The last will and testament of a forgotten Earth…
 
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.
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
 
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
577 Mulberry Street, Suite 1520
Macon GA 31201
 
The Mythmakers
Copyright © 2010 by Robert Appleton
ISBN: 978-1-60504-906-9
Edited by Sasha Knight
Cover by Kanaxa
 
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: February 2010
www.samhainpublishing.com
The Mythmakers
 
 
 
Robert Appleton
Dedication

For Doris, one of my first loyal readers, who kept me company on an arduous time-travel adventure. For Melissa, my charming partner in verse. And for my best friend T., who is no longer with us.
Chapter One

There had to be easier ways to make a living.
Steffi Savannah loosened her jaw with a gummy roll of her mouth, then shook her head to stay awake. The stars wheeled at a dizzying clip. She ducked lower into her magnetic boots, but her quads ached from crouching. The dark purple flame of her cutting torch ballooned and dripped behind the tinted welding shield in her hand. It was taking too damn long. She’d guessed at five minutes to cut the metal debris loose—fifteen minutes ago. Bright molten shards spiralled away into space as the Albatross rifled through nothingness on her way to nowhere. “Come on, you bitch,” she urged.
The two chasing ships were gaining. Once mere pinpricks of light against the dull grey cloud whirls of planet October, they now had necks and glassy beaks and shiny metal wings that reflected the suns’ amber. And an arsenal of major firepower ready to annihilate the Albatross.
“How’s it coming, Cap?” Bo Lineker’s snappy boyish voice redoubled her grit.
“Nearly there,” she replied. “Don’t wait for me. Get inside if you’re done.”
“You don’t want a hand?”
“No. I’m almost through.”
“I could—”
“Get below. Tell McKendrick to light the candle as soon as I close the hatch behind me.”
“Aye.”
The weight of resignation in his parting syllable tumbled and echoed deep inside her. She’d always hated being alone outside. Having a man to keep her company, one who’d do anything for her even though she didn’t love him in the least, was a safety cord no rig could best. She looked round but he’d gone. The unique brass hull had been sleek once. Now it was dented and greening and it barely reflected starlight anymore. Laser scarring and rivulet depressions where the seams had started to buckle groaned with old age.
Steffi shot a breath from her nostrils and gripped the cutter’s blunt handle. It rocked and rolled as the mangled wreckage lifted toward her. Shit. She had to let go of the torch to duck. McKendrick had punched the throttle early, as soon as the ship’s rolling had stopped. Tons of twisted metal almost took Steffi’s head off as the Albatross gathered speed. Ducking backward, she lay flat on the hull. Only her knees pointed up, as her magnetic boots were still clamped. The wreckage lifted like a silver crown of thorns away, ahead of her into space. She hoped like hell the bastards would fly into it.
A large blue glove gripped her arm.
“Bo! I thought I told—”
“Sorry. Was worried about you, Cap.”
She climbed up his arm and shoulder and shook her head. “Of all the dumb goddamn…I told you to tell McKendrick to wait ’til I was inside.” She gave him her hardest shove. It made him blink. “I came this close to being ripped in half,” she added, demonstrating the distance between her forefinger and thumb. “Now get your dumb hulk ass below and help Flyte with the Psammeticum coils.”
“Soon as you’re inside, Cap.”
She wanted to hug him for being a loyal puppy, but he needed to learn what an order meant. Bo adored her. He’d often said so in bed. And a part of her was very fond of him—the sex and the sweet talk had brightened up many a dull evening—but no more than that. She knew it was pity more than love that kept her close to him. Pity for his dumb, harmless nature; for him being an orphan with no hope of anything but a mining or muscle job; and for him not minding being used for sex whenever she wanted it.
But this time, his mindless devotion had gone too far.
“I said get inside right now. You’re not to wait for me, you’re to get the fuck below and do as I say. Or I’m dumping you on the nearest rock.”
His loyal squinting eyes neither moved nor blinked. What the hell could be going on behind them? She felt like the small guy from Of Mice and Men, trying to tell her backward giant friend that they’d never have a ranch together. It made her insides curl and tug. She was such a shit. And he still hadn’t responded.
“Bo? Say something.”
The fingers of his glove caressed the loose folds down the arm of her suit. He gently jabbed her hip.
“Bo?”
His mouth eased open. Blood trickled from his nose then fell from lip to lip. Steffi caught him as he began to sway sideways. Gasping, she looked down at a hole the size of a cricket ball in the centre of his chest. Gobs of blood squeezed from his arteries and froze immediately like misshapen ice lollies.
Oh my God.
Her mind blanked.
An infinitesimal spark in the tar pit of her being ignited her into action with a shudder. She swivelled her head round far enough to see loose rosaries of enemy fire following the Albatross’s dive. The energy pulses were small but rapid through space. One sheared the corner off the open hatch. Fifty others streaked above while McKendrick barrelled the ship low and steep. Steffi made a fist with her right foot to squeeze the insole’s magnetic grip. The boot loosened its hold and she swung her leg out past Bo, then clamped it down again. She almost forgot to clamp her next step, and only a magnetic toe kept her from drifting away into eternity. Rhythmic steps from now on. Rhythmic and metallic and precarious. Arrhythmic heartbeat. No way to steady that.
What about Bo? She couldn’t just leave him…but she had to.
The shots streamed by like a shower of white micro-meteorites. They lit her way across the brass hull as though she was back on old Xiu Pau’s roof on Chinese New Year, fireworks drip-webbing the sky. Before she reached the hatch, the firing ceased. It felt like the eye of the storm. She waited for a single, well-aimed sniper shot to thud into her spine. None came. Where was Bo? She daren’t look behind. A deep dark pool of emptiness lay around the Albatross while she gripped the hatchway ladder and bunched her toes. She tried to blink the silvery sears of light from her retina but couldn’t. Spinning the exterior hatch lock above her, she thanked God for giving her a bit longer to exist. Down through the inner hatch. Into the grimy airlock. Captain Steffi Savannah pulled the gravity lever and let Sir Isaac plonk her down onto the metal floor, right onto Aurora McKendrick’s white painted sign:
DON’T DO IT! YOU’RE YOUNG. YOU’RE HEALTHY. YOU FORGOT TO PUT ME IN YOUR WILL!
Anxious breaths misted the mess door’s rhombus window. Two pairs of eyes peered through, waiting for the air system’s green light. Suddenly the door swung open and Rex and Alexandra Van Rynn raced toward her, blankets and first-aid kit at the ready.
Steffi puffed her cheeks and sank her chin into the damp foam guard of her helmet. She’d just done a hell of a thing. Saved her ship. But it would be forgotten in no time. A few handshakes and a cup of hot chocolate and that would be that. No regrets. Achievement did not exist outside the law. Only survival, from one job to the next. She was used to it. But Bo’s death had to last a little longer. How much would she miss him? As long as the power in his magnetic boots lasted, he would be clamped on the hull like a barnacle. She knew she’d never sleep while he was there.
Christ, Bo! Why didn’t you just do as you were told?
Rex’s huge black hands wrestled her helmet and collar off. “You okay, Cap?”
“Yeah.” She sighed then took a swig of Alexandra’s water. “But Bo’s gone. He took a shot right through the heart.”
“Shit,” he said.
“Shit luck,” she replied.
Beautiful Alexandra reached into her blouse and fingered the pearl crucifix on her necklace. “We’ll say a prayer for him tonight.” Her ex-smoker’s rasp stuttered into a cough. “In the meantime, let’s get you rested.”
“Amen,” answered her husband.
Steffi removed her gloves to rub her tired eyes. “Are we clear of the Royals?”
“McKendrick seems to think so,” he replied.
“She did good.” Steffi sat forward and rested her arms on her knees.
“She always does. That’s the problem—we never hear the end of it,” Rex reminded her.
“Help me out of these boots, will you?” Steffi’s fingers trembled over her shin locks. “They weigh a goddamn ton.”
But even without the magnetic boots and the bulky suit and the clingy thermal undersuit, she felt no lighter. The burden of losing a man couldn’t be peeled off. As she staggered into the mess room, everything seemed so familiar: the faded, cherry-coloured floor, the spindly yet sturdy dining table clamped askew, the chrome sink surprisingly shiny despite being over a decade old, the wooden board games locker with no handle, the wrinkled cream yoga mats rolled up and tied into the corner like big ancient scrolls. So why wasn’t she glad to be back? After nearly three hours in zero-g in the line of fire, she ought to be.
She spotted Bo’s cereal bowl in the sink. A half-eaten serving of bran flakes soaked in milk. Almost like a child’s cereal. Her sock snagged on the steel grated floor as she ghosted down A corridor in her stocking feet. She let the sock rip loose. Barefoot felt much better, less restricted. Her cozy sleeping quarters consisted of an unmade bunk bed, two quilts and an out-of-date music system bracketed to the wall over her reading desk. She sank into the nest of quilts face first. Her hot breaths accumulated, stifling her pangs of guilt, on the verge of suffocation. At least it felt secluded in that livid place. When it finally became unbearable, she tossed onto a cooler spot and heaved a hollow sigh.
What the hell was she still doing out here, a fugitive in deep space?
Christ! There had to be easier ways to make a living.
Chapter Two

Steffi woke at around midnight to heavy clanking steps outside her quarters. The engine’s low hum was no longer soporific. It seemed to thump in cycles, as though something had broken loose during the escape and become lodged inside, impeding the revolutions. She got up and selected a music track to bring her to life. Something lively but not insistent. One of the Blue Infinity orchestral movements. Sweet, better than nothing. She yawned, stripped to her underwear and grabbed two towels from the clotheshorse. The floor was chilly so she nestled into her flip-flops, looking forward to a long, hot shower.
In the corridor outside, McKendrick and the new guy stopped their friendly banter as soon as they saw Steffi. Their eyes lit up. To their right, the door to the old prayer room was open and the light left on inside. Very odd. No one had used it since Polly Olduvai’s suicide there a few years back. The rest of the crew insisted it was haunted, and they now used the dining room for prayer. But not McKendrick. Her view on God and religion was stonewalled atheist. Had been as long as Steffi had known her.
“Nice work earlier, Cap,” said McKendrick. “You earned that lie-in.”
“Ditto. Dodging the rain…not too shabby.”
“Have you met the new guy yet?” McKendrick introduced him as Chance—the crew’s nickname for him after his brave intervention on planet October had afforded them the few moments they’d needed to take off before being hit by a laser blitzkrieg. Apparently, he’d been fired from the hotel for smuggling liquor. McKendrick had bought a case of Malibu from him minutes before the inside job had gone south. Steffi’s assignment, to help three diplomatic prisoners escape Royal custody, had failed when one of the politicians had misread the situation and assumed Rex and Bo were there to execute him. He’d fired his weapon. They’d fired back. And all hell had broken loose in the October Hotel.
“So instead of three pencil-neck politicians, we get one hot concierge with minty breath…” McKendrick felt his crotch, “…and a big dick. Not a bad trade-off. Eh, Cap?”
Embarrassed, Chance didn’t seem to know where to look.
“You don’t pray either?” Steffi asked him.
He shook his head and sprouted a mischievous grin. “Not since I was sold to the mines for a bottle of Scotch.”
“Who did that?” said McKendrick.
“My old man. Couldn’t afford to keep me at home. I was labelled forty proof that day, and I’ve never touched a drop since. If you see God anywhere in that, you’ve had one too many.” His inscrutable stare and narrow grey eyes, upturned at the edges, intrigued Steffi. He was focused, hard to read. Broad shoulders and a slouch, both probably from the mines, fitted the battered metal corridor like a Viking in a granite cave. She didn’t think him handsome, but that enormous masculinity pulsed through her, made her nipples harden.
“What are you doing in the prayer room?” she asked.
McKendrick grabbed Chance’s hand, barely managing to suppress a titter. “Um, not praying.” She winked. Chance raised his eyebrows at Steffi, halfway between asking permission and asking if she’d like to join them.
“The pagan kind, huh?” Steffi suddenly wanted a man inside her. The shower could wait. The corner of McKendrick’s smirk twitched in anticipation. Faint voices chanting in the mess only added to the scandalous vibe. The breath of fresh licentiousness. Sex in a haunted prayer room—what could be more apt for three people who no longer believed in anything?
“There’s always room for one more, Cap.” McKendrick turned back to Chance, grabbed his green sweater and pulled him into the room. Steffi saw their lips meet as she followed them in. It made her lick her own. Before she knew it, she’d tossed her towels aside and was being ravenously undressed by both partners on the soft foam mats that still shone white after all this time.
She gasped as Chance slid one hand inside her panties and clutched her ass with his other. McKendrick supported her from behind, squeezing Steffi’s breasts again and again. It didn’t feel right. Neither of them seemed to care what she wanted, what she liked. Their gropes felt eager, impersonal. Steffi curled this way and that, wanting to succumb, but something was missing. Bo had never treated her like this. She felt Chance’s firm, warm lips move down from her tummy. Then the probing tip of his tongue.
The back of her head thudded on the cushioned mat. McKendrick had let go, and Steffi had fallen backward. It sent a cold, sprawling pulse through her blood. She lay gasping, on the verge, unfulfilled.
McKendrick whipped off her own shirt and frayed sports bra, revealing large white breasts that sagged a little. Two moles on the right of her rib cage almost symmetrised a large knife scar on her left side. Three or four abrasions on her shoulders and hips told of the fighting she’d done on October, mostly in the bar the night before they’d fled. But any hint of tomboy dominance now submitted to Chance’s manhandling. From behind, he yanked her chin sideways into his kiss, his strong arm clamped around her neck. Then he wrestled her khaki shorts down below her knees. She wasn’t wearing panties. His teeth gritted, he unzipped his fly and penetrated her deeply from behind with a rhythm that made Steffi want to cover her eyes and ears. McKendrick’s moan had the helpless pitch of pain, yet when he desisted, she begged for more.
Their blissful surges overlapped like mingling currents in a choppy tide. As McKendrick flicked her head to face Steffi, warm sweat peppered the mats. A droplet or two even hit Steffi’s bare skin. An overwhelming feeling of loneliness, of being forgotten, discarded by the many worlds she’d called home, gripped her with frosty regret. She looked at the steel lattice ceiling painted white. Flaky, untreated. An unsentimental tear oiled the sexual athletics in the corner of her eye.
She heaved a shuddery sigh.
Was this really what she’d come to? Sharing a strange man with the most self-centred woman she’d ever met? Aurora McKendrick cared for two things in life—piloting the Albatross and Aurora McKendrick. Anything else was either a disposable pleasure or something she had to endure. But she was also a hell of a pilot and worth keeping around for that reason alone. Lately, with the increase in competition, the interstellar smuggling business had all but dried up, meaning the Albatross had had to go farther afield and take on more dangerous jobs than she once would have. McKendrick’s bravura piloting was becoming more and more important, a fact that she knew full well.
But Steffi hadn’t always broken laws for a living. Once upon a time, in the clean water days of Rapture’s moon Hellespont, she’d farmed Valerian fruit and hunted buffalo and fished for fourteen months of the year, and she’d been full of hope. The man of her dreams was a few ranches away, only a handful of seasons from earning enough to ask for her hand in marriage. Her dad would have agreed. He would have. If only the earthquake hadn’t taken them both from her and—
She swallowed too quickly. It went down the wrong hole and she coughed.
The mats creaked under Steffi’s feet while she gathered her towels and flip-flops and her underwear and walked away on rubbery legs. The loneliness hit her harder than ever in the corridor outside. McKendrick’s grim chuckle seemed to mock everything Steffi had ever been and ever could be again. So much for a captain having the respect of her crew.
She waited ’til she’d locked the shower door behind her and turned on the water. Under the tepid stream, she cried until her fingertips pruned.
 
