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  “It’s a go! Drop one!” The intercom blares around us.

  “Hook your hands in my belt here, Rousseau!” Captain Boa shouts over the noise.

  “But, I . . . !”

  “Go!”

  I’m screaming. Captain Boa gave me no chance. He just pushed both of us out the flight hatchway, and then he wrapped his arms around my head. My screams are muffled in his throat as huge winds fling us bodily over and over. The air sucks at my breath and I can’t breathe anymore, then suddenly everything goes black.

  I grab Tallie tighter to my chest and clench my eyes as the heat and debris of the surprise explosion washes over us. The cargo Skitter exploded! Fear, as I’ve never felt before rocks my body. It’s as bad as the thermal waves from the explosion that punch us imaginably far off our course. Buffeting us, head over feet in the air. Tallie’s unconscious, but the straps and hooks are holding her tightly to me. Still, sixty seconds gone and I have to break the chute, except the thermal wave could buckle it. However, I have no choice. I’m glad Tallie is blacked out as my lips rub her cheek, and I whisper, “I’m sorry, baby.”

  Whap!

  My entire body jerks violently as the parachute catches, and then holds, and then it drags our bodies upward with a bone wrenching snap. It held! Now, I need to see how much distance I can manage to propel the parachute back to where we should be. I pop the top of my meter watch and realize it's impossible; we are hundreds of miles off course. The whole team will be scattered, and now I have to worry about dropping in the midst of the enemy.

  One thing at a time, I caution myself. That’s the only way to survive. I tug the lead strings and drag the parachute east. I do have an idea where a safe zone might be. I never leave on a mission without thoroughly studying the area or space I’m venturing into. This time, I immersed myself in a thousand-mile radius. I’m overly cautious, but it pays.

  “Tallie,” I utter against the wind, with her name tearing out of my mouth. Now, I need her awake or she’ll break her legs in landing.

  I have to slap her cheeks. “Huh-huh,” she mumbles.

  “Brace yourself!” I shout. “But keep your knees bent.” That gets her attention and I can feel her body respond as I also prepare for impact. “Let me take the fall!” I shout at her. “Roll with me.”

  Tallie screeches in my damn ear when we hit, but her body goes with me and I’m able to keep both of us from killing ourselves, when we hit the ground. Once on the ground, I swiftly unsnap the hooks on Tallie’s flight suit and she falls right onto her back as I ignore her and turn to drag the parachute into a ball.

  “On your feet, private! We need to move now!” I shout at her over my shoulder. But when I turn, she’s still laying on her back with her knees bent. I bundle the parachute under one arm. I’m not leaving it behind, we might need it, and I drop into a pouncing crouch over Tallie. “Get your ass up now, private!” I bellow.

  Tallie gasps at the loud booming sound and I grab some of the material of her flight suit between the cleavage of her tits and haul her upright.

  “Let go of me!” she cries, beating on my forearms as I hold her upright by the material bunched up so tightly in my fist that my knuckles rub against the conical slope of her breasts. Damn it, I’ve seen rookies lose it before and Tallie’s face is white. She has to be in shock, which is quickly turning to hysteria.

  “Just what I need,” I mutter viciously under my breath as I shake her. “Stop it, private. Stop it now!”

  “Let me . . . ,” she chokes, and then her eyes suddenly seem to focus on me, while her nails are digging into my wrist.

  I have her back, but now I need to hold onto her. “We’ve landed.” I shake her aggressively. “And you are going to haul your little ass behind me this instant! Or, private, I’m going to take my gun out and shoot you for being a deserter.”

  Tallie pants with her eyes so enormous and brown that they kick me in the gut. But I don’t let her think about what I’ve said for two seconds, as I shout, “Now move!” I shove and release her at the same time, grabbing her shoulder to turn her and shove her forward again. But she’s moving now.

  I know that I'm alive at Captain Boa’s mercy . . . and alive because of it. But still, I’m . . . Damn, I’m so confused, terrified, angry, and helpless! So, I move like the Captain orders me, when all I want to do is scream at him for getting me into this. My reservist’s papers say strictly no, absolutely no, physical combat unless the carrier is under attack, of course. I am not trained for this. I don’t want to be trained for this!

