Taken by the Alien Dragon Read online

  Alm clambered down from her lookout and set her empty hydration pack on the console between us. We laughed.

  “You’re such a greedy little monkey, Puff,” Essie chuckled, ruffling Alm’s hair.

  “Is that what you call her?” I asked. “Puff?”

  “I suppose I should call her whatever Oyna has named her. She’ll be glad to see her when we get back to my ship.”

  “Alm will stay with me.”

  “Alm,” she said as if Puff were a better name. “You said that my ship, and my crew were mine—”

  “Not her. I will compensate you. And surely she is not crew.”

  Deep grooves formed between her brows as she mulled over my proposition. “I don’t think so.”

  “You have barely known her longer than I,” I said. “Is it Oyna or you who wants to keep her?”

  She flipped a lock of hair over her shoulder, then rocked back on her heels. “I—”

  “We have time to discuss the finer details later,” I said, cutting her off. “Tell me, what is wrong with your shoulder?” Since she had entered the bridge she had been rubbing and scraping at it, hitting it against walls and punching at her upper arm.

  “My translator needs tweaking,” she replied, rubbing at her shoulder once more.

  “We will get it repaired,” I said.

  Before her mind could dwell further on anything else, I brought her face to mine and kissed her so long and hard she ended up on my lap. As she nestled into my arms, my sigh turned to a groan. She tugged at my hair and rubbed her soft body against every part of me she could reach.

  The viewscreen’s beep announcing an incoming transmission barely registered before Commander Tarion’s face was scowling down at us, his arms crossed.

  I cleared my throat to halt Esmerelda’s lips from nibbling on my neck, her favorite spot. I turned her around in my lap. She slid into the co-pilot’s chair and sat up straight.

  “Sir, Commander, Captain—”

  He rolled his eyes. “Captain Black, I assume that Captain Moddoc has had time to apprise you of the details of our arrangement, or were you discussing other matters more urgent than the war?”

  “Yes, he told me everything, and I agree to your terms,” she said in a rush.

  “In that case, I return your crew and ship to your command.”

  “Thank you—”

  “Thank you, sir—”

  We both spoke at the same time, but the screen was already black. It was time to prepare for war.

  19

  Esmerelda

  Damn it was good to be back. I looked around my new bridge. I say mine, but I guessed it still technically belonged to the Hielsrane fleet. It was mine for now though, and after this was over, I’d get my hands on a Pax Prime ship. Ooh, Mama. Rubbing my hands together at the thought, a wicked little grin crept to my lips.

  Not only had Moddoc’s ship been returned to him, but when they learned the scale of the operation I intended to pull off, they’d loaned us a much grander ship from which to command. A real battleship.

  It was a big ship – proper shields, city-leveling weapons, all that good stuff. And my own fleet was rapidly growing. Solar by solar, more and more craft were arriving, answering my call for assistance out of pure love for me.

  Yeah, right.

  That’s not how my kind of space-people work.

  They were answering my call because I promised them they’d be richly compensated.

  “How many we got now, Wrigo?” I called to my second in command. During this battle he would be behind Moddoc in the hierarchy, who was now my co-commander, but I still felt like he was my number two, along with Oyna.

  “Ten commanders, with around sixty ships between them.”

  “Sweet,” I answered with a nod.

  “How many more are we expecting?”

  “We should reach our full fighting force within the next two solars. We anticipate another three dozen ships, assuming all arrive unhindered by the Pax.”

  It was a small worry. The Pax would of course be doing their darndest to hold on to their capture of Thirren, but their attention would be mostly focused on the Drakon. An armada made up of fleets of space pirates, smugglers, and the kinds of traders that I did business with shouldn’t be on their radar. And of course we had ordered everyone to arrive as stealthily as possible, using cloaking devices and other stealth technology where they had them.

  I began to pace around the deck. Moddoc fell in by my side. It was nice to have so much room to work with. I could really stretch my wings on this ship, both figuratively and literally.

  “How do you do it?” asked Moddoc, sounding a little in awe.

  I shrugged my wings. “Same way I do everything. Go all out, with the absolute confidence that I will not fail. That’s how you should do anything — as if the very possibility of failure doesn’t exist. Commit, or don’t commit, but once you do...”

  Moddoc nodded his head as my final words hung in the air. He understood what I meant.

  “I never got the chance to command a fleet. I’ve been ground based for most of my career. Planetary defenses are a very different kettle of sea-meats to commanding spacecraft.”

  Sea-meats. I was glad my translator had been fixed, but the Drakon software the engineer had loaded was not as good as that of the Pax software in my old chip, at least when it came to translating into English.

  “I bet it is. When this battle goes to the ground, you can manage that side of things. But while we’re floating out here, I’ll be in my element.”

  Moddoc smiled at me, and it looked like pride.

  “I knew when I met you there was something special about you Captain Black.” He put a hand on my shoulder, squeezing it. “But I didn’t realize just how many special things there were. You’re a woman of many talents.”

  I glanced around the bridge to make sure no one was observing us. They were all busy at their stations, working hard at integrating the newcomer ships into our systems. I trailed a hand down Moddoc’s front, from his chest all the way down to his pants, where I ran my fingers over the outline of his cock.

