Page 21 of There’s an Alien Down My Chimney

Stella didn’t hesitate, she leaped into the Scintilla the moment the gap was wide enough, and I shoved the artifact inside after her. A blue spark arced from the artifact to my body as I let go, the ends of the cylinder starting to faintly light up again. Shit, that was bad. We couldn’t have that thing go off on us before we were flying, what if it send us back to space?

Then a bullet pinged off the hull next to my head, and a second followed, scraping through the sacred Santa hat Stella had gifted me. I roared in anger, spinning around to look for the culprit. Had that spark broken my personal shield?

My eyes landed on a group of soldiers crouched behind stacks of sandbags, at least three of them with the barrels of their guns leaning over the top. Right as I aimed the laser-pistol, which Stella had accidentally set to its maximum setting, a bullet thudded home in the shoulder of one of those soldiers. Pike was still there, covering our asses. I shouldn’t be wasting time, taking stupid risks for the sacred hat, so I threw myself back into my ship, slamming the hatch closed behind me.

“Welcome aboard, Captain,” the computer announced, I ignored the greeting and ducked past Stella to grab a net from the nearest shelf to secure the artifact with. I did not need that stupid thing to go off on us while hurtling through the interior of the ship. What if it hit Stella or me in the back of the head.

“Computer, run diagnostics, how much fuel have we got? Can we make it off the planet?” I demanded while I threw the net over the artifact, the magnetic edges engaging to strap it to the deck of the small interior corridor beyond the airlock. Stella’s smaller hands were helping me smooth them into place, her gray eyes wide, and a little in awe as she took in the insides of the Scintilla.

“Running diagnostics,” the ship stated, “Please rephrase your secondary request, I am unable to comply.” I rolled my eyes at the stupid computer, wracking my brain for the right way to restate my question. There were no sounds coming from outside, the hull was too thick and too insulated to let anything through, still, I worried the humans were shooting at my ship.

Taking the backpack from Stella, I stuffed it in a cubbyhole, dragging her by the wrist along to the front of the ship. I was going to have to fly this ship, and then I was going to have to hook myself up to the nav-ports for the first time since Ar’tax’s fatal accident. I hadn’t considered this part of the plan at all, and my stomach was tying itself up in knots about it.

After Ar’tax had died in the pilot chair at my side, after I had received a dangerous amount of current through the ports, enough to nearly kill me, I had sworn never to navigate again. It looked like I didn’t have a choice though, we were so far away from the Zeta Quadrant… If I wanted to figure out a way to get us home, I had to try.

There was only one seat currently inside the bridge of the Scintilla, I’d ejected with the other one when I’d crashed on this planet. Tossing my own bag in a safe cubbyhole, so it would stay out of the way during the flight, I sat down in the navigator’s seat and pulled Stella into my lap with me, strapping the harness tightly around us to make sure we wouldn’t go flying once we hit zero-g. “Diagnostics complete, all systems stable,” the ship announced right as I clicked the last buckle shut.

Flicking buttons with both my hands and my tail, I started prepping the Scintilla for launch. My eyes focused on the viewscreens to see what the fuck was going on outside. “It looks like mass panic,” Stella pointed out, indicating the crowd milling around outside the ship. On the cameras, we could also tell a contingent of soldiers was heading out into the forest, up towards the hillside Pike had used as a vantage point. Since there was no shooting going on, I had to assume that Pike was making a run for it.

“Ship, analyze fuel levels, do we have enough to break atmosphere?” I demanded again of the ship. This time I heard how the engines were whirring to life on my command, and my pre-flight check was almost complete. Pulling on the yoke, I gave the thrusters some power, and up we went, ripping the straps holding the Scintilla to the trailer like paper. Stella whooped and pumped her fist as it happened, her eyes glistening with excitement.

“Now we just need to offer a little distraction so that Pike can get away,” I grinned. Swinging tail around over Stella’s head to flip on the laser array I normally used to cut hull pieces apart out in the scrap field near Strewn. Hovering above the UAR facility, I selected some trucks in the near distance as the target, and they blew up in a marvelous display of fire.

Now they were really panicking, and even the soldiers on the hill had stopped to stare and watch. Good, that gave Pike some time to escape. Moving the yoke so the Scintilla pointed to the sky, I opened the throttle and we shot up. Then I started pointing out what was what, explaining it as quickly as I could to my girl. Each time I turned my head just a little, I could see that the artifact was glowing more than before. The interior of the ship was starting to get bathed in light. I had a feeling it wouldn’t be long before it would send us somewhere. I just had to figure out how to make it send us where we needed to go.