  I’m so mad that I believe I could confront him. A powerful Variant male with all his added strength and honed muscles. Instead, I use my anger to move me forward. Maybe, I’m not that brave after all. Hell, I know I’m not! I want to cry. All I want to do is sit down and cry I’m so scared. But I suck it up. Captain Boa is the only thing that’s going to get me out of here alive, now that I'm here. But as soon as we stop, as soon as we have a moment, I’m going to . . . !

  “Get down, private,” Captain Boa hisses behind me. “Flat!”

  He doesn’t even wait for me to . . . “Oh!”

  “Quiet!” He practically lies on top of me, pushing my face down.

  Chuk. Chuk. Chuk.

  I hear the sound overhead and I’ve never heard anything like it before. It sends my skin crawling as it grows closer and there’s some kind of vibration coming with the sound. It’s thrumming through my body and I bite my bottom lip to keep from whimpering in terror. What is it? It has to be something alien.

  “Damn, it’s a Wasp ground unit,” Captain Boa hisses in my ear.

  Wasp? That’s what they call the aliens, because they don’t know what else to call them and their space fighters can swarm like wasps. I don’t know if any human, still alive, has ever seen one. Oh, my God and the sound is nearly on top of us.

  Chuk! Chuk! Chuk! Chuk!

  “Run!” Captain Boa bellows in my ear. I scream, of course, as he drags me up and he shoves me forward. “Run!” he thunders again.

  I’m running! Running through the scrub-brush and rocky terrain. I can’t really see that about the land I am scrambling over, because it is too dark. I can just feel it.

  Chuk! Chuk. Chuk.

  The sound is getting softer, making me think we are actually getting away from it. Then there’s some type of huge light swinging toward us.

  “Run!” Captain Boa shouts, giving me a hard push. “Go east and don’t stop for anything!”

  East? Where the hell is east, I want to scream, but then I realize he’s broken away from me. He is gone! But as I keep running, I look over my shoulder and I suddenly see Captain Boa zigzagging out into the light not twenty yards from my right side.

  “No,” I wail. No, he’s trying to lead the light away from me. He can’t do that. He can’t! I swear I can run faster than he can. “No, Captain, please! Please!”

  A humming sound starts. Ominous. Frightening! Getting louder and louder until it’s piercing my eardrums. Then in the next second, a flash and rumbling sound reverberates around me. Out of nowhere, my body is thrown into a spindly bush by something. It’s as if I was picked up and dropped flat. I scream, but it's cut short as I struggle to catch a hard breath. But I can’t.

  Run, Ry, run damn it, I think as I crouch, duck, and then I roll to the right, trying to avoid the impact of the laser type shot. It misses me, but still the impact rolls my body fifty feet beyond any humanly possible roll. That’s okay with me as long as nothing. is broken. It’s not, but then I hear Tallie scream, and my gut clenches like a ball of lead just dropped into it.

  “Damn it! I told her to run,” I growl savagely as I leap to my feet and see the light is sweeping to the west of either of us now. I don’t know what the hell those things are, but I can hear by the sound, that incredibly, they seem to be moving away. A thousand reasons for this skitter through my mind as I crouch down again and move forward intent on finding Tallie.

  Automated? They could be automated o
r perhaps the Wasp sensors didn’t really pick us up? Perhaps, it was our motion they swept after. Lousy sensors if that’s all they could pick up. Yet, none of our military has ever fought the aliens on the ground. It’s all been in space or in the skies around planets.

  Hell, I wish I could follow them and take a closer look. We need information like this. Yet, that's not my mission, not why I’m here. Tallie. My evasive thinking has only kept my thoughts away from her for under a minute. Damn, she shouldn’t be here. She wasn’t made for this.

  “Tallie,” I utter harshly, dropping to my knees. Tallie is sprawled face down in one of the spindly scrub bushes. If she is dead, I’m going to fucking kill them.

