Worlds of BBW Erotic Romance - Box Set (16 page)

She could now see the trailer park below, already a hundred feet beneath them. The ship started to move forward as it continued to rise, and as the landscape began to zoom towards her view she realized that she must actually be sitting at the FRONT of the ship.

They started to rise faster and faster, until she could see the buildings and cars below receding in a blur, as if quickly zooming out through the lens of a camera. It was dizzying, and she would have expected to be squashed into her seat like an astronaut. But again, there was nothing but a gentle vibration, and the slight feeling of rising.

The ship climbed above the clouds, breaking above the gray haze and into a realm of clear blue and sunlight… And then shot forward at full speed, the churning wisps of the clouds flowing beneath them like a gaseous sea.

“No sign of pursuit,” Gearon said. “That is a little bit odd, yes?”   

“This might seem like a funny question,” Heather asked, “And forgive me if I’m distracting you with something trivial but… The ship… Does it still look like a trailer on the outside?”

“Oh no,” he said. “I have turned off that disguise. Look—“

He hit another button and her view through the window in front of her receded somehow, zooming out—

So it must be a viewscreen of some kind, she thought.

--and suddenly, she was looking at the ship from behind as it zoomed over the clouds.

It was silvery, organic-looking, almost like a torso with twisted limbs, triple layers of iridescent wings trailing behind it. The longer she looked, the more the rear part of the ship looked almost like two sets of intertwined, silvery legs… And, at the front, two heads, one over another, perhaps elbows further back, arms embracing?

“The shape of the ship,” she told him. “It almost looks like … Well, maybe it’s just my perverted brain or something, but it almost looks like a couple making love.”

“AHHH!” Gearon shouted. “Yes, prettiness, you have it! My people thought so as well. Thus, this ship was named ‘
Astral Tryst.
’ Sadly, this is also because it was meant to be piloted by lovers… partners, a Bonded pair… but I do the best I can with—“

Suddenly, the ship shook. Heather caught a flash of movement out of the corner of her eye. She looked to her left, where the long window—or viewscreen, or whatever—stretched across that side of the ship. There, two large, silver-black objects were flanking them.

These two other ships were obviously Enpathian, kind of oval-shaped… What would be the correct term?
Lozenge-shaped?

Like giant cough drops of death, Heather thought. One thing’s for sure
… they certainly SUCK.

She realized that one of them must have blasted the ship, hence the shaking. And now, they were streaking forwards, towards the front of the ship… where she sat.

Gearon hit a button or something, and the rear “chase-cam” view of the
Astral Tryst
disappeared. Instead, she was looking through a “window” directly out of the front of the ship again.

“Can you fly this thing backwards?” she asked him. “I mean, your seat is facing the wrong way. Shouldn’t you be over here, at the front?”

“No,” he said. “That panel’s for the female… Well, not to mind. Everything important I can do from this panel, lovely. Now set your splendid bottom down securely. I want to attempt to evade these ones. I’d better lower us a bit, yes?”

The view in front of Heather suddenly pointed down. As the ship descended, piercing the clouds, there was a moment of obscuring mist… Then, they were clear.

She saw that they were now somewhere over the ocean, the roiling waves of a gray, stormy sea far beneath them. She thought she saw a few specks ahead, just tiny dots miles ahead in the storm-swept sky. There were four specks, growing in her view now… No,
five
of them. Other ships, headed straight for them.

She couldn’t see the ones that had been following alongside them. Had they lost them when
Astral Tryst
had dropped down through the clouds?

She leaned forward again to get a better view of the ships approaching. By now, the specks had become a clearly-defined formation of silver-black Enpathian ships, headed directly towards them. These ones looked bigger than the lozenge-shaped ships, with long booms in the front—some kind of giant cannons?

“Gearon!” she shouted. “Watch it, up front here, there’s a whole group going to—“

THWOOOM!!!

At that moment, something hit the ship hard. It threw Heather forward—

Hit from the rear of the ship, what—?

She went to catch herself… And her hands slid across the control panel, slipping into the recessed, handprint-shaped sockets there.    

A jolt of pain hit her like an electric shock. She couldn’t breathe. Every muscle in her body was locked up and spasming.

And then suddenly—

She was viewing the ship from
outside
, almost as if she
was
the ship—

--feeling the chill wind rush past, the driving bitter rain…

And a flaring, thrumming, irritating pain where one of her rear propulsion units had been hit.

She could feel herself slowing, just as the cluster of five Enpathian gunships approached, heading directly towards her.

And Gearon… She was acutely aware of him, connected to him through his link with the ship. Heart beating evenly, intent on his task. His hand struggled on the control stick, fighting so valiantly to steer the ship.

But that stick was an emergency measure: a crude, manual mechanism that was never meant for situations such as this. The human, Heather part of her ship-linked-mind would compare it to steering a car with one elbow. Possible, maybe… But not very effective.

Gearon didn’t have a chance on his own. But now, linked with the ship, maybe she could—

Was it already too late? She was becoming aware of her body—her real, Heather body—as the feel of ship faded. She was seeing out of the front viewscreen again through her own blurry human gaze, aware of the wracking pain as her body trembled and spasmed.

I don’t think that I can do this much longer
, she thought. But before her link with the ship completely disappeared, she had to try something.

Blocking out all other thoughts, she WILLED the ship to dive towards the water.

