MetalReign:AnImpulsePowerStory

Chapter One

Frankie threw her hands up. “Because it’s home, dammit!”

“A toxic planet with a potholed moon.” John rolled his eyes. “Some home. And we’re not even sure anyone survived the initial attack. What if we can’t even live down there anymore? What if everything is dead?”

“Earth is tougher than you think.” The old debate. She was tired of it, tired of waiting, of running out of everything, of being afraid all the time. But then again, humanity was about to do something about it. Stand up and take their planet back. In a matter of hours—

“Your turn.” John tapped the deck of cards on the plastic trunk by her bunk.

She played her card in their weekly game of poker. But her heart wasn’t in it. A headache squeezed the back of her eyeballs. Damn, another low.

John’s eyebrow arched the way it always did when pain slipped past her guard. He never missed much.

“Want one?”

“Sure.” That man was one in a million.

The toffee John offered melted on her tongue as soon as she popped it into her mouth. Caramel flavor spread from the velvety candy as sugar entered her bloodstream. The latest glycemic low left, her hands stopped shaking and her mood lifted. Somewhat. Frankie closed her eyes and sighed. Buttery paradise in her mouth.

“Good, huh?”

In all the years she’d known him, John’s voice had always soothed her nerves. It did again that evening, a mere twelve hours before the great charge. D-Day, as in the old days. But right now, they were playing cards. She focused on that.

She smiled with her eyes still closed, knowing John would wear that corner grin she liked to tease him about, the one that invariably got him in trouble with the ladies. Or more aptly, with their territorial boyfriends. Frankie opened her eyes and caught him not grinning as usual, but wearing a pained expression that flitted to mocking in the blink of an eye. There, then gone. Like those schools of silver fish she had watched in old-fashioned movies.

She let it go. John O’Shaughnessy, her ship’s cook and long-time friend, was eccentric if nothing else. “Better than good.” She winked.

“Is the low over?” The lone lamp in her cabin cast coppery rays in John’s light brown hair, which he wore a bit past the collar. Eyes bluer than an iceberg stared, as if he could see right through to her core. “You still look pale. Want another shot of sugary sin?”

“I think I’m good now.” She extended her steady hands to prove it.

“A surgeon’s hands.” John pocketed the rest of the toffees. Little drops of amber clad in gem-colored wrappers. “You should have the doc take a look at you. I can’t always come bravely running to save you, armed with candy and benevolence. You could lapse into a diabetic coma, and then who would complain about my menu?”

“The rest of the crew?”

“Ouch.” John put a long hand to his chest. “How you wound me, my fair lady.”

“I’m no lady and you know it.”

Without taking his gaze off her, John delicately lowered his cards. A full house.

Frankie slapped her hand on her thigh. “Goddammit.”

“Tut-tut-tut. He had nothing to do with this.” Eyes sparkling, he scooped up and pocketed the evening’s win—old tokens from a long-destroyed bridge on Earth—and leaned back against the bulkhead. Muscles twitched along his rower’s shoulders. All angular, lean lines. “So… That plan of yours…”

And there it was. She knew it had been coming. All evening she’d waited for John to broach the subject of her plan. In his characteristic way, he’d taken his time. A true poker player. No wonder he beat her nine times out of ten. But then again, she didn’t play to win against John, she just played to spend time with him. Once in a while even Commander Beaumont needed to let her guard down and be herself.

“About damn time you said what was on your mind.”

John shrugged. “My nan always said there’s never a good time to make a bad decision.”

“Going after the Imbers is a bad decision?”

“Not if you have tens of thousands of professional troops and an armada of warships. You have neither. Those are biomecha death on wings. How do you kill the machine part of them when you don’t have armor-piercing ammo? And how do you get to the soft, chewy inside when you can’t get past their mechanized defenses?”

Intellectually, Frankie knew he was right. But humans couldn’t afford to do nothing, as they had for the past five hundred years since the invasion. In 2149, Imbers had come on their monstrous ships, thousands of them, machines made of living parts. They had landed and taken everything. Ravaged the planet, killed half of its species, mined it to a hairsbreadth of its ecosystem’s life. While the Imbers raped the planet for its precious ores, unyielding and unafraid of its inhabitants, people had fled in what ships could be launched. Cruise liners, freighters, personal crafts. Those who couldn’t flee died on a planet suddenly toxic. Or so everyone had surmised. Now, she wasn’t so sure. Mass exodus of unparalleled proportions had preceded a couple million humans stranded in space, struggling to sustain life onboard ships never designed for prolonged habitation. After decades of disease and despair—a second Dark Ages—people had begun to reorganize, colonize. Start over. But none of the space colonies were Earth. None of them felt like home.

“We can’t afford to sit on our hands. Not anymore. We’re starving, John. Food is running out. We keep losing power. Our hydroponics crops are failing, children are born smaller and weaker with every generation. Our immunization programs aren’t worth shit. We have to take Earth back. It’s not a matter of ego or honor or whatever. It’s survival. We’re not going to last much longer.”

“We could find another hospitable planet instead of obsessing about one we can’t have. There’s a couple—”

A flare of temper forced Frankie to her feet. Her French father’s side was manifesting itself. Again. “John, for fuck’s sake. There are no other planets close enough. Every single mission we’ve sent came back negative. When they came back at all.”

“So you’re just going to attack them? Get out the slingshots, folks, we’re going after Goliath.”

“No, not just attack them. You know that. One stealth cruiser, no heat signature to speak of, we remote-pilot it close enough to put a charge on the orbital pipeline. The Imbers will think it’s just more space debris and won’t see a thing until their fuel dries out. My plan—”

“Your plan is flawed at best,” John cut in.

Frankie took a deep breath. “You’re not doing that devil’s advocate thing again, are you? Because this is not a good time for it. Not tonight.”

“The devil doesn’t need another advocate, but reason does. It’s not reasonable to think we can hurt the Imbers badly enough simply by cutting off their fuel line. That thing is armored and protected. Plus, they’ll spot us a system away. It can’t be done.”

“It can. And it will. One good hit on that orbital pipeline and it’s bye-bye Imbers. You’ve seen the reconnaissance report—”

“A couple of spotty RSIs don’t count as data to me.”

“Those remote sensing images aren’t spotty when you know what you’re looking for. And people died to get that data back home. It’s the Imbers’ one blind spot, and I’ll be damned if I don’t take a shot at it.”

“Okay. What if you miss that shot? Or worse, what if you succeed and it doesn’t change a thing except make them come after us?” John’s blue eyes turned darker. “They haven’t cared one bit what we do so far, don’t make them. And as the lead ship, Commander Beaumont, you’d be the first to get it in the teeth.”

John always used her rank whenever a debate wasn’t going his way. Frankie sighed.

“You’re on that ship too. And I still wonder why you stayed. You’re a civilian, you could’ve just asked to be reassigned to another ship. This mission was volunteers only.” She raked both hands in her hair. “Look, it’s a decent plan. While the alien scumbags are running around wondering what the hell is going on with their fuel, the rest of our ships will come in for the kill. With the numbers we have, it should be enough to destroy the lunar power plant.”

It sounded true enough, and accurate enough. Yet Frankie couldn’t look into John’s eyes without feeling dirty. Most of what she’d said was true. But not all of it.

She checked her watch, cringed. One standard hour until her ship, Magellan, the largest and oldest in the fleet, would rendezvous with the salvager, Ca Ong, which had in its massive belly the cruiser she’d pilot for the mission.

“Why do you keep looking at your watch? Are you nervous?”

Because all they had was right now. Because she wasn’t woman enough to face him and tell him the truth. Because every time she looked into John’s eyes, she wanted to change her mind and find a quiet place somewhere for another game of poker. Just one more.

In the end, she just shrugged. “Aren’t you?”

Some big Commander you are, Beaumont. Can’t even face up to your one friend.

Through narrowed eyes, John stared at her as she resumed pacing her small cabin. Barely three paces one side then back to the other. When she’d returned for a fourth trip, he stood and blocked her way. She was tall and fit yet was still dwarfed by the man’s six-three, athletic frame. In long hands that didn’t shake—his hands never shook, no matter the situation—John framed her face and placed a kiss on her forehead. Heat wafted out of her collar. He’d never done that. To her shock, the heat caused by his unexpected kiss didn’t dissipate.

“God knows you have a lot on your plate, Frankie,” he murmured. “And I understand you can’t brief me on everything all the time as things happen. But when you want to tell me what’s bugging you, you know I’ll be there to listen. Okay?”

The impulse to tell him everything surged in her. They’d shared so much already. Heartache, frustrations, illnesses and injuries. She could tell him anything, couldn’t she? Almost.

Not this time, Beaumont.

“You’re such a moron,” she let out through a fake grin. Guilt was like a cold knife stabbing her despite the pleasant warmth his hands created.

A dark blond eyebrow arched as he pulled back to look at her. “I’ve been thinking about something…” He scratched the back of his head, sucked his teeth. “Maybe I should just—”

A knock came at the hatch. Both John and she started. It was the first time she’d ever seen him caught off guard. The notion that something could rattle him pained her. He was her rock, her one true friend. If life got to him too, then who else could lend her a shoulder to cry on?

John drew back, an expression of chagrin quickly turning to mockery. He rolled his eyes. “Leila needs to learn how to use the comms.”

“How do you know it’s Seaman Qiu?”

“Only Leila knocks on armored steel.”

Game-face time, Beaumont.

She put the mask back on, changed from Frankie playing a game of poker with her best friend, to Commander Beaumont, ship captain and fleet admiral due to unforeseen circumstances—Admiral Lang’s death had left a gaping hole in the fleet—and a woman about to take what was left of humanity on an all-out charge against the invader. No one but John had ever seen Frankie underneath the stoical mask of leadership. No one but him knew about her drops in blood sugar, her obsessive nail-biting and pacing, or how she would sometimes wake in the middle of a nightmare she couldn’t remember, prey to her own personal demons. Doubts the worst of them. What if she missed something? What if she was wrong about that pipeline? What if something happened to the Ca Ong?

Those what ifs would someday crush her, she was sure.

She felt torn between needing to deal with this latest fire and yearning for a bit more downtime before…

She pulled the lever up and opened the hatch. Seaman Qiu stood not ten centimeters away, brown eyes huge in her pointed face as she saluted. “There’s a problem, Ma’am.”

John slipped his two forefingers inside the arm pocket of his black coveralls and pulled out a toffee. “There. For later.”

When Frankie reached out to take the candy, their fingers brushed. While she turned to address Qiu, she spotted John bringing his hand to his mouth, as if testing the feel of it. That look of pain again flashed in his expressive eyes before the Roman Catholic Irishman who had a direct line to God—John spoke to Him all the time, as he jokingly boasted—winked then walked out.

She could still smell his cologne after he’d left. A strange notion of loss invaded her, made her mad at the intrusion even if she knew intellectually that she could speak with John any time she wished. For the rest of that night anyway. She would go see him later. A lump rose in her throat.

Not now. She couldn’t afford the luxury of self-pity.

“What’s going on, Seaman?” she asked as she rushed down the passageway alongside Qiu. Both sets of boots clanged on the metal grille deck. Those they met snapped to attention along the pitted bulkheads. The Magellan had once been a fine ship. But it was old and tired now. Like the rest of humanity’s infrastructure. They needed that planet back, dammit.

Qiu murmured out the corner of her mouth, “It’s the Ca Ong, Ma’am…”

Glacial fingers of dread gripped her by the nape and wouldn’t let go. The Kraken-class vessel basically carried the entire plan in its hold. If something happened to it, she’d be hard-pressed to find another small, maneuverable craft that could approach, undetected, the vulnerable Imber pipeline.

“How bad?”

Seaman Qiu cleared her throat.

Jesus…

She could tell just by the wall of noise from the hatch leading to the bridge that there was big trouble in the air. Comms crackled with a multitude of messages coming in simultaneously from various ships. None of it sounded good. The two crewmembers manning the console frantically relayed the data to the officer of the watch, who, in turn, barked orders to the rest of the crew. Beyond the wide portholes in front and on each side, inscrutable blackness pressed in against the bonded glass except for one spot lit by the Magellan’s giant searchlight. Still a fair distance away but close enough to ID, the Ca Ong’s unmistakable round prow occupied the beam of light.

When the closest deckhand spotted Frankie stepping through the hatch, a relieved smile spread to his lips. She nodded.

“Captain on deck!”

“At ease. Present location?”

“One light-year from Earth, Ma’am.”

While the chaos of the bridge swallowed Seaman Qiu, Frankie made a beeline for the comms console.

“Sitrep.” She needed a situation report, and she needed it now. Things were not looking good.

“Bad, Ma’am. The Ca Ong just sent a distress call. They had engine problems all the way to its present location—”

“Ma’am.”

Frankie turned away from the comms console to catch the Ca Ong’s starboard green light arcing from left to right, which meant either the ship had executed one hell of a tight turn or it’d just done a barrel roll. Neither maneuver made sense in the present situation when all they had to do was position their aft so that the Magellan’s cargo cranes could tug the stealth cruiser into her hold.

From the comms, a cacophony of messages blared out. Only one word, repeated over and over. “Mayday! Mayday!” Then nothing at all. The silence startled her as badly as the crew. Someone gasped.

“What the hell just happened?” Frankie yelled to be heard above the crackle of static as she rushed to the navigator, who bent over his table and repeatedly jabbed his fingers on the nautical chart. “What’s their heading now? They’re facing us or away?”

“Us.” Lieutenant Bentley blanched when he turned to look at her. “But they’re belly up, Ma’am.”

Shit.

“Comms, try to get them back. Use short-range.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

Frankie tamped down the long line of expletives while she mentally listed what resources she had for a rescue mission. They’d loaded the Magellan to the gunnels with ammo. They had precious little else than warheads and charges for the pulse cannons. Still, the Ca Ong counted at least three hundred crewmembers.

“Officer of the watch, deploy the grappling hooks.”

A couple of the more junior crewmembers—a few had chosen to stay behind for this mission—turned to stare but quickly did as she instructed. She was really pushing her good luck this time. The Magellan, loaded with ammo, would attempt to draw in a ship three times its size and hopefully right it. Should the ships collide…

Muffled thuds along the deckhead heralded three jets of steam shooting out of her ship’s prow as the grappling hooks deployed. A trio of able seamen piloted each hook from their stations.

Frankie stood behind her seat and gripped the backrest. Vinyl squeaked plaintively. “Nice and slow, people. Ca Ong is old, we don’t want to puncture their hull. Attitude jets at forty percent. Take us in.”

Gravity fields shifted as the officer of the watch, Bentley, cautiously maneuvered the Magellan closer to the upside-down ship, firing attitude jets at regular intervals to achieve the perfect angle. Something rolled off a workstation and clattered on the grille deck.

“Comms? Anything?”

“No, Ma’am,” a timid voice replied.

She didn’t recognize that one and turned to see who had spoken. An ordinary seaman by the name of Tilak stared unblinkingly at the tacscreens.

“Switch back and forth. Someone on that ship has his finger on the panic button.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Tilak replied.

Frankie wanted to pace. Bad. But such weakness would have to wait until she was alone. Or with John.

“Quarter bursts from now on, Bentley. Ten percent.”

Sweat pearling on his temples, the OOW nodded.

“Portside grappling hook,” Frankie warned. “Aim for their prow, but the underbelly where the hull is thicker. No atmosphere inside that section so it won’t matter if we punch through.”

A zoomed-in portion on the tacscreen relayed in aqua and green the left-side grappling hook as its tiny engine propelled it at the Ca Ong’s prow. Glowing numbers counted down the distance. Almost there.

“Contact,” announced the able seaman piloting the right-side hook.

Frankie let out a surreptitious sigh of relief. One down, two to go.

“…electrical engine room…”

“Was that them?” she demanded. “Comms?”

Tilak nodded. Another burst of message filled the bridge. “…fire…losing…integrity. Mayday!” The woman’s voice sounded high-pitched and tight.

The two other crewmembers piloting the hooks each announced contact. In a voice she willed to be calm, she instructed them to upright the large ship. Beyond the large portholes, the searchlight illuminated the Ca Ong as it slowly—excruciatingly slowly—began to roll right-side up.

“Perfect,” she murmured. Someone would have to use a power tool to pry her fingers off the backrest. “Bentley, reverse attitude jets. Not even quarter bursts, okay. Just think about backing away.”

Some charitable soul laughed at her lame joke. Her smile crystallized when the man piloting the right-side hook cursed under his breath.

“Something I should know?”

“I’m losing—”

A sudden tremor ran along the deck and rattled the workstations. Anything not bolted to the deck—people included—began to scatter around and collect in corners and along anchoring points.

Frankie barely had time to widen her feet. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

Both Bentley and her comms tech picked themselves off the deck and slid back into their seats.

“Ma’am. The hook broke off.”

“Losing central hook.”