  “Uh,” she groans. “Did you call me, Tallie?”

  “Hold still,” I order. God I’m shaking.

  “Oh, Captain, it hurts,” she moans. “B-But I think I’m okay, really.”

  “Hell, are you crying?”

  “N-No,” she sniffles. “I-I wouldn’t do that. B-But you tried to kill yourself to save m-me.”

  Hell, she is crying. “Jesus, Tallie.” I pull her upward, turning her into my arms. This is highly, as in totally, inappropriate. Yet, it’s too late. I just walked over the line.

  “A-Are you h-hugging me, sir?”

  “Shut up, Tallie.”

  “Yes, s-sir.” She hugs me back tightly, still weeping softly and tearing my guts apart.

  Wouldn’t you know it; she fits me like a glove. She is soft and plump in all the right places. I’m a goner, sure as hell. Only now, we have one big problem, because I only like my women in a certain way. It's a true bone-deep fetish, I suppose. But I’m dominating, and I can be a bit rough, especially with womb-born females. My ex-wife enjoyed the small glimpses that I showed her. That wasn’t our problem. And, I’ve got the intuition that Tallie would too. If I have enough time. But the sorry truth is, I don’t think we are going to make it off this rock. Oh, I do believe weeks from now, we will be able to set the MAXI. But we will never make it to the two specified rendezvous, we are just too far off target. What the hell, looks as though fate has just handed me a heavy fling before I finally check out.

  I catch Tallie under her thighs and lift to stand. She catches my neck tightly. “I should try and walk, sir.” She sniffles.

  “No.”

  “But I . . . ,”

  I interrupt. “I can walk all day like this, Tallie.” I pause significantly. “I’m a Variant, remember.”

  She huffs in surprise and embarrassment. “You called me, Tallie, again.”

  “Yes.”

  She puffs some air again. “Well, what does it mean?”

  I can tell the darkness or the near death experiences are making her braver. She would normally be to shy for this. “It means that I am stronger than any womb-born males and I really could go six times, if I put my mind to it.”

  She gasps a startled breath, but then . . . “Oh,” she whimpers.

  “What is it?” I stop walking.

  “I . . . ,”

  “Damn it, Tallie!”

  “I-I’m all right, really. It just hurt for a second. I d-did fall flat on my face, pretty hard, sir.”

  “Hold me closer,” I mutter, and then I start walking again.

  Tallie feels really good as she leans into me, while I pick my way through the rocks and scrub brush. My mind drifts over the fact of how much power I have over her in this situation. I am her commander and the only thing that will keep her alive, for as long as I can. I’m smiling a little. The fact is, I never really smile all the way, but I’ve never had a woman in this situation before. It’s a bit heady, now that I’ve let myself go.

  And she’s attracted to me, that much I can tell, but how much I don’t know. Yet, even a little is enough to work with. The idea that excites me is I don't believe Tallie likes me because I’m a Variant male. Some womb-born females are like that, after any Variant male in pants and after them in secret of course. They sneak around trying to find big Variant dicks, hoping they won’t get caught.

  Now Tallie, she’s pretty shy, but given the right situation she would stand up and declare she was jumping my bones for anyone to hear. She has a fierce protectiveness in her for those she cares about. I’ve seen her use it with the Shadows. Hell. I stop walking and look down at her. It’s getting light out and her eyes look dark and luminous. The other day, when she put those tow jerks down because of me . . . that was very protective.

  “What’s happening?” she whispers, trying to hold my gaze, but losing the battle as her gaze drops to my chin.

  I know I look very fierce at the moment. I don’t blame her hesitation and I’m looking forward to her shyness. When you must work hard for something, it is so much better than having it fall into your lap.

  “I believe, Tallie Rousseau, that I am claiming my woman.”

  Tallie’s arms jerk then, and tighten around my neck. I lower my mouth to her ear as her face ducks deeper into the crook of my neck, “You need to think about that, baby,” I whisper against her ear as I feel her heartbeat fluttering wildly against my chest. Then, I start walking again. We need to find a safe place to bunker down, before full daylight.

