Rebel Kato (Shifters of the Primus Book 1) (8 page)

L
iandra follows
me into the shuttle. I make sure she is strapped in tightly and, as usual, take the opportunity to enjoy the soft mounds of her flesh. Then I take the seat beside her at the controls. Once I have us airbourne, I turn to regard her.

“Your plan is good. But there is no need to put you in danger. You will stay in a safe place while we crush my father’s forces. There is a—”

“Excuse me?” Liandra says. She tilts her chin slightly to one side, a sign that I have made a serious mistake. “None of your men know the systems on my ship like I do.”

“Yes, I remember you said you were a Chief Engineer. Known amongst your people for your talents.”

Liandra squirms in her seat slightly at my mention of her title, but she presses on. “Right. So it took me years to learn those controls. If one of your men messes it up, it will mean xenocide for my entire race. I can’t sit by and risk that.”

I look away from her. “And I can’t risk losing you. We are at an impasse.”

“You stubborn—listen. Once I punch in that command, there’s not going to be anywhere in the galaxy safer for me than on the ship.”

“Very well. I will come aboard the ship with you.”

“Didn’t you hear my plan? You know, the part about deadly gas that will boil your people’s skin from their bodies?”

“I will wear a
soot.”

She stares at me. Though I have stared down warriors and beasts of the Dead Sea, her glare nearly makes me break eye contact. But I will not bend on this. If my
kouva
is going to be in danger, I will be by her side. I will protect her, even if it means watching my skin boil away from my body. I will not fail again.

Finally, she looks away. “You’re lucky you are so fucking hot.”

“Yes, my people generate internal temperatures upwards of 57 Barsuli—115 fahrenheit in your human measurements.”

“No—I meant, nevermind. . .”

“Why do you smile?”

“I’m trying to imagine you telling a joke on purpose.”

“I know many jokes.”

She quirks an eyebrow at me.

“For instance, a man falls from the highest towers of the Great Loris tree of Morsakuta. He falls and falls, wishing that he would land on something to crush his skull before he reaches the Dead Sea. He strains and sways his body, trying his hardest to collide with something, but he finds only air. After several minutes, he resigns himself to his fate. He decides that he never wanted a quick death afterall. He wanted to die while locked in honorable battle with the beasts of the Dead Sea.”

I pause for a moment, holding back a laugh. “But the corpse of a Sakkar sits atop The Dead Sea and the man breaks his neck when he lands on it!”

K
ato’s barking
laughter is infectious. His joke was easily the dumbest thing I have ever heard. But seeing him smile and laugh until he clutches his stomach has me giggling along with him. Once I have finally controlled myself, I manage to say “That was about as funny as I imagined.”

He beams with pride, not catching my real meaning.

I look at his lap and trace the thick lines of his leg muscles with my eyes. I follow them to the outline of his cock against his thigh. He notices where I look at grins over at me. I watch as his cock stiffens, stretching the fabric of his leather pants until I think they might break. I
hope
they break. But the leather holds, and I can’t reach from where I sit so I am forced to look on longingly.

“Will Mira be safe with Davoso?” I ask after a few moments, hoping to distract myself.

“Yes. When my father learns the Separatists have mobilized their torcher ships, he will not have the spare men to send after her. An assault against an enemy ship is no easy task, even for Primus warriors. He will need to bring every spare man if he hopes to minimize his losses.”

I nod, not fully convinced. In the end, it doesn’t matter if I’m convinced. Even though I told Kato I couldn’t be safer than on
The Hope
when I execute my plan, I left out the part about my little white lie that turns out to be not-so-little. Had I actually been Chief Engineer like I told him on our first night together, the commands I would need to enter on the console would be simple. However, the only things I know about the consoles are what I had worked out on my own. While I have seen the commands I told the men about, I don’t actually know if they will work. Certain areas of the console are more complex than others. Sometimes it is as simple as drawing a few logical conclusions and other times, well, it’s like math that they don’t teach greasers.

We reach our destination, which seems to be a military base carved into the trunk of one of the biggest trees I have seen. Primus males wearing suits of armor and holding spears jog around the large platform, readying supplies and torcher ships—boxy craft that look like a cockpit strapped to a single, massive cannon.

“How do you know your father won’t be on
The Hope?
” I ask Kato.