“…Mayday!” The comms drowned everything else.

Another tremor rattled the Magellan. Shit. That ship was just too large to draw in. Frankie took a deep breath. Bentley looked back at her. As did Qiu, who stood lance-straight near the tacscreen. Aqua light bathed her face in lime-green hues. Both knew what was coming. On a long sigh, Frankie ordered the remaining hooks to retract.

“But, Ma’am,” one of the able seamen protested. He spread his feet wider when the ship began to lean to portside, drawn by the Ca Ong’s inert mass.

“Retract the bloody hooks!” Bentley roared. He’d always been all about tact, that one.

“Comms, kill the link,” Frankie murmured. General silence followed her order.

Tilak switched off communications. The last words from Ca Ong floated on her bridge like a stench, like a restless, lost soul. “Unable to launch cruiser. Hull integrity breached.”

While the OOW backed the Magellan safely away from the doomed ship, Frankie walked around her seat and sat on the very edge. The least she could do was bear witness. To three hundred deaths. To humanity’s best chance of reclaiming their home.

The searchlight rendered the scene in sordid details. First the mammoth ship rolled another quarter turn before beginning a slow rotation on its lopsided axis. In vibrant colors and soundless, the view from the portholes made Frankie want to turn away. But she didn’t. No one did. A series of white crackles appeared along the rounded hull and congregated at the extremities. Aft and fore began to glow white-hot. Then the ship’s hull burst like an overripe melon. Silver skin ruptured to spill gray metal flesh. Little black dots—pits—sieved out of the many tears. Everyone knew what these dots were.

Frankie sat in her seat as she watched Ca Ong disintegrating, along with the precious stealth cruiser and her grand plans of insurrection. A mirthless laugh bubbled up her throat. Nerves frayed from months of preparation and sleepless nights pacing her tiny cabin threatened to make a fool of her. She stood, shoved her hands in the pockets of her coveralls. John’s gift poked the pad of her index finger as she pressed on the ends of the candy wrapper. Small thing. Normal thing. While three hundred people were being sucked out into space. Cold, pitiless space.

“Heading, Ma’am?”

She cut a glance at her nav. “Resume heading. We’re carrying on with the mission.”

“But the mission… With the Ca Ong gone…” The able seaman who had protested turned accusing eyes to her. Impertinent little jerk. She’d have a talk with his section head.

“We all know what was on that ship.” Frankie looked at her crew.

“People,” Qiu murmured somewhere behind her.

“Yes,” Frankie conceded. “People. People who believed in what we’re doing. We’re all volunteers on this ship.” She threw a sharp glance at the man who’d be scrubbing the heads for a week. “We all believed in the mission. And that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to just keep on going. Until we’ve rebuilt what was destroyed, until we don’t need to abandon a crippled ship because we can’t afford the additional loss. Until we’re home.”

Frankie felt cheap for not thinking of the crew first. But her cruiser was on that ship. The one craft with no heat signature. The one craft that could sneak under the Imber defense grid. What would they do now? They’d come a long way, had made sacrifices and lost a lot of people. For what? Turning back barely a light-year from Earth? They couldn’t even afford to turn back, not with failing hydroponics crops, with tainted water supplies and crumbling infrastructure.

She left her officer of the watch in charge. Womack and she would need to find another vessel to carry the bomb. They’d have to find a way.

But first, there was a person she wanted to see. Needed to see.

Chapter Two

Just as John was about to turn everything off except the cooker and return to his cabin for too few hours of sleep, a tremor rolled along the deck and sent pots and pans clanging against their anchors. Inside his largest stockpot, sixty liters worth of soup sloshed back and forth. Damn.

“Frankie, you madwoman,” John grumbled as he wiped liquid from the stainless-steel counter. He threaded another chain into the handles and secured the pot to the stove casing. There, even Frankie’s bad piloting wouldn’t budge that thing. They couldn’t afford to lose a single serving. Everything was precious on the Magellan.

“Starting with its captain,” he murmured then shook his head.

The feel of her fingers as they grazed his still sent shivers down his spine. He’d never dared touch her that way. In case she didn’t react. In case she did. Oh, he’d thought about touching her—more than touching on several sleepless nights—since day one. She was his type of woman. Strong, smart, independent and driven. A woman who didn’t need a man. Maybe he should rethink his type. He hadn’t wanted to ruin what they had, the friendship and trust that had developed over the years. What if he reached out one time, and let his affection, his true feelings, show? What if it soured their relationship, made everything awkward and tense? What if he lost her?

No way.

He wouldn’t gamble what they had. Even if it meant he had to watch from afar.

As John muscled the heavy cast-iron grid back over the cooker, a smell drowned even the aroma of simmering soup. He’d recognize that scent anywhere, anytime and under any circumstances. Jasmine and cucumber lotion. His belly cramped with need as he forced the mocking grin back on.

“You sure you don’t need glasses?” he threw over his shoulder. “That was one fine example on how not to pilot a ship.” He turned to wait for the repartee that’d surely follow. His grin died when he saw her standing in the embrasure, biting her thumbnail, dark eyes rimmed red and looking glassy.

“Sit.” He pointed to his stool bolted along the bulkhead. Sometimes he could even use it for five whole minutes during his shift.

Frankie did as he instructed. No argument. No debate. She just sank on the stool, leaned her head against the bulkhead and closed her eyes.

“It’s gone,” she breathed. “Everything. Everyone. All gone.”

“What is?” It slayed him to see her this way. “What’s gone?”

“The Ca Ong. I just watched it disintegrate. All those people… And the stealth cruiser. And I couldn’t do shit.”

Usually, this would be the point where pain would turn into anger. But the flare of temper never came. His heart hammering, John grabbed a crate of fresh produce he’d acquired from someone who owed him and brought it in front of her. He sat and took both her hands—so cold—in one of his. They seemed small in his palm. In fact, Frankie had never appeared so vulnerable, so badly shaken by events that were sadly all too common. They’d lost other ships. Although none of them carried a stealth cruiser destined to break—or at least bruise—the Imbers’ back.

“Look at me.” He searched her gaze. “Hey, look at me.”

A stubborn lift of her chin made him want to hug her. Kiss her, push her against the wall and tear all her clothes off.

“There’s nothing you could’ve done. I know you think otherwise, but you can’t keep a ship from blowing up just through sheer willpower.”

“John, three hundred people just died.”

“People die all the time, it’s how things work.”

Dark eyes flashed dangerously. Man, he was turned on. “What the hell’s wrong with you? People die all the time?”

“What, you hadn’t noticed? And people will keep dying even if we manage to somehow strike a lucky blow to the Imbers. Nothing will change that.”

“Yeah, just keep cheering me up, John. Man, you can be such an asshole.” She pulled her hands from his and ran them through her hair. It stuck up at odd angles. “We need another ship to get us close to that pipeline. Something with no signature heat, a thick hull and maneuverability. Got one like that?”

John sat up straight. Something had just occurred to him when Frankie said “thick hull”. Maybe it’d work. Or maybe he was desperate to have his old fiery friend back.

“What?” she asked, eyes narrowed.

“Come with me.” He took her hand and led her out of the galley and down the passageway, deserted at this time of the night. Those who slept would learn of the Ca Ong’s demise the next morning, and those on duty had probably decided to sit at their stations and reflect on the loss.

“Where are we going?”

John kept tugging her behind him as he rushed across the Magellan’s smallest cargo hold, where he received perishable commodities for the galley. Commodities that required a temperature-controlled vessel to ferry them from ship to station to faraway colony. Black and yellow placards enjoined workers to keep well away from the glacial bulkheads, where skin tended to stick and freeze in a matter of seconds.

“There.” He pointed at the closest porthole. He tapped his index finger against the quartz glass. “What do you think about this?”

Frankie leaned closer to the glass, squinted. “About what? There’s nothing there.”

“My reefer. It’s temperature-controlled, it has a thick hull and I can turn that thing on a coaster, sideways and edgewise.”

Frankie took another longer look into the porthole, which offered a view of a line of ships, some small, others smaller, docked along the Magellan’s interior quays. At the very end, moored on its retracted skids, his reefer ship resembled a giant wasp. Four attitude jets on either side and a pair fore and aft, as much torque as a tug and a bubble bridge that allowed a three-sixty view. That thing was older than he was, but it still pulled its weight and did its job.

From morose, Frankie’s expression turned doubtful then guardedly optimistic. He could see each emotion gradually giving way to the next. Like layers being peeled off. How her expressive eyes narrowed or her lips thinned as she evaluated the situation, dissecting it and looking at it from all angles. That sharp mind of hers gauging on the fly which option would work best or not at all. It’d been the first thing he noticed when he first met her. Most men had only been interested in her killer physique. Nice, sure. But physiques eventually went, whereas an incisive mind tended to last much longer. And hers was one of the sharpest he’d encountered. No argument was boring with her. He wondered if she also fought in bed.

John held his breath. If he reached out a hand, he could touch her back as she stood a few centimeters in front of him, looking out the porthole still. Her smell made him feel drunk. Such proximity to the woman who gave him a serious case of testosterone fever made him swallow repeatedly. Without meaning to, he raised his hand to touch her hair.

Don’t touch her, man. It’ll mean trouble.

Maybe just an accidental brush?

Fuck, O’Shaughnessy, keep it in your pants.

All that curly black hair that glistened like old-fashioned ink. His index finger lifted a ribbon. So soft. His heart jackhammered against his sternum hard enough to hurt. So beautiful.

Even if he was a civilian onboard the Magellan and free to change ships as often as he did shorts, he still would follow that woman to the end of the universe. He would do a lot for her. Usually a lover-not-fighter type, he’d even do violence for her. In fact, the only times he’d ever been involved in fights had been for Frankie. Years ago, one particular ex-flame of hers had aired a bit of dirty laundry in public and shared details of Frankie’s anatomy, to his buddies’ vociferous delight. Right in the galley. Maybe he thought John would laugh with the rest of them. He hadn’t laughed. But what he’d done was vault over the counter, grab the prick in a headlock and pound until he couldn’t feel his hand anymore. Good thing God had given him two. To this day, Frankie had no idea why John had suddenly attacked her ex. No-good piece of shit who didn’t deserve such a lady and would never know what to do with all that woman. Asshole.

John inwardly cursed his timing again. Maybe he should’ve made his move right away, when they’d met during an argument in the galley of New Ankara Station. She’d looked magnificent as she restrained one of her crewmembers from jumping over the table and attacking someone from another ship. After helping to restore order, John had introduced himself as the cook, instead of just as some guy in the galley. Maybe he’d killed his chances right then and there. “Cook” must not have been first place on a lady’s sexy chart. Oh well.

“A reefer,” she breathed, nodding.

“It’s old but still good. I never would’ve thought about it if you hadn’t mentioned the hull. A refrigerated ship carrying produce isn’t your first thought when you think of attacking Imbers.”

When she turned sparkling eyes to him, John hurriedly dropped his hand. “You know, this just might work.”

“Glad to be of service.”

“Yeah, why this sudden interest in the mission, hmm? You couldn’t care less five minutes ago.”

“Maybe I’ve seen the light.” Or maybe I’m moronic enough to do anything to make you smile again.

“Right.”

She pressed her forehead against the porthole and sighed, which created a halo of condensation that irised out around her head. John’s world narrowed to a sliver that only Frankie occupied. He stood so close he could see the fine hairs on the back of her neck rise with the cold environment of the hold. Nothing moved except her shoulders when she breathed in deeply. No one else was up in this part of the ship. Just the two of them and space. The intimacy elated and scared him.

“I have a confession to make,” she murmured without turning around. She drew a sad face in the bit of condensation still whitening the porthole. “I’ve always been on your case for that insufferable grin. You know the one?”

John swallowed hard because he couldn’t say a damn word. Where was she going with this? Confess what?

“I like it on you. That mocking grin and the attitude that matches. You’re one of a kind, John O’Shaughnessy.” She repeated “one of a kind” under her breath.

“Whoa, Frankie,” he began, chuckling to hide his uneasiness. “You’re freaking me out here. You’re going on like there’s no tomorrow.”

“Maybe there isn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

She shrugged. “Maybe today is all we have. Who knows what waits for us around the corner? I could choke on my breakfast and poof. Gone.”

His heart ached at the tone of her voice. So solemn. “You’re invincible. You’ll never die. That’s for lesser folks like your ex, the one with all the tattoos.” And the broken nose, courtesy of John O’Shaughnessy.

“What’s with you and that guy? He’s old history.”

“Does that mean it’s okay to go beat on him again?”

“John, I was being serious here.” She sighed. “We’re going up against the Imbers tomorrow. Some of us aren’t going to make it.”

“You will.”

“You sound so sure.” She made another halo of condensation and this time drew a smiley face. “He looks like you.”

“Gee, thanks.”

Her snort of laughter made him feel so much better. He didn’t like that grave-looking Frankie talking about death and the passage of time. Where had that come from?

She turned. Eyes the color of coffee beans rolled up to look into his face. She reached out, tentatively, fingers outstretched for a gentle touch, then dropped her hand. John realized he’d been holding his breath the whole time.

“I’ll go get Womack out of bed. Get him to install the charge on the reefer.”

Back to business as usual. John felt as if he’d just missed the last train home.

“Your wishes are my commands.”

Frankie punched him on the arm. “Cut that out. Now get me the codes to that old clunker so I can get a look inside.”

They waited in silence until Womack turned up, armed with his ever-present bucket of tools and a cigarette dangling precariously from his tattooed lips. “Show me,” was all he said.

John led them to the reefer, which still smelled of cabbage and onions, no matter how hard he ran the air hose over the deck. When the wide tail hatch dropped to the quay, both Frankie and Womack entered the ship and began to talk about where to put the charge, how to rig the consoles for the remote-pilot bit, how the detonator’s signal would still penetrate the hull if the distance wasn’t too important. All in all, it became quite boring so John let them at it and made his way to his cabin. Dawn would bring a momentous day. Frankie intended to start a war, and wars made folks hungry.

~ * ~

“He’s gonna be some mighty pissed when he finds out. Ma’am.”

Guilt poked its sharp little talons in her side again. John would be angry with her for sneaking out on him this way. For not telling him first. For lying. Even Womack knew how close John and Frankie were. Every time someone wanted something from her, they invariably went through John, who relayed their wishes with his usual dry sense of humor. The ship’s enabler, he’d once called himself. He was so much more than that. To others and to her. Especially to her.

Frankie gritted her teeth even harder. “Focus, Womack. I want to be out by oh-four-hundred hours.” She checked her watch, yawned. “That gives us five hours to rig the reefer.”

With the help of mechanized heavy-lifters, they loaded the massive charge—all two tons of it—into the reefer’s cargo hold. The smell of onions mixed with that of plastic composites. After they were done, she pressed her palm to the comms panel and waited until her OOW responded.

“Position?” she asked as she watched Womack give a couple of last turns to the bolts holding the charge to the rails. “Stop fiddling with the damn thing,” she added in a snarl.

“We’re about to enter enemy space. I’ve had engines cut to minimum. Your orders, Ma’am?”

“Good. Get a fix on O’Shaughnessy’s reefer. That’s what we’ll use instead of the cruiser.”

There was a good five seconds of silence before Bentley replied, “The refrigerated cargo ship?”

“That’s the one. Get a fix and don’t lose it.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

After she was done with Womack—who never took well to someone telling him what to do, but if he wanted to change that, the Navy Lieutenant could bloody well take command tests—Frankie made her way back to her cabin. When she cleared the hold and reached the gangway that’d lead her to the main part of the ship, she came across one of the tacscreens interspersed along the passageways. Not a real porthole, but close enough. A pixellated image of Earth filled the screen. So unlike the old history books. Like a second Saturn with a belt of asteroids—five hundred years of mine slag—in a dirty brown ring. This version was mostly green for the alien acid flowing in a grid that crisscrossed all over the surface, with the equator taking the prize with its thick, glowing belt of lime-colored pipeline. Near where had once been Sorong, Indonesia, a connector tube rose several tens of thousands of meters in the air to L-point 1, about midway between the Earth and the moon, to join with the orbital pipeline. The Lagrange Point One, the one spot relatively stationary. Perfect for their conduit.

“Perfect for my surprise too,” she whispered.

She knew every little detail by heart. Distance, speed and strength of both gravitational pulls. Everything.

Gritting her teeth, Frankie turned her back to the tacscreen and its green planet. Goddamn Imbers had ruined everything.

Without even thinking about it, she rounded the corner and was standing in front of John’s hatch.

She’d already said her goodbyes of sorts. Any more time spent with him and she just might let the cat out of the bag. Not an option. She needed her head clear. Yet her hand rose, forefingers ready to press the chime. Another civvie perk. None of her crew had chimes on their hatch. Hell, she didn’t even have one.

Just a couple minutes. Maybe she could find some excuse to talk to him. Ask about the next procurement, or…whatever else. She wanted to see him again.

