Page 24 of Protected By the Alien Commander

Doshax

I satin the cockpit studying the instrumentation on the dashboard while Ohliveah and her friends carried over things from their ship. She would not let me help. My job, as she told me, was to stay on the ship and study the cockpit controls to make sure we would not blow up in space. I narrowed my eyes at the smaller, damaged ship I could see out the cockpit window. A warrior did not sit or leave women unprotected, but Ohliveah had been fierce with her reasoning that it would not take much time and they would be fine.

It did not ease my vexation that she was right. The IGS trained its pilots on all the current fighter, deep space, and transport ships. However, anything else was reserved for the navigators. I was not familiar with these old-style controls, but now that I had studied them, I considered myself competent to take the ship off the planet and set a course for the nearest city, whether it be on a planet or on a satellite station.

In no time at all, Ohliveah entered and claimed the copilot’s chair. “We've got everything off the ship, and we’re ready to go. We brought everything we could carry, like you said. Who knows if we’ll need it, but we even brought pillows and sparkle sticks from the lounge.”

I thought of at least three traps that could be made using the light sticks and pillows, and ways they could be used in a shelter, but I was not going to say that out loud. I did not want to scare her. The odds were against our needing to make shelter again, but I would not discount the strange things that had happened. We needed to be prepared for anything.

The fact that this ship had turned on by itself and flew was the strangest yet. Maybe my ship would start when I returned to it. But I would have to do that after I took the females to the closest hospital.

I rubbed my chest at the thought of being separated from Ohliveah. But it was stupid to feel this way. I knew my duty to the IGS and my men. In addition, I needed to find the pirates so they did not destroy any other families. It was my fault for succumbing to my baser instincts when I knew I had a year left on my contract. Not surprisingly, that knowledge did not make the pain of our upcoming separation any easier to bear.

I flicked the switch to the ship’s speakers. “Attention everyone, buckle in. I am going to lift off slowly, and then we will leave the atmosphere.” I turned to Ohliveah. “I am going to fly over the other side of your ship first. The crew might have gotten out.”

“I'm not going to look. I don’t want to see any… thing.”

I glanced at her bowed head. I doubted there would be anything on the outside of the ship. Any bodily damage to the crew would be contained in the cockpit.

At the sound of running footsteps, I looked behind my chair to see the other females enter the cockpit. They hurriedly fell onto the small jump seats behind our chairs. “Wait, wait, don't take off until we get buckled in!”

Her friends must not have wanted to be separated. I did not blame them. Once I heard the click snaps of the restraint systems, I slowly pulled back on the flight stick. I had not wanted to let Ohliveah know how worried I had been that the ship would not fly again. When the ship responded and lifted off the ground, I let out my breath I had been holding.

Orange dirt blew up in a haze that blocked any view out the window. I raised the ship slightly higher until the dust cleared, then I piloted the ship to the far side of their crashed cruise ship. The nose of their craft was buried in the ground. The crew would not have survived that. The females were lucky they had been in the lounge when it had hit the ground.

I looked over at Ohliveah, thankful that she had survived her ship’s crash. Otherwise I would never have met her. Our eyes connected. I flashed her a quick smile instead of what I wanted to do, which was to pull her onto my lap and kiss her senseless. Dragging my eyes back to the dashboard, I focused on safely flying the ship out of the planet’s atmosphere.

“Hold on, this may be a bumpy ride.” I pulled the flight stick back. The ship shuddered as it flew away from the planet’s surface. This might be the last flight it made.

Ohliveah and her friends cheered as the ship approached the black of space. It was hard not to share their excitement, but I would rather wait to celebrate until we were in space with a course set for the closest hospital. I hoped this ship’s directional instruments started working once we were away from the planet.

This nightmare was getting close to being over, but not for me. I still had to find my squadron and the pirates.

The steady vibration of the ship stopped. I looked down at the dashboard. The ship was dead, nothing lit up anymore. I pounded the ship and pushed buttons, but nothing responded. Flaxx!

Ohliveah stared with her mouth open. Her friends were more vocal. “What happened? Why is it quiet?”

And just when I had thought the nightmare was over…

I could not restart the engines. Why had they quit? I would blame the age of the ship, except that my squadron’s new Raptillion ships had died near the planet too. Was there something on the planet disabling spaceships?

The females were screaming as I tried to control the ship’s descent back to the planet. Was it just the cockpit without power? The instrument panel for the ship's battery levels showed they were at acceptable operating levels. If that was the case, there should still have been power to the cockpit. Rocks on the planet with magnetic elements or other properties could not have caused the ship to suddenly lose power. Was there something else making technology fail?

As I held the ship steady, I determined the best solution to land it in a controlled crash, one that would end with all of us alive. I would have to glide it to land on its underside, exactly like I had done with my ship. There was one major problem: this craft was bigger, bulkier, and older. It would be like trying to land an urlak that could fly.

“Can you keep pushing this button to cycle the engines?” I glanced at Ohliveah. “I am going to land the ship to minimize damage and it will take all of my concentration.” I raised my voice to address her friends. “Could you stop screaming?”

They did not stop.

Ohliveah looked back. “Hey! Quiet down! He’s trying to land the ship!”

Finally, blessed silence. Except one of the girls started praying.

I was not against prayers, Goddess knew we needed them. Except the praying could be quieter.

Ohliveah was still frantically pushing the engine cycle button and anything within reach. Nothing happened. She pounded on the dashboard.

“Tighten your restraints!” I yelled to be heard over the sound of the girl’s praying. “We are not going to have much time before it gets bumpy.”