  “You’ve got a talent too,” I said to him in a throaty whisper, eyes flicking to see who was listening. No one but him. “And plenty of them.” I felt him stiffening, but he brushed my hand away with his caudal.

  “Not here,” he said, looking around nervously.

  With a nod I agreed. Of course not here. I was just playing. My crew would think I’d lost my mind if I let myself get fucked by a Drakon up on the bridge of a brand-new ship.

  But in a way, I had lost my mind. There was something about Moddoc that was screwing with it in all the best ways.

  “Captain?” called Oyna, who was in charge of logistics but also manning my personal comms. “You’ve got a call coming in.”

  “Who is it?”

  “The Drakon. Captain Dashel.”

  “Sounds like it’s for you,” I said to Moddoc with a nudge.

  “For both of us. We’re co-commanders.” Moddoc called across the bridge to Oyna. “Put him on screen.”

  Moddoc and I stood side by side, looking at the giant screen that dominated the center of the ship’s bridge. There was a flicker, and then a high-resolution image of Dashel appeared before us, Natalie by his side.

  I was still wary of her. I naturally felt like I should have some kind of kinship with her. After all, we were both human females with Drakon significant others. But I wasn’t exactly the kind of person who made friends easily. A lifetime on Earth of being the unwanted foster kid orphan, followed by another lifetime in space dealing with some of the most cutthroat groups of murderers, pirates and traders in the universe didn’t make me a people-person.

  “How are preparations coming along?” Dashel asked.

  “Very well.” Moddoc turned to me. “Captain Black?”

  “We’ve got new ships dropping in every few microns. I called in every favor I had, and I anticipate an armada of over one hundred vessels. My
team are integrating the arrivals into our systems as quickly as possible, but it will take approximately two solars for this to be complete. We must have over sixty different kind of craft.”

  “Two solars?” Natalie asked, her voice cold.

  I stared into the screen. “Yes.”

  She smiled. “That’s very impressive. With such a ragtag conglomeration, I don’t think I’d be able to get them integrated at all.”

  I controlled a tight-lipped smile, not wanting to give too much away. I had thought she was making an unreasonable criticism when she confirmed the two solar estimation. But, actually, she was impressed. As she should be. No one else in the verse could do what I was doing at the speed I was doing it. That’s what more than a decade of experience working your ass off got you: the best.

  “Where are you?” Moddoc asked.

  “We have taken command of the Calder, Lehar’s second ship. Look after ours, won’t you?”

  I grinned at them. The ship we were on was Dashel’s, at least it had been until I’d got my hands on it. The craft he’d taken command of was even bigger than this one, so he had not been dishonored by the turn of events, but of course he would want his old ‘baby’ to be looked after. I wasn’t going to promise anything though. We were going into battle, after all.

  “I promise we’ll do more damage to the Pax than we’ll take from them.” I grinned at the mixed-species couple on the screen. “Deal?”

  Dashel and Natalie exchanged half-amused, half-worried glances with each other.

  “Moddoc,” Dashel started, his voice wary, “she knows what she’s doing, right?”

  He draped a big, heavy arm over my shoulder.

  “She’s going to save us all.”

  After the screen had switched back to its displays of the local star system and our various units, I gave Moddoc a gentle punch in the side.

  “Thanks for backing me up.”

  “Of course. And I meant it. When I met you, I could tell there was something… vital, about you. That you were hard, tough like the rocks of a lava field. But now I’ve seen you know what you’re doing too. I’ve known commanders who were tough as a zarkenite-coated battle-spear, but their brains might as well have been replaced with quarry-dust. You’re the whole package. Tough and smart.”

  I took a step back from him, arms crossed in front of my chest. It was the most effusive praise I’d ever had from someone who wasn’t my immediate subordinate trying to get into my good graces.

  “Thanks, I…” I wasn’t used to it. Didn’t know how to take it, really. “Thanks.”

  Glowing with pride, I walked across the bridge to see Oyna who was being kept busy by the near non-stop arrival of ships dropping into the system to answer my call.

  “What can you tell me about our new additions?”

  Oyna clicked in excitement as she swept over the controls to pull up some images and figures on the screens in front of her.

  “Look. We’ve got Commander Thansup.”

  “The spice-dust trader?”

  Oyna snorted.

  “Yeah the ‘spice-dust trader’” she said, mimicking air quotes with her arms. He was a pirate that used drug-trafficking as a cover because it was slightly less likely to get you blown out of the ‘verse than actually doing the space equivalent of flying a jolly roger. He was known to have a small but nasty fleet with weapons systems that far outclassed the ships they were bolted on to.”

  “Should be able to bring down a few of the Pax ships for us.”

  “I’ll say. And then there’s the Olyit-commune fleet. Eighteen of them now — they only had a dozen last time we met.”

  “Interesting… very interesting.”

  The Olyit were a weird bunch. They were a group of traders, actual ones, though with ships equipped with shielding and weapons to fend off attacks from groups like Commander Thansup’s, or even mine.