~ * ~
 
Breakfast the next morning smelled and tasted better than it ever had before. The ship’s mechanic, Joey Marchmain, whom they’d nicknamed Flyte for his surname’s literary link to the rich family in Brideshead Revisited—he was polite and well-spoken as well—had cooked up a traditional English breakfast with the rare ingredients he’d bought from the outdoor market on planet October. Scrambled eggs, tinned bacon cut into generous slices, hash browns, handfuls of fried mushrooms, baked beans, what tasted like actual New Cumberland sausages: he’d gone the whole hog and delivered a stunner of a meal.
“Where the hell did you learn how to cook like that?” Chance wolfed down an extra spoonful of mushrooms. “I’ve never even seen half this stuff. Where are y’all from again?”
“Zaragoza, on Santa Lucia,” replied Flyte, brief and taciturn as ever.
Steffi thought she ought to reassert herself after last night’s embarrassment. “He’s the quiet one,” she said of Flyte. “One of those who you know is good at absolutely everything but never brags about it. A hell of an engineer, probably smarter than all of us put together, and the cleanest grease monkey you’ve ever seen. That’s our Flyte.”
“You forgot to mention renaissance chef.” McKendrick saluted him with her fork.
The slightest tug of a smile broke the smooth solemn mould of Flyte’s face. It led to a raising of the eyebrows and a wandering of the eyes—two overcompensations that Steffi saw and smirked at. Though he said little, she knew him better than he realised. The reluctance to form relationships. The obsessive perfectionism. The calibrated mind trapped in a box of broken promises. Flyte was an orphan of moneyed landowners, a thirty-year-old boy lost in the sea of space, and she had taken on the role of big sister far more than captain. He was like the royal physician serving on board a rotting sloop. Penitence was his salvation and his prison. He could be great if he wanted.
If he wanted.
“Yup, damn good, brother,” said Rex Van Rynn, a bear of a man born on a deep space pioneer vessel, whose job it was to load and unload all the Albatross’s cargo. He also doubled as head of security, more for his size and tough appearance than any special knowledge of the discipline. His shiny bald head and perfect white teeth were the first two things a stranger usually saw of him. Black skin, massive horizontal shoulders, he should have been a brute, but Rex loved to joke with his shipmates more than anything. The kind of goofy banter with a grin to back it up that made friends with anyone who happened to be nearby. “You’ve not blown it all on one breakfast, though, have you?”
“Not all, no.”
“Good, ’cause Alex could do with putting on a few pounds.” Rex glanced to his left, to his beautiful pale wife Alexandra. “Sorry, love, but you could, you know. All that healthy organic crap. It might be good for the soul, but it’s bad for the hold.” He winked at her. She clipped his ear. “I mean you look great. Have you lost weight?” he added.
Everyone laughed.
“So where are we headed?” asked Chance. “It all happened so fast, I forgot to ask.”
Silence. Noncommittal glances. Deliberate chewing.
“I guess that depends.” McKendrick slouched over her plate, adjusting her thick navy blue dressing gown about her shoulders.
“On what?”
“On how much you want to avoid the slammer. We might be able to outrun the Royals, but that won’t stop them chasing, not in a million years.”
“We need to lie low indefinitely,” announced Steffi. “If the Albatross so much as pips on the radar of a nearby planet, there’ll be a Royal reception waiting when we land.” Her weary indifference to any possible course of action felt like palming beach balls up in the sea breeze of her mind. “We can either do a big roundabout, go light-years out of our way to avoid this system altogether, or we can just keep this heading…see what we find.” The crew’s heavy silence lent weight to the latter idea. She combined scrambled egg with bacon on her fork for the first time, and it tasted delicious. Her mind was made up. “We’re already on the fringe of explored space. Word is the terra-formers are divvying up entire sectors beyond the asteroid belt. Supposed to be clusters of planets begging to be colonized. Even some with primitive life.”
“Yeah, I heard that too,” affirmed Rex. “It was a news story on Dionysus. They called it God’s Second Wind. Places teeming with life. They reckon in about twenty years we’ll be sending armadas out past the belt. But it’s off-limits for the time being. They don’t want opportunists staking claims, ruining the ecosystems before we can work out the right ways to live there. Anyone know anything about the blockade?”
McKendrick replied, “No. Only that there is one.”
“And what’s that to us?” Alexandra lifted her voice above its rasp, aiming for a rousing note. “Are we fugitives or aren’t we?”
“I don’t know. The amount of time you spent praying last night, I was sure you’d be absolved by now.” McKendrick’s insult stirred a familiar rancour, one that had split the crew, albeit only philosophically, for as long as Steffi could remember.
Alexandra rolled her eyes and shook her head at McKendrick’s taunting tongue. “God understands why we do what we do. And He recognises the shortsightedness of man’s laws. So yes, we are fugitives; and no, He does not condemn us for it.”
“Why not?”
“Because we break none of His commandments.”
“What about the stealing?”
“Re-appropriation.”
“And the killing?”
“Justifiable homicide. Self-defence.”
McKendrick blew her a sarcastic kiss. “Amen to that, sister.”
They all licked their plates clean, gave Flyte a congratulatory handshake, and were about to leave to start their jobs for the day when Steffi said, “Get ready for a long trip, people. We can’t waste any Psammeticum for a warp jump, so it’ll be nearly a week to the asteroid belt. We have enough supplies to last us about six weeks. Sorry, no more smorgasbords. We’ll be rationing from here on. McKendrick, plot us the quickest course past the rocks. Not too close, but not too far away either. It’d be better if we didn’t show up on the blockade’s radar.”
“Aye, Captain. Chance, come on, you’re sitting with me.”
He threw her a mock salute and replied, “Aye, aye, sweet cheeks.”
“Rex and Alex, you sort out what food needs to be frozen,” Steffi went on. “Then you can help Flyte tune the engine.” She turned to the posh mechanic. “Whatever you need.”
Their clanking steps diminished in opposite directions and she found herself alone again. Not much to do that couldn’t wait until she gave a shit. Any of the assignments she’d doled out could use her help, but that would be entirely too industrious on a day like today.
She shrugged.
Another birthday about to pass like a star’s flicker in the night sky.
She sighed and collected the unbreakable dishes. Washing up bought her a little wallowing time. The familiar perfumed detergent soon killed the rare sooty alchemy of Flyte’s grilled breakfast, the kind she hadn’t encountered since Hellespont almost a decade ago. She packed the washed crockery back into its cupboard then sprayed and wiped the table and the benches and mopped the kitchen and had to stop herself before she set about cleaning the entire ship.
She un-bunched the sleeves of her thin cotton sweatshirt until they caressed her soap-softened wrists. Enough work for a while. The Albatross didn’t need her yet. She went back to her quarters, shouldering a heavy dejection, a feeling of utter uselessness. She stopped at the doorway. Someone had made her bed? Ethereal scent from a single Minervan candle on her bedside table swooned through her brain as she inhaled. On her pillow was a small package wrapped in bubble paper and tied with fluorescent pink string.
There was neither card nor note, but Steffi imagined and mouthed the words, “To a captain, from her crew.” It touched her so deeply she almost didn’t want to open the present, to alter anything about this moment. She just stared and soaked up the funky tenderness and sat on the edge of her bed as though it was a shrine to happy surprises, to her sacred childhood, and to other such contraband in space.
Chapter Three

1001 Arabian Nights (selected tales from) , spread across four Albatross nights, was the best read Steffi had had in years. Witty tales, bawdy fables and magical escapism in exotic lands; the crew couldn’t have chosen a better present. Earth had long held mystique for her orphaned generation. What remained of it was scattered and assimilated—recipes, books, ancient music and video discs, seeds, engineered animal life, history and myth blurred forever—but never forgotten. Even centuries after its destruction, Earth remained the symbolic hearth of humanity. Which was why people, wherever they went, no matter how inhospitable the place, would go to any lengths to replicate that mythical idyll.
Steffi wiped a tear from her eye as she traced the creases on the back cover with her fingertips. Beauty did not last forever. But the idea of beauty was incorruptible. Books, music, the stories passed down through generations, they were the seeds that had survived Earth, the real hope bequeathed her generation.
But God had not survived the trip with that same integrity. She flicked through the pages and stuck her nose into the gentle waft. Ah, there it was. The faintest perfume of fresh pulp. This particular copy had to have been cryo-frozen for a long time to retain that flavour. Humanity’s love of myths and legends had lasted. Everywhere she went, people and places were named after the heroes and fanciful gods of myth. But religion?
It had become an afterthought.
In the decades leading up to Earth’s destruction more than ninety percent of humanity had believed in or actively worshipped a supreme being. Now that figure was reckoned to be around twenty percent. Was science to blame? The neo-spiritual revolutions of the last century? Or had man simply become empowered by having to survive in space on his own ingenuity alone? Did humanity need God anymore? Where had God been when that mysterious alien battery had blasted the earth to smithereens?
Restless, Steffi got up to stretch her legs. The Albatross purred while she jogged a few laps of the cargo bay and then walked the full length of the ship to check on the progress in the cockpit.
Alexandra Van Rynn yawned and stretched, contorting her limbs and torso in the pilot’s seat. Every crewmember had to take their turn at watch, even the ship’s resident medic and spiritual guru. Alex wore a silver satin scarf and a woollen bob hat, as well as her usual grey slacks and low-cut blouse with a frilly trim. A mid-priced escort with a criminal past on her home world, she had met Rex, her future husband, at the airport minutes before a spontaneous holiday on the first off-world shuttle to…anywhere. He had got on the flight with her, even though he had a pre-booked ticket for another planet. They had made their own fate that day. Carpe diem. If they had not, life would never have led them to Steffi and the Albatross.
Had fate been kind?
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey.” Steffi collapsed into the co-pilot’s seat. “Didn’t wake you, did I?”
“Ha. Not exactly. I was in more of a trance. You finished your book yet?”
“Yeah. My head’s still spinning with all those crazy plots. But it was a good present. Pretty hard to beat.”
“I’m glad. We don’t get to talk much anymore, Steffi.” It was the first time anyone had called her that since Bo’s death. “How are you holding up?”
Steffi turned a knob on the dashboard, illuminating her half of the panel. “No complaints. You know me, just take it as it comes. One port to the next, no regrets.”
“None at all?”
“None that I’d brag about.”
“What about Bo? I’ll bet you’re missing him. You two were close.”
Steffi shrugged. She wanted to say, Yeah, thanks for bringing that up, Little Miss Sunshine. “The place isn’t the same without him. He was dumber than a bag of spanners but handy to have around, you know?”
“I know. I thought he was sweet.”
“He was.” Hint: past tense! “I can’t remember if I thanked Rex for…you know…the burial at sea.”
“You don’t need to thank him. He would never have let you go through that on your own. You might not realise this, Steffi, but you’re well-liked around here.”
How to respond to that. Steffi’s mind was a blank. She blinked self-consciously and pretended she hadn’t heard. Something about Alex always made her feel uneasy—that apple-pie demeanour and righteous positive attitude somehow didn’t sit well with her sordid past. The woman was a convert, a born-again with enough zeal to power the entire ship. Steffi just didn’t believe anyone’s life could make such a U-turn without something being awry…somewhere. It didn’t have to be on the surface. The demons might take years to emerge, but, like all things trapped and patient, they would find daylight eventually.
“What’s that?” Alex pointed to a large blinking shape on the deep-space radar.
Steffi magnified the image. It appeared…black. “No clue. There’s nothing there.” She altered the ship’s course a few degrees, then brought it back. “On the other hand…” the blinking shape reappeared, “…there has to be something there.”
“What could it be?”
Steffi frowned, then tapped her fingers on her armrest. “Buzz McKendrick over the intercom,” she told Alex. “She might be able to figure it out.”
“If she can figure out how to get here, that is. She was drinking late last night with Chance.”
“No kidding. Best give it to her full volume then.”
“Cap, you’re evil.” Alex smirked, then flicked the private intercom switch. As soon as she heard McKendrick’s voice, she blared out the gist of what they’d discovered.
“Huh? You’re blinking the blank, or blacking the blink?” groaned McKendrick in reply.
“There’s a blink where it’s blank, but it’s really black,” replied Alex.
“Anyone there who isn’t flying on peyote?”
Steffi snatched the comm receiver. “Get your ass here right away. We have something on radar. Something massive.”
“On my way.”
Bog-eyed and only half-dressed, McKendrick brought Chance along with her. Alex fetched her husband as well. The five of them studied the green radar screen, watching for the emergency collision alarm. Whatever the object was, its miles-long rectangular shape appeared far too big for any manmade craft.
“Definitely a solid exterior,” announced McKendrick, “and moving fairly slowly. Faint heat signature. Profiling suggests it’s hollow. Steady vector. Spinning freely on all three axes.” She looked ahead. A great wall of blackness blotted out the constellations, eating more and more until stars only existed in the Albatross’s peripheral windows. A giant black vessel? The crew shared excited glances when she added, “I don’t mind saying…it looks dead in the water.”
Steffi cringed. The unspoken dilemma blazed across the eyes of each person—a dilemma she, as captain, would have to resolve.
Salvage?
No one addressed her, but the silence pressed its own opinion. Out here, they were just as invisible as the mystery object. Their journey—equally as aimless. After such a disastrous job on October, they could not afford to pass up an opportunity like this. She gripped the worn leather arms of her seat.
At the very least, they would have to look for a way in.
“That thing has to be alien,” said Rex. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Some kind of stealth ship? Black ships are illegal, and this one’s big enough to swallow two of those Titan pioneer vessels end to end. What the hell is it?”
“Beats me,” admitted McKendrick.
“And me,” agreed Alex. “It’s your call, Cap.”
Steffi had already weighed the obvious pros and cons before she spoke, but she knew the crew, who would be risking everything alongside her, needed to hear her reasoning. “Right, we’re going to give it a shot. This thing’s too big to pass up.” McKendrick and Rex shared a high five. “We’ll tour the perimeter,” she explained, “see if we can find an access. And if we get lucky, we’ll dock using the airlock extension—that way we can cut the umbilical and get the hell out if things turn dicey. If not, we’ll improvise.”
McKendrick interrupted, her voice fizzing with excitement. “Hold on to your beaus and britches! Check out thirty degrees, halfway up the bow, port side. Looks like an entire section is missing.” After double-checking her readings, she puckered her lips and raised a celebratory fist. “Yep, that part’s been blasted away. Probable access point. Highly probable.”
“Okay.” Steffi dredged deep to find her calmest tone. “I’ll want two-man teams. Rex and I go first, then McKendrick and Flyte. Alex, you’ll be our eyes and ears in the cockpit. Chance will stay with you.”
“Someone go wake up Flyte!” Rex whooped and clamped his huge hands on Steffi’s shoulders. “This could be major.”
Steffi agreed, but that was an awfully portentous word in space.
Major.
A prefix to beware.
 