What the hell is wrong with you? Think, Beaumont. He’ll ask questions, he’ll give you that stare-through-your-soul look. And that insufferable grin if he thinks he knows what’s going on.

Frankie backed away from the hatch, torn between the woman in her wanting—desperately—to buzz his hatch, and the commander of a fleet going to war. That commander needed to have her ducks in a row and her neurons firing in sequence.

She practically ran to her cabin. Maybe if she walked quickly enough, she wouldn’t turn right back and buzz the damn hatch. Or maybe the dark clouds above her head wouldn’t follow.

Once safely inside her cabin, she prepared her stuff for the next day, as if she weren’t preparing to fly a ship right into the dragon’s mouth.

“Stop it,” she snarled at her reflection. Dark circles, frizzy hair, thin lips. Yup, she looked like shit. John probably could guess something was up with her. She wondered why he hadn’t made a big stink of it the way he sometimes did.

Going through the motions of normal life gave her something to occupy her shaking hands. She showered, brushed her teeth, clipped her nails. She donned her best coveralls, her least objectionable boots and sat on the bed to wait for oh-four-hundred hours. No way she was sleeping.

Navy Lieutenant Womack’s words floated in her head like the echoes of a distant gong.

“He’s gonna be some mighty pissed when he finds out. Ma’am.”

~ * ~

She was slipping.

John held on to Frankie’s hand, sweat pearling at his temples, his heart hammering, lips numb from grimacing against the strain. He was losing her. He didn’t know why or how. He couldn’t see a thing. Had no idea where they were. Up, down, no exterior stimuli except her. Nothing other than the feel of her hand—he’d recognize the feel of those hands among a thousand—in his, with sweat a lubricant slowly eroding their grip. He couldn’t lose. He had to hold on. Against everything and everyone.

“Hold on,” he snarled through his teeth. His shoulder burned, as did his biceps. While he may have been a fit guy who pumped iron regularly, his lovely Frankie still was no nymph.

By a tiny measure, he felt her slipping. Then by another.

“Don’t let go,” she implored.

“I won’t.”

“John. John?” Her voice sounded so far away. Getting farther. Fainter. “I’m sorry. I have to go. Please don’t be mad.”

“Go? Where?”

“You can’t come with me. Not this time.”

“The hell I won’t.”

“I’m sorry… We ran out of time.”

“Frankie,” he growled. “Frankie.”

Her hand slipped out of his. He screamed something, had no idea what. He just had to give voice to the fear, the horror, the shame. He’d dropped her. He’d let her go.

He’d let go of the woman he loved.

The split-second realization snapped him up like a broken bow. John hit his head against the deckhead above and rolled off his bunk. Muttering curses, he rubbed at his forehead. A nightmare? What the hell was that about? His heart still thudded hard enough to make him feel nauseous.

He had let go…

“Jesus.”

When he could hear himself think again—the swoosh of blood flow drowned even his thoughts—John sat back on his bunk and leaned his elbows on his knees. Sweat coated him from hairline to boxers. On the produce crate that served as night table, his watch showed 03:10 in aqua blue. Both dots blinked like eyes on a robotic beetle. He slipped it on, snapped the clasp in place. He couldn’t put his finger on it but something bugged him. A detail. A bubble in a murky pond. Rising little by little.

Frankie must have been getting ready to join Womack down in the launch bay. He was such a softhearted moron for her. And now his reefer would serve as cannon fodder. Great. Where would he find another ship like it, with a hull thick enough to stop food-spoiling gamma rays? Hell, even comms didn’t come through.

John slowly stood as the realization surfaced. “Wait a minute…”

No long-range comms could penetrate the reefer’s hull. So exactly how were they planning on remote-piloting the thing all the way to Earth’s moon? The Magellan would have to remain close, that was how. Frankie didn’t mean…

No, she’d never put her crew at risk.

“Shit.”

He’d never thrown his clothes on so fast.

By the time he reached the launch bay, his watch indicated ten minutes had elapsed since waking from his nightmare. Womack had his back to him, bent under the reefer’s tail section.

“Womack.”

The man whipped around. Instead of the morose welcome habitual from the man, John received a sort of awkward glare-wince combination that stopped him dead in his tracks.

“What do you want?” He always spoke around his cigarette. Drove John absolutely nuts.

“The reefer, you won’t be able to take it out far enough.”

Womack shrugged as he drew near his tools bucket. A long pipe clamp gleamed yellow in his fist. “It’s all good, O’Shaughnessy. No need to worry.”

“How do you know it’s ‘all good’ since I haven’t told you the problem?”

“Fuck, just go back to your galley, ’kay?”

Blood drained from Womack’s face when John cut the distance between them by two long strides. He stopped only when he towered over the shorter, thicker man. “Damn right it’s my galley. And you mind your mouth. I’m not above dropping a throat oyster in your soup next time you show up in my galley. Got it?”

John wasn’t known for his temper but this smirking man just might trigger a bubble of testosterone to burst out. “Now, for that problem, you want to know what it is or not?”

“Sure. Shoot.” With the pipe clamp still in one hand, Womack indicated the reefer’s side hatch.

Finally the man showed some sense.

John preceded Womack and had to duck underneath the dormant ship’s stunted wing whereas the engineering officer merely leaned his head sideways. Rivets and plate seams encrusted with rust resembled scars.

“That hull—”

Pain exploded between his shoulder blades. Tiny suns burst behind his eyelids. As heat spread downward throughout his body, John turned just in time to see Womack coming for another hit with the pipe. Instincts saved him from having his skull bashed open. But his elbow took the brunt. Something crunched.

Womack seemed as surprised as John that he still stood. He backed away by a hesitant step, pipe proffered accusingly in front of him, as if John was supposed to go down the first time. Well, tough shit.

John charged.

Womack brandished the pipe with practiced ease. John let him come. A twitch of shoulder heralded the man’s attack. The pipe made a swoosh when it sliced downward at a forty-five-degree angle. Using his height to his advantage, John let the pipe arc harmlessly by, waited for the perfect window of opportunity—poker helped with patience—and struck. He grabbed the pipe as it reached its apogee, tugged the shorter man closer. A punch on the snout whipped Womack’s head back. But the riposte came sharp and quick. A knee that would’ve emasculated him had it touched its mark landed instead on the inside of John’s thigh. It still hurt like a bitch. With a grunt and his hand still around his end of the pipe, he kicked low. His aim was true and he landed a good hit at Womack’s ankle.

The engineering officer must have decided he didn’t want his pipe anymore and let it go. He came at John as a wrestler would. Aside from their boots scraping along the deck, the fight was strangely quiet. The impact forced out a great hoomph of air. The pair went stumbling back, arms twisting for weak spots as they grappled, feet dancing around the pitted deck, and crashed against one of the reefer’s skids. Armored metal dug into John’s back. Both men grunted in pain.

“What the hell…is wrong…with you?” John panted.

Womack tried to elbow his way out of the snarl of limbs but couldn’t. “Th-th-the show must go on.”

“What?”

While John was trying to pull an arm out of the hold to punch Womack again, the shorter man snapped his head down. With the difference in height, his head-butt caught John on the chin. Still, his teeth grated together. Surely he’d just lost a filling.

“Jesus Christ, man. What are you talking about?”

Eyes like chips of black onyx, Womack just laughed. “Fuck, you don’t even know, do you? I thought you were here because of her.”

“Who?”

“The captain.”

Frankie?

John’s heart thudded once hard then resumed arrhythmically. What the hell was going on? Womack must have seen an opening in the way John straightened because he went for it. Kicks, punches, joint locks. But as confusion gave way to fury—was Frankie in trouble? His Frankie—John parried every one. After a devastating punch to the belly, Womack bent in half, gagging.

John grabbed the man by the back collar of his coveralls and hoisted him up to his level. “What’s going on with Frankie?”

Here he was again, using violence because of Francine Beaumont. What was that woman doing to him?

“It’s bigger than you and me. Or her.” Womack’s breath smelled of cigarettes and adrenaline enhancers. “It’s bigger than all of us.”

“What’s bigger?” A good shake added emphasis to his rising temper. He was sick of this.

“We know about the comms on that old clunker. We know it can’t get through. So we’ve fixed it.”

“Don’t take me for a fool. You can’t fix something like that.”

Womack tried to break John’s hold on his collar but failed. “We found a way around it. She did.”

“How?”

A look of triumph passed over the man’s tattooed face. John didn’t like it one bit. What did that man know about Frankie that she hadn’t told John? Wasn’t he her best friend? Wasn’t he the one person she trusted, or so she claimed? Maybe he’d been the best friend too long, had been taken for granted. And if that didn’t leave a bitter taste in his mouth.

“She’s going.”

A sudden drop in blood pressure made John see stars. Whoa, what was that about? His cheeks felt numb.

“What’s that supposed to mean? She’s going where?”

Womack shoved away from John. And when his fist came, right for the snout, John didn’t seem to be able to parry. He took the hit, barely felt a thing. His hands and feet had also grown numb. To his shock, his kneecaps connected with the deck. That should’ve hurt a lot more than it did. Even his busted elbow didn’t throb anymore.

“She’s going.” Womack smiled a mean one as he pushed John back with the tip of his boot. “She’s going with the ship.”

His world vacillated.

“No,” he croaked.

“Yeah. She has more balls than all of us combined, that broad.” Womack disappeared from his field of vision to return carrying the pipe clamp once again.

Frankie… No, no, no, no.

She couldn’t be on that ship when it…

A suicide mission?

“We’ll have to find ourselves a new cook on top of a new captain, now, I guess. Nothing personal. It’s for the good of everyone. And I mean everyone.”

He raised the pipe clamp.

Supine on the cold deck, John could only stare at the underside of his reefer, incapable of movement, incapable of mental processes that required more than four neurons. Horror flashed through him. Frankie was going to sacrifice herself. She was going to die on that ship. His reefer, which he’d conveniently offered to her after she’d lost her stealth cruiser. He’d basically facilitated her suicide.

Everything went fuzzy. Sounds, vision. A metallic taste invaded his mouth. Then black.

Chapter Three

At oh-three-fifty-six, she left her cabin and locked it, before making her way to the engineering section. She met few people. Good. Not a great time to strike up a chat in the passageway.

She reached the launch ramp in record time. That or she hadn’t noticed a thing on her way there. She knew every rivet anyway.

The engineering section’s nightshift stood at attention.

“At ease.” She smiled to a young ordinary seaman with the brightest orange hair she had ever seen. That stuff was orange enough to start a fire.

“Ma’am, the remote-piloting station is ready.” Womack lied very well when he set his mind to it. “With your permission.” He hooked his thumb at his bunch.

At her small nod, he dismissed his section, who filed out. Frankie gestured at Womack and went through the motions of standing at the rigged console, where wires and fuse boxes competed for every available centimeter of flat surface. When the deck had cleared, she leaned closer. “Is my stuff in already? With the detonator?”

A furtive nod confirmed it. “The ship’s fueled to capacity, everything that needs charging has been, there’s food and water and a medikit, and a couple of e-suits with stunners.”

“And the bomb, still armed and ready?”

“Yes, Ma’am. Checked it at least half a dozen times…” he glanced at his watch, “…in the last fifteen minutes.”

They exchanged tight grins. She noticed a dark red mark from the bridge of his nose to his cheekbone. That was new.

“Another fight?”

“Nah. Just biz gone wrong,” Womack said around his crumpled cigarette. “Good luck out there.”

“Thanks.”

With the cargo hatches leading to the main ship closed and locked, she rushed to the reefer gangway, climbed onboard and kicked the lever to release the grille steps, which descended to disappear below deck.

Inside, the smell of John’s cologne and fresh produce made her shut her eyes tight. Man, not only was she seeing him in her head, but she was smelling him everywhere now?

Get a grip, Beaumont.

Trying not to see—and smell—him in everything she touched, she dug in her bag, slipped the detonator in her pocket and sat at the controls. After cracking her knuckles, she clipped on the five-point harness.

A fleeting shadow registered at the edge of her peripheral vision. She turned to see Womack giving her the thumbs-up from the “piloting station” before speaking into the comms. No doubt to announce to the dockmaster that everything was a go.

She powered up the engines. Tail hatch rising, Frankie leaned back.

“Here we go,” she murmured to herself. Then in a louder voice announced, “Tower, Reefer One ready for launch.”

“Standby Reefer One,” crackled the comms speaker. They all thought she spoke from the relay on the launch ramp, not from the bridge on the reefer itself. She wondered what people would think. Not that it mattered. She’d come to the decision early after Womack and she had realized remote-piloting the damn thing wouldn’t be a feasible option. Not one which would insure one hundred percent success. And one hundred percent success was the lowest she’d go. No room for error when dealing with the Imbers.

After a long wail of siren, the huge cargo hatch slowly slid upward, creating a widening rectangle of pitch black dotted with the occasional star. Despite the many protective layers of armor plates—John had been right, that thing was built like a bunker—she still felt the cold seeping into the bridge. A shiver tightened her nape.

“Reefer One, stand by for launch sequence in five…four…three…”

Frankie gripped the holy-shit handles on either side of the nav console so she wouldn’t be tempted to mess with the automated launch.

“…two…one. Launch activated.”

A series of clacks reverberated along the deck under her feet. Then a godawful grating noise of metal against metal made her grimace as the rails powered up to propel the ship out of the Magellan. Slowly at first then with gathering speed, the rail pulled the reefer forward. Fast. Faster. A grunt left her when the huge hatch swallowed her ship. The violence of the launch lifted her feet off the deck. Hands on the controls again, Frankie leaned forward so she could survey the many consoles. Who knew a damn reefer had so many buttons to worry about?

“Magellan, this is Reefer One. Launch successful. Heading and speed as planned.” Switching to launch-ramp channel, she added, “See you on the other side,” for Womack’s benefit.

Soon, because of the hull thickness, she’d lose communication capability with the Magellan. Already Bentley replied something she barely understood because of the static crackling like sheets of plastic.

She checked her watch. 04:07 glowed acid green in the bridge’s low light. The same color as the orbital pipeline. With any luck, she was going to hit that thing hard enough to make the alien scumbags regret ever having set their metal claws into her planet.

“You saved the day, John.” She wasn’t sure he’d agree though.

Damn, she was already getting cold. Small crafts had never been her thing. She preferred the bigger ones like the Magellan. Quieter ride, warmer interior. Frankie left the controls to go rummaging around in her duffel bag. A sweater should do it. She donned it directly over the coveralls—sexy—then slid back into her seat. John’s seat.

“Dammit.” Her breath rose in coiling ribbons.

Guilt was an impossibly potent venom eating at her.

A poison of her own stock. She could’ve told him and accepted the consequences. She could’ve at least let him know he’d lose his poker partner. His friend. She knew he cared for her. As she did for him. Sometimes, she even wondered if she more than just cared for John O’Shaughnessy. But that facet of the prism she preferred to leave in the dark. If she pretended it wasn’t there, maybe it wouldn’t exist. A coward was what she’d become. A coward who’d let a friend down.

But I’m saving humanity. That should count.

Yeah, right.

Frankie adjusted heading and speed to rendezvous with her target. Gs accumulated and made lead of her legs. The ship turned much faster than she would’ve anticipated given its size and insectoid shape. A complete about-face and she had the reefer heading the right way. Behind her lay everything and everyone else. They’d wait behind natural barriers—planets, asteroid fields. They’d wait for the light show, which should be a clear enough sign that her mission had succeeded. No light show meant failure. Humanity back with its tail between its legs.

She wouldn’t let that happen. No way. She patted her thigh to confirm the detonator was still in her pocket. Not that anything could happen to it. She just wanted to check on it again. Truth be told, she’d keep it in her hand if she dared. But just in case…

On the nav console and its backlit chart table, the Magellan shrunk to another speck on her radar. Just another blue dot among thousands. Of those, about two dozen bore navigational tracks that resembled thin blue spider webs stretched across the screens. Each had a heat signature. In John’s refrigerated reefer, she’d appear on no one’s screens. No blue dot to mark her position or track. Good thing. Because as far as the Imbers were concerned, her ship didn’t exist.

Speaking of which…

In the large bubble tacscreens all along the bridge—that thing had a great view, practically no blind spot—an image seared an imprint of itself onto her retinas. Earth choking under a glowing green mesh. Still a fair distance away but with the enlargement to its max she could see quite a bit. She’d watched old vids where the blue planet—blue, for God’s sake—looked like a pristine glass ball. Not anymore with the Imber overmining and dumping slag into the atmosphere. A second Saturn is what they’d done. Alien scumbags.

A small sound caught her attention. “Christ, don’t tell me there’s a malfunction already.”

Scanning from her seat revealed nothing so she faced the tacscreens again. Not two seconds later, the fine hairs on her nape rose in waves. Frankie whipped around, stunner out of its holster at her hip.