  But the Olyit didn’t have a commander or a captain, or a leader. They made all their decisions as a group, using an AI to manage instant voting over pretty much every decision they made, from what to eat for breakfast to whether or not they should have a uniform, to battle plans during an assault.

  I guessed this time the Olyit had voted to join my fleet. I’d really need to check just how much Oyna had been offering all these groups and whether we’d be able to afford to pay them. Or rather, whether I’d be able to get the Drakon to agree to pay them.

  “What else do we have?”

  Oyna went through, naming several smaller fleets of mercenaries, pirates and traders, as well as a couple of macho weirdos — rich, masculines from a couple of different species who had heard a big space battle was going to take place, and used their wealth to get whatever war-capable ship they could get their hands on to join in on the ‘fun’. I may have mocked them, but I couldn’t help but feel at least a little kinship with them. There’s nothing like a good battle to get the adrenaline pumping, is there?

  I clapped Oyna on both shoulders when she was done updating me on our progress.

  “Excellent work. Keep me informed if anything significant changes.”

  I returned to my commander’s chair in the center of the bridge. With my hair now proudly up again in all its glory, the pins and braids forming a crown around my head, I felt more like a queen than the commander of a ship.

  A space queen.

  But if I was a queen, I had a king with me too. On the other side of the bridge, Moddoc was crouched down, his giant bulk dwarfing Puff, who he was gently stroking on the head.

  He was a big softy really.

  A giant dragon-king with a soft-spot for a little fluffball Pomeranian-like creature.

  “Sir?” called Wrigo. “We have another call incoming. It’s the Drakon commander.”

  20

  Moddoc

  Running my hand over Alm’s head a final time, I stood up, shaking my folded wings a little to release the tension.

  Commander Tarion was calling.

  Again.

  I crossed the bridge and went to stand behind Essie, who remained in her commander’s chair. I couldn’t help but think how much things had changed in such a short time. I was her prisoner, then she was mine, and now we were both working together, commanding a ship, — and a fleet! I never thought I’d see the day! — to save my home planet.

  Thanks to her I’d gone from disgrace to, well, perhaps still disgraced, but disgraced with a whole fleet behind me. Even if it wasn’t a Drakon armada like every one of us Hielsrane males dreamed of, it was more ships than any single Drakon male commanded apart from Tarion himself.

  Speaking of which.

  “On screen,” Essie said when I was standing behind her.

  The all-too-familiar image of Tarion appeared on-screen, his red scales gleaming in the light of his ship. His human mate, Carissa, sat by his side, her face a dark mask devoid of emotion. It gave him and I something in common, at least. As long as he didn’t go back to his earlier plan of demanding she be sold into slavery after all this was over.

  His face was dark, and I could tell he was expecting bad news.

  “Report,” he demanded as soon as the communication line was established.

  Essie gave an almost imperceptible nod behind her, indicating that I should begin. Despite my disgrace, Tarion would still trust my word over Essie’s.

  “Sir, everything is proceeding in excellent order. Thanks to Captain Black’s contacts, we have assembled a formidable fleet of ships.”

  “Really?” he asked with narrowed eyes and a disbelieving look. “We have been receiving reports, but they seem to be suspicious. We will be arriving for a visit shortly. Please prepare.”

  “Sus—?”

  I didn’t even finish the word. The screen had turned black and Tarion was gone.

  “The fuck was that?” Esmerelda asked, standing abruptly and turning to me with her own look of disbelief.

  “I do not know. But I think I have an idea,” I told her, a small smile on my lips.
>
  She looked annoyed. Angry. And it made her look divine. Although her stature was tiny compared to my own, she stood with a strength and confidence that radiated power. There were few females in the verse like her.

  No.

  There were no females in the verse like her.

  “I think he is disbelieving of what you have achieved.”

  “What?” She tilted her head toward me. “I told him I had contacts who owed me favors, now I called them in. What’s to disbelieve?”

  I put a hand on her cheek and as always, I was surprised but delighted at just how soft it was. How could this girl of granite also be soft as a flower petal?

  “He does not yet understand how remarkable you are, that is all. I think this visit is nothing to worry about. In fact, it should cement his confidence in us.”

  Esmerelda’s fierce look softened and she seemed cheered by my words. It was remarkable. Whenever I managed to lift her spirits, it had the same effect on me, filling my own heart with a warmth I couldn’t remember feeling for what seemed like eons.

  Truly, there was something exceptional about Captain Esmerelda Black.

  Essie.

  My, Essie.

  “Well you better hope you’re right. I’m not in the mood for another argument with an angry Drakon.” She paused, a little grin appearing on her face. “If he starts playing up, I’ll have him thrown out the airlock.”

  “Essie!”

  “What?”

  “He’s the commander of the Drakon fleet and our planetary defense. You must not say something like that when he is here. It would be more unwise than plotting a course into a black hole.”

  Essie looked up thoughtfully. “I did that once.”

  “What?”

  “Plotted a course into a black hole. Of course we didn’t actually go into it — as you can see, I’m still here — but it got rid of some pesky security forces who seemed to think I should return some recently acquired goods.” She rubbed at her chin at the memory. “They’re probably still there, actually.”