“My father didn’t become king because he’s a fearless warrior. He became king because he is clever. He will suspect everything we plan—sabotage of his army, a sneak attack against the capital. He has no way to know, but he cannot afford to leave behind the city with no defenses. He will be there, organizing the defense.”

“Why not just leave the city for now and then return to slaughter us when he’s done with my people?”

“He’s clever but he’s proud. He will not allow me to enter his city unchallenged. More importantly, I would be able to seal our mating beneath the Sacred Tree and bring fertility between the Primus and your kind.”

“Seal our mating?”

“When we reach the heart of the Sacred Tree, I will take you while we are bathed in its sap.”

“Oh,” I say, twirling a loose lock of hair.

“And many will bear witness to our mating. It will usher a new era for the Umani and your people. A historic joining of bloodlines, starting with you and I.”

“By bear witness, you mean like, bar-room bragging the next morning?”

“Traditionally, the mating is observed by the entire clan.”

“Right,” I say, feeling my cheeks burn bright at the thought. Fantasy is one thing. But actually having people watch while we. . . Yeah. I’ll have to talk to him about that one.

We fly out of sight from the Separatists, but I already see several torcher ships flying in formation behind us. Kato pulls the ship into a climb until we are flying straight toward
The Hope
. It is a small speck against the sky when we crest the top of the trees. The sight of it makes me feel uneasy. I realize how many lives are on the line. How many lives might depend on me. Of course I could always try to find someone qualified to run the controls and explain the situation to them once we’re on the ship, but then. . . Then Kato would know I had lied to him.

He would know I wasn’t a Chief Engineer and that I wasn’t known amongst my people. I wasn’t sure I could bring myself to hurt him like that. Even if it meant risking so many lives. But I might have to.

I
expect
us to have several hours to set up Liandra’s plan when we reach
The Hope
but see that her hull is already riddled with leech ships. They stick to the outside of the ship like small insects, each capable of holding upwards of 100 Primus warriors. There are thousands upon thousands across the ship.

Then I see the stars to our left flicking in and out of sight. Looking closer, I realize a small squad of Umani Corsairs are flying toward us. When they come within weapons range, their hulls light up green as they fire their payloads toward us.

The Separatist Torcher ships fan out between us and the incoming fire. Their large cannons spraying hot plasma into the vacuum of space, melting most of the missiles before they have a chance to detonate. I see a torcher ship caught in the explosion of a missle that slips through. It is sucked in toward the blast, seeming to freeze in time. Then the explosion ripples outward, spraying tiny fragments of shrapnel that used to be a ship and a Primus into space.

I look at Liandra and she meets my eye, her hands clenched tightly in her lap.

“You are my
kouva.
I will keep you safe. Do not leave my side. Any who try to touch you will have to come through me. Do you understand?”

She nods.

“Good.”

I bank hard, slipping away from the fighting while more Separatist reinforcements catch up and provide cover for us. I find an intact airlock and dock our ship to it. The ship creates a seal while Liandra helps me into a combat suit. This suit has a helmet with pointed panther ears and a ventilation system that should protect me from the substance Liandra calls Helium Two. It is not a chemical my people know of, so we cannot be sure the suit will work, but I will take the risk for her.

Once our ship burrows through the hull, I lead Liandra inside, spear at the ready.

Inside the ship, my sharp ears are assaulted by the sounds of laser rifles firing in the distance and the wet, meaty sound of metal cutting and crushing flesh. Liandra points down a hallway to our left that is already riddled with bodies.

I move forward, crouched low and ready to strike at any threat.

“We need to find a room with a green door. Okay?” Liandra says.

I nod, moving as quickly as I can while keeping Liandra close by. The first group of Umani clansmen we see mistake me for one of their own at first. The material of my suit hides the golden skin that would mark me as their rebel prince. Then they see Liandra behind me and raise their weapons. I don’t hesitate.

A quick thrust forward takes the first warrior in the eye. I rip my spear free of his skull and pull my right leg backward, dodging a slash aimed for my thigh. I leap off my left foot, throwing my spear into one warrior’s chest and tackling another. I land on the warrior, pressing my forearm to his neck. He struggles against me but is no match for my power.