“Holy…”

Her heart must have stopped for two seconds. Minimum.

John stood in the interior hatch. Blood covered one side of his head as he leaned precariously on the jamb. Through matted bangs that reached to his nose, bright blue eyes stared out of a glistening, crimson face.

“You lying bitch.” He let out a mirthless laugh.

Frankie barely had time to flick the autopilot on and vault out of her seat as he slowly slid along the hatch to land in a heap on the unforgiving deck. “John.”

“Don’t touch me,” he growled. Shoved away from her to lean back against the bulkhead.

She tried to see the source of blood but abandoned her search after he smacked her hand away. His eyes resembled two chips of blue ice. Just as hard. Just as cold. He’d never looked at her this way before. But she wouldn’t squirm. She refused. Her mission was vital. Everyone depended on its success and she’d be damned if anyone—even John—would make her feel bad about it.

“I had to,” she murmured. “You know that.”

“Bullshit.”

“No. Not bullshit. It’s true. Even if I had told you? Then what, huh? Tell me what would’ve happened.”

“Trust would’ve happened. Would’ve kept happening.”

“What, you no longer trust me?”

“No.”

From anyone else, her reaction would’ve been “Oh well.” But from this man… Frankie swallowed hard. “Fair. Now can I look at your damn head?”

“No.”

Gingerly he stood and walked his hands along the bulkhead until he’d reached one of the recessed storage niches. John muttered under his breath as he opened then went through the medical kit, tossed aside what he didn’t need and generally made a mess of things. Gauze and a suture gun in hand, he walked by her to sit at the controls.

“Here, I’ll do it.” She took a step but froze.

He cut a glance over his shoulder. “I told you to leave me the fuck alone. It’s my ship, my bridge, my deck, my blood, my seat, my fucking air.”

The urge to take a strip off him almost overwhelmed her good judgment. After a few deep breaths, she sat half her butt on the edge of the nav chart table, crossed her arms and watched her friend tend to his injuries. Blindly—stubbornly and stupidly—John fingered his skull and seemed to find what he was looking for because he zeroed in on the crown of his head and pressed the tip of the suture gun. The dry little clack of a suture being applied made her wince. A few more followed. Sweat poured down John’s neck and seeped into the collar of his stained T-shirt. Frankie couldn’t take it anymore.

“Don’t,” he snapped.

“You’re going to make it worse. It’s going to infect now.”

“Why do you care, you’re dying anyway, right?”

“Hey.”

“Hey what?” He dropped his hands on his lap, closed his eyes briefly. “I should’ve just let you go.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Twin blue suns seared into her soul when he stared at her.

Guilt, that toxin that had entered her bloodstream since she’d formulated her plan, chose that grand time to make a comeback. In force. Tears welled in her eyes. She angrily rubbed them away with the heel of her hand. In a tiny, selfish part of herself, she was glad John had cared enough to follow her on the reefer. But, at what price? His poor head.

“What happened to your head?”

John sneered. “Ask your boyfriend Womack.”

“Womack isn’t—Womack did this?”

“Yeah, the show must go on. Sneaky little shit.”

“Me or him?”

“Choose.”

Frankie nervously twirled a strand of hair around her index finger. “Okay, we still have time to about-turn and drop you back on the Magellan before the rest of the fleet begins to wonder what happened.”

Numbers rapidly flashed in her head. Time, a precious, precious commodity, was slipping away. The rest of the ships would wait for the sign, which wouldn’t come because the reefer wouldn’t yet be at the rendezvous point. Shit compounded by more shit. They couldn’t mount another attack without the Imbers discovering a pattern. Movements in human ships never went on so close to Earth. The invader had become very territorial. Plus, they wouldn’t have enough fuel for the entire fleet to go back, regroup, and return to Earth. They’d need to dig for more, find other asteroids with the veins they needed. Decades would pass. Kids were getting sick from poor nutrition as it was. Just too damn long. They had to do it now.

“No, we’re not.” He stood, letting the things on his lap just drop to the deck. With an alcohol wipe, he washed his hands and face. “We keep going.”

Her heart did a quick little dance. Tap-tap. “No. Out of the question.” She shook her head as vehemently as she could without causing damage. “No damn way you’re coming with me. Not this time.”

The thought alone chilled her to the bones. John, a lover and bon vivant, dying this way. It contradicted and offended every principle in her. She was in charge. She’d go.

“We’ll turn the reefer—”

“No, we won’t.”

Right on the heels of fear came anger. “It’s not about you, John, dammit. There’s no need for two people to do this thing.”

Frankie meant to walk around him to get at the controls but he barred her way, dwarfed her with his height and palpable fury. But she refused to be cowed and sidestepped to circumvent him. A long arm blocked her access.

On a snarled curse, Frankie planted her palms on his chest and shoved as hard as she could. She knew how much it took to move the tall man. Instead of fighting back, he gripped the front of her sweater—and coveralls underneath—and hoisted her to him. She’d expected a tirade or at the very least one stinging tongue-lashing. Instead he shocked her with a kiss. His mouth landed like knuckles on hers. As if her body had suddenly dispensed with her brain, she seized his T-shirt in two fistfuls. Not to push him away. To pull him to her. John replied in kind. Palms hot and heavy landed on the small of her back and crushed her to him. Against her belly, his erection pressed to make a home.

As soon as contact was made, he abruptly pulled away and released her. John looked as stunned as she felt.

He opened his mouth but no words came out.

Frankie, panting, tried to voice what she knew went on in his head—or she thought she knew… Maybe she didn’t understand the first thing about her friend. “I…I’m—”

“Just drop it.” He stared at the portion of deck between their feet. A symbol of what separated them.

But then again, was there a separation between them? Friendship could bloom into something more, couldn’t it? Had it?

“You can’t stay,” she murmured, stopped when the lump in her throat rose again. “You can’t, okay? Please.”

“I’m staying. Period. It’s my ship and I know what it can do. Have you ever backed that thing into New Ankara’s service docks? They’re twenty-two meters wide. This ship is twenty-one and a half abreast. Plus, this is what friends do for each other, Frankie.” John’s expression turned from pained to mocking. Her old friend was back. She wondered if the aroused man was still in there somewhere. She wanted him to be there.

Selfish, immature, yes, but still…

“Friends,” she repeated in undertones. Her smile must have resembled a grimace more than anything.

John nodded. And here came that corner grin that spelled trouble. God, had she been blind the whole time? All these years? Did he think of her as more than a friend?

“Friends sit on a doomed ship,” he went on, “knowing it’s a stupid plan at best, knowing there are other planets somewhere that could spare a few square kilometers for us. But noooo, we’ll go kill ourselves instead, for the good of humanity. That’s what friendship is. And apparently, it’s a disease that’s about to enter into the terminal stage.”

Frankie couldn’t help a snort of laughter which she quickly repressed. “That’s not funny.”

“It is. You’re just too stubborn to admit I can make you smile whenever the hell I want. Ha. Suck it up, Beaumont.”

“What now?” She couldn’t believe they were going through with this. Both of them… “John, it’s crazy. You can’t stay. I don’t want you to stay.”

He gave her a penetrating look. “It’s no longer about what you want, is it? It’s about the whole lot of us bipeds gifted with opposing thumbs.” A mean smile pulled her friend’s lips wide. “For what it’s worth, that sneaky little shit Womack got a taste of his own medicine before he put the pipe to my skull.”

“The pipe?”

John slowly worked his left arm and grimaced. “That crunching, it can’t be normal.”

She couldn’t believe Womack had attacked John over the mission. Everything was spiraling out of control. This was supposed to have been a simple plan. Go in, drop the charge, detonate. So what if humanity lost one member. Others would replace her. Bentley would take the Magellan into the fight, Qiu would work the comms. All as it should be. But now this.

“How did you get on the reefer then?”

“Crawling, mostly. Womack hits like a granny. I woke up in the back of my ship and—” His words trailed as he focused on the front tacscreens.

She followed his gaze. There it was. The autopilot had taken them within spitting distance—relatively speaking—of their goal. She’d never personally seen Earth and its moon from so close before and couldn’t help but stare in wonder at what had once been the cradle of humanity. Some said there were still people down there, struggling for survival, just as their brethren did in space. Frankie wasn’t sure about that. How could people survive under the Imbers’ invasion when they mined every continent, every island and hunk of rock? Yet this was what John and she were prepared to die for. A mined-out planet with a pitted moon. But there was an atmosphere down on Earth, with some flora and fauna, with all the space they needed, unlike crowded, disease-infested stations and colonies. They’d build special habitats if the air was too bad, start over. And it was home, dammit.

“Wow,” John breathed.

For her eloquent friend, the fact he could only utter an inarticulate sound when faced with Earth made her smile. Wow, indeed. Her smile disappeared when a few Imber ships crested over the Earth’s curvature on their way to the lunar power plant.

She snarled a curse. “Look at them. Like it’s all theirs.”

“Not for long.”

“What, you’re finally coming around to this?”

He shrugged. “Might as well make my last few hours entertaining. And I’m sorry for calling you a lying bitch. That was uncalled for.” He meant to rub his hands together but grimaced for his injured arm. “I’m just cranky right now.”

She noticed it had swollen quite a bit. “It’s okay. Not like I didn’t have it coming.”

“Still…”

“You, erm, want some ice…?” She cleared her throat. Not that it’d matter. “Yeah, okay, here’s the plan.” She turned to the nav chart table, unrolled one of the large plastic films and spread it on the table. Its core, filled with plasma, turned a bright amber when she activated the chart. “There.”

“That’s the plan? ‘There’?” John said through a crooked smile. “I’m bored already.”

“Focus, O’Shaughnessy.” Frankie made a circle with her index finger. “That’s where the juncture is on the pipeline. Technically, it’s closer to the moon than Earth, but because of the power plant and Imber activity up there, we’ll have to go down then come up along the pipe, until we hit that spot. That’s where we’ll anchor the ship.” Her fingernail glowed ginger when she pushed it on the chart.

John narrowed his eyes as he surveyed the chart. “What about that place? Wouldn’t it be better to just ram the ship in that thing, whatever it is? It’s full of conduits and pods. Looks important.”

“Yeah, but look how it’s free of debris. They must emit some kind of repulsive field to keep it clean. We’re supposed to look like debris to them, no heat signature, no obvious propulsion. They’d see us coming a system away. But along the pipeline, it’s quiet.”

“Good. Then let’s go.” He left the chart table to sit at the controls. “Strap in. Those rings around the rosies aren’t the flowery kind.”

“My mission, remember?”

“I’m the better pilot, by a long shot.”

“Hey.”

It all felt so surreal. John by her side. An hour to live at most.

She sat in the other seat, buckled the five-point harness then remembered something. The toffee he’d given her felt soft when she pulled it out of her sleeve pocket. “Want a piece?”

“Sure.”

Frankie shared her toffee with him before he placed long, square hands on the controls and took the reefer nice and slow into a lazy dive. They couldn’t appear to be in a hurry or the Imbers would notice. Funny how the aliens had never bothered to leave Earth and look for the refugees. Finish the job. Maybe they didn’t care. Humans were a non-issue to them, just like someone wouldn’t have a relationship—even a warring one—with one’s parasites.

While he chewed, Frankie watched muscles bulge along his lean jaw. Heat flared out of her coveralls. It didn’t feel so cold anymore in the refrigerated reefer. In fact, she was getting quite warm. She wondered what it would feel like if John worked on her the way he did on the toffee. When he licked his sexy lips, she had to tear her gaze away.

A cluster of Imber ships caught her attention. They’d just taken off from the lunar power plant and flew in a direct line for Earth. If they maintained speed and heading, both the aliens and the reefer would meet in the middle.

“Nice and slow,” she breathed. “I’ll cut power to the rest of the ship.”

A declining drone rumbled under their feet when she switched main power off. An amber emergency light came on, giving everything a coppery glow. John’s hair glistened like dark honey. The urge to touch him nearly overpowered her. Just touch him. On the hand, the arm, anywhere. Just make contact with this man, her friend, perhaps more, for one last time before it all ended. Before she chickened out.

Frankie reached out and tentatively brushed his wrist bone poking out of the sleeve. He shivered. “I’m sorry, okay? For not telling you sooner. For letting you find out this way.”

“Maybe it was better this way. I would’ve raised holy hell, believe me.”

“I know.”

“You should’ve ordered Womack to go instead. What good are ranks if you can’t use them?”

“Ranks mean trust, not power.”

He snorted in disbelief. “That’s no fun. If I had—”

“Here they are.” Frankie leaned back in her seat. She started tapping the deck with one foot, then with the other. “Slowly, slowly. They have to think we’re nothing more than space junk.”

John leaned forward. He made minute adjustments to their heading. Earth’s curvature and its green glow filled their tacscreens. “Shh. I’m piloting.”

The Imber ships grew closer. Barely one thousand nautical miles ahead. And kept coming.

Frankie bit her thumbnail bad enough to draw blood. “They’re coming. Shit.”

The reefer began to rattle the closer it flew to the planet’s gravitational pull. Stuff not anchored in niches or strapped to the deck jangled and clattered. Sweat pearled at John’s temples.

“Cut the engines,” Frankie said through her teeth. “Let it coast.”

John did as she instructed. Both of them waited while the Imber ships grew nearer and filled their tacscreen. For the first time in her life, she could see the enemy firsthand, alive and functioning instead of studying data from dead specimens found floating in space. Alive they looked even more monstrous than in death. Because their ships were an integral part of their species—humans had learned this the hard way—they became one and the same when in flight. The resemblance also made it clear their ships were more than mere methods of transportation. In the reefer’s tacscreens, metal death flashed and glistened in all its frightening beauty. Exoskeletons made of unknown dark metal, with protruding joints tipped with limbs in long, serrated claws that resembled those of crustaceans of eons past. Amidst the mechanized parts and armature, gray flesh could be spotted. Like silver hide, capable of withstanding the rigors of space or the pressure of Earth’s one-atmosphere. Covering their bodies and heads, thick, glowing veins filled with the green acid so vital to them. With the pipeline gone, they wouldn’t be able to refuel. Not easily anyway. Then the human fleet would come tearing in and attack. Imbers would have to make the hard choice of protecting their power plant—and their precious acid—or defending their new mine, Earth.

“Ugly as sin,” John muttered.

She couldn’t help but agree. Yet to a certain point, the biomecha aliens had always held a sort of strange, sinister beauty.

Still, the cluster of ships kept coming for the reefer.

“They’re on to us.” Frankie shook her head. “Goddammit.”

“This time, I’ll agree.” John swallowed hard then cut a glance her way. The mocking grin was back in force. “But only this time.”

Chapter Four

John had never seen anything so foul. He had watched RSIs of them, had listened with the rest of Frankie’s officers to streams of the alien language—clicks and hisses—yet no remote sensing images and no bits of stolen comms could ever convey the sheer depth of their vileness. Monsters of flesh encaged in metal structures. Surely hell was populated with these things. He couldn’t help it. He crossed himself.

“I think I’ll give just a quick burst, just to get us out of their way.” He reached for propulsion, but Frankie put her hand over his wrist. He tried not to get turned on. Failed. Not the best moment in life to be turned on, but hey, what could he do? Frankie would turn him on if someone was adding the wrong spice to his famous pea soup.

“Wait,” she murmured.

In silence, they waited.

Sweat stung his eyes. He wiped it with the back of his wrist. The Imbers were so close he could see individual ships now. A quick peek revealed Frankie had begun to tap her feet. Both of them. He could relate. On the nav chart table, the glowing orange dots represented by the alien ships grew rapidly. Twenty-thousand meters. Fifteen. Ten.

Nothing but the sound of his heart in his ears. Whoosh-whoosh.

A strange noise like nuts breaking in one’s fist kept intruding in his mental list of everything he’d wanted to do before he died. Learning Japanese, boxing, calligraphy. So many things, so little time before annihilation.

“What’s that noise?”

Frankie shrugged, gaze riveted to the tacscreens. “What noise? Five thousand meters. Jesus.”

The noise resumed. John realized it was Frankie grinding her teeth.

“Here they come.” She gripped the armrests on the seat and spread her feet wider.

Everything happened fast.

One second, about a dozen alien ships were flying a couple thousand meters ahead and the next second, a hit sent the reefer barreling to portside. The impact rocked both Frankie and him back against their seats. Only the harnesses saved them from being projected across the bridge like the rest of everything not anchored or strapped down with thick cargo netting. Clacks, clangs and rattles drowned what Frankie yelled. Alarms wailed, lights flickered, died for an agonizing second then switched back on.

John’s instinct surprised him. Instead of trying to stay the ship, he extended an arm to grip Frankie by the back of her coveralls. Just in case. He’d never known a protective nature hid under his cynical crust. Great timing…

As the reefer gathered speed in its gut-flattening spiral, John braced his feet wide apart on the consoles. Gs built up. Space flew sideways in the tacscreens. Stars became white lines. Interspersed with these lines, a green blur—Earth. Fighting against nausea, John forced himself to focus on the altimeter. Too low. Too damn low.