~ * ~
 
Her gentle hop from the tail of the Albatross felt underdone. A spit with no momentum that would dribble down one’s chin. For a brief moment she glimpsed the infinite black sea beneath her, with its untouchable sprinkles of light resting on the bottom. Telling her just how insignificant she was. Telling her she was being a bloody fool. The gap couldn’t have been more than ten feet, yet her glide across seemed to last forever. Her scalp tingled. She focused on the caved-in grey piping in the centre of the damage ahead. One pipe in particular had been rent inward and now lay dead straight, a lucky platform on which she could enter the vessel. Otherwise, what an unholy mess this great impact had made. Slashed and warped metal pocks covered much of the vessel’s exterior around the damage. Definitely not an explosion from inside, as everything was twisted inward: the ranks of piping, the four layers of thick metal, a strange silver mesh that looked razor sharp where it had been severed. Whatever had hit this vessel had done so at a savage velocity and/or with tremendous weight.
When? Where? What had happened to the occupants?
She vented oxygen—two gentle squirts—from the booster rig strapped to her back. Enough to swing her up to the horizontal, feet first, a few metres from the pipe above the opening. She had aimed well. One or two tiny course corrections. Dab the brake, dab the brake, and…
Touchdown. Lock the boots into place. Turn carefully and walk upside down for a few steps. No, don’t look behind. There’s no such thing as ground or ceiling or Isaac Newton out there. Focus on the next step. That’s reality. Easy does it. Now bend down and touch the pipe with both hands. Now loosen both boots at once and push off with your hands. Don’t forget to switch the boots back on.
There! She was standing upright on the pipe platform. Inside an alien ship. An alien ship. Steffi Savannah, Captain. Was she the first human to boldly go…? Whatever. She heaved a heavy sigh and focused on the minutiae. Simple steps. Hmm. They were anything but that. Without gravity, her reconnaissance would be awkward and painstaking. She gritted her teeth. A little thing like that wasn’t going to dampen her conquest. She was nothing if not a veteran of the spacewalker species.
How long had this vessel been drifting? It spun on all three axes, out of control, but how had it lost power? Had the crew been forced to abandon it? To seek refuge on the nearest rock, call home from there? Something so big had to have a grand purpose. What was it carrying?
“Captain? What can you see?” McKendrick blurted out over the comm channel.
“Not much so far. Looks like the pipe’s collapsed an entire inner panel. Peeled it to one side. There’s a gaping hole I can fit through. Beyond that seems to be dimly lit by some sort of phosphorescence coating the walls of a narrow tunnel. High ceiling. No idea how far in it goes. A long way. Tell Rex to cross over. Then you and Flyte can follow. I’m going on ahead.”
“Will do. Rex’s having a bit of trouble with his oxygen regulator. Shouldn’t be too long. Watch yourself, Cap.”
“Affirm that.”
The farther she crept, the smaller she felt inside this cool cathedral of a ship. Complex spiral patterns embedded in the flat metal floor seemed very alien indeed. The purple phosphorescent walls pulsed ever so gently as she passed, as though they were reacting to her body heat and the light of her torch. She peered up. Oil to mist to darkness. A gargantuan feat of engineering, hundreds of feet high. She glanced down. The readouts on her cuff now suggested a balmy temperature, adequate oxygen, and a significant increase in gravity.
How could that be?
She tapped the gauge with the tip of her glove. She took another two steps.
What?
The readout had changed all right. But the gravity was now identical to that of the Albatross. Steffi took two steps back. Sure enough, the atmospheres halved.
The answer had to be an invisible gravity field containing sufficient air and temperature to support life. But how big was the field? If life still existed aboard, what might it be like? Hostile? In cryo-sleep? Should she turn back and declare the salvage over—play it safe?
No way. This was monumental. Only a chicken-shit would bow out now when the exact environmental conditions to support human life had clicked into place around her. She told McKendrick what she’d discovered and pressed on.
“Copy that, Cap. This is getting weirder by the step. Oh and Rex sends his regards—he’s sorry he was too thick to check his gear beforehand. You might want to hang fire ’til we replace his tank.”
“Understood.”
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.
Chapter Four

“I don’t recognize that accent. German?” Steffi asked her gorgeous chaperon.
“Danish.” Arne led her back through the aqua tunnel. “We speak fluent Danish and English and Latin.”
“Interesting.”
“Is it? I am afraid we have lost touch with modern linguistics. What do people speak now?”
“Um, Russian, bullshit and bad English.” Steffi watched his reaction, a from-the-gut, infectious laugh, from the corner of her eye. Such a sweet guy. Guileless. No hint of a façade. But how could anyone not know that fifty percent of the colonies spoke Russian? Arne sang again while he led her back through the turquoise passageway, this time of dolphins and fjords and a beautiful woman called Steffi. He admitted he’d improvised the latter. But it sounded cute.
“So what was that you were singing in the corridor outside?” she asked him.
“It was ‘The Dying Child’, an old verse by Hans Christian Andersen. It is quite sad, but if you would like to learn it, I would be glad to—”
“Maybe later?” Steffi glanced left at the main corridor, hoping Rex and the others had kept their distance. Things were going so well with Arne, and his habitat appeared so peaceful, she didn’t want someone brazen like McKendrick fouling up this acquaintance. She remembered her own words—tread softly.
Good, Rex had kept his word. Nothing but shadow and dim, jiving patterns. Yet, her crew would be on tenterhooks back there, wondering what the hell was going on. It hadn’t been fifteen minutes, but Steffi reopened her private comm channel. “Rex, Cap here.”
“Go on, Cap.”
“Everything’s okay. The compartment holds some sort of lagoon. Vegetation. Dozens of personnel sunbathing inside.”
“Sorry, did you say sunbathing?”
Steffi snickered. “Copy that. The place appears benign. Repeat, the place appears completely benign. One of the crew is giving me a guided tour. I might be gone a while, so switch your e-bands on and I’ll flash you every half hour to let you know I’m good.” She rolled her eyes. McKendrick would be tittering at the use of the word flash.
“What do you want us to do, Cap?” asked Rex.
Hmm. Could she risk some kind of set-to? Her crew would have to meet the lake dwellers sooner or later, but it would be better if she and Arne were there to make the introductions. Without that, the chances of overreaction were too great.
“You’re to cool your heels ’til I come get you,” Steffi ordered. “We can’t risk alarming them.” She paused to think. “But I tell you what, if I’m not back in one hour, you’re to head back to the Albatross. No sense in you sitting there, wasting oxygen. Whatever happens, I’ll keep in touch. And remember, every thirty.”
“Copy,” affirmed Rex.
Arne led her a long way down the main corridor. The phosphorescent flanks took on a magical aura, and she loved the new tingle inside her. Even the clank-clank of her boots seemed soft and welcome. The mysterious vessel now held no opportunity for conquest or salvage, only some kind of beating heart.
He may have been without guile or guise or even pubic hair, but Arne was a man all right. She felt it in the tug of his fingers on her wrist, the purpose in his stride, the way his blue eyes struck sparks in her whenever he turned, enflaming her loins like no one had since Hellespont. He gripped the wall again with his fingertips. Another panel spiralled open to reveal a similar blue passageway. Much darker inside this one. Her gauge reckoned the temperature had fallen to ten degrees Celsius. But Arne didn’t appear to be cold. No goose bumps that she could see. No shrivelling.
He said, “Do not be afraid. We are quite safe.”
Whatever that meant. Steffi felt sure nothing would surprise her after what she’d just seen.
Take that back. She rocked on her heels, gasping as she looked up.
A gargantuan tank full of water—she couldn’t see how high or how wide—stood before her. Sub-aqua creepers climbed the inside of the glass, their loose limbs jiving in an unseen current. The tank’s bed consisted of dark sand and rocks and the skeletons of medium-sized fish. She had never been to an aquarium, although this was no aquarium. It was simply too big, and the insanity of holding this much water on a spaceship defied all logic.
“It’s amazing. What’s it for?”
“Keep looking.” He let go of her hand for a moment and left to touch a pattern on the wall behind them. When he returned, the water’s pigment had already begun to lighten as though it was a swimming pool in one of the hoity-toity October resorts, lit at night from underneath. It took a few minutes for the entire tank to glow turquoise, the higher echelons far brighter than the deep. As she was about to remark on the extraordinary sea garden—its array of fish and colour, its lack of murk and mulch—a long, slender silhouette snaked toward her from the distant depths. Undulating through the water like a giant eel, it had huge flippers and a bulky midsection. She stepped back, swallowing all the dampness from her mouth. The behemoth cruised, watching her from the mystery of its silhouette, before it dove to the bottom and, gathering frightening momentum, whooshed up right in front of her.
She saw exactly what it was. The truth screamed but the words dampened to a disbelieving whisper.
“A dinosaur.”
Arne couldn’t hear her through her helmet. But his gleaming eyes and genuine smile answered her with the exact same wonderment that lifted her heart.
“You have a dinosaur?”
“Not just a dinosaur.” He sounded on the verge of another song. “The dinosaur. Steffi, I would like to introduce you to the largest member of our ship. Nessie.”
“Excuse me?” She gawped at the tank, at the smaller fishes returning to their positions in the wake of the leviathan.
“Surely you have heard of the Loch Ness monster.”
She looked at him.
He blinked. “Scotland’s greatest legend. Its existence was disputed for centuries before the earth was destroyed. A plesiosaur of the Cretaceous Period. Alive and well before us.”
“What the hell is this place? Who are you people?”
He beckoned her to follow him toward a large white enclosure to their left. “I will attempt to explain. This should illustrate it well enough for you.”
“You’re damned cryptic, Arne.”
“Not for much longer. I promise.”
Overwhelmed, Steffi plodded after him in a breathless daze. The white structure resembled a cigar-shaped tunnel, around thirty feet wide and two hundred long, the floor of which was phosphorescent. The inner walls were pale, smooth and convex.
“Now you must take off your outer suit, Steffi,” he said. “You need not undress completely, but your helmet and cumbersome attire will diminish the experience.”
She checked the external gas configuration on her wrist display. High nitrogen, almost a quarter oxygen, low carbon dioxide, and a few harmless trace gases: very close to the makeup of old Earth’s air. Without proof, she would not have taken his word for it, but the science tallied, the hairs on her neck prickled, and Arne seemed to be the key to learning all she could about this bizarre vessel. She unclipped and removed her helmet. The air tasted of cool cucumber and seaweed. He didn’t give her a moment’s privacy while she removed her boots and outer suit, then her sopping thermal suit, finally stripping down to her panties, T-shirt and thermal socks.
“You really are beautiful, Steffi Savannah. Do I please you too?”
Oh, brother. He’d just spiked the scenario with erotic cravings. The idea ravaged her conscience. She answered by removing her T-shirt and standing topless for him. It felt chilly at first, but his smouldering stare, unyielding in its focus, ignited a warm, coiling sensation inside her. A quick-fuse to teenage memories, when she’d dreamt of situations like this.
But she kept her distance. She crouched, unfastened the metal e-band from the wrist of her glove and clipped it around the top of her forearm.
Arne studied every inch of her while she rose. “Close your eyes,” he said with the clinical tone of an optometrist.
She obeyed but found herself ready to fend him off should he try anything. Yet there had to be more than that on his mind, after what they’d just seen. The light dimmed. She stirred to the gentle lapping sound of water. Distant birds chirruped amid a light rustling above. The faint chugging of an engine to her right and two voices debating in a lively brogue to her left seemed very—
“You can open them now.”
Arne was dressed in a tweed suit and a deerstalker. He pointed his oak walking cane with a tartan glass handle out over a choppy lake. “Loch Ness,” he announced. “The year is two thousand and seven.”
She had no words.
Enormous green and brown mountains, sculpted like God’s shoulders on either side of the loch, appeared so permanent, so real, she knew the image would last her a lifetime. She’d heard tales of the wild highlands, the majesty of its topography. How could she have known the cleansing power of untamed Scotland, how soothing the sounds of Earth really were? The lake appeared big enough to be a sea. No wonder they’d never found the monster. At its deepest, the loch would be nigh unfathomable.
But she’d just seen the beast in all its mythic glory. What was going on?
Behind Arne, two ageing gents were sitting on a mossy wooden bench, needling each other’s convictions regarding the monster. The well-trampled limestone path leading from the water’s edge to a small guesthouse higher up the hillside was quaint and higgledy and without litter. The still air and cloudy blue sky suggested summer. She’d never seen the sun before. Not that sun anyway. She’d never touched heather or smelled buttercups or let a sugar-stealer tickle her palm. Each one seemed unreal while she experienced it, a stolen treat she would not be allowed to take home.
Arne watched her with a permanent grin, delighting at her every delight.
“How are you doing this?” She felt up and down her brand-new denim skirt and purple tank top. “Is it real?”
“I am afraid not. But it is a perfect facsimile of a real afternoon on the banks of Loch Ness.”
“What’s it for?”
“The watchers created it as part of their research. They visited Earth a number of times, recording their experiences for these interactive simulations. There are hundreds on the ship. This is my favourite Loch Ness simulation. I thought you would approve.”
She shook her head in disbelief. A fishing boat’s outboard motor spluttered then conked out less than thirty yards offshore. “It’s incredible. I’ve seen virtual reality programs before, but this is light-years more advanced. Absolutely perfect in every detail.” She paused. “But who are the watchers?”
“Mysterious alien beings, Steffi. They built this ship and everything you see in it. We know very little about them, but we do know what they were trying to do.”
“And what was that?”
“They were trying to save humanity from itself. They wanted to find the answer to a riddle.”
“What riddle?”
“Why are humans so superstitious?”
She scowled, perplexed. “Huh? Why should that bother anyone? Sounds a daft reason to fly millions of light-years.”
“Not just millions of light-years, Steffi. Thousands of years into the past. The watchers are beings from the future. They arrived at the banks of Loch Ness and the forests of North America and the slopes of the Himalayas and the streets of Mecca for a very specific reason—to find out what makes humanity tick. To learn how superstition would one day lead it to annihilate half the galaxy.”
The boat’s engine spluttered into silence. Steffi turned toward it, then gazed beyond to the far shore of the loch to a bulky car she’d never seen before, not even in old pictures, bouncing its way along a dirt road parallel to the water’s edge. What Arne had said sounded too far-fetched to be true. Alien watchers from the future? But who else could have recreated a lost era of a long-gone planet so flawlessly? Who else could have made this ship? Dedicated it to researching humanity? Who would have wanted to?
She spun again at the sound of squeaking leather. The elder, more gaunt of the two men sitting on the bench at the water’s edge winced and leaned away from his friend as though hiding an arthritic ache. His shoes rubbed together when he shifted position.
“Is he okay?” asked Steffi. “Who is he?”
“His name is Leonard Rees, a retired policeman from Dumfries,” Arne explained. “His friend is Jock Wallace, a local schoolteacher. If you pay close attention, you will notice a very faint aura around each man. It is thin, only a few millimetres.”
“What’s it for?”
“It simply prevents us from interacting with the person inside. All these simulations are alike. You may alter anything else, but the human characters are sacrosanct.”
“I see. Thanks for the tip.”
Leonard Rees sank back on the bench, finding a more comfortable position for his sore knees. “You know, my wife and I visited here umpteen times before she died, and neither of us ever saw anything resembling a monster.”
“Not even a ripple from a flipper?” asked Jock. His question had a condescending tang, as though anyone visiting the loch should at least glimpse the creature or else they weren’t looking hard enough, or they were a bit thick.
Leonard took the bait. “Not when there’s nothing to see. People convince themselves they’ve seen ghosts and UFOs and Elvis Presley in the supermarket; it doesn’t mean anything. Their brains get carried away, that’s all.”
“Crap. That’s always the eggheads’ cop-out—they imagined it. Funny how eyewitness testimonies are taken as fact in a court of law, but when it comes to something like this, they’re pooh-poohed.”
“People are liars,” Leonard announced with a superior chuckle.
“Whatever. We’re talking highly respected members of society here—priests, councilmen, even police superintendents. They’ve all seen the monster with their own eyes. Do you really think they’re all lying or hallucinating?”
Fascinated, Steffi knelt on the grassy bank at their feet. She pressed her hand against the invisible shield protecting them. It felt supple but firm, like days-old jelly.
“I don’t know what they saw,” admitted Leonard, “but I do know that if we just accept what people say they saw, then pretty much everything would have to exist. Angels, ghosts, vampires, the Yeti, every religious vision across the world—they would all be real because so many people have seen them. But you have to use your common sense. If something is so outlandish—supernatural, say—I think you have to wait for at least some empirical evidence, something that can stand up to scientific scrutiny. And what you said about a court of law, that’s only partly true. The burden of proof is on the prosecution. You don’t have to prove that something doesn’t exist, but you do have to prove that it does.”
“So says Dr. Seuss,” Jock replied with outright disdain. “All I know is I’ve seen the thing, and no one can tell me any different. I’ll trust my own eyes, thank you very much.”
“Fair enough. And I’ll just say the odds of a few plesiosaurs surviving here for tens of millions of years is about as likely as someone winning the lottery five weeks in a row.”
“Why’s that?”
“One…” Leonard checked the points off with his fingers, “…no other large dinosaurs survived the cataclysm. Two, there would have had to be no mishaps with the birthing of baby monsters, no diseases, no accidents, for sixty-five million years. Three, the earth has suffered massive upheavals in that time, including countless ice ages. Scotland and its lochs will have been frozen time and again. Four—”
Jock interrupted with a scoff. He waved his friend’s cynicism away like it was a feeble glass-is-half-empty argument. “You’re just telling me how unlikely it is. Which is the same as saying it’s possible. No matter how big the odds, one community of dinosaurs could have survived here all this time. See how big the loch is, how deep it is? The fact is you don’t know for certain, and you’re frightened of admitting there could be a monster. End of story.”
“Yes, there could. But what I’m saying is it’s going to take more than the word of a drunken git to convince me.”
“Dickhead.”
A cruel curling of Leonard’s thin mouth made Steffi shudder. “Admit it,” he said, “you’ve seen as much of the Loch Ness monster as I’ll be eating off my plate with chips for dinner.”
“Bugger off, Leonard. You’re just winding me up.”
Crack!
A deafening screech and the clatter of metal spun Steffi toward the water. The loud cyclic buzz-roar of the boat’s propeller spinning in midair made her duck low to the ground. The boat was upended, sinking by the bow at forty-five degrees to port. What the hell had happened? She couldn’t see the fisherman. The engine’s buzz sputtered into a chug-chug then a final shudder as the grey-metal boat sank from under it. A plastic green box holding fishing tackle bobbed beside it. An upended fishing pole whirled in the wake for a moment before the falling vessel dragged it down.
“You all right, mate?” Leonard yelled at the top of his voice to a man sculling in the water twenty feet behind the spot where the boat had sunk. “Can you make it to shore?” He wriggled out of his jacket and hurried forward a few steps, as if ready to dive in. He glanced down at the water, halted and waved his arms instead.
The man in the water yelled back, a high edge of terror sharpening his voice. “I’ll be all right. Don’t come in after me, for God’s sake. Did you see it?”
“I saw it,” whispered Leonard, breathless.
“You saw what?” asked Jock, questing through the ripples.
“I don’t know. I saw something flip the boat up from the front.” The old man’s eyes danced while he chewed his thin lip. “Nothing could have done that. It was too powerful.”
“Make sense, man.”
Leonard rubbed his knees and sat again, watching the fisherman’s careful, paranoid strokes through the water.
“So, what was it?” asked Jock.
Leonard swallowed twice, his face white, his expression one of petrified awe. “I…I don’t know. I think it was…I think it must have been…the monster.”
Jock stared at him for a moment before blurting out a short, cold laugh. “Ha! Bollocks, man. I saw it too, and it weren’t the monster. That idiot lobbed a hand grenade.”
“What?”
“Yep. I watched the whole thing. What an arsehole. Look, he’s got one of those waterproof camcorders, probably filmed the whole thing.”
“But why?”
Jock shrugged and lifted his friend to his feet. “My guess is he’ll edit it to hide the explosion, then that footage will show up on YouTube. Voila! A terrifying clip of how the Loch Ness monster sunk his boat.”
“What a bloody idiot!”
“Aye.” Jock put his arm around his shell-shocked old friend. “Aye, so what will you be having with those chips again?” His wry smile was contagious, and Steffi grinned at the ironic turn of events.
She watched the two men walk up the well-worn path to the guesthouse, then she chuckled at the sopping yahoo fisherman staggering out of the water, shivering. He stuffed his little silver camcorder into the pocket of his parka with shaking fingers. The goon. He’d planned the whole crazy stunt but had forgotten to keep himself warm.
Arne, having sat apart on a verge behind the path, his boots resting on a clump of wild heather while Steffi had listened to the two men talk, now got up and took her hand.
“Well, what do you think?”
“It’s a showing up for us,” she admitted. “People are nuts. They’ll believe anything at the drop of a hat.”
“So you agree with Leonard’s cynical view?” He led her up the path after the wet fisherman.
“Pretty much, yeah. People are liars on the whole. They embellish and they lie to make themselves seem important. They even convince themselves they’ve witnessed amazing things. I see what you mean about superstition. We are a pretty pathetic species.”
He offered her his arm while they walked uphill. She gladly took it. Being close to him was like wearing an extra warm and soft layer when the Albatross’s heating packed in.
“Did you believe in the monster, Steffi—before you saw it, I mean?”
“Um, no, not really,” she replied, a little embarrassed.
“Why not?”
“For the reasons Leonard gave. The odds against were too great. It was too far-fetched to believe in just because someone said they’d seen it.”
“You are correct,” he said with stern authority. “The Loch Ness monster did not exist.”
Steffi’s brain fudged. Now Arne wasn’t making any sense. “You’d better explain that,” she insisted.
“I mean the monster was pure myth…until the watchers created it.”
 
