Adam (BBW Bear Shifter Wedding Romance) (Grizzly Groomsmen Book 1) by Becca Fanning Read Free Book Online

breathing deeply and steading her hands on the steering column. It would take the guard far less than forty-five seconds to re-lower the interior bay door. It didn’t matter; this was why Annie had reprogrammed the countdown to two seconds.

    All sounds outside the Needle abruptly cut off as everything not properly latched down was swept into the inky vacuum of space. Annie took a moment to silently apologize to the seven guards who had been ejected from the ship and then entered warp 2. She double checked to make sure the autopilot was functioning, then slumped back. Pressing a hand to her chest, she closed her eyes and breathed out. Her heart was thumping far too fast under her hand, but she refused to let herself begin to hyperventilate. She was already on a ship with limited shielding and limited fuel in the depths of unfamiliar space. She didn’t need to add “overtaxed the oxygen recyclers” to her list of problems.

    She reached into her bodice and pulled out a scrap of paper. On it was a set of coordinates. She’d done a little research while in captivity and she’d found the location of a Class 6 planet: breathable air, civilized settlements, but not important in terms of strategy or resources. With any luck, she’d be able to stay there until Strathmore lost interest and left. After that, she’d try and catch a ship out, or maybe just stay there. After all, there were dive bars all over the galaxy.  

    She plugged the coordinates into the ship’s computer and closed her eyes. There wasn’t much she could do until she was planetside, and unfortunately that gave her time to do the one thing she really didn’t want to do: think. The worries and fears that had been building up for the last week surged forward in her mind, demanding her attention. With nothing to distract her, she gave in.

    She wondered how her father was. She’d screamed at him, telling him he was no father of hers and that she never wanted to see him again. It had been largely to keep him away from Strathmore, but it had come naturally. At the time letting out years of frustration and disappointment had been cathartic, but now that the chances she would ever see him again being depressingly low she wanted to take it back. Carl Heathcoat hadn’t been the best father in the galaxy, but he was the only one she had. Hopefully he was so deep in a bottle that Strathmore’s men wouldn’t be able to find him.

    And then there were Annie’s concerns about her own safety. She wasn’t dumb enough to think that Strathmore couldn’t track her little Needle. Honestly, she wasn’t sure why he hadn’t just caught up to her and either blown her out of the air or used a tractor beam to pull her back into the main ship. The Appomattox was capable of warp 8, despite its size; Needles could only get up to half of that. Even with the memory of sitting on her mother’s lap as she steered a patrol ship in lazy circles around buildings fresh in her mind she couldn’t out-navigate a trained pilot. The only thing she could think of was that he hadn’t noticed she was gone yet, or that he didn’t care.

    Soon, a blue light lit up on her dash to warn her she was about to break atmo. She sighed, rolled her shoulders, and prepared for her descent. This was the part Annie was truly worried about. She’d never landed a ship on her own, especially not without a proper landing strip. Her plan was to try to hit a huge lake that should be right under where her coordinates put her. If she could slow down enough and hit it at an angle, the emergency ejection system should get her out of the Needle safely. Of course, this depended mostly on her not dying on impact.

    As the rippling blue-green waters grew closer and closer, she steeled herself and tilted the ship slightly upwards and she cut power to the engine. The Needle shuddered for a moment, then automatically booted up its safety protocols. The plasma shielding flickered back to life around her and she felt