“Take…the nav,” he growled. “I’ll…take…propulsion.”

Both wrestled the effects of gravity, which tried to keep them glued to their backrests, as they struggled to control the ship’s spiral. Frankie quickly punched in coordinates while John gripped the engines control and pushed them as forward as they could go. The only way out of a spiral was down hard and fast. With any luck, they’d gain enough momentum to break out of the corkscrew, skim along Earth’s atmosphere then bounce off into space. But then again, luck was a bitch these days.

“Hang on,” John warned a split second before the attitude jets responded to his commands. By his side, Frankie held on to the console corners.

Turning, turning. Slower. Another turn that stretched out told John their maneuver may just work. Alarms finally clicked off when the reefer pointed downward and entered into a dive just as scary as the spiral. Except that now they were in control. Somewhat.

“Tell me when it’s five degrees,” John said through his teeth.

Frankie nodded. Sweat coated her face and made limp ribbons of her usually curly hair.

Silence was only broken by their panting as they each fought with their assigned console.

“Five degrees!”

John gunned it.

The reefer shot forward and up, at thirty-five degrees to starboard, higher still, until they’d made a complete U-turn that sucked every iota of power out of his poor ship. When the moon appeared in the tacscreens, John spared a hand to pump his fist. Had to let out the testosterone somehow.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” she muttered. “They hit us and didn’t even come back for a look.”

“We just don’t matter to them. Would you come back to look at a bug you just squashed?”

“Still, for Pete’s sake.” She combed a hand in her sweaty hair. “Man, that was close.”

“I’ll go check for damages. That hit can’t have left just a scratch.” He unclipped his harness, worked his stiff legs and neck. Without his brain’s consent—his brain had pretty much taken an extended vacation…wasn’t he on a suicide mission?—John bent over and placed a loud kiss on her forehead. “We make quite the team, Commander Beaumont. Want to recruit me? I promise I won’t spoil your other recruits’ young, impressionable minds.”

Her beaming smile made everything all right. Her betrayal, her lies. Nothing mattered anymore. Affection swelled his heart, and pride his head. This woman, strong and capable and hot as the coals of hell, made him feel as if he could take on the world. Which in a sense he was about to do.

He left her in command of his reefer while he climbed down below into the detachable section of his refrigerated ship. Used to transport produce and other perishables, his reefer had never been meant to withstand the hit it’d just taken. Not without serious damage. They were lucky not to have been sucked out into space.

All along the passageways, metal plating had buckled, rivets popped off and steam whistled out of bent pipes. Not good. Near the airlock, e-suits hung on hooks and resembled a row of hanged men. Those environment suits may come in handy if the ship had suffered hull damage. At least until they connected to the pipeline. Afterward, well, it wouldn’t matter much, would it?

John breathed a sigh of relief as he inspected the seal between the main portion of the ship and the separate cargo area. It seemed intact. But as he stepped through the hatch to survey the damage to their precious cargo, he couldn’t abort the long string of curses. He didn’t know much about explosives, but the way the charge had shifted on its rails in the hold, with yellow wires pulled out of connectors and plastic coils all crumpled up against the glowing blue core… That just could not be good.

“Shit.”

The comms panel still worked so he switched it on. “Hey, Frankie. You know how to build that thing, right? Because right now, it looks like something the cat spat out. Except in metal and plastic.”

Her voice crackled but he got the last bit. “…goddamnsonovabitch.”

“Indeed.”

“I’m coming down.”

John felt the ship decelerate to automatic pilot. A minute later Frankie barged into the cargo hold like a Valkyrie down the hills. His nape tingled with arousal. He forced his mind to clear.

Not the time, O’Shaughnessy.

“Argh, no, no, no.” She rushed to the sad-looking bit of Imber destruction smashed against the side of the cargo hold and muttered for a good minute as she inspected her patient. In the end, she straightened, fists on hips—sending his testosterone fever into the danger zone—and blew air through pursed lips. “I think we’ll be good. It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“Is this like ‘it’s-not-as-bad-as-it-looks-just-a-sucking-chest-wound-Ma’am’?”

Her snort of laughter unreasonably stroked his ego. “No. I can fix this. We’ll reroute some power to the charge, hook it up to the ship directly. It’ll work.” She nodded, muttered to herself some more. “I can fix this,” she repeated.

“Well, get to it then because we can’t take another hit like this.” It was one thing to die in the name of humanity and all that, it was an entirely different thing to just get blown into bits by a passing Imber ship. Not as, well, fulfilling.

Before he left her to work while he checked the rest of the reefer for damage—something told him he’d find much, much more—John stopped inside the hatch leading to the main part of the ship. Frankie was crouched underneath the electrical panel and muttering through her teeth as she yanked on knotted wires. He tamped down the regret. He wasn’t doing this only for her. Well, mostly for her. But along the way, he’d begun to believe that maybe, just maybe, it was better than doing nothing at all. He’d never tell her that, of course, in case she started to think of him as a romantic. John O’Shaughnessy had a rep to keep. Catholic Irishmen weren’t a flower-in-the-hair, bright-eyed bunch. Or he liked to believe. But then again, to his widowed father’s horror, his eldest child and only son of four children had become a cook. His little sisters all teased John about his choice of career, especially since he was a trained machinist like their da. Oh well, to each their own path.

They better dedicate a whole city to her name, complete with wide boulevards, airy gardens and gurgling fountains. Frankieville. Frankburg. Francine-sur-Mer. Ha.

When she let out a long string of curses, John smiled and turned away to hide what he knew was in his eyes.

Surreptitiously, Frankie watched John watching her. Funny how neither of them had ever been shy to tell the other what was on their mind. Since John had kissed her—and since she’d let him—there was a thin layer of awkwardness. Subtle but there. It chapped her ass to let him think his kiss had had no effect. The devil knew it had. But what was the use now? And it pained her so much to think John would end this way. Goddamn stubborn…man. Still, she’d be lying to herself if she didn’t admit his presence, his willingness to stay with her, made her feel important, valued. Something worth fighting for. Dying for. The realization he was dying to be with her filled her eyes with tears.

John is dying for me.

With him, the end wouldn’t be dull, that was for damn sure. His kiss still created a steady heat all over her body. Not only was he a good-looking, witty and understanding man, but it seemed as though he would’ve wanted to take their relationship to another level. She would never know what that would be like, waking up in John O’Shaughnessy’s arms. The thought made her feel self-conscious, and she adjusted her collar.

Stop being silly, woman, and start thinking about fixing that damn thing.

A couple of the connectors on the charge had been pulled out. The charge itself had shifted on its rails and rested against the cargo hold’s bulkhead. The core was intact—good thing because no one wanted an impromptu explosion to happen too far from the target. She intended to detonate that thing when the reefer sat directly on top of the pipeline. Not a second before. The kill box would be humble, maybe two hundred meters or so. The Magellan and the rest would be safe from the initial blast. Then only their skill would matter. But she—and John—would give them a hell of a head start.

It was only after she had pretty much connected every damn wire and hooked the main power to the hold’s electrical grid that she noticed the way the rails had all but fused to the bulkhead. With the impact, both steel plates had become merged in intricate accordion-like folds.

She knelt by the crumpled rails and ran her hand along the bulkhead. She wouldn’t dare put the blowtorch to this mess for fear of cutting the wrong layer.

Okay, think, Beaumont.

The reefer was designed to back into tight corners, so they’d have to approach the juncture point on the pipeline aft-first. With the hull’s thickness, Frankie already knew they’d need to lower the tail hatch and allow the charge to slide out on its rails. Problem was, because the rails would no longer work, the charge would stay inside the ship. They’d lose explosive power this way. Womack and she hadn’t designed a depth charge. Unless they could lower the hatch, back right up against the pipeline and detonate the thing.

“Yeah, that could work.”

But this would mean some fierce bit of piloting. Plus, someone would have to visually guide the reefer, tail hatch opened, cargo hold gaping. Good thing they had a couple of e-suits. All the pieces snapped into place. Frankie nodded. Plan B. Or was it C now? Since the Ca Ong’s destruction, everything had degenerated into a downward spiral.

One, because John was a better pilot—not that she’d ever admit it to the fathead—he’d stay on the bridge while she’d don the environment suit and act as loadmaster. And two, long-range comms may not be able to penetrate the thick hull, but she’d be able to maintain intra-ship communication using the e-suit’s relay.

Better than nothing. It’s gonna work. It has to work.

“O, my fair lady,” John’s voice crackled from the comms across the hold.

“Ass.” She grinned all the way to the panel, pressed the Receive button. “Yeah, O Funny Guy?”

“You want to come have a look at this. Imber ships. A lot of them. They’re doing…something.”

It was not like him to be lacking the mot juste.

“What now?”

When she stepped onto the bridge, which he’d put somewhat back into shape, she stood by John and likewise stared at the tacscreens. She draped the e-suit and helmet she’d grabbed along the way on the nav’s seat.

As he had told her, a group of Imber ships were doing something. Problem was, she had no idea what.

John had split the tacscreens into two sections—the two larger ones for main view, and the smaller one to the right for a zoomed-in look at the pipeline. At the juncture, the exact point where she intended to dock the reefer ass-first and detonate the charge, a group of smallish Imber ships had grouped around one larger. And much uglier.

“What do you think they’re doing?” she whispered. They couldn’t possibly hear her, yet the threat they posed, the sheer number and proximity, made her feel whispering was the thing to do.

“They seem to be waiting in line for something. Look over there.” He pointed to the larger ship as it deployed what resembled giant funnels from its underbelly and sides.

The large ship’s aft rested directly on the pipeline as it raised its prow—its head. When the green acid that coursed in thick veins along its hull began to glow brighter, Frankie understood.

“They’re refueling.”

John cocked his head, upper lip curled. “It’s more like…suckling.”

Revulsion and curiosity riveted her to the spot. She watched as the smaller vessels aligned themselves along the large ship’s flanks, docked face first then began to refuel. To suckle, as John had put it. Green, glowing stuff passed from the mothership—in every sense of the term—to the others. This went on for several minutes until the large ship abruptly pulled away, not caring if it hit the babies and sent them scattering around.

“Deep motherly instincts, those Imbers,” John remarked as he turned away. “Well, this was very much like a shuttle wreck that you can’t help but watch. I don’t think I needed that in my head.”

“I did. That acid is much more than just fuel. Look at how much brighter they glow now. And their flight is different. They look drunk.”

“Alien ship-tits and drunken metal babies? Too much for me.” John dropped into his seat and meant to cross his hands behind his head but grimaced and dropped his injured arm. “Wake me when it’s time to blow them up, okay?”

“About that, you’re going to have to back that old clunker right on the pipeline. The charge’s rails are stuck in the bulkhead. Can’t cut them off. I’ll guide you from the hold.”

John snapped to his feet. “What? Guide? How?”

“With the tail hatch open. I’ll guide you from one of the e-suits.”

His blue eyes flashed. “You want me to fly that ship with the tail hatch open and you on it? Are you mad?”

“Should I answer that last one?”

“It’s not funny.” He stalked up to her, seemed to want to touch her in some way but dropped his hands by his sides. “What if I collide against something and crush you? What if I adjust too quickly and you fall off? I can’t fly with you standing outside, for Pete’s sake. I’ll go. You sit here and pilot the damn thing.”

Frankie put her fists on her hips. “Aren’t you the better pilot of the two?”

“I am. But that’s different—”

“We don’t have time to argue. You’re going to have to trust me. And you’re going to have to pilot that thing like you’ve never done before.”

“Frankie, that’s demented. And don’t make this about trust, that’s just bullshit.”

She grabbed the front of his T-shirt and hoisted herself up to his level to plant a long kiss on him. Heat like a blast furnace right in the face hit her. Hard. Air left her lungs, neurons her brain. She became a bundle of nerve endings incapable of mental processes. Supernova. Meltdown. Surfacing from a great depth. Because she knew that if she didn’t act now she never would, Frankie pushed herself at arm’s length.

“Trust me,” she whispered. “Okay? Like you always did.”

“That was…” His mouth glistened. That mocking, beautiful and wicked thing. He closed his eyes, inhaled deeply. “That was a cheap shot.”

“It wasn’t cheap and it wasn’t a shot. It was real.” She backed away from the bridge, heart beating like a mad war drum. “I’ll go suit up now. We don’t have much time. Other ships will come to refuel. We have to do this, John.”

“If somehow we come out of this alive, Francine Beaumont, we’re having a long conversation.”

She grinned because she was afraid to start crying. Detonator in hand, she tilted her head his way. “We will.”

“How long is the countdown for?” His eyes were rimmed in red. Did tears cause this?

“Twenty seconds.”

That mocking grin. God, she’d miss it. “Not ten?” he asked. “It’s usually ten.”

“I like twenty. It’s a nice number. Bye, John.”

The hardest thing she’d ever had to do, turning her back on her best friend. Much more than a friend.

“Goodbye,” came John’s reply. Barely audible.

Unshed tears dried in her eyes as she rushed down the passageway. She felt the ship moving to portside. John had begun to slowly maneuver the thing right up to the pipeline. She guessed John was keeping the engines at barely five percent. If that. Just enough for a slow and steady course. They didn’t have much time. The Imbers may think lowly humans incapable of posing a threat but surely they wouldn’t let anything—even supposed space debris—come too close to their precious fuel. Or whatever it was.

Small thuds against the hull indicated he’d entered the vicinity of the pipeline and Earth’s Saturn-like rings. A sound similar to a fistful of rocks hitting a metal panel reverberated all along the deck. Gradually, the sound intensified. They must have been very near their goal. Frankie turned the corner and spotted the row of e-suits. One was missing—the one she’d brought upstairs onto the bridge. She donned one of the remaining suits, clipped everything into place, strapped on a crowbar and a pair of stunners, all of which hung on her utility belt at the end of short leashes. Awkward and heavy inside the ship and its one-atmosphere, but out in space, everything she could ever need would just float around her like little space poodles. The detonator, she slipped into her thigh pocket for ease of access. After fiddling with the controls on her forearm, she activated life support and comms. Stale air filtered into her helmet.

“Frankie, here. You on?”

“Is that a trick question?”

Good old John.

Her breathing made long, strained ssh-ssh sounds as she made her way to the cargo hold. A thin ribbon of steam stopped her cold in her tracks.

The seal between the refrigerated portion of the reefer and the main section seemed to be failing. When she put her face shield right up against the bulkhead, waiting for telltale signs of a breach, Frankie spotted a minute cut in the rubber seal.

Shit.

She grabbed a bit of nearby webbed belt and tore a strand off, which she dangled near the cut. It fretted then stuck to the seal. John’s reefer may have been built like a bunker, but the hit still had damaged it. Probably beyond repair. As long as it held on until they could turn on the charge. It had to hold on until then. Good thing they flew slowly because there was no way in hell this ship would remain in one piece should they kick up the engines past thirty, forty percent.

Frankie decided not to tell John. He had his hands full as it was, trying to maneuver the ship toward the pipeline without looking as though he did. More debris hit the hull in little thunks that made her wince. Every rock could be the proverbial last drop…

Let’s do this.

Light inside the cargo hold had been dimmed to minimum. Barely a thin ray of amber light filtered down from the deckhead. She mashed the Send button on her forearm and kept the comms on automatic. She would need both hands for this job.

“Are…erm, are you ready?” Her voice trembled. She cleared her throat.

“No, of course not.”

“John.”

“We’re approaching the target,” he went on, business-like. “Hang on for a complete rotation. I’m backing this thing right up to the pipeline.”

Frankie gripped the closest rack of cargo netting and waited until the deck had resumed its normal angle. Under her booted feet, the deck’s tremors faded to a barely discernible rumble. John had powered down almost completely.

“Engines at two percent. One, point-five. Zero.”

“How far are we from the pipeline?” Sweat stung her eyes and she couldn’t even rub them.

“A meter, give or take a couple centimeters.”

“Wow.”

“Thank you,” John replied. She heard his deep breath. “I love you, you madwoman. Always have. You know that now, don’t you?”

John’s voice felt like a warm breeze on a cold night. Steam haloed the edges of her face shield as tears leaked down her cheeks and into her mouth. She grinned in spite of them. Because of them. “I think I always suspected, but didn’t know what to do with it.”

“As I said, mad. Utterly, completely, adoringly crazy. I’m glad I’m here with you. I’m where I belong.”

“John…” She choked on the rest. “You’re the best. I’ll miss you.”

“No, you won’t, you’ll be dead, my dear.”

They shared a strained laugh.

Frankie took a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s do this. For Earth.”

“For that polluted, mined-out chunk of space debris swimming in green acid. For Earth.”

