“Darling,” I said, as I realized she had the sword pointed at him now.

  Cheri frowned, then sheathed her sword and cracked a smile. “Ah, I was just having fun, foxy. The voices told me to say it, that’s all. They’re telling me you don’t like being called foxy, either, but guess what? I don’t fucking like flying, it hurts my stomach. So, we can all be a bit grumpy, huh? And just leave it at that.”

  I turned to Breaker, hoping he’d back off. He met my gaze and nodded. Charm saw this and went over to her man, whispering something about a punch, but didn’t act further on it. Andromida was glaring, clearly not the type to put up with this bullshit.

  Breaker turned to the crowd now gathered around us and held out his hands. “Ignoring all of that, it’s nice to meet you. I’m called Breaker, but my real name is Chad. I take it everyone is now familiar with the concept of supers?”

  Trunk raised a hand. “Still trying to wrap my mind around the idea but back there, in Abaddon, we were exposed a bit.”

  “Short version of the story, supers were the colonists who left for the Oram system long ago. The sun there changed them, giving some of them superpowers.”

  “Them, you say?” Letha assessed Breaker. “I’m pretty sure you have powers, too.”

  He nodded. “Apparently, my jarhead brother and I, although raised on Earth, were children of some very powerful supers. We can get into it when we travel again, or during our next down time. I’d love to hear more of your stories—especially, Letha and Trunk, what happened after you both ascended.”

  The ‘jarhead’ part of what he said registered, although it took me a moment to put together the word with where I’d heard it before. “Oh, Marines!”

  “Drew is,” Breaker said, nodding. “Once a Marine, always a Marine.”

  “Ascended?” Tink asked, leaning in so the others wouldn’t hear.

  “Ah, yes,” I whispered back as someone else said something to the group. “Basically, they fought on a planet to earn their rights among the elites in their system. It’s kind of fucked up.”

  “I’ll say.” She frowned, taking in Letha and Trunk.

  Trunk, who had listened to us, shook his head. “Technically, I never did. But yeah, story for another time.”

  “Trunk, will your father really be able to show us where Orion Corp. is? Even get us in?”

  “He has the knowledge and know-how. You just gotta do the convincing.”

  “We’ve got that covered,” Charm assured him.

  “As long as you don’t lose your temper, I guess?” Tink said, but at a look from Charm went small, fluttering next to my shoulder.

  “Right, don’t you worry about Charm,” Breaker said. “She’s reliable. Each of you should worry about your own team when we get there.” I was pretty sure he looked my way before continuing. “Right now, we’re gonna need a small group, including Trunk, to get his father and escape with the man. That means going with me will be Trunk, Charm, and… Trunk, you want to take one of yours?”

  The man adjusted himself, clearly not used to wearing so much clothing, and shrugged. “Knowing my dad and where he’ll be, I’ll say my boy Draino, there.”

  “Draino?” Breaker asked.

  A short guy with pearly whites stepped forward, rubbing his hands together as he shouted, “Reporting for duty.”

  “Why him?” Breaker asked. “Some power that’ll help? A knowledge about this sort of stuff?”

  Trunk laughed. “Nah, just that my dad’s the type to hang out at whorehouses, and I promised this guy I’d buy him a lay.”

  “Fucking classy,” Letha said with a laugh.

  “Hey, anytime you wanna come back my way for a spin, you let me know.”

  The hybrid next to Letha growled, but she put a hand on his chest. “Darnell, please. We have history, that’s all.”

  Trunk grinned, staring down Darnell.

  Letha turned back to Trunk, glared, and then returned her attention to Breaker. “And the rest of us?”

  Twitch cut in. “We’ll have two ships in orbit, in case there’s trouble, and the rest can wait here, ready to go. I’d like to get some time for us all to spar, get to know each other’s strength in a fight, that sort of thing, so that we’re a cohesive unit.”

  “Good thinking.” Gale gave her a respectful nod.

  “I like it too,” Letha chimed in. “Just remember, we don’t all have superpowers. That said, we know how to shoot, and where a blade goes.”