He begs. I crush his throat. I feel a sharp spike of pain in my back and turn to see two more warriors. One is a shifter. He takes the form of a massive, green panther. I grab his head and pull him into a spin, knocking the other warrior aside and slamming the shifted warrior into a bulkhead. I finish off the dazed warriors with my spear and motion for Liandra to follow me. She tries to check my wound but I wave her attention away.

“It will heal,” I say.

“Here,” she says, pointing to a green door.

She taps at a console beside it and the door hisses open. I hear shouts behind us but Liandra closes the door before the males can reach us.

We’re alone in a room full of electronics and a large console built into a table. Liandra looks at it and then at me, smiling uncertainly. “Here we go,” she says.

She reaches to touch the console and I notice her hand is shaking. Several minutes pass while she scrunches her brows, talking to herself quietly. I see sweat beading on her forehead. I remember the last time I saw her sweating was while my cock filled every inch of her. The thought makes me smirk.

S
hit shit shit
. I tried to calm myself down before I started by asking how bad could it go. The problem was that I didn’t have a good enough imagination. It was going
really
bad. Like, trying to ask someone their due date and learning they are just fat bad. I can’t shake the knowledge that Kato is watching me. I wonder if he is getting suspicious yet.

I try to imagine what he was thinking. “Why chief engineer struggle with puny machines?” Probably something like that.

I try one last ditch effort to get the system I needed. Like everything else I have tried, it fails. I take a deep breath, let my hands fall to my sides, and look into Kato’s eyes. For some reason, he is smirking. The amusement in his face only makes what I am about to do harder.

“Kato. I wasn’t a chief engineer.”

His frowns in confusion.

“When we first met, I—I didn’t feel like I deserved you. Hell, I still don’t. I was worried you had made a mistake and would realize it any moment. I started talking and before I knew it, I was lying to impress you, to convince you not to turn me away.”

“You lied to me?” he asks. His fists clench at his sides and his jawline pulses as he squeezes his teeth together.

I struggle for a moment, looking for a better way to say it but finding none. “Yes. And I’m sorry. I am just a greaser. We’re the bottom of the food chain. . . I thought I could figure out how to work the console, but I can’t.”

The look I see in Kato’s eyes breaks my heart. I can feel him distancing from me, drifting away. Something cold is slipping into the fiercely warm, protective way he used to look at me.

“I have an idea,” I say in a small voice. When Kato doesn’t respond, I continue. “I know where we can find the personal chambers of someone who can help us. He will have the access procedures.”

Kato’s head snaps to me. “Why do you know a male’s personal chambers?”

I pause for a second, confused. Realization sets in and I stop myself from laughing. “Don’t worry. When you see him, you won’t be jealous.”

I lead Kato down several corridors before we run into any opposition. The aura of his still-hot anger is nearly palpable. I feel myself hunching my shoulders, like a dog who knows it has done something bad. A few times, he motions for silence and sneaks behind Umani warriors, ending them before they can so much as grunt. The way he moves in combat is fluid and graceful, like a cat—like a panther.

The sounds of combat and struggle still ring out through the ship. From the looks of things, the military aboard the ship has created choke points using the blast doors. The Umani are having to burn their way through door after door to get to the bulk of the crew. I think the dead humans we have seen were likely the ones who were caught in the halls at the start of the attack. Hopefully the bulk of the crew is safe on the bridge. The blast doors will buy them time, but not forever.

We reach a room in the barracks wing of the ship. I search until we find room 122-B. I know the room by heart because of the numerous times my acts of revenge required me to sabotage something inside.

I was hoping that the room’s inhabitant would be cowardly enough to have ignored calls over the intercoms to move to the central areas of the ship. I imagined he would want to lock the closest door and huddle in fear.

When we open the door, I see Chief Engineer Reemer sitting on his bunk with his back to the wall, knees up to his chest. The medical equipment aboard the ship seems to have him on the path to a quick recovery, but his arm is still missing at the shoulder. A thick bandage from his armpit to shoulder covers it.

“You,” he says, standing. Within seconds, he has washed all signs of fear from his face. It is replaced by a look of indignant disbelief. “You think you can just walk in here?”

Kato stays in the doorway, arms crossed over his broad chest. He waits for me to act. I feel hurt by the silence. I can’t help thinking if he wasn’t angry with me that he would have ordered Reemer to do what we needed. Instead he was leaving it to me.