A delectable roast beef smell spread from the dining area inside the simple Bay Mare Bed and Breakfast. Oak rafters and alcove buttress beams appeared old but very well kept, while the clean, knotted wooden floor was half varnished, half carpeted. A brace of crossed claymores on the wall above the front desk and an antique set of bagpipes in a glass cabinet near the open fireplace lent the room an ancient, vaguely threatening vibe. In its medieval heyday, Scotland had been a wild and vicious land. The romantic façade—Robert Burns, kilts, sporrans and Auld Lang Syne—was sustained by the tiptoes of nostalgia. The real legacy of the Highlands was one of clan rivalry, bloody battles and fierce patriotism. Why was it that people sang so sweetly of such cruel times?
Arne led her up a narrow staircase that creaked. “I love this place,” he said, making way for a lost little girl looking for her mother. “Time seems to stand still here.”
“Where are we going?” Steffi let go of his hand.
“Upstairs…to the bedroom.” He hesitated. “I thought that was what…you wanted. If you are worried about what we might find, I can assure you it is the quietest room in the guesthouse. It is my favourite place for—”
“So you come here a lot?” Steffi tried to hide her brewing jealousy.
“Yes, frequently.”
“With other girls?”
“Always.”
A bruised feeling gingered her steps. It reminded her of her embarrassing clinch with Chance and McKendrick in the prayer room, a sullied sensation. She’d felt used, debased in the cheapest fashion by a complete stranger. She tautened the bottom of her tank top over the exposed inch of her tummy. Was Arne a cad as well?
“What do you say we hang out downstairs for a bit, in the pub? Get to know each other a little better?” She watched his beautiful face for signs of deceit. God, he was lovely in the yawning stairs light, a perfect thing in a dream come true. He stared back at her as though she’d impugned his honour.
“I want to make love to you.” Not a glint of irony escaped his marbled expression. “Is that not your custom? It has been ours for generations. It is the reason we are still here.”
“I guess.” She wanted to trust him, but the idea of being the latest conquest ticked off on the calendar of a cad made her a little queasy. She grabbed his arm instead and led him down to an empty table across from the staircase. “So you don’t have anyone…you know, special…back at the lake?” Steffi sat and pretended to peruse the menu.
“If you mean a life-mate, then no, I do not. We make love when we are attracted, that is all. Right now, I am deeply attracted to you, Steffi Savannah. Am I wrong in thinking you reciprocate the desire?”
“No. It’s just that you talk about it like it’s mealtime, or something you do to alleviate boredom. Plus, you’ve not told me enough about yourself. Won’t you sit down?”
He didn’t appear to know whether to smile or frown. In the end he tipped his hat, then widened his eyes with an alluring confidence. “What if I assure you it will not affect our lovemaking?”
A very careful response.
“Then I’d ask why you’re dodging the question.”
“Rather than tell you what I am, I would prefer to show you. Later. I promise you will smile.”
“You sure you’re not some kind of politician? With a slippery tongue like that, you could—” She coughed, banishing the image from her mind. “Okay, Mr. Denmark, I’ll put it to you this way—if you don’t sit down right now, no one will be going down on anyone. Period.”
After running his fingers through his hair, Arne cocked his head to one side, studying her. “I do not understand. Which part of that ultimatum involves coital enmeshment?”
Steffi shivered, then wagged her finger at him. “See? You make it sound like we’re putting up chicken wire. I’m afraid you’ll have to do better than that, Arne. Why don’t you take me back to your lagoon, introduce me to your friends? I know mine will be dying to meet you.”
His wounded expression lifted a little.
“It’s not that I don’t fancy you,” she explained. “It’s just that where I come from, jumping straight into bed is usually an empty experience. I’m sure you’re a perfect gentleman, but this isn’t the way to go about convincing me. It might be your custom here, but I’m afraid I’m just not having it.”
Despite speaking English, Arne seemed to have a hard time grasping what she meant. His blue eyes seared, and he fidgeted above her, as though he was wrestling aside generations of conditioning, tradition and permissiveness, to gain a perspective hitherto unseen. Perhaps her abstinence was as alien to him as pollen refusing a bee. Maybe, to Arne’s kind, it was bad manners to turn down a sexual advance after both partners admitted to the mutual attraction. Tough shit! Steffi had had enough of that cheap tequila and last-one-out-the-door-afterward-pays-for-the-room sex.
“I am sorry if I offended you.” He offered her his hand. “My knowledge of Earth’s customs is limited to these recordings…and our own practices, passed down for centuries. It was not my intention to entrap you. Please accept my apology, Steffi Savannah.”
She loved the way he over-enunciated her name, as though each syllable were dipped in crisp fjord water, priceless. “Accepted,” she replied. “Now won’t you sit down? We still have a date, don’t we? I mean it’s not every day a girl gets taken to Loch Ness.”
He kept eye contact while sitting opposite her, his tense, befuddled face now pink and bereft of all confidence. His Adam’s apple bobbed twice over heavy swells. What had she done? Against his every gesture so far—his sweet, outreaching nature—Arne now appeared intimidated, perhaps even afraid of her. Why? Just because she’d told him to cool it? To wait ’til she was ready? Was she the first woman who’d ever spoken her mind like this? Stood up to him?
“Will you be all right?” She wanted to laugh at how ridiculous that sounded, at how pathetic he was being about the whole thing. But if he really was so naïve, then this might very well be a life-changing moment for him, on a par with his first ejaculation, or, as a two-year-old, having the shit scared out of him by his neighbour—a large prehistoric fish.
“I will be fine,” he replied, chipper all of a sudden. “I realise how little I know, and how much you must know. I must seem like a child to you.”
“No, just a really sweet Danish gent…who likes getting his own way. All things considered, you’re shooting far, sunshine. And I bet there’s a lot I could learn from you and yours. Being polite, for one thing.”
He smiled without defence, and she imagined the wet paint behind his eyes and in his cheeks. Her paint? Her handiwork? For despite this being Arne’s favourite haunt, they were both on fresh, uncharted ground.
The warm, inviting atmosphere in the bar restaurant circulated quiet merriment and wafts of delicious beer. Each look she shared with Arne started out tense, only to deepen, fizz inside, until her heart rate galloped and the distant, untamed passion she’d braved on Hellespont reared its feral memories. No words, just hopes and brittle promises.
She yawned. It had been a long day without a proper night’s sleep—and so much to take in. “Sorry,” she said. “It must be catching up with me.”
“Would you like to rest in the bedroom? I can always take a walk around the loch.”
She stifled another yawn. “Now that you mention it, that’s not a bad…idea.” But she didn’t want him leaving her alone in this unprecedented place. What they needed was some sort of compromise, one that would keep them together whilst upholding her take-it-slow promise.
“Shall I tell you where the room is?” he asked.
“Hmm…no, but you can show me.” Her quick wink only seemed to puzzle him further. “Okay, Arne, just trust me on this. I think I’ve found the solution. Go on, lead the way.”
After tapping his walking cane on the tabletop, he retorted, “And you call me cryptic, Steffi.”
The stairs seemed steeper than they had a while ago. Was she more tired than she’d realised? A middle-aged, redheaded man sporting a pipe and a well-trimmed moustache blew smoke into Arne’s face on the stairs. Arne’s deafening coughs rang out, but the man didn’t so much as blink in response. The noise reminded Steffi it was time to send an e-alert. She flipped open the protective casing on her forearm, then pressed and held the red button for five seconds. When she released it, the button lit up and flashed exactly ten times.
No problem. The alien simulation hadn’t shut the gadget off. Rex’s reply of ten green flashes commenced right away, reassuring her the signals were unaffected.
She hesitated before clicking the casing back into place. Hmm…subsequent e-alerts would not be so straightforward. Every thirty minutes? What a goddamn nuisance. Alarms and quiet time—two things created to confound one another…and Steffi. She’d never sleep in half-hour increments but, on the other hand, she had to send those alerts.
Yawning, she spun the timer dial around the button—click, click, click—until it reached the third notch. Automatic e-alert every thirty minutes. She wouldn’t catch Rex’s replies, but he’d be perfectly safe with the others aboard the Albatross. If anything did happen outside, his signal would trigger a wailing siren inside her e-band, or, failing that, they could pinpoint her signal and come get her. Emergencies aside, however, she needed this uninterrupted time.
The soft landing lights above the first floor corridor reminded her of old Xiu Pau’s attic, where she’d spent many happy hours as a teenager, nursing and feeding the stray Hephaestian critters he’d taken in—an illegal practice on Hellespont. Steffi couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t broken one law or another. Not that it had ever lost her any sleep. There were laws and then there were laws worth having. Whatever else she’d done, she’d never broken the latter.
Steffi smirked. The words of every criminal who ever lived.
Arne led her to the penultimate room on the left. Number 17. The oak-panelled door swung open with a gentle push of his arm. He clasped her clammy hand in both of his, easing her inside the cosy bedroom.
“What are you really?” she whispered, melting in the sensual gaze of his unblinking blue eyes.
“I am yours, whenever you desire it,” he replied.
She flushed and, trying to regain her grip on the situation, ghosted at the foot of the bed when his warm caramel breath touched her lips. “Okay, this isn’t what you think it is.” She gathered herself. “I’m inviting you to share my bed, but that’s all. We’ll lie apart and just keep each other company. How does that sound?”
“I do not know. Surprising?”
“Exactly. Have you ever done that before?”
“Never.”
“Me either. And that’s why it’s the right thing to do.” Steffi walked to the near side of the bed, peeled the covers back, then started to undress. “Do you think you can handle that?”
“Yes. But can you?” The cheeky way he mimicked her quick wink from downstairs made her shiver with delight. Maybe he was starting to lighten up after all.
Steffi undressed to her underwear and climbed into bed. After drawing the maroon curtains, Arne followed her in, wearing only boxer shorts. Neither of them said a word, and to Steffi, the three feet between them felt like the most wonderful promise she’d ever kept. Alone in bed with a gorgeous man, and she was untouchable.
It was a day for firsts.
She drifted away imagining what he tasted like, and what it would be like to swim in his lagoon. On a trip to nowhere, any stopover could be a destination.
This was hers.
Chapter Five