“Fuel levels sufficient for escape velocity,” the ship announced and I breathed a sigh of relief. Now I just had to warn Stella about what I was going to have to do, and I should apologize for stealing her from her home while I was at it, even if I wasn’t feeling the appropriate amount of remorse about that part.

Chapter 15

Stella

I knew what Ru was trying to do, familiarize me with the ship so that I could take over flying. I just didn’t know why. I liked the idea of flying a spaceship, hell, I was eager to try, but not while we were still escaping Earth. It seemed to me like flying a ship out of the atmosphere was a tad harder than just flying it around in space. I mean, space was vast, it would be pretty damn hard to hit something in space, wouldn’t it?

At least most of the controls didn’t seem too difficult and the way he was using the yoke… That was extremely familiar, I could probably steer this bird without crashing us. I hoped. The excitement running through me told me that despite the less-than-optimal circumstances I was starting to feel in my element. Up in the sky, flying, was where I’d always fought my battles, this was familiar territory.

“I’m so sorry, Stella,” Ru said, his mouth pressed against my crown when he spoke, brushing heat across my scalp. I wasn’t entirely sure what he was apologizing for, if it was about the hole in his Santa hat, I was going to be so pissed, like I cared if that hat got damaged, as long as he was unhurt.

“There’s no way I can leave you on the planet, I didn’t mean for that to happen. I’m so sorry I’m stealing you from your home…” he said, elaborating. Okay, so that was even worse. Why was he trying so freaking hard to leave me behind? My face heated at the thought of what I’d stuffed in my pack, at the choice I’d made. I was the one who’d tried to make our affair all about fun right at the start. I was an idiot for not remembering that, he was just holding me to it. No wonder he was so regretful.

“What home?” I exploded, my eyes on the viewscreen where images of the forest were still streaking by even though we were climbing rapidly. “Are you so ready to leave me behind? Are you eager to get back to the lover you left behind in your own time?” I didn’t know where those mean words were coming from, Ru was a good guy, a total sweetheart, he wouldn’t have a lover stashed somewhere, I knew that.

“Leave you behind?” Ru said, his voice rumbling with a deep growl, my body vibrating against his chest. “I don’t want that at all, but this isn’t fair to you. I don’t want to take your choices from you…” All the hurt I was feeling faded away at those words. Of course, Ru didn’t want to take my choices, that was so him.

“Ask me what’s in my backpack,” I said, folding my fingers around his on the yoke so I had something to do. Embarrassed heat was crawling up my cheeks, I had acted so stupidly just now, Ru did want me here. I should have just come out and said it, should have told him about my choice before this mission started. I really needed to brush up on my communication skills.

He was quiet behind me for a moment, his thighs tensing beneath my legs, then he spoke with what was clearly a smile in his voice. “What’s in your backpack, Stella?” He leaned in as he said it, so his lips brushed against the shell of my ear. With the nose of the ship still pointed up, straight toward the stars, I could start to see heat streaking across the viewscreens displaying what was the front of the ship.

“Everything I need to start a life with you somewhere,” I said, my mouth going dry as I spoke the words. “And cocoa of course.” I didn’t have to worry about whether he liked that or not, he made an eager noise, and then he took a hand off the yoke, tilted my chin back, and pressed his mouth to mine in an eager kiss.

“Yes, I want that so bad,” he told me, “I should have known you’d made up your mind the moment I saw that bag. No wonder you were so cool about the lack of a mask in that interrogation room.” He grinned, displaying his sharp fangs, his red eyes glowing with happiness. “I love you, Stella, I didn’t want to leave you. I was so happy when I realized you had to come.”

He loved me, he just said it so easily. It made my heart soar, hearing those words, and I murmured them back with this sense of relief. So what if it was crazy that I’d gone and fallen in love with an alien that had crashed into my chimney? So what if I had just chosen to give up my home, my friends, everything. Just to be with him?

This felt like the best Christmas I could have had, and I was pretty sure if my grandfather could have had anything to say about it, he’d have told me to grab hold of this opportunity with both hands. But then… My grandfather had always loved to look up to the stars, he’d always believed in Christmas magic.

I wanted to turn around in the harness straps and kiss him some more, and he was feeling as amorous as I was because I could feel his cock harden beneath my butt. Except everything suddenly started going weightless, my body floating up inside the harness, losing that delicious pressure against his erection.

He groaned, “Fuck, always with the interruptions.” His focus shifted from me to the ship as he checked the indecipherable readings on his displays, making adjustments with switches and the yoke. “Leaving exosphere in three, two, one,” the ship’s computer announced. The front displays no longer showed heat streaking across the nose of the ship but instead a dazzlingly bright display of stars.