“We need you to access the nearest admin console and vent all the ship’s helium two into the air circulation system.”

“What?” he asks. “What would we use to scrub the fuel lines if we vent the helium two??”

I barely keep from screaming. “Think for one second, you—” I take a deep breath. “We are out of fuel. We do not need to scrub fuel lines when we have no fuel.”

He blinks twice, then appears to have forgotten that he ever asked such an idiotic question. “Why would I help you and your
friend
.”

Kato growls deeply.

“Because if you don’t, one of his people is going to shove a spear so far down your throat that it will pop out your fat ass,” I say.

Reemer’s lips pull back into a snarl. “You fucking bitch. I should have taken you into a dark room and made you suck—”

A wooden shaft appears in Reemer’s belly. I blink, my mind trying to register what I am looking at. A split second later, I realize Kato is holding on to the shaft’s base. He pulls it back and jabs it into Reemer in a blur of wet, meaty thumps.

“Stop! Stop it! We need him!”

Reemer coughs blood, sliding to the floor. I try to think quickly. Reemer definitely won’t want to talk now. If I hope to get anything out of him before he dies, I’m going to have to get my hands dirty. I look around the room for an idea. I see a stapler on his desk. I run to grab it and then kneel beside Reemer. “Tell me how to vent the helium two.”

“Fuck you,” he says.

I jab the stapler against his balls and his eyes bulge. I can sense that he will not be alive much longer and raise my voice. “Tell me. Now.”

He doesn’t speak immediately so I jab another staple into his balls. He screams out and waves for me to stop. “Use the password DDE87B16 to bypass the initial—”

His eyes squeeze shut and he clutches his stomach. He coughs thickly and then wheezes, rolling to his side where even more of his blood spills free. With one last cough, he stops moving. I feel a small glimmer of pity for the man. He was never anything but cruel to me and my sister, but the last few days have given me a sense of the fragility of my species. The bodies in the hall and the knowledge that the last breath of humanity hangs in the balance makes me mourn his death.

The emotions that are raging through me make me forget how I have wronged Kato with my lie. After all, it was a simple lie and it shouldn’t mean so much to him. It certainly doesn’t justify killing Reemer, especially not before we got the information we needed out of him. I feel my chin tilting sideways and my lips are pressed into a thin line.

“What were you thinking?” I ask Kato.

He stares down at me, a spatter of blood across the front of his suit. “That no man will disrespect you while I breathe.” He pauses. I can see his face through the visor of his helmet and he looks down, clearly looking for the right words. He must know the stupidity of his actions, but his face shows no remorse.

Something explodes outside the room.

It sounds like it came from nearby and the ship shudders as air is likely vented out into space. I wonder if the humans set off charges to vent some of the Umani warriors into space. Either way, we will need to be careful. The ship should prevent any door from opening that would expose us to depressurized areas, but with all the fighting, there’s no telling what systems are malfunctioning.

I lead Kato to the first admin console we can find. I open the controls to enter the password and realize I have forgotten it. . . DDB78. . . Kato sees me hesitate. He reaches down and types a series of numbers and letters into the digital keyboard and a message flashes across the readout: Admin Access Granted.

I would kiss him but he’s covered in dried blood and the visor of his suit is between us. It’s probably for the best. I’m still angry with him. How can he be so single-minded? If I have to worry about him killing every single person that ever disrespects me in the slightest. . . Well, I will leave behind a trail of bodies longer than his cock. Even though alarms are raging on the ship and I’m somewhat certain I could be experiencing my last few moments alive, my mind’s eye calls up the image of Kato’s face in the pleasure of his climax as he straddled me, thrusting himself into me and pumping me full of his seed. Our time together hasn’t been perfect, but hell, would I even want perfect? Would I know what to do with it?

He may have some anger issues and some possessiveness, sure. He’s a fixer-upper. And I’ve spent my whole life trying to keep this ship from falling apart, so somehow, I think I wouldn’t know what to do if he didn’t need fixing. I decide that if we ever get through this, I’m going to start by fixing the whole killing people in cold-blood thing. That is probably a good first priority.

The console beeps and directs me to a new menu that I’m not familiar with. I realize that instead of tapping through pre-set options, this menu allows me to delve into the code behind each command. Then I realize that Reemer wasn’t helping me with his last act. He was sending a big “fuck you” from the grave. Unless I could figure out the code to access the function I needed, this wouldn’t help at all.