“So what are you, Arne?”
He appeared to have trouble keeping his eyes open—he claimed he’d stayed awake, watching over her, throughout the six hours she’d slept—but he sighed into his pillow and diverted his glance with an almost clownish self-consciousness.
She chuckled through her nose. “What’s the matter? You really don’t want to tell me?” The idea gave her pause. She swallowed but tried to hide it by shifting her head on the pillow.
“I would rather show you.” Such a soft, cuddly answer. What was it about him that made her feel like a teenage girl with a crush?
Facing each other three feet apart on the pillows, just to stare, was the most intimate she’d been with anyone in years. Sex with Bo had been for sport, for pleasure. Never for sharing. He’d loved her without knowing anything about who she really was, and she’d wanted it that way. That distance. A part of her had been off limits to men.
But Arne had come along and intrigued the real Steffi into bed, if only to sleep. How? She studied his narrow blue eyes while they struggled to stay open. Before, she hadn’t seen past the stunning coolness. But reflecting back—his solitary introduction in the corridor, his extraordinarily ingratiating efforts to befriend a complete stranger—she perceived sadness, over-friendliness, the lonely yearning of the man inside.
“What’s your number one wish?” She hid the cunning in a blasé delivery. She reckoned his answer would have to reveal at least something about him.
“I would like to set foot on a planet like Earth.” He didn’t elaborate, but the immediate and matter-of-fact response told her he’d already given the idea a lot of thought.
“Which planets have you visited?” she asked.
“None.”
“Hmm?”
“Not one,” he reiterated. “In all the generations of our colony, no one has ever set foot outside this ship.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“No, I am not.” He sounded severe, a little bitter.
“So you want to just explore…see what’s out there?”
“Yes. Is that too much to ask?”
She checked her frown before it set. “How could it be? You’ve been trapped here all your life. It’s paradise, but it’s paradise with bars. There’s a whole universe to explore, sunshine. Wow, Arne, have you met the right girl!” She propped her head on a warm palm, her elbow bunching the pillow against the wooden headrest. “Did I tell you I’m the captain of my own ship?”
“Yes, you did.”
“Well? Wanna come? With me, I mean.”
“To where?”
“Does it matter? You said you wanted to get off this tub. I’m saying I can take you places you’ve never dreamed of…and for free.” She cringed at that last part—it sounded like a tacky advert for a budget package holiday.
“Why would you promise that, Steffi? We have barely met. Not ten hours.”
“And? When you’ve been tearing through space as long as I have, you learn to snatch any opportunity that comes along. You’re just wary because all you’ve ever known is this safe little bubble. You’ve known exactly what’s going to happen and at what time every day. If you come with me, you’ll have to kiss all that goodbye.”
Silence. Another sign of genuine trepidation from the man who’d tried to get into her pants in record time. Well, well. Not all superhuman after all. She wanted to kiss him and hold him against her breasts and tell him not to worry. But this was the decision of his life. She’d only just entered his world, and now she wanted to turn it on its head? If their positions were reversed, she knew she’d need space to think.
Space.
“Maybe you want some time to yourself.” She combed his untidy fringe with her fingernails.
“I would need to talk it over with my kin. They are well acquainted with my wanderlust fancies, but they do not share them. Perhaps one or two secretly dream of life away from the lake, yet it is strange that I am the only one who visits Earth—these reconstructions—habitually. They must feel content where they are.”
“So where did your kin fit into the watchers’ plan, originally?”
Arne laid his head flat on the pillow, facing the ceiling. He closed his eyes. “They created each species for a specific purpose, as part of their experiment. When the time was right, they were going to introduce the creatures into their so-called natural habitats on Earth, one at a time. Nessie would be set loose in the loch, fairies would be released in rural England, and so on. I will show you as many as I can. The watchers then planned to gauge humanity’s reaction to each mythological creature—to see what effect this new reality would have on their superstitious nature. If a thing is real, one no longer has to blindly believe in it, or fear it. Based on the outcome of these experiments, they planned to formulate a strategy to phase out mankind’s irrational beliefs over time. No one knows how. Evidence suggests they had no real conception of what they were up against, as if they themselves had never known superstition. Their records hint at a radical plan—the introduction of widespread but bogus visions of angels and gods, a kind of disinformation leading up to the big payoff. On an allotted date, in front of the entire world, the watchers were going to reveal it was they who had manufactured the visions, not any God. They were going to show humanity, once and for all, that there is no supreme being. Nothing to fear but themselves. That it is enough to simply exist and share one’s existence with others. That may have been their plan.”
“To stop us destroying the galaxy in some god’s name?”
“Exactly, Steffi. You see, for all the watchers’ vast intellect, they were without one vital human component.”
“Insanity?”
“A capacity to believe in that which cannot be proven. The enigma of faith.”
She scoffed louder than she wanted. “You mean the complete fucking stupidity of faith. You said it yourself, we blew the galaxy to kingdom come because some god told us to. If you ask me, the watchers were on to something.”
“Nevertheless, they were thwarted before the plan could be implemented.”
“By whom?”
“By a far less forgiving party who arrived from the future without permission, and with one purpose—to annihilate Earth. They did. The watchers destroyed that enemy ship before it had a chance to hunt down the rest of humanity’s colonies. But in the fire-fight, our ship was also badly damaged. It could no longer return home. Gradually, over hundreds of years, the watchers died of old age until there were none left. The last one died more than six of our generations ago. And we have been drifting ever since.”
Steffi masked a huge, regretted yawn. “My God. That’s the saddest story I’ve ever heard. You’ve just been drifting for centuries inside your little homes? I mean gigantic homes,” she corrected herself, “just waiting for time to run out?”
“You could put it like that.” His flat-lined delivery could not be so cool underneath. Steffi reckoned she’d planted another new seed of perspective in his mind, one she’d nurture a little if she could.
“Yeah,” she urged, “this has been your whole world all this time. It’s no wonder your friends are so attached to it. I would be. But seriously, you have to ask yourself: what’s gonna happen in the end? If you don’t leave sooner or later, you might get pulled into a sun or pummelled by asteroids. And if you don’t leave now, with me, you might never get another chance.” Quietly preening, Steffi was adamant she’d convinced him to join her on the Albatross. Her logic was sound, if not her method. But she couldn’t bear the thought of undocking without him. Of all the scenarios pinballing through her brain, it was the only one giving her that sinking feeling.
No, she would abduct him if he refused.
She swallowed the word salvage with a wry smile.
“So, Arne, where do we go from—?”
Crack!
The door slammed open and three armed men tore into the bedroom. Their uniforms were burgundy with gold trim and silver epaulettes. Royals. Arne sat up, flabbergasted. Steffi’s first reaction was to dive over him and make for the window. The adrenaline rush electrified her limbs and made her feel twice as fast.
Something hard and blunt thudded against the back of her neck. The splintering pain tossed cold waves up into her brain. Her legs buckled.
“Not so fast,” quipped one of the men. He dealt her a vicious kick to the stomach, then dragged her by her hair to the middle of the room. “I don’t know what this place is, but it’s starting to look up.” Yanking her hair into his fist, he pressed the barrel of his pistol against her neck.
“Who are you?” yelled Arne, kneeling upright on the bed.
The other two men watched him, their guns trained on his muscular chest. “Don’t try anything, pretty boy,” one of them mocked. “This bitch is under arrest for treason. Soon as we get her back to October, she’ll dangle with the rest of her crew. If you try anything, you’ll join her.”
“Treason? What do you mean?”
Steffi reached for her e-alert button, but the Royal bastard snatched her hand away. He ripped the e-band off and hurled it against the wall. Then she noticed he wore an identical one on his arm. It had to be Rex’s. She’d never seen that model anywhere else. So that was how they’d found her. And what about Rex? The others? They hadn’t sent her an emergency signal. Had they been caught equally unawares? Meanwhile, she could see in Arne’s eyes that he was about to try something rash. Terrified and furious impulses vied inside her. He couldn’t be so stupid. They’d blast holes in him for fun.
“Arne, let them take me.” Her voice trembled, her entire body shook while the Royal pulling her hair traced his cool gun barrel onto her shoulder, then across her clavicle, on to her sternum, then down over her breast inside her bra.
“Stand her up,” another man insisted. “We’ve come all this way. We might as well get something out of this.”
“Please!” Her feeble tone fell to a plea. “Please, I won’t give you any trouble. Just let me get dressed.” She watched hatred turn Arne’s sweet face to a red, rippled fury. But he daren’t make a move. The helplessness had to be churning him inside. She felt worse for him. The bastards could do what they wanted to her, as long as they left him alone.
She tried whipping her head away from the second man in disgust, but the first one yanked her arms up her back so hard it made her cry out. The brawny Royal in front of her, with a cruel, handsome middle-aged face, stroked the stubble on his chin. He licked his lips and, after sniffing her scent, ripped her bra off and grabbed her breasts. It didn’t hurt so much as sicken her. She tried to banish sweet Arne from her mind.
When he’d tired of her breasts, the brute crouched and grinned up at her. Steffi spat in his face, but he laughed hard. God, what now? All the while he roved his coarse hands across her back, down over her butt and all the way around her legs, the man panted. His horrid blank eyes and twitching tongue began to zero in on her middle.
Crack! A gunshot hit the ceiling behind him. The third Royal had fired up when Arne’s pillow had struck him. But Arne wasn’t quick enough to follow it up.
She cried, “No! Don’t hurt him!” as the furious Royal and his horny colleague wrestled Arne down against the foot of the cupboard. He cracked his head on the solid pine base. They took turns kicking him in the ribs and the head and any part he couldn’t cover up.
“Fuckers! You’ll kill him!” With all the strength in her being she shook loose from the bastard’s hold. He made a grab for her hair but she ducked. Swivelling to one side, Steffi let loose with a powerful roundhouse kick to his chin. Smack. Right on the money.
He staggered sideways like a drunk falling off a kerb. With his gun lowered, this was her chance. She yanked his head back with a fistful of sticky, gelled hair, exposing his bare throat. One hit would do it—right on the Adam’s apple. She drew her arm back, ready for the kill punch…but someone snatched her wrist instead. Oh shit. It was the horny brute. She resisted, but he applied the exact same restraining hold as his colleague had used, pressing both her arms even farther up her back until she couldn’t feel anything but the iron pain. A sickening click in her shoulder ended her struggle. The man eased his grip. Nothing was dislocated, but it still hurt like hell. She hissed and snarled instead. It was either that or burst into tears at the awful sight of Arne crumpled, lifeless, on the blue carpet.
What had they done?
“All right, no more screwing around,” the horny man insisted, handing Steffi back to his humiliated colleague, who now had a cut on his chin where her toenail had sliced him. “And drag that piece of shit back to the ship.” He pointed down at Arne. “We told him what would happen if he interfered. Anyway, he’s been harbouring fugitives. He’ll dangle alongside the rest of ’em.”
“Think you can handle the spitfire?” the third man joked.
“I’ll break her arm if I can’t,” vowed the man holding her. “Come on, get a move on, you little bitch.”
The strangest looseness overcame her as they walked. With Arne being dragged, unconscious, she could now focus on her own predicament. What to do? Her friends had probably been arrested too, Arne’s kin held at gunpoint. What else? How had the Royals found the Albatross? Once they’d shown up, it would have been easy to take over her ship, but the odds of them happening upon these exact coordinates, four days after being left behind in deep space, were infinitesimal.
The sublime interactive simulation ended outside on the bank of Loch Ness, the sun setting in a pink and purple sky over the western mountains. The Royals must have half figured the program out. They knew where the exit was, but not how to shut the simulation down. Steffi tripped over her helmet and oxygen tank as they left. The brute kneed her in the small of her back. Sharp and excruciating shards exploded up her spine. It grew chilly at the giant tank, but the smell of buttercups stayed with her all the way back to Arne’s lake.
 
