He chuffed and shook his head slightly. He wrapped his hands around my biceps and pulled me into him, bending his head to bring it closer to mine. Being my mate was going to give him neck problems.
I put my hands on his chest and tilted my head back to watch him.
He opened his mouth to speak—alarm klaxons blared. The ship shuddered, gave one hard jerk, and the lights went out.
Chapter 6
Orange lights flashed. The roar of the engines could be heard even over the alarms. The ship was listing to the left.
We’d been knocked off our feet with the initial jerk, There’d been some nasty bruises and one woman had cracked her head on a table pretty severely. The General had taken control of the chaos, gotten people to their feet, and kept us all calm. He hadn’t let me drift more than a foot from him the whole time. One tentacle or claw was always reaching out to touch me every moment or so.
I had totally let it go to my head.
Now everyone was crowded in the bridge while the General typed at the console monitor, his face grim.
He met my eyes. “The engines are overheating and have shut down. The stabilizing systems are offline! We are drifting into the planet’s gravitational field,” he shouted over the roar.
I hadn’t looked out the window since yesterday. It had just been black space.
Now a planet dominated the view. It was burnt orange and did not look inviting. We were being pulled into it? Fear once again coated the inside of my mouth with a sour taste.
Callie cupped her hands around her mouth. “What the hell happened?“
The General stepped back from the consol. “Let’s find out!” He turned to the engine room door behind him, his tails writhing and tentacles gripping the edges of the open door. He’d opened the biometric lock with an override on the captain’s console.
I turned to the girl next to me and shouted into her ear, “Get everyone back into their rooms! We are going to figure this out! I’ll come get y’all later!”
She nodded and started yelling and gesturing for the others to follow her.
Only Callie, Sam, and Patty stayed.
I nodded to them and followed my mate into the hallway and had to grab his arm for balance down the stairs. The ship was shaking and the tilt was more severe now, making the descent down the stairs difficult. I had Patty’s arm gripped in mine to keep her upright. She had Sam’s, and Sam had Callie. Like a chain of teamwork. If I wasn’t freaking out, it would have made me all fuzzy inside.
We came to the huge blast doors that were also biometric. They were already open. Did he open them from the console like the other door?
When we entered the engine room, all the coolant was gone. The engines were steaming and the heat in the room took my breath away. We could go no further than the door. It would blister our skin for sure.
The roaring here was deafening. I looked at Patty; she was pouring sweat and shouting, her mouth was moving but I couldn’t hear anything over the engines. She pointed her finger, and I followed it. At the huge computer, was the engineer shark. Our Designated Survivor. Guess that answered the question about the open door. He was red and badly blistered all over. His clothes were smoking.
I’d forgotten all about him! How the hell had he gotten out of the hold? I was just as bad at security as the sharks!
He was pulling wires and tossing them into the boil of the engines below us.
When he noticed us, I swear he smiled. Right before he pitched himself over the railing and died.
The General pushed us back up a flight of stairs to the first landing and went back into the oven. He looked over the ruined computer. His lights flared brightly, and he jerked the computer off its hooks to toss it into the heat below. He curled his claws, threw his head back, and roared. The muffled power of it heard even over the engines.
He stalked back to us, skin steaming. He wrapped a burning hot tentacle around each of us, and picked us up. My skin was on fire where his tentacle touched the bare skin of my stomach. Hopefully, the others were better off wearing full coverage shirts. Ohem was wasting no time. He curled us close to his back like women-sized backpacks and bolted up the stairs. I recognized the doors and hallways we raced past. He was taking us to the cargo hold.
He didn’t set us down until we were back in the hold with our cages.
“What are we doing here? What’s going on?” I shouted at his back. My hand was shaking when I raised it up to touch him. I curled it into a fist before I contacted his back and pressed it into my stomach. He was ripping paneling and wires out of the wall until the door slammed shut, locking us inside.
“What are you doing?” Callie demanded. She had her arms around Sam and was glaring at the General.
He ignored us both and pulled up another panel from the floor that revealed a huge yellow lever. He jerked it up and grabbed us all again. The hold jerked violently, an explosion rocked the ship, and then we were falling.
Searing pain in my side woke me. I lifted my hips to roll, but something pinned my legs. I couldn’t see. My eyes were open, but I couldn’t see. My breath sawed in and out of me in panicked rushes. I cried out, but only managed a croaked moan. I tentatively touched my side and my hand came away wet. I was bleeding, blind, and pinned to the floor. Where were the others? Patty and Sam, Callie and my General? Someone coughed and gagged.
