Mating Fever(3)

“Oh, good.” The woman’s voice belonged to Doctor Moor. I recognized her dark brown hair and kind face hovering over me. She was an Atlan female, which meant she looked human, mostly, except she was well over six feet tall with shoulders broader than most football players. The Atlan Warlords were big men, so I wasn’t surprised that the women were sized to match. She was dressed in the usual green doctor’s uniform, her hair cut short in a pixie style that made her big brown eyes practically jump out of her face. She was gorgeous. But more importantly, she was kind. Which was why I’d come to her for the Interstellar Brides Program testing. I was not about to let one of the Prillon doctors loom over me while I was having an intense sexual experience dream, possibly involving one of their kin.

No way. Not happening. Doctor Moor suited me just fine. And so had that dream.

Looking around, I recognized the dark green stripes lining the walls, the exam chairs that looked like the ones I used to sit in at the dentist’s office when I was a kid. Lying here, I felt small. These things were built to hold huge alien warriors, Atlans and Prillons being the biggest, most close to seven feet tall. And in beast mode? The Atlans topped out at eight or nine feet, like the Incredible Hulk minus the green skin. They were huge, brutally efficient killers, and sexy as hell. At least to me. Nothing made me happier than seeing a battalion of Atlan Warlords swarm the battlefield around me and literally rip enemy Hive soldiers in half with their bare hands.

So I had a wee bit of a violent nature. I’d made peace with that side of myself a long time ago when I joined the Army. Not everyone was cut out for flower garlands and peace protests. No one in my family, at least. But I was more than willing to fight and die to protect those who were. Put a gun, or an ion blaster, in my hand and turn me loose on anything evil. Terrorists on Earth. Hive drones in space. They were all the same to me. Evil was evil. Fighting them made me feel powerful. Made me feel like part of the family. My dad and both my brothers went into the military. Therefore, I went into the military, even though I was a girl. A half-black, half-Irish mutt from Boston.

I could pull the trigger on my rifle just fine.

I was also the only one who’d transferred from the Earth army to join the Coalition Fleet. Not that it made a difference to my mother. I’d fought the Hive for almost two years now—my term was almost up—and seen some seriously insane shit. I wasn’t a weak girl. I was a powerful woman who not only stood up to the Hive, but baited them, trapped them. Killed them. Killed their leaders. Sneaked behind enemy lines and lured the Integration Units away from their protective Hive Soldiers and Scouting units. We’d been targeting the Integration Units, the Hive responsible for torturing and assimilating their captives into the Hive collective mind, for months. But now I had bigger fish to fry. Top Secret fish.

We were hunting their Core communication units, the Nexus Units. A few days ago, we’d almost had one. But our intel was bad. They were guarded by a full dozen Hive Soldier class warriors, big, strong bastards that were hard to kill. The last op had almost killed me, and the Soldier unit had taken out the rest of the warriors assigned to the Op before I could do anything to stop them. We’d managed to get to one of the smaller Nexus creatures. Killed him. But his communications unit had been fried. Worthless. Three dead Coalition warriors…and all for nothing.

I couldn’t live with that, which was why I was going back down there. Tomorrow. The I.C., or Intelligence Core, the elite Coalition minds that ran the intelligence arm of this war, were assigning me a team of five highly trained killers to take into that canyon tomorrow. This time, I wouldn’t fail. My last mission would not be a failure. I’d hear my mother’s disapproving voice in my head forever if I walked away now. “Why can’t you be tough, like your brothers?” and “Stop your crying, little bitch. You sound like a girl.” And my personal favorite, “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, you never shoulda been born into this family.”

The doctor circled me as the memories flooded my mind. Not of rough hands and desire, but of slaps across the face when my mother was drunk, and words that cut so deep I didn’t think my heart would ever stop bleeding.

My dad was a big, powerful black man, fierce and protective. He’d loved us all, when he was home, and I’d loved him with a fierceness that still filled my spine with steel. My mother had been better then, happy. But he died when I was nine and she never recovered, started drinking whiskey like it was water, and the more she drank, the meaner she got. My dad was dead. Had been for a long time. My brothers were tough assholes, still on Earth, still serving their country. I had no idea where they were now. Afghanistan? Syria? Africa? Hell, they could be shitting ice in Antarctica for all I knew. I got a message from my youngest brother about twice a year, letting me know they were all still alive. Even Shirley. Shirley Simmons. “Mother” was not a word I liked to use these days and he knew that.