“We’ll be famous after this,” the horny Royal boasted with a flippant salute to the wonders of the colourful lagoon. “Nailing Savannah and finding this juggernaut. Cocktails all round when we get back. I’m buying.”
“That’s enough, Revere,” barked a tall, thin commanding officer holding Flyte and Rex at gunpoint. But…why were they here and not the others? Steffi scanned the entire lagoon area twice but saw only the natives. Where was McKendrick? Had Rex and Flyte disobeyed a direct order—Steffi had told them to return to the Albatross—on their own? Unlikely. This reeked of McKendrick’s selfishness. Or perhaps the Royals had captured them on the Albatross and simply forced Rex and Flyte to show them the way here.
“Sorry, sir,” replied Revere. “It’s not every day you find an alien museum floating dead in space. And definitely not one with naked chicks. Dibs on the redhead by the pear tree.”
“I said that’s enough!” The commanding officer pointed an adamant finger at Revere, who chuckled to himself. “We’ve wasted enough time here. Nader and Umbize, you stay here and watch the locals. No funny business. Any of them tries anything, shoot first. The rest of you…” he nodded at Revere, the man holding Steffi, and another two guards standing at the turquoise tunnel exit, “…suit up and escort these traitors back to our ship. Nader, transfer the other two from Savannah’s bird to our brig, and then plant a charge in the engine room. Set it for one hour. We’ll be well away before the explosion. This will be our prize.” He winked at Revere. “And we’ll tow it back to October orbit. See what they can make of it. Okay, let’s go.”
The other two on the Albatross? That left one member of her crew unaccounted for. But who? Had the fuckers killed someone? Grinding her teeth in agony, Steffi glanced around the lakeside garden with frantic jerks. What did she hope to find? Inspiration? The situation was hopeless. She couldn’t escape the strong arms levering her shoulders out of joint. Not this time.
“Cap, you okay?” Deep tractor tracks furrowed Rex’s smooth black forehead. His bulging pearl eyes blazed at the man holding her. When one of the other guards handed him his helmet, Rex snatched it and glowered down at him.
“I’m okay,” Steffi lied. “We’re about out of moves, though.”
“Shut it.” Another hard knee in the small of her back ripped more diamond shards up her spine. She screamed, cried through the pain. She launched a desperate reverse head-butt at the son of a bitch, but he was ready for it.
“Ha! Not so fast, you little cunt.” He let go of one of her arms, then slapped her mouth so hard it drew blood.
Her cheek and gums stung. It made her eyes water. She felt like sobbing but the bastard would never get that satisfaction from her.
“Real fucking hero,” Rex yelled with a fury that lent steel to her resolve. “A defenceless woman. Why don’t you try that on me? Because I’d fucking rip you in two, that’s why. Pussy.”
Rex put his helmet on then helped Flyte with his. Revere prodded them both with his pistol, hurrying them up. When everyone else was space-ready, the commanding officer approached Steffi with a startling scowl, as though this arrest would end a personal vendetta. Treason? It must have meant more to these Royal bastards than any other crime. Even murder. And when all was said and done, she’d only tried to smuggle a political prisoner off world.
“And now, Savannah…” his icy voice still chilled her through the muffling glass of his helmet, “…put this on.” He picked up the last spacesuit, helmet and boots from the grass and thumped them into her midriff. “It might be the last thing you’ll ever wear.”
The relief she felt at being freed from the iron grip shot endorphins into her body. A few moments of glee. She exhaled then massaged her sore shoulders and back. The brute smacked her again from behind. Incensed, she glanced round at his perverse grin and for half a glorious second considered kicking him in the balls. Don’t be dumb. You’re still alive. Bide your time and you’ll get your chance.
She knew it was all lies but the optimism righted her dangerous list.
Many a slip ’twixt cup and lip.
The rebellious thought made her smirk as she ached her way into the loose-fitting suit. But everyone watched, including the dozens of poor innocent lake dwellers cowering, holding each other around the water’s edge, their expressions fixed with fear and shock. Steffi ghosted, avoiding eye contact with them. What had she done? A fugitive on the run from notorious fanatics, days after stirring an interstellar hornet’s nest…what did she expect? A Royal pardon for being a good sport? Idiot. Staying in one place like this was unforgivable. Leading a tyrannical regime here, to this peaceful, drifting Shangri-La…unconscionable. If only she’d acted as a captain and not some love-struck tourist, the lagoon folk would never have suffered this. What would happen to them now?
She stepped into the rather large boots, then locked the helmet into place, rattling the metal rim connecting it to the suit collar, to demonstrate to herself that it was all a size too big.
What the…?
The reason flooded her like glittering water from a cold sluice.
McKendrick.
There could be no other explanation. Steffi’s own gear was back at the virtual loch—she’d even tripped over it on her way out—and the bastards had been in such a hurry to bring her here, they’d forgotten all about it. They would have realised their oversight sooner or later had there not been this extra outfit waiting for her. McKendrick’s. What a stroke of luck.
But where was McKendrick? Hiding somewhere, waiting to make her move? She’d shed her space gear all right—probably to sample the local penises, in direct contravention of her captain’s order—and now she was the Albatross’s only chance. Oh God. Steffi’s breath caught in her flaky throat. A sharp prod in the middle of her back told her time was almost up. For a horrid moment she thought McKendrick had set this whole thing up, betrayed her and the rest of her crew to the Royals. The reward would be substantial, especially with this prize alien vessel thrown into the bargain.
No sooner had the word “Bitch” escaped her lips than she spun toward the lake.
Crack! Crack! Splash!
A crossfire of rapid laser bolts ignited the lakeside into frantic action. The first barrage emerged from a clump of tall emerald weeds behind a large, drooping ash tree on the nearest bank. It had to be McKendrick.
Rex wrestled one of his guards into a brutal headlock. He jerked. The man’s helmet cracked apart and his head flopped sideways, neck broken. Rex yanked young Flyte behind him. He grabbed the dead guard’s pistol and stood the lifeless body in front of them for a shield. Laser hits thumped into the silver suit, chucking foam particles and blood into the air. Rex took Revere out with a fabulous shot to the face, killing him on the spot. The two Royals standing at the exit aimed low at the body shield, trying to bull’s-eye Rex through the splayed, lifeless legs. They nicked his shin. He grimaced and ducked to the grass, laying the body down in front of him. Shot after shot splattered into the corpse, but never all the way through.
The commanding officer and another guard were busy exchanging fire with McKendrick, which left Steffi and her nemesis, the backstabber, the only unengaged parties in the gunfight. He daren’t shoot her, not while she was unarmed. His C.O. would court-martial him. Instead, he resumed his usual position, grabbing her from behind, his gun aimed at her head. The yellow son of a bitch. Right now, he was the lowest form of life in the universe. A parasite. Right now, she was his insurance.
Crack! Crack!
Though firing while flat and under cover in the grass, the commanding officer took a shot through the neck. His awful convulsions and silent scream meant the laser had hit his larynx. A kill shot. McKendrick could shoot as well as fly.
As could Rex. He nailed both exit guards in quick succession when they rushed at him in a daredevil flanking manoeuvre. He then sneaked behind the dead officer’s goon. Crack!
“McKendrick,” he urged, eyeing Steffi’s brute—the last Royal alive.
She emerged from the weeds in a wet tank top and boxer shorts. Her straggly blonde hair, still sopping, slapped against her back when she tossed it over her shoulder.
“One to go,” she said.
Arne stirred twenty feet away, but his attempts to roll onto his side appeared sluggish, painful.
“I’ll put one right through her neck,” the Royal insisted. “I swear. Don’t come any closer.”
McKendrick, Rex and Flyte stopped.
“That’s good. Now drop your guns and step away. You first, bush bitch.”
McKendrick cocked her head and cupped a hand to her ear. “You called me what?”
“I said drop it and step away. Unless you want your captain’s entrails as a souvenir. Do it!”
Steffi winced when he mashed the gun against her ribs.
“Um, let me think about that for a minute.” McKendrick slid her gun barrel up and down her cheek, pretending pensiveness. “Um, no. I’m thinking we won’t be doing what you want from now on. Rex?” She started creeping toward Steffi. Rex copied her—perhaps the two of them had discussed this hostage scenario before, and this was their solution.
Whatever it was, Steffi didn’t like it. The bastard grew jittery. He prodded her ribs again and again, kicked her legs apart, even head-butted her. Jesus! The jack-hammering pain in her side, the throbbing ache in her lower back, her entire body felt bruised and cut to ribbons.
Still Rex and McKendrick closed in, their pistols pointed straight at the brute.
Steffi’s heart slammed her chest, harder and harder. How to turn a stalemate into an insane dick-measuring contest. Someone had to fire. Two guns to one, but they were putting the bastard into a desperate corner. Her legs began to buckle. He wrenched her upright and, backing her away with him, clashed his helmet onto hers. Insane.
Steffi took his head-butt for a loss of balance and tried wrapping her leg around his, the first in a three-move shoulder throw Bo had taught her. No dice. He back-stepped and slammed the point of his gun under her arm. “One more like that, I’m begging you,” he dared her, his manic voice trembling.
“Put the gun down and there’s a chance we won’t kill you,” Rex said with utter pragmatism.
“I…I will…kill her.” Feeble words from the brute. But they sounded fucking scary to Steffi.
She mashed her lips together. This was it. He would become irrational at any moment, and the only chance she had was for someone to risk taking a shot. To put one right between his eyes. Any good captain would make that call, and she’d been a piss-poor captain for most of the day. Time to make amends. No guarantees, only a last round of Russian roulette. She nodded at Rex and McKendrick inside her helmet. Rex winked back.
Five feet away now. Four.
“I mean it!”
“So do we. You can still survive this. Let her go.”
Three.
Rex’s trigger finger twitched, as though he was about to take the shot. But the Royal bastard ducked behind her, shielding his face from Rex’s line of fire. He lowered his grappling arm then tossed it around her again. Shaking, she found it hard to breathe. Her panicked breaths seemed to suck the oxygen faster than her tank could provide it.
Two.
She shut her eyes tight and turned her head away from his gun. A last refuge inside her helmet.
One.
His gun clattered against the metal rim around her neck. It sounded like a miner’s erratic hammering in the dark. A grim peace bowed her head loose from its taut corner. If this was it, she would not struggle anymore. The eye of this storm would be forever. Not a glad one. But an empty one.
Crack!
She wheeled into the abyss and felt the rope slip through her mind’s fingers. Down, sideways, down. At least the laser blast hadn’t hurt. The sensation of release unspooled her into a delightful sigh of contentment. Thread-less forever. No bad thing for a natural spacewalker. Was this what eternity would—
She thudded against the ground. The shock tasted of salt and spat green into her eyes. She was on the grass? Unharmed? All her aches and pains clambered over her with crampons. She groaned, rolled onto her side. Rex and McKendrick were standing over her, ready to pick her up. Behind them, the most beautiful man she’d ever seen stood almost upright, clutching his ribs. His eyebrows met on a worried brow. He peered at her between Rex’s bulk and McKendrick’s steaming curves.
“You’ve found yourself quite a guy there, Cap.” McKendrick lifted Steffi’s left shoulder, Rex managed her right.
“What? What happened?”
“Your man. He sneaked up behind the fucker and snatched his gun. Then I finished it. Good deal.”
“Arne?” Steffi asked, woozy.
“Here.”
“Hold my hand.”
She couldn’t see him, but his gentle touch tingled through her glove. It hinted at the night before and days to come and strange, Danish fairytales.
The happy-ever-after kind.
Chapter Six

