentary glimpses of. No wonder she had no fear of jumping into that group of men at the bar. If she really were a fighter pilot, one who had seen combat, she’d have stared into the jaws of death…and probably laughed in its face.

She shrugged, and threw her arms around him to bury her face against the tattoo on his chest. “I was happier when you thought I was a lady.”

Her words were muffled against his skin. They, and the tone in her voice, plucked at his heart strings. He wrapped his arms around her. A pang started up in the center of his chest, that she thought he’d think less of her for what she did. Hell, he was used to warrior women. His mother had been one, most Sargosian women were…it was nothing new to him.

“Why?” He slid a finger under her chin to make her look up. “You’ll always be a lady to me. Albeit one who can seriously kick ass.”

He bent his head and placed a long, lingering kiss on her lips “Now go. The faster you’re gone, the faster you can come back to me.”

* * *

Roz walked Summer to the wicked-looking single person fighter he’d noticed in the shuttle bay several days earlier. Jei followed a few steps behind. He looked over the sleek lines of the ship while she laced up a borrowed pair of boots. At least she didn’t steal them like the clothes under her flight suit. He smiled, not caring. At least she took something to remember him by, even if it were only his clothes.

She opened the canopy on the cockpit and grabbed a helmet. If he’d had any doubt she really was the pilot who went with the deadly fighter, seeing her name on the side of the cockpit and her last name on the front of the helmet ended that.

“I’ll come back for you, Roz. I promise.”

His lips quirked. “I’m pretty sure that should be my line.”

In all his daydreams of the future over the last few days, he’d seen her at home…their home…looking after a brood of kids with his blond hair and her light-green eyes.

Him going out to war, not her. Not a human with a body so fragile compared to his…his heart all but stopped in his chest. He wanted to grab the helmet off her and cast it aside. Beg her not to leave. Beg her to stay here, safe with him.

He couldn’t, though. He saw the fire in her eyes, saw it in the way she stroked the nose of the sleek fighter. The vitality and spirit that drew him was fueled by this. Fueled by looking into the abyss and seeing it stare back. If he took that away, she’d wither and die. Become a pale shadow of the woman he knew.

“You’d better. I want my shirt back.”

She gave him a cocky smile and slipped her hand behind his neck to pull him down for a kiss. Crushing her in his embrace, he kissed her back with everything inside him, but he couldn’t tell her yet. He felt her shifting in his arms and reluctantly released her.

“I’ve grown rather fond of this shirt. I’ll wrestle you for it when I get back.”

She pulled him down and pressed her forehead to his. He held still and watched her until she stepped back.

“I’ve gotta fly, Angel. I’ll see you soon.”

With that, she climbed into the small cockpit and pulled on the helmet. She gave Jei a wave before closing the canopy.

He backed up as the engines roared to life. She gave him a jaunty little salute and lifted off. He watched as the small, sleek fighter reached the doors. She hit the engines. All he saw was the flare of her exhaust vents as she went for light speed. Fleet pilot. Crazy as they came.

He turned to find Jei watching him with an odd expression.

“What?”

The other warrior looked toward the bay doors and back again. “That one…crazy as she is…is a keeper. Don’t screw this up,
Angel.
”

Eeeewweeeeeooooooo…eeeewweeeeeoooooo…eeeewweeeeeoooooo.

The sound of a ship-wide alarm woke Summer moments before she was thrown from her bed. She stumbled to her feet, clinging to the wall the second time the ship rocked violently. Something was seriously wrong.

Clad in her underwear and Roz’s Wildcat shirt, she grabbed her flight suit as the call for all fighters came over not just her comm clip, but also the ship’s main P.A. system.

“
All Talon fighters scramble, scramble, scramble. Enemy craft inbound and causing heavy damage.
”

Shimmying into the jumpsuit, she jammed her feet into her favorite pair of cowboy boots at the same time. They were easier to slip on compared to having to lace up her duty boots. By the time she hit the corridor at a full-out run to the lift, she had her suit zipped up, dodging crew members as they flooded out of their quarters.

“Make a hole, people,” she shouted as another blast rocked the ship. Adrenaline flooded her system, her body humming with readiness for the upcoming fight. The Tipton was not a small ship. For her to be bucking and rolling from enemy fire, it didn’t bode well.

