The First Starfighter by Grace Goodwin (lightweight ebook reader txt) 📕

The queen laughed at something the person on her other side murmured in her ear, and I guessed dinner was over. My patience was rewarded when she set her glass down with a sigh that most likely stemmed from boredom. “Attend me.”

She gave the order to the entire room, but it was her five personal guards who jumped to serve her, pull out her chair, offer her assistance to rise to her feet. It wasn’t because she was weak. No, far from it. It was because she was too fucking strong.

She slipped each of her arms through a guard’s offered elbow and turned to me with the two males flanking her. “You have until morning to get me what I want. The Starfighter must agree to join me. If you fail, I won’t kill her, although she will wish for death—but I will end you.”

Dread filled my belly, as cold and heavy as this fucking rock we were all on.

“Of course, my queen.” I spoke clearly but did not raise my head. She made a satisfied grunt and indicated that her guards should escort her from the room. Her charcoal coat swirled around her legs.

The moment she was out of sight, I excused myself from the table, irritated but not surprised when two of the queen’s remaining guards stepped up to follow me. I could be invisible or quiet no longer, it seemed.

“I don’t need help,” I told them.

“Of course not.” The higher-ranking guard spoke for both of them. He slapped me on the shoulder. My eyes widened at the familiar gesture, but I said nothing. “We are merely to observe.”

“Right.” I had no doubt they would be broadcasting my torture session with Jamie directly to the queen’s personal quarters. I had heard rumors about her during the many weeks I’d spent undercover—the fact that she enjoyed inflicting pain, or watching one of her minions do so, primary among them.

Luckily I had expected to have company. The first Starfighter was a novelty. A specimen to study. They had to dissect the enemy’s weapon. In this case, that weapon was a beautiful human woman.

I ignored the two guards as I took the long way to get to the bowels of the asteroid base and back to Jamie. Leading the two guards exactly where I needed them to be was part of the plan.

Twenty paces into the long corridor, the lighting went out in this section. It wasn’t pitch-black, but it was a surprise. For those who weren’t expecting it.

The queen, in her continued lack of trust, had not given me a weapon. I turned on my heel and struck the elder guard on the side of the jaw with a closed fist. He went down like a felled tree.

Fuck, that felt good.

His companion barely registered the movement before a perfectly aimed knife flew through the air to hit him in the center of his chest. His eyes widened as he leaned over and gripped the hilt of the blade. I took the weapon from his limp hand and pulled it free, ending his life. A knife was an ancient weapon, but it was silent and dispatched the enemy to hell without drawing attention. Blasts from a laser pistol would not only be heard, but the heat of it detected through the base’s sensors.

With the knife, I quickly dispatched the elder guard, who appeared to be rousing.

“Nicely done, old friend.”

I turned at the familiar sound of Trax’s voice. I was in fighting focus, but I was glad to see his familiar—and friendly—face. “It’s good to see you. Your timing was perfect.”

“If you two lovers would stop making eyes at one another, we need to get these two out of the corridor.” Nave stood in the now-open doorway of a maintenance chamber. Trax and I each lifted a dead man by the shoulders and dragged them inside.

“Good.” Nave touched a control panel on his wrist, and the lights in the corridor came back on. “That was less than a ten count. Maybe we won’t die today after all.”

“No one is fucking dying.” I leaned over both guards and searched them for weapons and comm units, taking everything I could and dividing it among the three of us. I wiped the blood from the blade on the dead guy’s uniform, then handed it back to Trax. “Here. Take these weapons.” I kept one for myself. “We have to get Jamie out of here alive.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll get your bondmate off this rock,” Trax assured me.

“I will not leave without her.” Meaning if she died, I would as well.

“We know. We know, Starfighter.” Nave slapped me on the back. This time the gesture was given, I didn’t want to kill. “Move your ass. We’re wasting time.”

“One more thing. The traitor is Delegate Rainhart. Remember that fucking name. Rainhart.” If I died, I needed to make sure the information made it back to Velerion.

“A fucking delegate?” Trax sounded as furious as I had been.

Nave punched the wall with his fist. “All this time and you find out? How?”

“The queen bragged about him at dinner. How he’d helped her take down the entire fleet and destroy the Starfighter base.” I checked the energy charge on my newly acquired laser rifle. Full charge. Excellent.

“Fuck me. That bitch.” Trax was fuming now, his skin darker, his pulse pounding out a visible rhythm at the base of his throat. “We wasted months, and she just fucking tells you his name at dinner?”

“Yes. Now let’s go.”

I lifted my hand to the controls and opened the small door. Once it slid wide, I moved quietly down the corridor toward Jamie’s holding cell, my two friends behind me. If seen, nothing would seem amiss. We were known on the asteroid base. Everyone knew I was the one who’d delivered the infamous Starfighter, knew the queen had ordered me to torture her, and knew I would