Hours later, Steffi hovered at the entrance to the turquoise tunnel, pacing this way, then stopping to nurse her sore back, then pacing that way, again and again. How long had it been now? Too bloody long. She galloped her fingertips on the same spot on the hard, luminous rim of the archway. The rhythm made no sound at all. She went to chew her lower lip for the umpteenth time but it was still bruised and bloody.
Flyte’s eager voice crackled to life over the comm link. She whistled and waved to Arne, who was recovering on the banks of the lagoon. He sat up right away.
“We’ve retaken the Albatross, Cap.” Flyte’s prolonged breath of relief sounded like a gale force wind buffeting the flames of a bonfire. “Just like you said. Rex and I did a Star Wars in our Royal spacesuits. You know, escorting Chewbacca—sorry, McKendrick—at gunpoint to the Royals’ ship. It was a capital idea. And they fell for it!” He paused, probably to gather his breath. “We overpowered the pilots and crippled the engine. Then we used exactly the same ruse aboard the Albatross. Chance and Alex were tied up in B corridor, watched by two guards. When Rex saw the big bruise on Alex’s neck, he didn’t say anything. He disarmed both Royals like that”—Flyte clicked his fingers—“dragged them into the airlock and hurled the bastards out into space.”
Steffi held a fist, then thumped it in triumph on the rock-hard rim. “Great show, you guys. Seriously, you did good.” She raised both arms aloft, sharing the celebration with Arne.
“Thanks, Cap. You should have been here—we got rid of every one of those sons of bitches.”
“Get your ass over here right away,” she replied. “I want to hear it in person.”
“Roger that…with bells on.”
Ten minutes later, he lumbered in through the tunnel in full suit sans helmet, his eyes immediately drawn toward a particular pear tree near the lagoon. A petite young redhead with light freckles stirred when she glimpsed him. Flyte blushed in reply.
“So it’s all ours, Cap,” he said, stealing another glance at the fragile-looking girl.
“Very nice work. A friend of yours?” Steffi teased. She loved winding Flyte up in that big sisterly sort of way.
“Yes. We, um, rather got to know each other while you were away. It’s their custom here. Where we shake hands and buy drinks, they lay you down and…pretty much have sex with you on the nearest comfortable spot. All very proactive.”
Steffi raised an eyebrow, pretending surprise. “So…who disobeyed me first today? I gave explicit orders for you not to come in here without me.”
“Um, yeah, you can probably guess. Rex and I were on our way back when we realised McKendrick had disappeared and…well, you know what she’s like.”
“I’ll deal with her later.”
Flyte rubbed his gloved forefinger back and forth over the stubble on his chin, a nervous tic that had often betrayed him during games of baccarat and poker. “Yeah, we told her it was dumb, but she went anyway. We reckoned it would be better to keep an eye on her, to make sure things stayed as cordial as possible. And they did.” He cleared his throat. “To say the least.”
Arne’s hand caressed, tickled her bare stomach. It reminded her of his eagerness to get her in the sack earlier. So he hadn’t lied. All the lagoon folk, it seemed, made love as a courtesy to attraction rather than leaving it as a promise waiting to be fulfilled. They acted on those sexual urges that most people suppressed in civilised society. And here, any question of unrequited attraction would be irrelevant; the lagoon folk were all knockout beauties.
“And McKendrick?” Steffi asked. “What did they make of her?”
Flyte sniggered in his snooty manner. “What do you think?”
“I figured. Don’t tell me…she’s had half the men already.”
“She’s given it a good try. I felt sorry for Rex, though. He was propositioned by at least five girls before they got the message. Apparently there’s no word for married here. He had to use the word mate, then they got the picture.”
Steffi turned to Arne. “So what are you, really?” She combed his long blond hair back behind his ears. “Nymphs and satyrs? You said the watchers created you as well. So there must be some mythological connection.” A gentle lump in her throat dropped an acorn of fear into the pit of her stomach. What the hell was he? Why was he reluctant to tell her? She didn’t know anything about him, despite them having slept in the same bed. She focused on his perfect features and the unblinking adoration in his blue eyes.
Did it really matter that he was something unnatural? What did natural mean anyway? Human? If the despicable Royals were any measure of that label, maybe it was better that Arne didn’t qualify. Unnatural, up to a point, might well be just what she needed.
Maybe.
“You are right about that,” he admitted. “We are creatures of myth. The watchers created us to bring joy to Earth. But I would prefer to show you what we are rather than tell you.”
“Well? Here we are.” She swallowed again. His cryptic remarks didn’t bode well. What if he transformed into some startling aberration? Something that gave her the creeps? Would he ever seem as sweet again if the change was too drastic?
“When the time is right, I will show you.” His bloodied lips curled into a sore smile. He flinched when she touched the bruise on his chin.
Steffi drew her hand away and, blaming herself for everything that had happened, curled her fingers into a gentle, apologetic ball. “This was all my fault, Arne.” Her monotone voice sounded far too cold and remorseless for what she wanted to say, but it was her captain’s voice—conditioned, pragmatic, a shield over emotion—and would not give in. “Those bastards followed me for a week through deep space. I had no right staying here so long and subjecting you to that. I…I brought them here…to all of you.” The shield wavered and she felt it slipping. The warm beginnings of tears trickled from the heavy sponge behind her eyes. “You can never forgive me, but—”
“If you were guilty of anything, I would have already forgiven you. But, Steffi, we know you never intended for this to happen, so there is nothing to forgive. I will never regret your arrival for a moment. On the contrary, I consider myself the luckiest man in the history of our kind, for while I was stuck in the past, in fantasies, I was visited by the only real woman I have ever met…a woman…both timely and timeless.”
Steffi started to sob but turned away instead. Those were the loveliest words she’d ever heard, and from a man whom she knew meant each and every one of them. How could she have been so lucky to find him? It was so much more than she deserved.
Surges of pride and shame lifted Steffi away from him, to her feet. She needed to change the subject, to distract her from the tears piling inside. “It’s okay, there’s no hurry…I guess,” she pressed without meaning to.
“No hurry?” Arne queried.
“For showing me…whatever it is you’re going to show me. Don’t worry, we have time.”
“Yes.”
The vapour cloud hung low over the lagoon, and even appeared to dip into the water a few hundred yards offshore. Fidgety whispers from the naked folk huddling in small groups in the undergrowth gnawed at her sense of escape. The Royals had been defeated, yes, but what now? Where could they go from here? This was still the middle of nowhere cubed—the doldrums of space.
Flyte took the lovely young redhead in his arms and kissed her with far more than the etiquette of attraction. He’d already had sex with this girl. She was more than willing. So he had nothing to gain by lavishing such passion on her if not for a deeper longing. He cupped her blushing cheeks in his hands and, red-faced himself, kissed her in front of everyone. A swooning, romantic kiss.
Steffi glowed at the sight of her adopted little brother so happy. Right then, the entire plan of what she must do played out in a glimmer from the rippling lagoon. Whatever else happened, she had to get this unprecedented ship safely to another world, one that had oxygen and water and could support the life of myths. Past the great asteroid belt, countless promising planets awaited colonization. It was up to the Albatross to find one. It could tow this alien ship through space without trouble. Not much manoeuvrability, but that wouldn’t matter if they could bypass the deep space blockade.
The redhead took Flyte’s hand and led him back to her group under a pear tree. An older couple greeted him. They could not have been more than forty-five years of age, yet they were the oldest-looking people lakeside.
“You don’t live long, do you?” Steffi asked Arne, a twinge of loneliness keeping her from looking him in the eyes.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because there are no old people here.”
“Not exactly true. We age slowly, that is all. Our formative years pass by much like yours, but when we reach maturity, the ageing process all but grinds to a halt.”
“So how old are you? A hundred?” She laughed, more in anxiousness than levity.
Arne shook his head with a playful grin, then groaned as he rose to his knees. “No, I am sixty-three. Your friend Flyte has found one of our youngest girls. Gerty. She is only seventeen. I predict they will become life-mates. And there you can see her parents, Lorne and Michaela. They are both over one hundred and twenty. You can probably guess that we know each other rather well by now. Time passes so slowly here.”
Silence. Even the lakeside whisperings lowered beneath the drips of moisture running off tree leaves and plopping into the lagoon.
“Are we…?” Steffi couldn’t quite give shape to the words.
“Are we what?” he asked.
“Could we be…life-mates?” Now the idea was out, she wished it back in as though it was a spiteful genie wrecking her dreams. Dumb, dumb. She was a wanted fugitive, and after the day’s violent turn of events, she’d be hunted to the far side of the galaxy. But she wanted, needed to stay with Arne. In the short time she’d known him, the Steffi Savannah of Hellespont had grown, like an image in a darkroom, into more than an inkling, more than a whisper of vague and cloistered memories. He had begun to define her, or rather, in his sweet company, she had begun to redefine herself. Days ago, the galaxy had shrunk so completely she’d had nowhere left to hide. Now, despite having a ship full of myths to hide as well, Steffi no longer felt trapped. For she had a purpose. The cosmic winds would fill the Albatross’s wings and guide her to a new home.
At least, that was what her heart wanted.
Her insides knotted at Arne’s long hesitation.
He limped the few steps to her. Though barely able to steady himself, he draped his warm, sticky body and muscular arms around her, holding her tight. “Do I think we could be life-mates?” he said before kissing her cheek. “I think you know the answer to that.”
She suppressed the desire to scream with delight while she helped Arne hobble to the turquoise tunnel. Steffi didn’t care where they were going, only that they were going there together. Marvelling at the sheer scale of the main corridor once again—phosphorescent cathedral walls hundreds of feet high to a phantom cloud ceiling—she loved how centred and electrically charged Arne made her feel. Intimate in epic surroundings. Epic in intimate surroundings.
“We need somewhere a little more private.” He winked and held a comforting, innocent smile.
“But I have to tell my crew what my new plan is.”
“This will not take long. Think of it as a quick convalescence.”
“Where to?”
“To a North American forest.”
“Oh? Sounds big.”
He chuckled. “Big…yes.”
 
California Redwood trees dwarfed even her memory of the water tank holding the Loch Ness monster. They stood so straight and imperious that Steffi asked him if they’d been exaggerated.
“No. Scaled down, actually.”
“You’re shitting me.”
A massive transparent shield enclosing the forest resembled a cellophane dawn. Artificial light from high up in the mist reached the shield with a cool glare between the shadows of trees. A carpet of clumpy grass, pinecones and dry leaves covered the forest floor. No signs of animal life. Arne assured her there was no way through the shield unless he deactivated it, which he’d done on occasion.
“Oh yeah? What are we looking for this time?”
“The sasquatch.”
“That sounds gooey. What is it?”
“You will have heard of him by another name—Bigfoot.”
Her eyes beamed, full wattage, at the empty autumn scene. She whispered, “Bigfoot?”
Recalling what Arne had told her about the length of time the creatures had been on this ship, she reckoned there must be a few families’ worth of sasquatches by now. Same for the plesiosaurs, and any other species. Minutes passed without movement in the forest.
“This happens sometimes,” he said, disappointed. “They are not the most dependable of neighbours.”
She cast him a surprised glance. “So you know them personally?”
“Not very well, but we have communicated often. They usually seem to enjoy my visits.”
Impressed, she lifted an eyebrow and squeezed his arm. “You are a gregarious fellow, Arne. Whatever next?”
She caught the faintest twitch of a smirk on the bloodless side of his lips.
“Let me guess. You want me to follow you?” she joked.
“Or you can carry me if you like.”
She laughed and tried to lift him. Her lower back wrenched, defusing the high jinks. “Or I can follow you,” she groaned.
“Smart girl.”
The tubular white tunnel for this particular simulation was much smaller than the Scottish enclosure. Arne pressed a calligraphy function on the wall. In moments, the convex white morphed into sky-scraping redwood trunks and a ceiling of potted blue sky. The phosphorescent floor flickered into an uneven assault course of scattered fern needles, jutting roots and pinecones by the thousand.
He was dressed in a chequered red and beige lumber jacket, dark corduroy trousers, hiking boots and a warm-looking Klondike hat. Her outfit consisted of tight jeans, a bulky blue ski jacket and a sweatband over her brow.
Before she could tell him what utter morons they looked, the foliage rustled behind them. A middle-aged man and a tallish boy, both dressed like hunters, both brandishing rifles, tore toward them. She stepped aside and yelled in the man’s ear, “You’re an idiot. Your boy looks about twelve. What the hell are you doing giving him a loaded gun?”
No response, just as she’d expected. Arne had explained that all simulated characters were non-interactive.
Arne doffed his hat to her. “After you, Captain Savannah. It is just over the next rise.”
“At ease,” she deadpanned, following the hunters’ trail. “And this’d better be worth it.”
On the other side of the verge, both man and boy crouched low behind a moss-covered stump. The man bid his son stay put. Something up ahead had piqued his concern. Was it the quarry they’d been pursuing? What was it? A deer? That must have been what they’d assumed.
Steffi held her lower back as she staggered down the crinkly slope to where the armed duo was hiding. She had to hear everything they said. These alien reconnoitres were nothing if not fascinating glimpses at Earth people. Her ancestors.
Twigs snapped up ahead. One at a time. Careful but heavy steps. The thing had to know it was being followed.
“Stay low and don’t make a sound, Kevin,” the man whispered over his shoulder.
“Don’t go, Dad. Just…don’t go. It’s too big.”
“Rubbish. I’ve waited for this since I was your age.”
“But, Dad—”
“Sshh.”
The broad-shouldered man crept as lightly as he could but the ground was littered with dry, dead flora. His every step bristled. The boy shook, patting the leaves at his knees with his rifle butt. He even gave the cold barrel a kiss and prayed that it keep his father alive. Halfway to the cluster of trees, the man veered right. He quickened his steps and bent low. What was his plan? To sneak up behind his quarry, making enough noise to wake the entire forest? Insanity. Fathers showing off to their sons were up there with the craziest hombres she’d ever seen, and this was no different. She shook her head, feeling bad for the boy. What sort of boneheaded example of manhood was this for him? A rite of passage? A rite of rampant testosterone, more like.
A godawful roar forced her to cover her ears. In a panic, the boy kicked out, gouging the mud with his boots. Apoplexy gripped the forest. The man ducked and, tautening his shoulders, raised his rifle at the tree. A bird caw echoed high up. Another twig snapped. Without warning, a tall hairy biped creature shot out and rushed straight at the man. Its effortless stride was gigantic. It looked about twice the man’s size, with simian features and arms at least as strong as a gorilla’s. Shaggy brown hair covered every inch of it except its face, palms and toes, which were black.
Crack!
The man shot in a hurry on the turn. The creature squealed, sped off to the right and shoulder-barged a branch barring its escape.
“Dad!”
“Gotcha, you son of a bitch!”
“Dad!”
The man cocked his rifle and ran after the sasquatch. Meanwhile, little Kevin knelt up to see what the heck was happening. When he saw his dad had vanished and then flinched at two distant shots, he leapt up and raced in the direction he’d heard them.
“Dad!”
“Get away, Kevin! Run!”
Unarmed, the man stumbled back into view at top speed under the broken branch. He dove to the ground in front of the trees to avoid smashing into them. Right behind him, the furious sasquatch showed no mercy. Blood seeped from a wound in its arm, blotting the mangy hair black. It stood on the man’s back with all its weight, then bent to pummel his head. Blow after crushing blow killed the man outright.
Steffi hid her face in her hands when Bigfoot turned to face the boy. But she couldn’t miss peering through tensed, clammy fingers. This was it—the crux of the vignette. The rite of passage.
Trembling, Kevin didn’t want any part of his rifle. The way he raised it looked as though he was lifting a rump roast to a T-Rex. The sasquatch loped with menacing focus toward him. Kevin peed himself. He cried, “Dad, Mum, I wanna go home.” He tried to raise the rifle again, but he was crying too hard. He dropped it. The sasquatch approached to within a few feet of the boy, still grimacing, the whites of its eyes as big as boiled eggs.
Thump!
Steffi reeled back, horrified, as the boy fell under a powerful blow to the head. He lay still and crumpled on the ground. The sasquatch stood over him for a few moments before opening its mouth, baring its teeth and letting loose a silent scream. Victory? The pain from its wound? A frustrated desire to be left alone in its natural habitat? The last thing she saw of Bigfoot was a sharp, loose branch catching the trunk of a redwood, back and forth, back and forth in a metronomic swing. The beast had barged into it. A clump of its bloodied hair hung from the point.
She looked at the boy, then at the man, then up at Arne.
“What the hell? I thought you said we were here to convalesce. This was downright horrific.”
“You forget we are supposed to be watchers, Steffi. You should not have ventured so close to the action. If it makes you feel better, the boy survives. A search party finds him in a couple of days. But this is perhaps the most interesting of all the simulations, insofar as what it represents. Do you not think so?”
“Watchers, shmotchers. If this is what you call a second date…next time, I’m picking.”
He almost toppled backward over a tree root as he laughed. But Steffi still trembled, and the humour now struck her as extraordinarily callous. She would have nightmares about this forest scene, and about Bigfoot. And most of all about the man who’d dreamed of shooting this legendary creature since boyhood.
 
Back at the lagoon, Steffi told Flyte her plan for towing the alien ship.
“I agree,” he replied, eyeing his girl who watched him from under the pear tree. “They’re drifting toward Royal space. Better we land them somewhere safe than they fall in with those self-righteous bastards.”
Steffi placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “And I’m sure your new girlfriend won’t argue.” She threw him a wink.
“Look who’s talking.” He tapped his fingers on her cheek then turned to leave for the Albatross.
Steffi lay on the grass, resting her abused back. Giggles emerged from the lakeside trees, and a distant choir broke out in song. She wondered what these sheltered folk would make of a world apart from their safe lagoon. They’d just had a taste of it, at gunpoint. But colonizing a wild planet was a different prospect altogether. She ripped a clump of grass from its roots, then watched the helpless green stalks slide through her fingers onto her stomach.
Hmm, Arne and his people, not to mention the many extraordinary creatures onboard, would need all the help she could give them. They would be underway as soon as Rex could rig the tow harness and attach it securely to the guts of the leviathan. But was it really the best course of action? For all involved, not just those in love?
Chapter Seven

