“Are you really letting me fly the Ebony?” I asked Kol when we stepped onto the bridge. “I’m mean really?”
The crew on the bridge did their fist over the chest and bowing thing to Kol, and they did it to me too, but none of them looked at me. He nodded to me as he led me to a large control panel where someone was always stationed even if the ship was on auto pilot. The male moved away without a verbal order from Kol. My husband positioned me in front of the massive control console, and he planted himself behind me. He put his hands over mine and placed them flat on the control panel. It was a touch screen filled with holograph images.
“You do not know how to physically pilot but just about anyone can do it mentally,” Kol explained. “I have given you clearance to fly. You don’t have a comm of your own, but your translator has frequencies that my comm has just finished rewriting so you can think your commands to my craft.”
I was suddenly terrified to fly the ship.
“This is a bad idea,” I said, panicked. “I shouldn’t have asked for this.”
I noticed the males on the lowered section of the bridge suddenly grabbing the closest sturdy thing to them, and a few of them even laughed and said something that made Kol tense.
“Say a single word further,” he growled to the males on the bridge, “and I will allow Surkah to do her annual assessment early this year.”
Gazes quickly dropped, and bodies busied back to work. All except one.
“An early assessment is worth it.”
“Nero—”
“That little human has you, as the humans say, by the balls.”
I choked on air as I laughed. I looked to my right and found Nero, a male who I had met a few days earlier when I tried to escape the Ebony.
“Get back to work,” Kol growled.
Nero winked but did as ordered. When my attention left him and returned to what I was about to do, I tensed all over again.
“You will do fine,” Kol assured me and pressed a kiss to the crown of my head. “Now listen to me carefully, okay?”
I bobbed my head.
“We’ll be reaching Ealra soon, so what we want to do is slow down considerably, and to do that, you need to fire all forward-facing thrusters.”
I knew that; my father had told me the functions of every part of every machine in an engine hall, but I still appreciated Kol’s guidance because I suddenly forgot everything I had ever been taught about a spacecraft.
“Okay, and how do I issue that command?”
“You simply think it.”
Uh.
“Okay … is that all?”
“You have to start your command with ‘Ebony’, or she won’t do what you tell her.”
I gasped. “Is she self-aware?”
A lot of androids on Earth had become self-aware over the years.
“No.” Kol nudged my head with his. “She is just programmed to react in conversation as if she were a living Maji female. She has a personality.”
“Right,” I said, relaxing. “Will I do it now?”
“Let me announce our heading to the passengers first.”
I hesitated. “Okay.”
He closed his eyes. “This is the shipmaster,” he spoke, his voice stern. “Prepare for deceleration. Humans, you will feel odd for a few minutes, so I’d advise you to sit down and place your head between your knees now. All males assist any female in need … Please note that my mate is heading the deceleration.”
The crew on the bridge practically wrapped themselves around their consoles.
“Oh, thanks a lot, guys! That’s reassuring!”
Nero laughed from somewhere behind me.
“You can go ahead,” Kol murmured to me, ignoring everyone’s panic. “I trust you.”
I didn’t know why I was so startled by his voice, but I was. I figured it was my nerves over flying the craft that was filled with living beings. I quickly looked down at my hands, and before I lost my nerve, I thought, Ebony, can you fire all forward-facing thrusters to slow us down … please?
Yes, Princess Nova. A sultry female voice flowed through my mind. Firing all foreword facing thrusters on your mark.
I swallowed. Mark.
I gasped when my body was suddenly, in slow motion, pulled forward. I felt so bizarre and almost instantly lightheaded and weak. My hands slipped from the control panel, and before I knew it, I was sitting on my behind with my knees raised to my chest and my head resting on them. A large warm hand was stroking up and down my back.
You did so well, shiva. Your execution was beautifully done.
I was trembling.
I can’t believe you let me do that. I’m never doing that ever again.
Kol was silent as he continued to stroke my back. It didn’t take long until I was back on my feet and feeling normal again. I worried for the rest of the human women who were also possibly feeling weak, but Kol assured me there weren’t many cases of women fainting, and those who had were being cared for by males until Surkah or another healer could help them feel better.
“Do you want to see the engine hall?” Kol asked me. “You won’t be back on board the Ebony in the future, so it’s your last chance.”
So he thought. I didn’t tell Kol that I eventually wanted to start my trade as an engineer, but I figured I’d wait until we were settled on Ealra for a few months before I made that declaration.
“I’d love to see it.”
We left the bridge hand in hand, and a few minutes later, we were on the lower decks of the Ebony and walking into the incredibly huge engine hall. I imagined the engines of the craft to be roaring with life, but they were eerily silent even though they were working from the look of them. I was a little unnerved that I couldn’t tell which engine was the main one used for converting energy from the reactor core and which ones were the propulsion engines used to fire up the craft’s thrusters. It all looked different from what I was used to.
“Thane?” Kol shouted, looking around for his friend. “Where are you?”
I saw no males anywhere, and I found that extremely odd because an engine hall usually had a crew with specific skills who kept everything in check from the moment the rector flared to life until the moment it was shut off. I smiled when I suddenly heard the familiar growl of an engine, a hiss of pneumatics that flowed to the reactor core, as well as some reverberating. The Ebony was virtually silent, as Mikoh had once told me, but an engine was an engine, and all an engine wanted to do was to be heard.
“This is amazing,” I said in awe. “So beautiful, but where is the crew?”
“Declaration has passed, Thane sends his crew to eat because he can manage on his own from this point on.”
“How can one-person handle all of this by himself?”
“Thane is a gifted chief engineer; he can do the work of ten males. He prefers is that way.”
I jumped when I heard a loud bang that was quickly followed by harsh curses.
“Is that you, Kol?”
The voice that spoke was deep and had a natural rasp to it.
“It’s me,” Kol confirmed. “And my mate.”
I blinked when a male rounded from behind a black engine pump with a rag of some kind in his hand. His skin, or what I could see of it anyway, was a warm blue … the patches that weren’t covered in a thick black liquid anyway. Like every other Maji male, Thane was tall, muscular, and ridiculously attractive. His chestnut brown hair was tied into a knot on the back of his head, but wild strands escaped the tie and hung loosely around his chiselled face. His cat-like eyes were emerald green with orange strikes throughout them, and a white scar stood out against his skin, curving up from his neck to his cheek in a jagged pattern. I didn’t focus on it. Instead, I locked my eyes on the black patterns that also decorated his neck, the top of his chest, and his bare arms.