I decide to look at the code and see what I can make of it. I know there’s no more time to try to find someone else who knows the system. Besides, the ship is crawling with Umani and they are between us and the surviving humans. Kato waits patiently beside me, weapon at the ready as he watches the hallway outside. I look at some of the basic code, trying to understand how it works.

At first, it looks like a foreign language. I was barely even taught to read as a Greaser and only know how because books were one of the ways I passed time off-duty. I basically taught myself to read and taught myself some basic math through number puzzles. The more I looked at it, the more the code seemed like a combination of a language and Sudoku puzzle. I was starting to get the hang of it when shouts came from outside our room.

A group of Umani appear at the doorway, assess the situation, and start trying to force their way in. Thankfully, Kato’s huge form stands between them and me. I know he can’t last forever against what sounds like a very large group of warriors outside the room. Our only saving grace is that the door is small enough to admit only one warrior at a time. If they try to pile their way in forcefully, Kato will have be able to pick them off with lightning speed. Instead, each warrior is forced to fight one on one against Kato. And within 30 seconds, four bodies already lay at his feet and he still appears unharmed.

I look down, focusing on the console while the sounds of battle jar at my focus. I can’t help worrying over my Kato.
My Kato?
Had I really thought that. But yes, he was mine. And I was his. No time to think on that, Lia. Get your head on the task at hand. With incremental success, I start piecing together a string of code that will reroute the helium two to the air distribution system. At least, I hope. I don’t have time to test my assumptions, so I rely on instinct, typing furiously as the solutions occur to me.

I hear a grunt and see a spearpoint burst through Kato’s back. The warriors managed to push into the room slightly and he is now fighting three at once. I fight the urge to get up and help him. I can best help him at the console. I plug in the code and submit the command.

Nothing happens.

Kato roars as another spear lands in his stomach. He breaks it off and uses the jagged shaft to kill one of his attackers, but he is down on one knee now. Seven, maybe eight—I don’t have time to count—warriors are now in the room, surrounding him and jabbing their spears with frightening violence at him.

I frantically scan the line of code I submitted and realized there is an extra semicolon at the end. I delete it and resubmit it. Again, nothing happens.

There is a bestial roar as Kato shifts into a giant, golden panther. He nearly fills the room, dwarfing the warriors. I see he still has blood dripping from wounds, so the shifting had not healed them. But with his new size and power he is able to quickly shred the warriors in the room and push them back to the door until he is again fighting one at a time. His back haunches nearly reach the ceiling in his shifted form, meaning he will need to take his natural form for us to leave.

Then I realize it had worked. The system is reading helium two rerouting itself to the air systems and it looks like we have about two minutes until the bulk of it will be blowing through the vents.

I see the tattered remains of Kato’s suit on the ground where he shifted. Oh no. If I don’t find a way to get us out of here before the helium two starts pumping into the ship. . . My mind is chaos. So many thoughts fire off at once that I can’t grab onto a single one. I close my eyes, pushing the sounds of Kato’s fatal struggle to protect me as far back as I can. Think, Lia. Think.

I open my eyes and look out the doorway. Above the warriors, a large water pipe runs throughout the hall toward the barracks where it both provides fresh water and collects used water for filtration. I get back on the console and puzzle out what the code will look like to do what I needed. I have to reference a few basic commands to see what the location code was for this part of the ship, but quickly find them.

I type in the line of code and submit it.

There is an ear-piercing groan, like a submarine being crushed under the pressure of deep water. Then a hissing sound as water begins to spray, and finally a crunch. I see the huge pipe fall down at an angle just beside the doorway. Though I can’t see it, the falling pipe must have killed several Umani. And, as luck would have it, it cuts off the hall containing the Umani who still try to reach our room.

Kato surveys the situation and then after a few seconds he shifts to his natural form. When he returns, he is kneeling and clutching his side, red blood bright against his sparkling golden skin. He is nude too, but the urgency of needing to get him off the ship in record time keeps even me from dwelling on that.

I try to help him to his feet but it is like trying to lift a boulder. He manages it on his own and has the nerve to put an arm up to shield me, as if I am the one who needs protected right now.