  Chapter Six

  I am totally blown away. Baby? Captain Boa called me, “Baby” with his deep tenor voice. I’m shaking, my palms are sweating, and my chest is humming with excitement as I try to hold back my leaping hopes, afraid I’ve missed something, or read the situation wrong. Yet, he couldn’t be more specific. I’m claiming my woman! Oh God, it’s such a switch. I’m tottering on confusion. One minute I’m Private Rousseau and the next I’m Tallie.

  Get a grip. You’re not a kid anymore.

  Yes that helps, I can breathe again. It’s simple . . . Captain Boa wants to get laid, and here we are where no one will know. That's it. He’s just taking an opportunity and I’m really, really lucky. Claiming my woman. It sounds so primal. I don’t know anything about him, not personally. He could do this kind of thing all the time. Even though, he’s always appeared to be a loner to me. If he preferred privacy, no one would ever know differently.

  What’s really blowing me away, and making it hard for me to believe, or even to know what to do is the fact he’s picked me. I mean me! I’m just ...well; it’s so hard to believe. I have hoped, but never held out any hope. I’m just too shy, and there are so many beautiful women. I’ve always lived with this lesser complex. It is the shyness, and I know that. It makes me believe somehow I’m not worthy and that I could not possibly attract a man like Captain Boa.

  Yet the problem is ... it appears that I have! Jesus, I’m way out of my league. I know I don’t have the guts, if he really means it. Of course he does, he said he does. I have to get myself together. This is what I wanted from the first moment I saw him. This is what I’ve dreamed about. Ah hell, what am I going to do now?

  “We’ll bunker down here for the day,” Captain Boa says, and I unglue my face from his neck to see some alien rock structures that look like green sandstone with several entrances to what must be caves. The light around us is an eerie gray. “We will check your injuries and make some plans,” he says as he sets me down on a smoothly sloping green rock. “Stay here while I reconnoiter the caves, Tallie.”

  Abruptly, I grab his wrist as he turns away. I could never hold him, but he allows me to, and he turns back to me. “What happened to the others?” I ask, looking back and forth across his face, looking for the truth.

  “We will talk about it,” he answers tightly. “But they got scattered. You probably don’t remember the explosion. The cargo Skitter was destroyed.”

  “The one we came here on?” I whisper, dropping his wrist.

  “Yes,” he answers turning away.

  Silently, I watch Captain Boa as he cautiously enters the first cave in a crouch with his weapon, a Mac-pistol, pointed out before him. We are stuck here ... he’s not going to tell me, but I know. That’s why he's changed, because we don’t have any way to get out of here.


  I know a little or a lot about these things. I’m just too curious, too much down time spent alone I guess, and I cannot help but surfing the networks. The military ones. So I know for a fact on a ground drop there will be only two attempts made to pick us up. The first, and then one back up at the same time and the same place, one week later. No radios, obviously for a covert mission, especially since the aliens can intercept our transmissions. I’d never have guessed the aliens had the capability, if they hadn’t asked for the MAXI.

  Wow, I would have been saving many lives. I should be proud. Possibly, we can still do that part. Just get me to any type of alien communication system and I’ll make it work. You know, I’m not very important, but Captain Boa, surely they wouldn’t want to lose him. Maybe they’ll try harder. Try for more than just two attempts?

  “Tallie, are you all right?”

  I’m hugging myself and I didn’t realize it, and he’s back. “Yes, sir, I mean, Captain.”

  “Ry.” Captain Boa picks me up again and I grab his shoulders. “Call me, Ry.”

  “Oh, I always wondered,” I mumble without realizing, and then I blush and turn my gaze to his neck again.

  “Good,” he murmurs. “Right about now, I’m glad you wondered.”

  Glib women ... sexy and secure women would know what to do with a statement like that. They’d probably purr really seductively and say a sexy come back. Me, damn it, I hug Ry tighter and sigh on any words I could ever say.