Ooh can you tell us about The Derelict? 👀
A tiny bit of backstory...I decided that I wanted to start selling smut on Amazon, and the best way to do this would be to rip the serial numbers on some fanfic. So I took my favorite ideas from SGA, Battlestar Galactica and Farscape to build my setting. It's grown pretty out of hand and I'm not sure it's going to really resemble any of those series in any way when it's finished LOL.
Excerpt: (The POV character is an Air Force Major named Jasper Ward)
It is several long moments before he can lift his head. The pain in his head has lightened. He stands, meaning to find a towel to clean up the mess but the movement is too much and he drops to his knees, vomiting until there is nothing but bile coming up.
When he is finally able to stop, he’s on his hands and knees, panting, vomit on the floor. He pushes himself shakily to a sitting position. He has managed to keep his pants clean but there is vomit on his shirt. He pulls it off and uses it to wipe his face. His breathing returns to normal and he tosses the shirt aside. He pushes to his feet, his dog tags dangling from their chain.
His legs are shaky, but they hold him.
A change in the light quality brings him to full alertness and he looks up quickly, terrified to find that the Daiomon is in his quarters. Its head is tilted uncannily to the side, like an owl hunting prey. He wants to reach for his radio, he needs to call for help, for backup.
Instead, he locks up, staying put.
The Daioman locks eyes with him, and he can’t move. He’s never been this close to one, but he’s read the survivor reports. The way they can entrance their victims, drawing them in with only a look. So many people simply walked into their embrace to die in their first few encounters with the menacing race.
He feels himself take a step towards the Daiomon, feeling a sensation of peace settle over him. He knows something is wrong, something should bother him, but he can’t remember what. He feels the fabric of his shirt slip from his fingers as he takes another step forward. He is within arm’s reach of the Daiomon and it raises a cool hand to his cheek.
He closes his eyes and rests his cheek against the hand which gently cups his face. The clawed fingers trace over his flesh. Those claws, so deadly; they are hollow, used to inject a poison of some kind to neutralize prey, and yet he doesn’t fear them. Somehow, ridiculously, he feels safe.
A voice in the back of his mind is screaming at him, because this is exactly how the report, from the only expedition member to survive being fed on, described the moments right before the attack. The Daiomon’s eyes trail over him, a finger traces his cheekbones, tilts his face to examine it from different angles.
This time when he smiles Jasper doesn’t resist, doesn’t snap out from under his influence. He runs a finger over Jasper’s lips and he feels his lips slide open, an urge to lick the clawed finger creeps over him but he’s too hazy to act on it.
The Daiomon steps back, his trailing fingers falling from Jasper’s face, and Jasper steps forward, blindly following him from the room. A part of him is still screaming that he’s in danger, but there is no agency in his steps as he wanders down the corridors and through crawlspaces that lead deep into the ship. Far deeper than their explorations have reached. He notes, in a vague hazy way, that the fleshy valves which serve as doors open for the Daiomon as he approaches. He never needs to touch a wall, to find a tendon to tug, as the human explorers do.
End excerpt
This is part of a series centered around a group of explorers called the Cygnus Expedition. They are stranded in the Cygnus galaxy with no way to contact Earth, trying to find a way to fit in with the native alien species, both sentient and not. They are running low on supplies and don't have a way to repair their machinery as it ages, so when they find an abandoned Daiomon (predatory, insect aliens who communicate telepathically...hush they get way less wraith-like) ship on a planet they are exploring they decide to wake it up and use it as their own.
Jasper Ward and the science team have been working on getting it operational and Ward is expected to fly it. What they don't know is that Daiomon bond rather intimately with their ships, and to get it to accept him as its pilot Ward is going to have to get it to trust him. In this scene the ship is trying to communicate with him, but it's using a daiomon avatar because that is all it knows; at the same time Ward is pretty delusional due to exposure to some of the ships fluids during repairs.