“Lower the tail hatch.”

Nothing happened.

“Don’t mess with me, John, open the damn thing.”

“I just did. It’s still closed?”

“It didn’t move at all. The clamps are still on and so is the seal.”

“Standby.” A moment later, John’s voice filtered into her helmet. “What about now?”

“Nothing.” Panic began to bubble up.

“Well,” he began, chuckling nervously. “That’s kind of anticlimactic, if I may say so.”

Frankie closed her eyes. Things could never be simple, could they? Shit.

“Maybe the hit damaged the hinges. Can we open it manually?”

“Yes.” John’s voice sounded tight and strained.

“Okay, tell me where the mechanism is.” Frankie left the cargo netting and approached the five-meter wide hatch. Surely there was a lever somewhere. “I can’t see it.”

“It’s outside, Frankie. It’s supposed to be activated by ground crews from the outside.”

As John would say, shit indeed.

Chapter Five

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he heard from the comms console. Frankie had always had a way with words. Certain kinds of words, anyway.

“So, what now?”

“Got a cutter?” she asked. “In case it goes to shit, I’ll need something to cut the clamps.”

“In the anchoring niche by the medical kit there’s a blowtorch. It should be fully charged.”

He couldn’t believe he was helping her find another way to go kill herself. What was wrong with him? He should take this as a sign of the Divine and hightail it out of there. A coward’s retreat. He had no problem with being one. Cowards tended to remain alive. But if Frankie stayed, then so would he. He hadn’t lied—he was where he belonged. By her side.

A tiny red light blinked at the far edge of the systems console. He craned his neck. Hull integrity. A glacial frisson snaked down his spine. According to the ship’s schematics he pulled from the chart table, the breach had occurred near the cargo hold. The main seal, probably. The one linking both parts of the ship together. Small, obviously, otherwise they wouldn’t be having this conversation. But a breach was a breach was a breach. Never a good time to spring one.

“Did you find the blowtorch?” His eyes remained focused on the tiny red light. A robotic, Cyclops beetle.

“Got it. Which service access should I use? The one at the back?”

“No, that’s too close to propulsion. Take the one at the base of the lift. You’ll come out directly above the tail hatch. That way I won’t crush you against the pipeline, because, you know, that’d be bad.”

Her chuckle made everything a whole lot better, even death by spacing. He was such a fool. A fool in love.

Speaking of which, while keeping his gaze on Frankie’s e-suit monitor—her heart rate had hit the three digits and kept climbing—John wrestled on the e-suit on the bridge. Just in case something went wrong.

Ha.

What could be worse than blowing up the Imber milk factory?

He knew Frankie had reached the outside just by the way her heart rate spiked. “You okay?”

Her voice came back distorted from the hull’s thickness interfering with the signal. “…goddamn cold…am reaching…both hinges are…elted!”

“Repeat. Both hinges are what?”

“MEL-TED!”

Not good.

A plan formed in the back of his mind. One more reckless than Frankie’s. She’d probably love it. He hated himself for even thinking of ways to pursue this demented course of action instead of just throwing in the towel and going to find another damn planet. His plan was positively Crazy, capital C.

“That fucking…it’s shut. Can’t move a goddamn—I’m running out of options, John.”

His heart sank. Eyes closed because he couldn’t bring himself to watch the little red blinking light anymore, John adjusted his e-suit around his neck. He’d need it. His arm throbbed and made little crunching noises when he bent it.

“I have a plan.”

“Shoot.”

“There’s a breach between the two main sections.”

“I know.”

She did?

“I say we jettison the cargo hold, spin it around so the open side faces the pipeline, then we blow it up.”

“Dear God…” Frankie exclaimed.

“Oh, believe me, He wouldn’t approve.”

“Let’s do it.”

“On one condition,” John blurted out. He had no idea what to say next. But as he struggled to find a fault in his own plan, words just tumbled out of his mouth. As though his subconscious knew exactly what to say. “If you want the plan to work, you’ll have to do as I say. Don’t you trust me?”

“What the hell…condition…no time for that.”

“You’re going to put on one of the monkey tails, they’re near the cargo netting just inside the tail hatch. You’re going to strap one of those tether straps on. And I want to see it on your cam.”

“…no time for…please, John.”

“Do it!”

Never, ever in his entire life, had he spoken to her this way.

He heard nothing for a long moment, then, in a much clearer voice, Frankie announced she had one of the anchoring harnesses on—monkey tails for the long strap tethered to the ship. A tiny cameo on the tacscreen squared out to show a first-person view of someone wearing an e-suit and a black harness. Frankie gave him a thumbs up, hand held right in front of her helmet so the cam could capture her.

“Good. Perfect.” He checked the distance to the reefer’s aft portion and the pipeline. One and a half meters and holding. “Okay, I’m going to jettison the cargo hold. Make sure you stay out of the way. Hang on to one of the loading ladders, okay?”

“Okay.”

She sounded as though she was panting hard. Space was harsh on the human body, especially under the circumstances.

He moved farther away from the pipeline—two meters, three. Proximity alarms began to wail again as soon as he changed positions. He cut them all off.

“You ready?”

“Hell yeah. Just do it.”

John grinned and pulled down the lever. Another alarm filled the bridge. He cut that one too. A jolt rocked him into his seat as the cargo hold latched off the reefer. Despite the dense hull, the short distance allowed him to keep control of the hold and its four attitude jets. Simultaneously piloting both halves—something he hadn’t done since working at New Ankara Station’s massive kitchens, John nudged the cargo hold into a slow, lazy roll. One wrong move and he would crush his friend. His beloved Frankie.

None of the exterior sensors relayed the woman’s position, even if he could hear her breathing inside her helmet. Movement at the edge of his peripheral vision forced John to take his eyes off the main tacscreen.

“Dear Lord…”

There she was, on portside, bouncing agilely along the rotating hull of the cargo hold like a triple jump athlete. By the green glow that shone from the pipeline, he could see the monkey tail attached from the back of her harness to the fore half of the ship. It floated behind her like a ghostly snake.

He hadn’t told her anything because he wasn’t sure himself if the rest of his plan would work. But if it did, there just might be an option for them. One that didn’t involve death by explosion. When he was sure, he’d make his move.

“Please, be careful,” he whispered.

Space pressed against her suit, her face shield, her very core. Lungs couldn’t fill up full enough or fast enough. Extremities grew numb. Steam accumulated in the corners of her visor and wouldn’t dissipate. A low in her glycemic index threatened. Frankie forced herself to relax. Around her, rocks ranged in size from walnut to freighter. And also surrounding her, silence. Space had always intimidated her. A vast, silent observer, waiting for one to mess up so it could close its hostile fist on the foolhardy or the incompetent.

Beyond the immediate vicinity of the pipeline and Earth’s new rings, the planet itself glowed that sickly, unnatural green. Even more vivid out here in space where she could look at the thing with her own eyes. Despite the great distance, she spotted massive open-air mines on every continent. Some in constellations, others in lines. The acne-scarred face of a teenager. Around it all, the mesh of conduits filled with Imber fuel. Blood. Milk. Whatever the substance and its role, it was about to dry up. Alien scumbags.

While John simultaneously maneuvered the reefer—slowly, centimeter by excruciating centimeter—and its cargo hold, Frankie made sure to be at the perfect spot to do her job. He truly was one hell of a pilot. As soon as the hold made contact with the pipeline, she’d use the blowtorch and make a few well-placed stitches to keep both in contact. Just enough so the explosion wouldn’t propel the hold backward and cause minimal damage to the alien pipeline. Faint white light shone out of the bubble bridge. She yearned to stop what she was doing and try to get a peek at him as he worked. But such luxury was now out of the question. Commander Francine Beaumont had a job to do.

Another couple degrees and John aligned the hold’s edge along that of the pipeline. The interior bulkhead, thinner and more brittle, wouldn’t stop the explosion from blasting through the alien metal. As it were, the fragments would probably contribute to the devastation.

Blowtorch ready, she bounced to the place where both human and alien structure met and began to stitch. Bright blue dots danced in her eyes as she made ten quick joints. No time to link them. This would have to do. Already, they’d spent too long getting ready when all she’d wanted was to pull a Kamikaze and hit the thing head-on.

Almost done. Jesus, she was actually doing it. It’d worked.

“Ready,” she said into her helmet. The visor whitened with even more steam. No wonder. Sweat covered her.

John replied something she didn’t understand. “Repeat,” she shouted.

“Misery…es…y!”

“What?”

“Misery!” John roared. “Loves! Company!”

What the hell does that mean?

A series of shadows flitted over the pipeline like someone flipping the pages of an old-fashioned book. One hand on her monkey tail, Frankie kicked with her right foot so she’d make a complete rotation and see what had caused the shadows.

Her heart sank.

Not a thousand meters from her waited a cluster of Imber ships. One had alien equivalents of green searchlights sweeping the juncture. Unquestionably they’d realize the reefer was no space junk. Even if it was in two pieces.

For the first time in her life, fear paralyzed her body and mind. Only senses remained alert. Around her, blowtorch, crowbar and stunners floated at the end of their short leashes, in the exact position and angle in which she’d left them. Still, she watched the enemy. Despite the dread freezing her body, her mind analyzed, gauged and studied. Such predatory beauty. The stuff of nightmares. Metal exoskeletons covering pale-fleshed beings whose Latin name, imber, meant rain. For the metal rain that had fallen on Earth all those years ago. A few hours of metal rain, then centuries of metal reign.

They couldn’t hear her—no one could hear anything in space, the one great equalizer—yet Frankie stopped breathing. Stopped moving. Her eyes only proved life still pumped through her. She counted seventeen small alien ships. Seventeen. Might as well have been seventeen thousand. Somewhere around them, perhaps behind the moon or hidden below the Earth’s curvature, the human fleet waited. Could they see this? Had Bentley rerouted all available power to boost the sensors? And still the Imbers made no move.

What are they doing?

Frankie had her reply when the one with the searchlights froze its twin rays on the reefer hold welded—at least a little bit—to the precious pipeline. A frenzy began with the alien ships. They swerved up and around, joined then separated, only to fly right back to their initial position. Clearly, the searchlights had revealed something to them. They knew the reefer was no space junk. They knew the hold hadn’t attached to the pipeline all by itself.

John and she had been discovered.

Coming from inside her helmet, John’s voice jackhammered into her skull. “Hang on.”

To what?

John’s warning snapped her back to reality. Fear evaporated, replaced with hatred that had festered for years under the mask of duty and obligations and had led her to this location, on this day. Revenge wasn’t even on the list. What she wanted—what John and she were about to dispense—wasn’t vengeance. No, much more powerful than that. It was hope.

A curse left her when the reefer began to pull away. Only by a few meters, but enough to yank on her tether strap and force her off her perch. As she windmilled her arms—not that it did any bit of good—a couple of the smaller Imber ships detached themselves from the rest and fanned out on either side of the juncture. Instead of swooping in, they just flew back and forth, like in a mad dance, like someone taking a step forward but then one backward. Rage was palpable in the way they sharply changed directions or executed snap-rolls. Angry wasps wanting a good spot to hit.

What the hell is going on? Imbers never acted this way. Not that she knew. Uncertainty? Confusion? What was wrong with them?

Then it clicked. Despite the differences in species and behaviors, Frankie understood. The Imbers didn’t dare fire at them for fear of damaging the pipeline.

“Oh, you ugly little fuckers. I knew this was your blind spot.”

She opened her thigh pocket. For a horrifying moment, the detonator slipped out into space. It floated up in front of her face. Black plastic against black space.

“Shit.”

But she caught the retrofitted magnetic lock and held it tightly in her gloved fist. Her heart almost stopped. With the color and size, had it slipped from her, she never would’ve found it again.

“What’s going on?” John asked. “…not moving…?”

“They won’t fire at us.”

Static crackled and drowned what John replied.

“They don’t dare fire on us. The pipeline.”

She heard his laugh and couldn’t help but grin as well. What a crazy day.

“The big one…it doing?”

Big one?

She was about to ask him what he meant when she saw, rising behind the small Imber ships like an angry cosmic storm, the mothership that had refueled the others earlier. From such a short distance, the thing was huge. Larger than the Magellan. Larger than four Magellans.

“I’ll cover you.”

With quick bursts of attitude jets, John indeed put the reefer between the enemy and her. Didn’t he know it wouldn’t matter? Chivalrous to the end.

“It’s doing something,” he added. When he cursed long and hard, Frankie had nothing to say. In all the years she’d known John, he’d used this kind of language only twice. And both times he’d been drunk. Goddamnmotherfuckingshit? John?

Indeed the mothership was doing something.

Frankie watched, half horrified, half intrigued as the large Imber vessel deployed a vast array of weapons that ranged from giant pulse cannons large enough to fly a small shuttle into, to small but vicious-looking rocket launchers. All along its limbs and round belly, muzzles sprouted out. A floating armory, that thing. And all of them were pointed at the reefer.

This was what she’d come here to do. It all came down to this moment. She hoped the rest of the fleet watched. And she hoped they cheered when the pipeline exploded.

“Do it!” John roared inside her helmet.

She squeezed the detonator in one fist while she flicked the cap off with her other hand. Both shook badly. Steam spread in white circles against the inside of her visor. She could hardly see a thing. She didn’t need to. She knew that little piece of machinery like the pocket of her favorite sweater. A tiny bump proved perfect to rest the heel of her gloved thumb. Womack and she had designed the thing to have a twofold ignition action. First, lift the cap, which she’d just done. Second, slide the little clip all the way up, where the thin strip of foil would crinkle up and create a tiny, internal spark. Said spark would trigger a five-second sequence emission that the bomb would pick up with the detonator’s twin sensor.

“I love you, John O’Shaughnessy,” she whispered.

His chuckle came back loud and clear. No static. Great timing. “And I love you. But for the records, I said it first.”

Tears rolled down her cheeks. It was time to end the Imbers’ rule over Earth.

The mothership lifted its prow—its head. The smaller ships became very still. Something was about to happen. Something bad.

“You fucked with the wrong species.” Frankie slid the clip all the way up. She couldn’t hear the satisfying click but imagined it.

Chapter Six

“You fucked with the wrong species.” Frankie had always known what to say.

John gunned the engines. All of them. All the way.

Instead of flying out in a straight line, he angled all four attitude jets to starboard. The violent burst of speed must have given quite a shock to the unfortunate woman tethered at the end of a cargo strap. But this couldn’t be helped right now. He yelled the whole time the ship ripped into a crazy roll. The reefer, now much lighter without its cumbersome hold, acted like a trebuchet and flung Frankie ahead in what must have been a spine-compacting arc. Poor woman. But she was tough. She could take it. Question was…could his reefer take it. Because he’d effectively put it smack between the pipeline—the one about to explode—and Frankie. He’d get the brunt of it and right in the face too. Fitting. The John O’Shaughnessys of the world were eminently replaceable whereas everyone could use a few more Frankies. Many more Frankies. It’d burned his toast to die for humanity. What was humanity anyway? A lot of people? Was that worth saving, a lot of people? Why? Because of sheer numbers? Who knew? Surely not because of humans’ humanity. They had precious little of it. But for her, he’d do so with a smile on his face.

A bright flash filled his tacscreens.

“God…”

The explosion was eerily silent. But the sight proved at once riveting and hideous. He sat transfixed by the spectacle.

Where Frankie had fixed the hold to the pipeline, it burst like an overfed snake. A ring-shaped geyser expanded from the point of impact and created a gap at least a hundred meters wide. Green acid gushed out in large blobs that sloshed outward, ungainly and unevenly, into a widening radius. Green globules hit the reefer, plastered the tacscreens, trailed in long lines up the prow and through the antennas. It was everywhere.

Then the shockwave hit.

Proximity alarms resounded anew. Even the one announcing imminent hull breach. The bridge shook, rattled violently enough to break John’s harness on one shoulder. Arms and legs wide and braced for support, he watched debris come at him hard and fast. A large black mass like a twisted cube rolled in his direction. Not dead-on but pretty damn close. It was the cargo hold blown loose. Oh, this one would hurt…

The hit tore a snarl of pain from him. Violent tremors followed as the twisted hold gouged a long gash all along the reefer’s prow, up the fore portion, dangerously close to the bubble bridge. John forced himself to watch the end. Frankie was safely—relatively speaking—behind the reefer and out of harm’s way. Nothing else mattered. At the last possible second, one of the damaged hold’s protuberances caught on one of the sensors and flipped off the hull to safely spin out of the way to portside. Electrical sparks rained down from the consoles above his head. Every alarm on board wailed, chimed, beeped and rang. Smoke, steam and frost seeped into the bridge.

Yet amidst the chaos and pain—something was wrong with his arm and now with both ankles—one thought kept him alive.

“Frankie!” he yelled into the e-suit’s comms. “Frankie!”

The mother of all warning systems blinked red right between his knees.

