Page 15 of Starfighter’s Salvation

Yet I was the one sitting here holding her hand, staring at her mouth like a starved man staring at a feast. She'd agreed to travel with me, a compromise that satisfied no one, including me. I leaned back, away from temptation and it was as if her fingers followed the retreat by a fraction, tightening in sleep. I let that small pressure undo the last of my discipline for the night and lifted her sleeping body her into my arms.

Gina woke on final approach to Velerion. Her eyes opened but I felt the change in her hand before I saw it in her face — the shift from limp to aware, her grip finding mine on instinct. She looked at the ceiling, the monitor, the line I'd used to pump nutrients into her arm, our joined hands, and finally my face. No panic. No screaming. She read the room like a medic. That small act of competence hit me harder than the sight of her had. There she was, the female I'd watched for hundreds, if not thousands of hours in training simulations. The incredibly calm triage medic who wasn't afraid of anything.

Not even me.

Approach thrusters pulsed through the deck in soft intervals and Velerion’s reflected light shifted green-blue across the medbay ceiling, sliding across her cheek while she took stock of me.

“I feel better.”

“The nanites cleared all infection and you've been supplied with nutrients your body needed to finish healing.”

“How long was I out?”

I tilted my head toward a visible readout on the wall that was still keeping track of exactly how long I'd held her pressed to my chest and stared at every detail of her face as she slept.

She lifted our joined hands, and the motion pulled my knuckles against her ribs. “I thought you didn't want a mate or a partner. Have you been holding me like this the entire time?"

"Most of it."

"Did the medical system tell you to do that, too?” Her cheeks were flushed and her breathing rate had increased. Either she was angry or aroused. I didn't know her well enough to determine which. Yet.

I considered several answers, most of them cowardly. The truth was simplest. “No.”

"Okay." Her smile appeared slowly, her entire body relaxed, trusting and unguarded, and I looked at the readout to keep from staring at her lips and doing something really, really stupid. “Thank you.” She checked the monitors again. “Whoa. I can kind of read that. The letters are… moving around. What exactly did you give me?”

“A cipher implant, transit medication, antivirals, immune support, and a sedative in the parking garage."

“All in one injection?”

“Yes. Once I had you here, I completed a full scan, and the medbay system gave you an optimized mixture of vitamins and minerals you were deficient in."

She chuckled. "So, like all of them?"

I looked down into her face in alarm and she shrugged.

"Everybody knows most of our food is processed shit with almost no nutritional value these days. Well, unless you grow it yourself on your own farm. Since I live in an apartment, that wasn't happening. And no one can afford organic, even though that's not that great either. It's better than nothing." Her voice trailed off on a whisper as I studied her.

"Growing food is the simplest of technologies. Why do your people not do it properly."

"Excellent question." She took a deep breath and sighed. "But I do feel better. Thank you. We need that technology on Earth. Half my job at the hospital is convincing people to swallow four pills in the correct order. Or to let me put an IV in their arm." She glanced at the tubing I'd attached to the delicate skin on the inside of her forearm. "No needle? I don’t feel a… holy shit. It's like the game!"

"What are you talking about?"

She reached over with one hand and peeled the adhesives from her soft, perfect skin. "Like in the game." She paused and shifted her tone to a monotone voice, obviously mimicking a medical evac ship's computer system. "Don't worry Starfighter. This won't hurt. Nutrients will be delivered to your system through a microdiffusion process." Her delight in her game was enchanting, and contagious. She bubbled with laughter and stared up at me with a smile I would happily kill to see on her face every damn day. "Right? This is amazing."

Well, fuck. My hand seemed to have a mind of its own because I wasn't holding her hand anymore. My thumb was now tracing the soft curve of her lower lip. "Right."

She rested on my lap and trusted me to hold her without a second thought as she lifted one hand. She touched the back of her neck as heat built in the bond mark on mine. She felt it, too. Desire. Warmth. The connection between us that was already too strong to deny. “There's something really there? Under the skin?” She rubbed her neck and held perfectly still in my arms. "I looked in the mirror. I couldn't see anything, but I could feel it."

“Nanites formed the mating mark once you completed training and accepted the bond."

"Not to be rude, but how the hell did you guys get bonding nanites into my body from another planet?" She didn't sound angry, she sounded intrigued.

"I am not involved with distribution of the training simulation that you call a video game on Earth. I can only tell you that the nanites involved exist in the quantum field and travel faster than light, utilizing the same technology of our communications systems. Only one would be required. Once activated, they travel quickly and are self-replicating. The formation of the mating bond was probably built into the sim's code and created once you activated the training modules."

"You mean, once I created you."

My turn to laugh. "You did not create me. You chose me. There are many hundreds of unmated Elite Starfighters in the training sims hoping to be chosen." And this perfect fucking female had chosen me. I shouldn't be proud of that fact but couldn't help myself. Of all the males in the training protocols, she'd selected me. Why? I had no fucking clue, and I was too big of a coward to ask her.