Amazingly—almost instantly—it responded. Tons of alien metal bent to her will, angling down towards the water on its iridescent wings just as the five enemy gunships fired and giant bolts of seething energy shot through the air where the ship had been moments earlier. 

The ship hit the water with a violent belly-smack, slamming through the waves.

Heather gasped she was jerked back by the impact, her link with ship completely severed. She fell back limply into her control seat, watching as ocean water cascaded over the “window” of the viewscreen. She was covered in a cold sweat, shaking and shivering, with the whole room spinning around her…

Her head heavy, she closed her eyes and lost consciousness.

#

Gearon was jerking the control stick back and forth frantically. It seemed as if the ship didn’t want to respond to him half of the time. He’d seen one of their pursuers coming up on their tail; he’d been trying to dodge, but it was no use…

The blast had hit one of the rear propulsion units full on. The impact had almost thrown him out of his chair, but he’d recovered… Just in time to see that the scanner on the panel in front of him showed a cluster of five other ships—heavy gunships by the looks of their profiles—heading straight for them.

This is it,
he thought. Dearest lovely Heather, I’ve known you such a short time, too short…

Yet long enough that she’d stirred things in him he’d never imagined he’d feel again. She’d exploded into his view like a bright nova in the cold darkness of his life. Now, he longed desperately for more time with her.

And he wondered if, given the chance, in an ideal universe, if he might have eventually pledged—

Ahh, but that was hypothetical nonsense! What
did
matter is that he wanted to spend what few seconds he had left with her.

He scrambled out of his seat, was turning towards the front of the ship to go to her when, suddenly, the ship tilted sharply down, and he stumbled, falling to the floor.

Klaxons blared, warning of a massive discharge of energy nearby. Gearon got up and pulled himself up on the back of his control seat.

The readouts showed that the Enpathian gunships had fired… But the
Astral Tryst
had descended just in time to avoid the potent beams that otherwise would have vaporized the vessel.

Another impact struck the ship, throwing him backwards. The ship had struck something…? He rolled over and looked up, seeing water cascading down the viewscreen in the front of the ship, and Heather…

Heather!

She was slumped, unmoving, in her seat. He ran to her, and as he got closer, he saw that she was very pale, covered in a sheen of sweat. No injuries visible, but…

“NO!” he cried aloud. “I told you not to touch, yes?”
Someone
had taken control of the ship and made it dive, just in time to void the gunship blasts. It hadn’t been him. So it followed that SHE, his pretty Earth female, had risked the controls to save them.

It was theoretically possible for an alien, un-Bonded female to interface briefly with the ship… or so he guessed… but what would it DO to her? Neural damage?
Worse?

Even as he watched, she jerked in her seat, spasming, as if in a seizure.

Meanwhile, the ship, having splashed down into the ocean and now buoyant, plowed through the water like an odd boat. Leaving them an easy target for the enemies which were still up there…

He knew that he should return to his controls at the rear and try to submerge the ship, do SOMETHING. Certainly, another attack couldn’t be far behind.

But yet he couldn’t leave Heather.

Fool!,
a voice in his mind scolded him, but he ignored it.

There was little chance of escape now, regardless.

He checked her pulse. It seemed quite fast, though he wasn’t quite sure what a normal pulse rate for a human would be. She was covered in a sheen of sweat, moaning as if caught up in a nightmarish sleep… But she was still alive.

He knelt and turned her chair around. Embraced her, kissed the nape of her neck.

“You saved us, prettiness,” he whispered. “For a few more moments only, perhaps, but you saved us. And for those moments, I will be holding you.”   

A flicker of movement caught his eye. He looked up to the front viewscreen, and saw that the heavy gunships were back, several hundred feet ahead of the prow of his ship and above it.

But now… They were keeping pace with
Astral Tryst
as it plowed through the water, flying in the same direction as it floated, their big cannons pointed away from Gearon’s ship.

Behind them, nearest to the
Astral Tryst,
was a small, saucer-shaped vessel of an antiquated design with a bulky hyperdrive unit mounted on top.

“Jessam,” he whispered. “What?”

Suddenly, the entire formation of Enpathian ships—the gunships, and the small saucer ship included—built up speed, heading away and up into the clouds…

Until
Astral Tryst
was alone.

Gearon sighed. “So, then. Once more, I owe you.”

#

Heather floated in a void of dreams. It felt like her body was floating, then she imagined that she was
Astral Tryst…
Not just linked to the ship, but
becoming
the ship itself. Soaring above the ocean waves, then out through the atmosphere, the blue of the sky giving way to the crisp blackness of space, dotted with stars.

And then—suddenly—she was herself again. Just relaxed, hovering in a warm, tingling haze of pleasant numbness.

Gearon…

He was there, watching over her, stroking her face. His tongue was ticklish on her lips, poking into her mouth. There was a taste like peppermint, but liquid and cool, as if she was drinking from Gearon’s mouth.

How odd,
part of her thought in a blurred sort of detachment.

And then, a glint of light penetrated in her hazy world. She realized that she had cracked her eyes open… Slowly, she opened them, the dream fading away.

As she returned to full consciousness, she thought she saw something very strange… As if, for a few seconds, whiplike tendrils colored grey and pink were thrashing over her, then receding into the wall.

Probably a hallucination, she thought.

Funny, though, she never questioned whether her earlier adventures with Gearon had been a dream. She knew she was inside his silvery spaceship…

Well, a couple of months living in a post-alien invasion world will make you stop questioning such things,
she supposed.