“Shit.”

Gravity failed. Lights died, even the emergency set.

John had no choice. He unbuckled the remnants of his harness and kicked off his seat. God, his ankles throbbed. He’d probably broken both during the initial shockwave. Still, he had to get out of this deathtrap. Weightless, hand over hand, kicking and pushing off anything he could latch onto, he tore out of the bridge. Behind him, another shockwave pushed the ship into an asymmetrical barrel-roll. A crazy top off its axis. Nausea choked him. A metallic taste invaded his tongue. Blood glistened inside his face shield. He pushed on. Had to get to the back of the reefer. Had to get to her. His injured head throbbed to the rhythm of his crazy heartbeat.

The passageway proved difficult to navigate in pitch black. But a soft, green glow highlighted portholes and the wide gap at the back of the ship where the cargo hold had been. He prayed the monkey tail had held on despite the violence, the crazy piloting and the acid flowing out of the broken pipeline.

If he’d survived and she hadn’t…

Finally, he reached the main seal and the gaping hatch that had once led to the cargo hold. Beyond, green radiance emanated from many directions at once. Acid still continued to flow out of the destroyed pipeline. With hands that shook badly, he patted along the hatch in search of the crank for Frankie’s tether strap, found it and slammed his fist on the mushroom-shaped control. Nothing. Not even enough juice to reel her in.

“Goddammit.” Steam whitened his visor. He could see little else than his hands and the outline of the hatch.

When he found the strap—still taut, thank God—John grabbed it with two hands. Despite his broken ankles, he buttressed his feet on the hatch edge and pulled. Hand over hand. Every muscle in his body burned. Weightlessness could be a bitch just as much as gravity.

“Frankie. I have you. I’m reeling you in, okay?”

A hazy memory surfaced. He’d done this before, pulled her in, calling out that he had her. Where had this happened? The fear and horror of dropping her, he’d felt this before. And she’d replied something, hadn’t she?

I have to go. I’m sorry.

Her voice was in his head, right? It wasn’t out there. She wasn’t telling him that she had to go. He refused to believe it. The hit must have scrambled his brain. Maybe he was dead.

“Fuck. No.”

He resumed calling her name. Nothing but ominous silence. Images of crushing despair filled his mind’s eye. What if the unthinkable had happened? What if her plan would’ve worked better than his own? What if he’d…killed his beloved? Couldn’t he have trusted her and did as told? Why the hell did he have to be the unpredictable asshole again? Jesus.

“Frankie!” His voice was hoarse from roaring her name. Still he called. For every pull on the tether strap he called for her.

After what felt like an eternity, a mass appeared at the end of the strap. Relief washed over him in a great warm wave. She was there. Within reach. All he had to do—

A great metallic face descended into his field of vision. An Imber ship was peering inside the reefer, its dead, milky eyes—as large as goddamn coffee tables—blinking like green lasers amidst the mechanized body. John froze, one fist on the straps.

He felt transpierced by that stare. Green death. He prayed under his breath, prayed not for him but for Frankie. He hoped with all his heart that she was alive. But unconscious. Because she faced away from him and toward the aft of the ship, the Imber must have been twenty meters in front of her. The face of Satan himself.

So close but still too far. Frankie floated arms and legs wide. John still didn’t move a muscle as the Imber face floated left to right, as if searching. Smelling. Hunting.

It abruptly slid below view.

John hurriedly resumed pulling Frankie to him. When he gripped the back of her harness and yanked her inside the closed portion of the ship, he let out a long sigh of relief. He spun her around. Fear and dread fought with hope and relief. What if she was…?

By the greenish ambient light, her face appeared intact. Blood stained one temple though, and chilled John’s own.

No…

His heart thudded hard when a long appendage curled into the empty space where the cargo hold had been. Green veins covered it but didn’t glow the way they had before. Instead of acid green, the veins glistened a deep, forest green shade.

Inside his helmet, static crackled so loud he snarled in pain. God, what was that? Modulation, cadence. Was the Imber trying to talk to him? It sounded pissed off.

He pushed Frankie behind him so he could close the inside hatch. His elbow crunched, sending lances of pain shooting up his shoulder. But he fought it. He fought it with all he had. The distress signal was still going off, somewhere in the ship’s innards, and relayed their position. If they were very lucky, one of the human ships would find them. Maybe.

He managed to close the hatch just as the limb—a mix of forklift and giant crab pincer—rotated and shot for the closing hatch. But it slid shut and the Imber arm thudded against it. Metal buckled on John’s side. Rivets popped loose and floated off.

“Shit.”

With Frankie in tow, he pushed his way back toward the bridge. But he never made it very far. A violent tug on Frankie’s strap reeled them both back against the hatch. The monkey tail disappeared into the crack. On the other side, the Imber must have known there was a soft little human tied to it. Fucking monsters. How he hated them.

Snarling and cursing, John fiddled with his utility belt and pulled out a stunner. He shot once at the strap nearest to the bulkhead as possible. If the charge came too close to the e-suit, it’d melt a hole in it.

Just as he was ready to fire another shot, he caught a look of Frankie’s face. His heart stopped. His world was reduced to one thin sliver. Frankie’s face. Contorted with pain.

In his helmet, her voice made his heart sing just as it stopped it. “John…I can’t…breathe.”

Something buzzed in her ears. Rhythmic, soothing. Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh. She’d heard this tempo all her life. Her heart. She realized her eyes were closed. She tried opening them. Still blinded. In fact, her entire body felt numb and as if controlled by someone else. Nothing responded to her brain’s messages. She couldn’t feel her extremities. Not because of cold. She didn’t feel cold. In fact, her core was warm. And tight. Something had her by the waist and was squeezing her. Hard.

“Too hard,” she mumbled.

From only the sound of her heart beating, other noises soon joined in. A voice. Cursing, panting. A lot of that. A name. Always the same.

Frankie.

She felt detached, loose, disjointed.

Yet the voice more than the name tickled her memory. She knew that voice. She loved that voice.

John.

As if reality came screaming back in, Frankie opened her eyes. She couldn’t breathe. Something around her waist was cutting into her. It hurt. So bad.

“John,” she murmured. Then louder. “John.”

His face hovered not a foot in front of hers. Two visors separated them, both whitened with condensation. He likewise wore an e-suit. A stunner glistened in his hand. Everything was a shade of green.

“Hold on.” He brought the stunner along her leg and fired. The monkey tail. Something had caught in the monkey tail.

“Wait!”

With deadened hands she grabbed the blowtorch, amazingly still attached to her belt, and brought it up for him to take. He let the stunner float where it may and grabbed the blowtorch. One stitch and her monkey tail melted free of the hatch. John put a few more stitches to the hatch seal. What was he doing? Sealing them in?

“John! Stop!”

“They’re here.” He put another couple of stitches. “They’re in the hold cradle.”

Her heart skipped a couple of beats. At least that.

“What?” She looked around. The reefer sat diagonally, no light other than the ghostly green radiance filtering in from the portholes, no gravity, no propulsion. “What happened?”

He put his visor right up against hers. His crooked grin warmed her heart. “I’ve never been so happy to hear your voice. Even if you sang I wouldn’t mind.”

A shadow fell across his chest, a result from the porthole behind her. Something had just passed in front of it.

“What’s going on?”

“The Imbers, they’re circling us like sharks.”

“And the pipeline?”

“Look for yourself.” John pointed forward at the darkened bridge.

She pushed against the bulkhead to have a better angle. A gasp left her. The thing wasn’t only destroyed in the spot where she’d put the charge. It was emptying of its green acid. Fast. And around them, indeed circling like sharks, Imber ships that somehow looked different flew in crazy patterns.

“What’s going on with them?”

“Let me take a wild guess and say they’re pissed.”

“No, it’s more than that. Look, they hardly glow and—”

A hit to the ship rattled them like beans in a can.

“They’re coming in for the kill!” John yelled. He grabbed her arm, reeled her in. “I’ve already spilled my guts quite effusively, but I do love you. Always have.”

As if a woman could ever tire of hearing that. She wrapped her numb arms around his waist and held on tightly. “You’re such an ass, John O’Shaughnessy. Always have.”

They shared a tight grin. Both visors were covered in white spots. Another hit sent the crippled reefer into a tight roll. Frankie screamed the whole time. Or she thought she did. She was still shaky and confused. They hit knobs and seats and chart table, conduits and pipes and guardrails. Through it all, they never let go. More hits followed. Someone was trying to get in bad.

As abruptly as it’d begun, the strikes stopped.

For a good ten seconds, John and she only held on to each other, helmets together, visors touching.

“They’re gone?” John ventured.

“I doubt it. Sneaky scumbags.”

Another five or six seconds. Frankie had never been known for her patience. “I’ll go have a look.”

“Like hell you are. You’re staying right—”

Darkness chased the green glow away and blocked everything else. Whatever it was that created the shadow, it was big.

John craned his neck. “The mothership?”

“That bitch.”

Together, they pushed and pulled to the fore tacscreens.

“Holy shit,” Frankie murmured. She pumped her fist. “Holy shit.”

Beyond the porthole were human ships. Many, many human ships. Some of them had already circled the portion of broken pipeline while others were still appearing from below the Earth’s curvature. And all of them fired at will. Pulse cannons blazed blue-white. Rockets zoomed out like giant darts. Turrets turned and spun like mad tops to track their targets.

“Look at that. God, look at that.”

Imber ships were taking hit after hit. Without replying.

And still the shadow covered them. She twisted her neck to see what had caused it.

“Bentley, you crazy sonuvabitch.” She would’ve recognized the Magellan’s fine, fine ass among a thousand ships.

“The Magellan?” John likewise peered up at the leviathan floating not one hundred meters above their heads. “Qiu has the best ears.”

“Qiu?”

“I triggered a distress signal just before you blew the Imber pipeline. I figured, if we don’t survive, at least they’ll find our carcasses.”

“Good thinking,” she breathed, her eyes scanning the expanse of space she could see. “Oh my God.”

Imber ships, usually fast and maneuverable, flew in loose formations around the human ships, which still fired volleys in quick successions. Some alien ships went belly-up, their veins darkening by the second. Even the fearsome mothership seemed to be unable to maintain speed and heading. She rolled, collided with a cluster of smaller ships and sent them careening out in all directions. A couple crashed and exploded. And still the green stuff gushed out of the broken pipeline. To Frankie’s shock, the thing had begun to darken as well, from Earth’s surface and up, until the black wave had reached the lunar power plant. Like a chain reaction, the plant also blackened.

“What the hell is going on?” John murmured. “The fuel is turning black.”

“It’s not fuel, it’s their blood. They’re dying.”

Under the Magellan’s protective shadow, John and Frankie watched as every Imber ship stopped and began to float aimlessly, not a glowing vein on any of them. The last remaining active vessel was the mothership. Her cannons and rocket launchers deployed and aimed in many directions at once. But she didn’t fire. The black wave also took her, turning her green veins into dark conduits. Every mobile part froze. Every glint of life died.

“She’s dead,” Frankie breathed.

“But look at this, though.” John held Frankie closer. Their helmets touched.

As they looked through the reefer’s portholes, the thick, glowing lines that had covered Earth for the past centuries began to fade. Like veins of phosphorus slowly draining out of a host, each particle dispersed in the atmosphere, free and unbound, rising, evaporating until nothing remained. Once a sickening shade of incandescent acid-green, Earth was now blue. A globe of shadow and blue ocean.

“It’s so…” Frankie began.

“Blue.”

“Yeah, so blue. Beautiful, vibrant blue. And some white too. Look at that. Gorgeous.”

“It is a nice-looking planet, as planets go.”

A hand landed on her shoulder, squeezed through the e-suit. Frankie reached up and gripped John’s gloved fingers. “They’re gone,” she murmured, awed. “I can’t believe they’re all gone.”

The human fleet ceased fire when it became evident the enemy wouldn’t fire back. When it was clear the war was won.

“…captain. Report.” Bentley’s booming voice made her grin. The man had the finesse of a freighter.

“Beaumont, here.”

“Good God. Am I…happy to hear…Imber…dead ducks…ride?”

John quirked an eyebrow. “Bentley has a dead-duck fetish?”

“I think he’s offering us a ride.”

They chuckled as they made their way out toward the back of the reefer. Because John had welded it shut, they had to use the stunners to break the stitches and float free. Above them like a giant hen, the Magellan opened one of its many cargo hatches. A bright square of light appeared right above their heads then a long boom was lowered right down to the reefer for the magnetic lock to clip. A clang echoed along the hull when the Magellan activated the magnet. Both ships were now attached.

“I know what you did back there,” Frankie began.

“Did what?” The mocking grin was back on. She’d missed it so much.

“It was unbelievably heroic and foolish. Thank you.”

“I’m neither a hero nor a fool,” John replied through his trademark corner grin. “Remember that long conversation I said we’d have?”

Frankie felt heat puff all the way up to her face. She cleared her throat. “Yes.”

“Where do you want it to happen? Your cabin or mine?”

She laughed. “You’re so traditional.”

“Oh?” He gripped her by the arm and pulled her closer to him. Despite the e-suits and both foggy visors, she clearly saw the desire etched on his handsome face. “You’re looking for something a little extra, are you? I’m not opposed to sex in the engines bay.” He winked.

“Womack would have a cow if he found out.”

John’s smile turned mean. “Yeah, Womack. I’d forgotten about that. I have a surprise for him. We’re having soup tomorrow, by the way. Oyster soup.”

Clearly, this was another one of John’s too-witty-for-her jokes. She just laughed along and grabbed his butt when he floated a bit in front of her.

“That’s sexual harassment, Captain.”

“Get used to it.”

John cut a glance back and grinned. “You just wait ’til I’m out of this thing.”

Frankie, in fact, could not wait. She’d already wasted precious years not realizing her affection for John ran much deeper than friendship. She’d be damned if she’d waste a single hour.

“Bring it on. Say, got a toffee stashed somewhere? I’m having one hell of a sugar low.”

“I have one hidden on my person. But you’ll have to find it yourself.”

“You’re tall. It could take me all night to find it. A hint?”

John chuckled. “Nope.”

“Ass.”

The last will and testament of a forgotten Earth…

The Mythmakers

An Impulse Power Story

For Captain Steffi Savannah and her crew of deep space smugglers, life has become little more than a dogged exercise in mere survival. Their latest disastrous heist ended with another dead crew member—and no place left to hide. She’s even finding it hard to dredge up any excitement over the giant, crippled ship that appears on their radar, even though it’s the salvage opportunity of a lifetime.

They find that it’s no ordinary alien vessel. It’s a ship of dreams, populated with the last remnants of Earth’s mythical creatures. Including the blond, built, mysterious Arne, one of a race blessed with extraordinary beauty—and few inhibitions. Though he won’t tell her exactly what he is, in his arms Steffi rediscovers something she thought she’d never feel again. Wonder, love…and hope.

It isn’t long, though, before the Royal guard tracks them down, and Steffi and her crew are faced with a terrible decision. Cut and run. Or risk everything to tow the ship and her precious cargo to safety.

Warning: This book contains moderate sexual activity, strong language and high-cholesterol breakfasts. Also features hot nudists, naive men and other equally rare fantasy creatures.

Enjoy the following excerpt for The Mythmakers:

Steffi lumbered on down the endless corridor, four pounding heartbeats to every thumping step. Moments ago, her spacesuit had felt no heavier than her dad’s winter cardigan; now it pulled on her thighs and anchored her lungs like an antique deep-sea diving suit. Clank, scrape, clank, scrape went her boots. The oily Rorschach walls scrambled and swirled while the light from her helmet lamp roved over them. The surface seemed alive, but it was an optical illusion. No sign of an opening. Neither a narrowing nor a widening of the corridor at any height. She wondered how far her curiosity would last.

Fifteen minutes in and no structural change in the changeling surface. Her palms and neck and the small of her back clung to her thermal undersuit. Moisture streamed down the walls and trickled away through small grids at either side of the convex floor. She checked her readouts again. Gravity and oxygen were the same. The temperature, though, had almost doubled. Thirty-eight degrees Celsius.

The ceiling of mist lowered to around fifty feet above her. Her helmet fogged. She made a higgledy clear streak with the knuckles of her glove.

“Moder, jeg er træt, nu vil jeg sove, Lad mig ved dit Hjerte slumre ind; Græd dog ei det maa Du først mig love, Thi Din Taare brænder paa min Kind.”

“McKendrick, keep it down,” she snapped. “Unless it’s important.”

“Wasn’t me, Cap.”

Steffi smacked her helmet. Had her comm receiver gone screwy? She realised the first voice hadn’t sounded like a woman’s anyway. “Rex, you there?”

“Here, Cap. Everything okay?”

“Was that you singing?”

“Nope. Not me. You don’t wanna hear my singing.”

She paused to untie the knot in her brain. She must have imagined the voice. Was her oxygen mix okay? Hmm, perfectly fine.