  “Make it fast,” Andromida said, rotating her neck and then stretching her arms. “I’m—”

  “Ready to get out of here, I know,” Breaker cut in, earning a couple of chuckles. “Sorry, but we all are. If Draino here’s really going to visit a whorehouse, he better be a true one-minute man.”

  “I can do even quicker,” the short guy said, giving Breaker a thumbs up. “Ten seconds, maybe thirty, tops.”

  “And where would you have me, master?” Aegriss asked, earning a nervous glance from all around. Oddly, there was a very palatable unease from his immediate group members, and something cold about Aegriss’ emotional aura. Different.

  “We can watch her,” Twitch said. “If anyone comes by, she can cover for us, assure them all’s normal.”

  “Good call,” Breaker replied, then turned to the Aegriss. “Do that.”

  She nodded his way, hands folded in front of her, and gave me a pleasant, very awkward, smile. It all felt rather unnatural, the way they were treating her, so I had to assume she was new to the team.

  “Android,” Cheri hissed into my ear. “Lilly’s telling me so, anyway. Just joined… basically.”

  I made eye contact with the supposed android, wondering if she had heard us and wondering how it was that I could get an emotional signal off her if she was truly an android. Lilly, Cheri’s bear but so much more, hadn’t steered me wrong in the past, so I decided to go with it.

  Breaker laughed. “Let’s get to it, then.”

  The four of them chosen for the mission took off, and I was fine with that. My team and I returned to our ship, ready in case we needed to fly or charge into the city. I hated not knowing what the next move was, but it would depend in large part on the success of our other teams. One thing I knew for sure, I had zero interest in staying on an elite-fueled fucking Paradise Planet one minute longer than was needed. These types had always annoyed me. People who thought they were better than others, basically considering themselves gods. Maybe that had been part of what drew me to Orion Corp., before I understood the truth of the corporations. They had promoted themselves as the answer for the common man. In a way, it was about power rather than status, which should have been a red flag in itself. At the time, all I saw was a system that set itself apart from the structure that had claimed my dad, the part I didn’t want to tell my team about. How he had fallen at the hands of the system, tried his best to bring us out of our place in it all, only to feel the weight too heavy for his shoulders.

  Turns out, maybe neither was exactly optimal. At the moment, I was going for the lesser of two evils, but still hoped for changes in more than one way.

  “Maybe we should wait inside,” I said, feeling a ball of disgust building up in my gut at the thought of this planet and everything it stood for.

  “Good idea.” Judging by the tilt of her lip and bounce in her step as Cheri moved aboard the ship, she had a similar notion of the place.

  Tink, I noted, lingered for a moment, eyes scanning the horizon as if looking for something. Maybe this reminded her of her home? Reaching into my fairly good memory and considering what I had learned about her when I read the file to prepare for her hunt, it hit me that she had indeed come from a place of wealth. She had been raised in a city I used to dream of visiting as a youth, one that, even in my studies at the temple, my mind had wandered to. It was during that time that I had learned to block the image from my mind, an image of me riding through a flying car down the streets of Ingar, its crystalline buildings rising up around me, the elegance of white and cobalt blue that made up the city sparkling in its dual suns.

  “You’re… happy?” I asked her, pausing with her as the others went ahead. “Here with me, I mean.”

  “Anywhere with you,” she replied.

  I grinned but waved the comment off. “Come on, not that long ago you were threatening to dismember me and worse.”

  “Not long ago, I also wasn’t sucking your cock, but…” She leaned into me, hand running along my inseam. “Things change.”

  “But, no matter what happens with us, where we end up, it’s not going to be Ingar.”

  She went rigid for a moment at the sound of the city’s name, a look of disgust crossing her face. Not the response I had expected.

  “The day I go back there is the day I die,” she said. “Literally—they’ve exiled me until that day.”

  “I’m sorry…?”