A few short seconds in the lift got her to the flight deck. Pilots and mechanics ran between each other and the Talon slings as they scrambled the fighters. The next announcement over the P.A. made her blood run cold.

“
This is Captain Forbes speaking. All hands to the escape shuttles and pods. Hull sections three, eight, eleven and twenty are breached. Shields are failing and our weapons are not responding. Talons will cover evacuation. Godspeed to you all. It’s been my honor to serve as your captain. Forbes out.
”

Summer smacked into another pilot, Kevin Peters, so hard, as she grabbed her helmet, she dropped it. It skittered across the deck and under a bench. She didn’t have time to run after it, she’d have to fly without it.

“Hey, watch where you’re going, King,” he teased, the stark truth of the situation in his eyes. This could be the last time they flew together.

“You ran into me, Peters. Get your ass in that bird, pronto, mi amigo. We’ve got some pirates to kill,” she threw back as she turned for her fighter.

“Whatever you say, chica. Let’s show them they just dicked with the wrong bunch of Fleeties.”

Strapping herself into her bird, she replied, “Hell, yeah!”

She grabbed an auxiliary headset from the side of the instrument panel so she could communicate with the other fighters and the Tipton. The fast startup on the fighters had them all lifting off within seconds of the pilots climbing in. Looking at all of them, she felt both pride and sorrow at that moment. They were some of the best pilots she had ever served with, and she knew not all of them would survive this.

Switching her comms to voice-activated, she broke them up into two groups—those who would go with the escape shuttles and pods, and those who would stay to cover the evacuation. The last line of defense.

“Talons two through eleven, you’re with me to run interference and defend the Tipton. Talons twelve through seventeen, your group will go with the escape shuttles. You make sure they make it out of here. The first group will give you cover fire as much as we can. Good luck, everyone.”

She glanced at her instrument panel. Weapons systems were armed and ready to go. She gave the order to move out just as another blast hit somewhere on the Tipton.

“Let’s take these fuckers out!”

A chorus of “Aye” answered her as they hit the shield barrier and exited the ship…straight into hell.

“Talons, on me. Group two, get to the shuttles,” she bellowed as they punched out into a blitzkrieg of enemy fighters. They were so thick, as if someone had kicked a hornet’s nest. There was no way they could stay in formation in this type of firefight.

The group she had assigned to the escape shuttles broke off. Her second-in-command, Lieutenant Kevin Peters, flew close, just off of her wingtip. He was in a Rogue class fighter while she flew the smaller Eagle class. The Tipton carried several different types of fighter craft, but each had its own strengths and weaknesses. Hers was perhaps one of the most maneuverable ones they had, and fast as all get out.

Peters took the first hit but his shields held. A glance around proved what she already knew. This was a gauntlet of death, a suicide run. There was no other choice, they had to run it.

“Talons, break formation. Fire at will, people. What do we want from these bandits?” she called out, whipping everyone into battle frenzy.

“
Their blood!
” came back at her over the radio from every one of her pilots.

The squadron scattered to engage the enemy, blasting the opposing fighters with both laser and mini-torpedoes. All around her, the battle raged. Blinding flashes of light from energy fire hitting shields, fighters streaking across the heavens locked in the deadliest game of tag, ever. Once tagged you weren’t “it,” you were dead.

She chased down bandits with a vengeance, dispatching them straight to the pit. The fires of hell surely were a friendlier sight for them compared to facing her fury. Calling on not only her training as a combat pilot, but falling back on her training with her family as a stunt pilot, she made an almost impossible, unpredictable target.

Over her headset, she heard her team calling out confirmed kills. Each one brought her a measure of relief until the status calls changed to hit reports to silence. Other pilots called in to report who was lost, if they had the chance; most were too busy to take their eyes off of their targets.

One by one, she lost not only pilots, her men…but her friends.

Suddenly, a large ball of red fire flew across her flight path, just missing the nose of her Eagle. The torpedo slammed into the hull of the Tipton, followed within seconds by several more, shredding her side as if she were made of paper instead of high-end ablative armored steel.

“No!” She watched in horror as the big ship broke apart.