The foreign man’s voice grew louder, like a radio in a slow-approaching sky-cab. Steffi heard every crooned word:

“Her er koldt og ude Stormen truer, Men i Drømme, der er Alt saa smukt, Og de søde Englebørn jeg skuer Naar jeg har det trætte Øie lukt.

“Moder, seer Du Englen ved min Side? Hører Du den deilige Musik? See, han har to Vinger smukke hvide, Dem han sikkert af vor Herre fik—”

Clink. The toe of her left boot scuffed the floor. The song ceased. Her lamplight shone across an incongruous form resting against the right-hand wall ahead. It made her knuckles clench. She stopped and stared until her visor steamed again. What was it—that crouched figure—in front of her?

She crept, shifting her weight from one boot to the other, careful not to clang them again and scare the creature away.

“Hello?” she called.

Water trickled under the floor into some kind of drainage system.

“What are you?” came the reply. “Have you come to kill us?”

Steffi had never heard the accent before. It sounded a little like German, though.

“The light dazzles me. I cannot see your face,” the voice continued. “Are you a man or a woman?”

“A woman.”

She closed in and saw that he was a trim, pale but handsome man with shoulder-length blond hair. Naked as Adam, he glistened with sweat. No hair anywhere else on his body. His narrow blue eyes squinted further in the beam of her lamp.

“What do you want here?” he asked, still crouching—solemnly, it seemed to Steffi.

“We’re just investigating your crippled ship. We saw it spinning aimlessly, and we wanted to find out what had happened. No one builds ships like this. Who are you?”

“First tell me your name.”

“Steffi Savannah, captain of the Albatross. And you are?”

“You have a beautiful voice, Steffi Savannah.” He rose and stood facing her, arms akimbo. “I am Arne.”

Her turn to be dazzled. His extraordinarily athletic physique would have been enough to make her shiver with delight, but he was also well endowed. No cuts or abrasions anywhere on his skin that she could see—unheard of among deep-space crews, due to the multitasking nature of maintaining a ship—and he stood without slouch, without pose, and without inhibition. Steffi highlighted every part of his anatomy with her torchlight. He was one hell of a fine specimen. Maybe too perfect.

“You are human, right?”

Arne offered her his hand without hesitation. “Yes and no.”

The gentle tugs of her conscience would at one time have been powerful yanks to rip the carpet out from under her, make her step back and exercise caution. But she was not that girl anymore. Diving into risk from a platform of indifference had kept her in the smuggling trade for a decade. It should not have, but it had. It was her peculiar knack. She accepted his hand and let him lead her twenty feet along the corridor. Neither of them spoke. Suddenly he faced the wall and, with the spidery grip of his free hand, pressed against the phosphorous. The wall spiralled open from the point of contact to reveal a navy blue passageway shimmering with turquoise light. She gasped and gripped him tighter. Where was he leading her? His living quarters? To see his captain? Hmm…what if he wasn’t as benign as he seemed?

With her free hand, she flicked the toggle for Internal Comm Only on her cuff. At the very least, she had to keep her crew apprised of the situation.

“Rex? You there?” She spoke into the side of her helmet away from Arne.

“Go ahead, Cap.”

“I’ve found a member of the crew. A foreigner. He seems friendly but I’ve never seen anything like this place, so tread softly. In fact, don’t come up here ’til I give the green light. We don’t want to alarm them. You copy that?”

“Loud and clear. I’ll hang back ’til you holler, but, Cap…don’t wander too far.”

“I’ll buzz you in fifteen,” Steffi explained. “If I don’t, make sure you’re armed before you come get me.”

“Roger that.” Rex’s curt, emphatic voice lent steel to her resolve. He might not be keen on her plan, but Rex knew what an order meant, and there was no one she’d rather have backing her up if things got tight.

She glanced down to flick the audio toggle to External and…wow.

Steffi widened her eyes. Speaking of tight.

Arne’s ass was a thing of beauty. A sporting ass. It seemed unusual for a man to have no leg hair, but then she remembered where she was. And he’d said he was only part human. What could that mean? What did it matter when he looked this good?

“Where are we going?”

“To where we live.”

“We?”

“Me and my kind.”

She was about to ask him what exactly that might be when the smooth curved passageway opened up to a vast, breathtaking lake overgrown with evergreen trees and multicoloured, fruit-bearing plants. The banks had at one time been smooth and artificial—some sort of a giant reservoir or swimming pool—but vegetation had almost completely hidden them. A low vapour cloud hovered a hundred and fifty feet above the water. Lying around the water’s edge, on a blanket of spongy green grass, dozens of naked men and women seemed to be basking or sleeping. All of them were breathtaking to behold.

“I think you should take your clothes off, Steffi,” Arne said matter-of-factly.

“Why? How do I know the air isn’t poisonous to my kind?” That last part sounded dopey. Her kind?

“I do not know what you mean.”

“You said you’re not fully human.”

“But all humans breathe the same air. I think you will be very uncomfortable here if you do not undress.”

She might have taken that for a threat, but Arne had a way about him, a forthrightness that seemed almost child-like. At least, that was how she perceived him.

“First, tell me what you’re doing here. What is this place? Who built your ship? What is its purpose?”

A boyish smile dimpled his cheeks, bared his perfect teeth. “If I reveal all that you want to know, will you undress?”

“Yes.” She smiled back with no intention of honouring that promise. There was something unreal about this whole setup, this quasi-human paradise, that screamed, “Get the fuck out, right now!”

But first she had to know its secret.

Working together is unavoidable. Falling in love…inevitable.

Hearts and Minds

An Impulse Power Story

Syna Davout thought it was supposed to be a simple smash-and-grab job—smash onto a luxury yacht, grab the cash, and split the proceeds with the client. Unfortunately, the client failed to mention that she’s the diversion for an assassination attempt that destroys the yacht and leaves her with a passenger she never expected. A fugitive telepath caught in the middle of a revolution.

Galen Fash thought his days were numbered. The fledgling revolution on his homeworld needs him to buy them time, with his life if necessary. The last thing he needs is to get involved with a pirate captain-for-hire whose larger-than-life emotions draw him like a moth to a flame.

Inexorably, Syna is dragged into a war that isn’t hers, and they both discover—between knock-down-drag-outs—that their whole is far stronger than the sum of their parts. Dodging the enemies that want them both dead will be hard enough. First, they have to survive each other…

Warning: this book contains Space Vikings, gossipy AIs, boxing-as-foreplay, rogue telepaths and a demanding pirate captain who likes to be in charge. The author will not be held responsible for a desire to punch your partner in the jaw, or a sudden awareness of latent psionic ability.

Enjoy the following excerpt for Hearts and Minds:

She stopped at a ship’s closet long enough to grab a tool belt and two pairs of leather gloves. “No padding in these, but at least you won’t get burned if something’s too hot. Come on, I’ll need your help down in engineering.”

Galen slipped the gloves on as the ship settled onto one of the rocks in the planetary ring. The whine of anchor drills resonated down the corridors and set his teeth on edge. The drills would make it hard to lift off quickly, but it also kept them securely fastened to the rock. An important modification in a zero-g environment and, he knew, completely off the book on a ship this size. Like the mass drivers, for that matter. He wondered how many other modifications he’d see when they reached the engineering department.

Department turned out to be a dramatic overstatement. The entirety of engineering consisted of two long, narrow access corridors down either side of the main power plant. It was barely big enough for one person, let alone the two of them side by side. Heat from the power plant leaked through the walls and left him mopping at his forehead in a futile effort to keep pace with the sweat that soaked him.

Beside him, Syna fared little better. Her ginger hair matted against her skin, and perspiration beaded on the side of her neck. Galen had a sudden urge to kiss her, to taste the salt on her skin, hear the tiny gasp of surprise that she thought he hadn’t heard when she’d kissed him in the gym. Had there been more room in the cramped corridor, he’d be tempted to try.

Gods, what was this woman doing to him?

“Are you going to help or just stare down my shirt?”

Galen blinked, smiled. “Is there a way I can do both?”

She shoved a curl of hair out of her face, pink leaching into her cheeks. “Just hold this.” She indicated the wires in her hands with a jut of her chin. He had to shift closer to reach and found himself too conscious of the way she pressed back against him as she worked. He willed his body not to respond and hoped it wasn’t too distracted to ignore him. She mumbled something as she flattened her back against him.

“Sorry, what?”

“Close your eyes,” she whispered. His pulse lurched erratically until blue-white plasma illuminated the space, and he realized she’d issued it not as a come-on, but a warning. His eyes snapped shut and focused on the red-yellow afterimage of the welding lance drifting quietly behind his eyelids. “Two more, then I think we’ve bypassed it.”

“That’ll bring the shields up to full?”

“It’ll bring them back to where they were before we started this venture, which is something. Stay out of the aft-most cargo hold—I had to reroute power from its environmental controls.”

“Is that safe?”

The welder sparked again, the light savage even through his closed eyes. The smell of ozone and charged particles drifted through the air. Combined with her shampoo, it made her smell like a spice field after an electrical storm.

“Yeah, just don’t go in there. Not much choice in the matter, the starboard field’s influx coupler got slagged. I don’t just carry those around with me.” The welder flared again. “That should finish that.”

Galen opened his eyes cautiously. “You can’t ask Bree?”

Syna shook her head. “No. There’s no pickups in here, and no speaker for her to respond through. I have to do it from the hall.”

He grinned. “Ooooh, unchaperoned. I like it.”

She laughed, her blush renewed. Warmth flooded out from her, her emotions a sea he wanted to swim in. She has no idea how sexy she is, he realized. On impulse, he leaned forward and kissed her.

She froze for a heartbeat and a flicker of panic went through him, then her hand tangled in his hair and tugged him closer. Her body crushed against him and any control he’d aspired to evaporated. The heat of her body soaked through his skin, suffused him as he lost himself in her.

She broke the kiss long enough to take a breath, then tugged his hair back to bite along his jawline. The combination of teeth and tongue overloaded Galen’s senses. His knees lost any sense of strength they had, and he reached out for support with one hand.

There was a soft pop and a whiff of electrical smoke. She pulled up from the kiss and touched her nose-tip to his, a quiet smile playing across her mouth. “Please tell me you didn’t just rip out my lovely bypass.”

He looked to his hand, tangled in the wiring, as if it were an alien on the end of his arm. “I…am going to go ahead and say yes.”

She slid her hand between them. His nerve endings went crazy as he felt the back of her hand slide past his hips, and she grinned at him, heavy-lidded eyes sparkling with mischief. Her hand retraced its route with agonizing slowness and when it came up, presented him with the hand welder. “Then you get to fix it.”

He let out a ragged breath. “You’re going to kill me.”

“Later. If you’re very good.” She backed farther down the corridor to give him access to the panel he’d wrecked.

“You’re not going to stand over my shoulder, make sure I do it right?”

Syna laughed. “Oh no. I’m not getting close to you again until I’m certain you’re out of reach of everything fragile.”

A woman bound to secrecy. A man bound to protect her.

Killing Silk

Azalea’s canvas is the human body. Her brushes—the colorful silk scarves and ancient ways passed down from a long line of Shibari masters. She has bound the rich and powerful, the beautiful and talented. But she has yet to find the one person worthy to trust with her age-old secrets.

Now a serial killer is imitating her unique style, leaving a trail of death across Tokyo. She knows she is in danger, but to reveal her alibi to the grave-eyed investigator would mean doing the unthinkable—breaking her clients’ confidence.

In all his years on the force, Keveri Newman has never seen murder victims posed as lovers, limbs bound in exceedingly rare silk. Down to the last knot, the evidence points to only one suspect: Azalea. A woman who redefines elegance and mystery, who asks the impossible—for him to trust her.

Azalea is drawn to the plain-spoken, cynical detective with hands as wickedly skillful as her own. A third murder inextricably ties them to a single purpose, because that night, she wasn’t alone. She was with Kev. And the killer knows the only way to get to her is to separate her from the one man who can protect her…

Warning: Here be futuristic car chases across Tokyo downtown, in the rain, with no lights and no caffeine in the bloodstream. That’s love, baby.

Enjoy the following excerpt for Killing Silk:

Her eyelashes looked like fans on her cheeks as she sat with her eyes closed, a sphinx-like smile on her berry lips and a slight tilt to her proud head. Hair the color of coal cascaded over her shoulders. She seemed to be waiting. Sleeping Beauty. Or serial killer.

In his guts, which he’d trust until convinced otherwise, he knew she hadn’t killed those people. She wasn’t killer material. Unless that was his dick talking. He’d never met a more conflicting, unusual and arousing woman. Every time he sent a question and expected answer A or B, she threw back a Z. Slick and hard to pin down. And pinned down was exactly how he’d been visualizing her for the last few minutes. She’d feel glorious and lithe pinned by his hips as he pounded into her. Flashes of carnal abandon flitted through his restless mind. On her knees, sucking him. Up against the wall, hard marble crushing her against him. And there she sat still, waiting.

The skin of his palms tingled when he leaned over. Those few inches were the longest journey he’d had to take in his entire life. He changed his mind about twelve times. Kiss her. Don’t touch her. He couldn’t resist her. But he should. What is he doing here? For fuck’s sake, just take the invitation. In the end, he did.

He’d expected fireworks as soon as his lips touched hers. Instead, he got…

Nothingness. Serenity. A bubble against the world. Nothing else mattered. Nothing else existed. Just them. Just the two of them. Even the adrenaline patch stopped itching his arm. Pure stillness. A garden in winter, scintillating snow like diamonds gently resting on delicate leaves, paths of tiny rocks glistening in the early morning sun, icy water gurgling inside a fountain of stone polished with the ages, and a sky blue enough to blind a man. Kev’s heartbeat slowed, his limbs grew heavy. The chronic restlessness that stole his sleep and sometimes made a powder keg of his temper dissipated. Should he die that day, he would do so a happy man. She’d given him peace.

Kev cupped her pointy chin in one hand while he leaned on the table for support. Gently, he let his mouth travel over her lips, moth-light, discovering and demystifying her. Although he knew no mere man would ever get to the bottom of the enigma that was Miss Azalea. She was as enigmatic and fluctuating as a prism. One angle only revealed one color. She was myriads.

Hands made for pleasure touched him lightly on the forearm. A simple touch, really. Yet one that shot his nervous system—already laced with the double adrenaline doses—into the fever zone. Like butterflies, the tips of her fingers danced a course along his arm, over his shoulder, up his neck and cheek. He shivered with the massive waves of pleasure she triggered. He pulled away so he could tug his turtleneck up and over his head, before literally jettisoning it across the table. It skimmed the smooth surface then slipped below view.

He heard her sigh as she ran both hands up and down his chest. “I knew it would be like this,” she murmured. Kissed a trail down his throat. “Exactly like this.”

Without using his fingers—he meant for this to last—Kev nudged with his chin the lapels of her long cowl wider apart so he could denude a breast. She had the most gorgeous, dainty little breasts he’d ever seen with dark points that rose like a challenge. He never turned down a challenge.

“Mmm,” he hummed deep in his throat. He liked to show a lady his appreciation.

The color of a plum, her nipple tightened even more when he blew on it. Softly, like a ribbon of air. Her sharp inhalation was all he needed. He did it again. Just blew on her nipple until he saw goosebumps rise all over her breast. When he knew she was ready, he licked her in one long pass from underside to collarbone. Then again. She arched for him. He reciprocated by suckling on her hard little point. Lotion that smelled of citrus fruit and something flowery invaded his brain and his ability to think rationally. Bending her over and taking her was quickly becoming an imperative he couldn’t deny.

Quick and precise, her hands worked the closure of his jeans. He was so hard it hurt. “Wait, not yet,” he snarled against her breast. A friendly little bite made Azalea tuck her bottom lip between perfect teeth.

He pushed the little tray, taking care not to rattle the delicate cups and teapot, to make some room for her. A pat to the tabletop seemed to be sufficient. Azalea rose to her knees to sit on the low table. She must have wanted the same thing he did. Her midnight gaze on him, she flicked a leg up over his head and spread herself wide. Ultramarine silk fell in a wide band that hid her pussy from him. And he liked it this way. Something this good had to take time. It had to last.

Azalea rolled her hips in lazy infinity figures as she planted her palms behind her. Skin the color of wet sand and shiny like coffee beans formed a canvas on which had been painted the most beautiful woman this side of the sun. Thighs that looked fit and firm twitched as she arched her foot. Smooth like silk.

She reached back, retrieved a teacup and tested the liquid inside with her lips. Smiling, she dripped tea over her chest, where it seeped into the silk band, turning it almost sheer. The garment looked at if it’d been painted on and exposed her form all the way down her belly and pussy, where it molded to her lips.

Kev was speechless as he watched her pour more warm tea down her belly. It glistened in thin rivulets on her skin. He could keep himself in check no longer.

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