  “Don’t be. I was part of an operation that exposed some very high-level officials in a ring of corruption and worse.” Her tongue ran along her upper teeth as she stared off at the wall in thought, then said, “Unfortunately for me, it turned out that pretty much everyone was in that boat. Everyone but me. They reinstated everyone else and kicked me out. That’s how it goes.”

  “Even in Ingar…”

  “Not ‘even,’ but especially. Yes.”

  “I had no idea.”

  She put a hand on my shoulder, offering a smile. “The prettiest things aren’t always so perfect once you get to know them.”

  “Is that a warning?” I chuckled, nervously. “Are you going to end up being some serial killer and slaughter me in my sleep?”

  “You’re kind. I hope you find that’s not true with me, but in much of life, it’s the case.”

  I nodded, considering the fact that I really didn’t know her very well. There was what I knew on paper, and the intense experiences we had shared on Abaddon and since, but… that wasn’t much.

  Apparently, she was thinking the same thing or something very similar, because her emotional aura started showing me unease and confusion. I leaned in, kissed her, and wrapped my arms around her.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said.

  “What doesn’t?”

  “Anything. None of it matters. We’ve shared a very intense experience, and some very intimate ones since then. Even if I learn that there are parts of you which aren’t what I would have once considered perfect, I will love them because they are part of you.”

  “You think?”

  I chuckled. “If there’s one thing I know, it’s emotions. Ours are real—all of ours. We need to get to know each other more, but for that we have all the time in the universe. Or, at least as long as we can manage to stay alive. Personally, I’m looking forward to getting to know each of you more.”

  “Ditto.”

  She kissed me back but then scrunched her nose. “Funny, considering how much I took you as the macho type…”

  “Don’t say it. I can be macho and still express feelings and emotions. I’m redefining macho.”

  Her laugh was pleasant. The way she squeezed my crotch a moment later, more so.

  “This is all the macho I need.”

  I squirmed uneasily as her fingers caressed me. A chuckle sounded from outside and I turned to see that we were still in the entryway with the ramp open, one of the hybrid men watching with a wide smile.

  “Hope you enjoyed the show,” Tink said, waving with her free hand, and then hit the button to make the ramp go up.

  I laughed, turning to continue in, but her hand gripped me tighter.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” she asked.

  “I assumed…”

  The rest of my sentence went unspoken as her hand moved up and then into my pants, stroking me right there. Her free hand started working my pants off, and she shook her head.

  “All this talk of getting to know each other more, I figure…” She knelt and rubbed my cock along her cheek, down toward her mouth. “No time like the present.”

  Naturally, I didn’t point out that this wasn’t the kind of ‘getting to know each other’ we had really been discussing, but hey, it made us both feel closer to each other, so why not? She held my cock as if for inspection, then flicked her tongue out, tickling my scrotum, then the tip of my cock.

  “See, getting to know you better already,” she said, and then was working it. When I couldn’t take it any longer, I pulled her up and pressed her against the wall while pulling her pants off.

  “Favorite food?” I asked, my hand sliding along her thigh and then gripping her ass.

  “Rack of lamb, slow…” She breathed heavily into my ear, guiding my cock to rub against her wet pussy. “…slow… cooked with pomegranate. You?”

  I felt her against me, moving so that I felt her opening take me inside, our two bodies becoming one.

  “So?” She asked, my cock fully inside of her, her eyes fluttering.

  “Food?” I pulled her to me, slowly making love to her. “I don’t… Oh, Oram… Maybe tiramisu?”

  “That’s dessert, it’s cheating.”

  I laughed. “Who the hell cares right now?”

  She grinned, moved in to kiss my neck, then bit my ear lobe. “Favorite position?”

  “Sexual?”

  She bit me. “Of course.”

  “This one right here feels very nice.”

  More thrusting, groping of flesh, kissing, and then an emotion of arousal from nearby registered, although not the one from Tink.

  “Er, Ezra?” Mer said, standing in the hallway. She was turned slightly as if not watching us, but eyes clearly focused on the view.

  I froze there, mid-thrust. “Yes?”

  “They sent me to tell you. I guess they thought… thought it would be funny? But… attack coming. You should see this.”

  “Not the only thing coming,” Tink said, pressing against me and taking my cock back fully inside of her. “One minute?”

  “I’m not sure we have time,” Mer replied, but Tink wasn’t listening. She was grinding on me and gripping me, her head thrown back and mouth open with eyes shut. I shared a look with Mer as Tink climaxed, and then Tink was off me, kneeling with two hands on my cock, jacking me off until I came all over her face.

  The whole time, Mer watched. When it was done, Tink stood and grinned, then said, “I’ll find a bathroom and see you in the bridge.” She had to hold a hand to her brow to keep my cum from dripping. I had to admit, after that, I felt much closer to her.

  And to Mer, who was biting her lip while staring at my engorged cock.

  “Sorry about that,” I said.

  She shook her head, eyes wide as if just realizing what had happened, then spun on her heel and ran back to the bridge.

  With a shrug, I tucked myself away and followed. Nobody had forced her to watch, after all.

  I entered to find Erupa and Cheri giving me sly grins, but they only lasted as long as it took them to remember the action on the screen as my eyes found it. Ships were incoming, and a lot of them.

  “Marines?” I asked, moving to the pilot seat and adjusting my half-boner so it wouldn’t be so obvious.

  “And more,” Erupa said, indicating a spot on the screen that showed some massive ships. “Those… I think they’re the Nihilists.”

  Mer sat in her seat, avoiding eye contact with me, or maybe she was just very engaged by the action on the screen. Judging by the nervous aura coming from her, it was less about that action, and more about the action she had just witnessed. Tink entered and glanced around, then to the screen, and said, “Shit.”

  “Indeed,” I said, checking in with the others as I raced through the hot launch startup sequences and then fired the engines on our ship. They were preparing as well. We were soon in the air, ready for action.

  An attack hit the city, the explosion no joke. Smoke rose and filled the air as more and more attacks hit. We were airborne now, doing our best to avoid the Marine ships that took us for the enemy, and already attacking any Nihilist-related ship we could confirm as enemy. Soon the Marines had forgotten about us, going full-on against the Nihilists.

  “Breaker’s incoming!” Twitch said, voice over the comms and through the ships in a way that told me she must have managed to hack into the ships with her special screens. “Prepare to make departure.”

  “We are,” I said, watching as the Marines began putting together a protective barrier that was helping to hold off the enemy attack, at least momentarily. I had no doubt they would fall, and judging by the force arrayed against them, it wouldn’t take long.

  Soon we were off, though, knowing this wasn’t our fight and not one we could make much of a dent in. Breaker filled us in on the rest of the mission and the coordinates we were to fly for. We had our destination, the location of the friend of Trunk’s dad who they had been after.

  It was time to put our plan into action.

  4

  Mer joined us on the bridge as we flew out to put the pieces together. We flew in silence for a while, and when I turned to take in the team, I couldn’t help but notice Tink eyeing her with curiosity. Tink winked at me, then leaned toward the hybrid.

  “We saw you watching, before,” Tink said with a suggestive wink. “So…?”

  Cheri and Erupa turned to look at Mer, waiting for a response.

  “You all have something special,” Mer said. “Me? I’m the outsider. I’m… curious, of course. Who wouldn’t be? Curious, nothing more.”

  Oddly, her aura was spelling pure desire. Lust. Infatuation.

  With a glance at me, Cheri laughed, loud and intense. When she stopped, she leaned in toward Mer and said, “Girl, you do know our boy’s powers, right? Reading your mind, kind of.”

  “Emotions,” I corrected her. “Mind is you.”

  “Not exactly,” Cheri countered. “Voices tell me things, that’s all. Sometimes it’s exactly what someone around me is thinking, others it’s not.”

  “So, both of you can… kind of read my mind?”

  “Kind of,” I said, nodding as if in apology. “It’s not intentional, though. I don’t mean to be intrusive.”