Dinner during the second evening of towing started without a word. No lagoon folk had visited the Albatross yet, though Arne had expressed a desire to do so once or twice. In Steffi’s opinion, it could breed jealousy in the others. Too much to-ing and fro-ing between ships could only result in unnecessary accidents; the beautiful people had never seen space before, let alone negotiated a spacewalk. So they would have to remain lakeside until a suitable planet could be found, however long that took.
“I’ve been wondering…if we’re doing the right thing,” she mused out loud, atypically in front of the whole crew, at the dinner table. “I mean would they be better off left as they are? Not just the people, but all those creatures as well. They’ve got everything they need to last indefinitely—food, water, the exact right environments. We’d be ripping them away from that and asking them to fend for themselves on an alien planet. Food might be hard to come by. It might not suit them. If we didn’t watch out for them, some could even go extinct. What do you think?”
She could have heard a pin drop.
“You don’t agree?” she tested.
“If you’re asking if we think it’s a crapshoot, the answer’s yes.” Rex clasped a huge black hand around his pint beaker of milkshake. “But we both think…” he looked to his wife for reassurance, “…that it’d be a crime to leave them floating like that.”
Alex gripped her husband’s hand on the edge of the table, then glared at Steffi. “What if someone else found them? God only knows what those Royals would do. And it’s only a matter of time before they get pulled in by a star’s gravity, or into another planet. I think it’s our duty to see they get a proper chance at surviving. They’re orphans from Earth—of a sort—so doesn’t that mean we’re related?”
Steffi wanted to nod in wholehearted agreement, but McKendrick, playing with her food, caught her eye.
“McKendrick? Come on, speak your mind. We need to discuss this thing now rather than later. Once we reach the asteroid belt, we’ll have put them in harm’s way, and there’ll be no ditching them then, not while I’m in charge.”
“Sounds like your mind’s already made up, Cap. I don’t have anything too constructive to add.”
Tickled by something in that, Rex spat his mouthful of milkshake back into the beaker. “Shock-a-bye-baby! McKendrick disagreeing with the rest of us? Anyone not see that coming light-years away?”
“Shut it, Van Rynn. If a thought ever went through your head, it’d start a new religion.” Everyone suppressed a titter. Rex beckoned more insults. “But someone’s gotta say this,” she added with a sigh. “These things might have been meant for Earth, but they were never actually from Earth. The aliens created them to fuck with our ancestors, to manipulate us into seeing things a certain way. Now the aliens’ logic might have been right, but that whole cockamamie plan—introducing fantasy creatures as some kind of experiment—just pisses me right off. These things they created are not real. They never were real. We thought them up in the first place to make us feel better about life being so fucking mundane. But the ironic part is—we’ve got these amazing creatures now, and life is still fucking mundane because we know they’re not real. They’re constructs. No matter how dreamy and magical they look, they’ll always be alien experiments that never escaped the lab. There’s nothing magical or supernatural about them. And when you get down to it, that was what fascinated us about them when we were kids. Take that away, and what are you left with?”
“Nymphs, Loch Ness Monsters, Bigfoot, unicorns…” Alex sat up and ticked the myths off with her fingers right in McKendrick’s face, “…winged horses, werewolves, the Ark of the Covenant, dragons, Excalibur. And those are the ones we know about.”
“Blah, blah, blah. They’re movie props, special effects, things created in a workshop to trick us. So they’re living things and they can do amazing things. In what way does that obligate us? We’re taking a hell of a gamble here, risking our lives, for things that insult us by their very existence.”
“That didn’t stop you from screwing half the lakeside population,” Alex snapped. “Feel insulted much then, did you?”
“I’ll let you know when I’ve had the other half.” McKendrick winked, then entered into a staring contest with her much prettier crewmate.
Steffi rolled her eyes. “Chance? What about you? You’ve been with us since October.” The memory of their sordid clinch in the prayer room dirtied him…and her. “What do you think we should do?”
He shrugged.
“Just say whatever you think,” Rex egged him on. “As you can see, that’s our crew motto. Everyone speak his piece, and ignore McKendrick’s.”
Chance stroked his week-old stubble, contorting his expression halfway between pensiveness and shyness. “Not really my beef. I’m lucky to be here at all.” It sounded dumb and fake. He must have realised it because he flicked his glance to every crewmember before setting his cup down with a gentle thump. “Okay, I agree with McKendrick. These things aren’t a part of nature—our nature, that is. But they’re here, and we’re here, and we’re going the same way. Why not give them a lift?”
“Hear! Hear!” Alex toasted with sarcastic glee. “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy—if we’re going the same way, why not give them a lift?”
“Because they’re fucking fifty times bigger than us, and they can’t steer worth shit!” insisted McKendrick.
Rex intensified the mood with a roaring belly laugh. “Oh dear. Looks like our little pilot’s gone and lost herself another vote. Quick, let’s do another. Who votes McKendrick has to follow Bigfoot around with a poop-a-scoop for the next week?”
No hands went up, only smiles.
“I vote Van Rynn goes out for some fresh air…without a suit,” countered McKendrick. “It’s been a while since I saw iced shit.”
“Hey, that’s not bad,” he said.
“Thanks. I’m here all week.”
“I wouldn’t count on that.”
“Count? One, two, three, five…aw, what goes next?”
“Your fat ass out of the airlock,” he retorted.
Growing restless, Steffi shut her eyes. “All right, knock it off. It’s settled. We carry on as we are. If we find a planet that looks promising, we leave the alien ship in orbit, check out the surface ourselves. If it’s suitable, we figure out a way to get that shed down in one piece. If we don’t find anywhere suitable…we’ll have to discuss it again.” No dissent. “Okay, anyone who feels up to it, Arne has invited us all to another simulation tonight. Says it’s a surprise.”
“Doesn’t that guy know any other word?” groaned McKendrick.
Steffi glowered at her. “You’ve just volunteered. Anyone else?”
Alex affirmed with great enthusiasm, while Rex agreed to keep watch with Chance aboard the Albatross.
 
~ * ~
 
In the blink of an eye, what once was brilliant white became dark, majestic and indescribably alive. There was little movement in the dusk garden chock full of colourful flowers, enclosed by old and overgrown trellises, and the fading light did not help define the buds and leaves fidgeting in a solemn breeze. Yet, the garden had life, more life than Steffi could see or hear or smell. The dimmer it grew, the more alive it seemed, like some nocturnal coral realm quenched by the dark.
The girl could not have been more than six years old. Her deck chair lay inside a large bower shaped like two Bo Peep staffs stuck together, facing the flowerbeds. She was sitting upright against at least four pillows. A single Toy Story quilt covered her. When the twilight dimmed too low for her to see, she switched her torch on and roved the beam over the tops of the trellises.
Then she coughed.
A horrid thought braced Steffi as she glanced around at her crewmates standing under a silver birch, a few feet behind her. McKendrick was sitting cross-legged, fist on chin, a little farther away to the left.
The girl coughed twice more.
Steffi nudged Arne, whispered, “Is she—?”
“I am afraid so. Cancer.”
A strong desire to walk away almost got the better of her, but that would mean leaving Arne again.
“Sweetheart? Do you want to come inside?” The girl’s father looked around thirty. Athletic, smartly dressed in a sleeveless cotton shirt and beige trousers, he was handsome in a standoffish, workaholic sort of way. He approached the bower from behind with a tired look of concern, the bags under his eyes quite prominent. “Shall I carry you to bed?”
“I’m okay, Daddy. I want to see one first.” Her fragile voice would blow away in a stiff breeze. “Mummy said they come out at night. She thought she saw one last night.”
“A furry?” he mumbled, half interested, sliding into a more broad Yorkshire accent.
“No, Daddy, a fairy,” she corrected. “Furry is like Teddy. These glow and they have wings.”
He smiled and knelt beside her, tucking the quilt around her midriff. “Ah yes, now I remember.”
“Mummy said you don’t believe in fairies,” the girl stated with a precocious hint of superiority, without looking at him. “She said you’d have to see one first.”
“Did she now? Well, it’s true I’ve never seen one. But that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. You believe in something before you see it. That’s how it works.”
“So you do believe?”
“Of course,” he lied, hiding a wince then a wounded expression.
They watched the darkness in silence, following the shiver of her beam over bluebells and tulips and tall white flowers that had no name. Crickets interrupted now and then like sentry soldiers reporting in. Low over the trellises, a thin crescent moon kept eerie vigil. The girl was rapt in anticipation.
Then she coughed again. And again. The third time sent her torch lurching onto the grass.
“I think I’d better take you inside,” he almost insisted.
“No! Just a bit longer. I want to see what Mummy saw.”
He checked his watch and heaved a sigh. “Okay, but I’m getting your medicine ready.” Yawning, he stumbled toward the house which stood a good fifty feet behind the bower.
The little girl watched him leave. When he reached the house, she cast her quilt aside and slipped out of her chair. Steffi gasped. The girl was so dainty and darling and her tiny figure seemed but a wisp of what it should be. Gripping Arne’s arm, Steffi whispered, “Does she—?” The word lodged in her throat. A bitter tightness that she couldn’t escape swelled from her stomach to the thorns behind her eyes.
Arne didn’t respond.
The girl’s torch beam pointed right at them. It continued behind them as though they were not there. Her rickety legs, covered in nothing but pink shorts, trembled in front of the azaleas. She walked on toward the trellises, not lighting her path but searching the deepest, darkest shadows of the garden instead. She tiptoed here, staggered there, crouched low to inspect a secretive flower. In daylight, it would have seemed a silly little child’s game; in the dark, it was nothing short of a breathless search for hidden magic. The little girl had tenacity and wonder. But not stamina. Such a brittle thing. So brave. Her legs finally gave way on a blanket of grass beside the tulips. Her torch beam waved across the flowerbed, once back, once forth, then stopped altogether.
Clouds roamed over her, unknowing. The crescent moon slid into a pocket of the night. Crickets reported in, and were not heard from again.
“Beth! Beth!” Something about the father’s run to her seemed rehearsed, inevitable, as though he’d dreaded and accepted the moment long since. He broke down at her side. He cradled her in his arms like he’d probably done the first time they met. So short a time to know one another. No way to get that back, or to prolong it a little. Not even a little.
The man stopped sobbing. All fell silent again while the girl stirred.
“Beth? Beth, stay with me.”
“Daddy. Where am I?” The air barely held her words.
“In the garden, sweetheart. I’m here.”
“What are those?”
He followed her glassy gaze to the old yew at the far end of the garden. Pinpricks of light danced about the dark bough, phasing in and out of existence like some magical Morse code communicating with her.
“Are those—?”
He gathered himself and, summoning a moment of wonder for her, replied, “Yes! Look—Mummy was right. Fairies!”
But her eyes had already begun to close. He held her in his lap, stroking her hair while the gentle sprites waltzed away to a tree in the next garden. In the pursuit of fairies, she gave her last breath of life.
He held her until the wind picked up and the fireflies moved on altogether. When the simulation ended, frozen in a still moment, everyone got up and left in silence. Only McKendrick was not sobbing. She stayed behind, cross-legged, her chin resting on her fist, just as she’d started.
No one saw her for hours after. When she finally turned up lakeside, she glanced over the paradise habitat and, after a long sigh, gave the briefest of nods. Then she left without saying a word. That was the last time she set foot aboard the ship of myths.
Chapter Eight

The first asteroids appeared on radar early the next morning. Rex’s turn at watch in the cockpit began with a bang—literally—when a small rock, undetected by the scanners, smashed into the Albatross’s roof. He sounded the alarm and course-corrected with care, not wanting to put too much strain on the tow cables. After all, they were pulling a ship the size of a town.
By the time Steffi reached him, one of the nearby suns had begun to emerge from an eclipse. Its shocking yellow glow backlit a sea of rocks suspended in space, a hailstorm with no ground to reach, for as far as the eye could see. Rocks of all sizes rolled at varying speeds. Some looked as big as moons. The way they were clustered together in this massive belt across nothingness didn’t seem to make sense until she remembered the all-powerful nature of gravity. Forces she couldn’t see harnessed the asteroids, and kept planets and moons at bay around stars, binding things together where not even air existed.
“Keep well clear,” McKendrick told Rex. “However long it takes. Trust me, we don’t wanna see even a medium-sized rock headed our way.”
“I heard that.” He chewed his lip while the Albatross dipped to the left, under and wide of the asteroids, at an agonising pace.
“Once you’ve locked the new heading, gradually build up speed,” Steffi ordered. “Then make sure you kill the engines before we clear the belt. We can’t risk anyone spotting our Psammeticum trail. We’ll just have to pick a planet now and let momentum take us. Try our luck ’til we’re clear of the blockade.”
“Where do you reckon the blockade is?” asked Rex.
Steffi shrugged. “They’re pretty much untraceable until you’ve crossed the threshold, then the artillery usually lets you know in a hurry. Two official warning messages, then a warning shot, then you’re dodging rain. We tried to locate the outer markers once around Horatius—you know, to knobble them—but you’ve no idea how small they are, how hard to pinpoint. They could literally be a hundred yards ahead of us right now and we wouldn’t know.”
“The long way round it is, then,” he agreed. “McKendrick, you’re not bad at navigation. Help me pick a world.”
“Sure.”
Steffi raised an eyebrow. She couldn’t remember the last time they’d cooperated voluntarily without ribbing each other first. “Holler if you need me,” she said.
Whiling away the hours in her own tiny quarters curled her toes and made her want to run a cross-country marathon. She read the same passage in her Arabian Nights at least six times without imbibing a single complete sentence. Her mind could not anchor without thinking of Arne. What was he doing right now? Who was he with? She shuddered and slammed the book down on her quilt. She stared at the moisture-stained ceiling—an off-copper green. Even breathing felt toxic, incomplete.
“Screw this.”
She marched to the changing area outside the airlock and switched on the comm system of a spare helmet. “Flyte, you there? Flyte? Cap here.” She whistled and tapped the receiver. “Joseph Marchmain, this is Captain Steffi Savannah ordering you to stop snogging and pick up your helmet. You there?”
“Hi, Cap.” He sounded surprised and out of breath.
“I sincerely hope I’m interrupting something.”
“Actually I was…no, what can I do for you?”
“Is Arne there at all?”
“Um…” his pause seemed drawn out, “…no, I don’t think…wait a minute, he’s here now.” Flyte’s posh voice lowered almost to a whisper. “Cap, the next time you visit, we have to talk. It’s about the lagoon folk. It’s something you really need to see.”
Steffi swallowed a hundred bad dreams in one go. “What is it?” Surely it couldn’t be anything horrific. He didn’t sound distressed at all.
“It’s okay, Cap. We’ll talk later. Shall I put Arne on?”
“I think you’d better.” With her finger, she drew a question mark in the breath-misted glass of the helmet. It squeaked when she pressed hard.
“Hello, Steffi.” A warm, melted-chocolaty greeting.
“Hi, Arne. How are you?”
“As well as can be expected without you.”
She wanted to curl up in his arms for a year, listen to him describing her in intimate detail. “I’m missing you too. Arne…” the sound of his name sent her heart aflutter, “…have you got something to tell me?”
“Yes, I love you.” An instant tonic for all the gruelling hours she’d survived without him.
“That’s so sweet.”
“Steffi? Do you have something you want to tell me?”
How typical of him—to turn the tables on her curiosity and remain innocent himself.
“No,” she insisted. “But I’m going nuts over here. I can’t stop thinking about a man I know nothing about. He’d never admit it, but I know he worries whenever I leave him.”
“He is admitting it now. He worries about the woman who turned his world upside down. He worries that she will risk her life for him. He wonders where all this will end.”
Steffi rested her brow on the helmet’s slick glass, waiting for him to tell her everything would be all right. “Arne?”
“Here.”
“I need you to promise me something. It’s important.”
“Oh?”
“Whatever happens, I need you to—”
The Albatross jerked, then rattled through a violent aftershock. Something had to have struck her. A second heavy impact knocked Steffi off her feet. The helmet bounced and clattered into the boot rack. The ship’s alarm sounded for the second time that day.
“Captain, we’re under attack!” The urgency in McKendrick’s voice flooded the ship with an apocalyptic air of dread. Ordinarily so calm at the helm, she had just sounded her equivalent of a war cry. Steffi raced through the mess room, wincing when her hip caught the table corner. Rex and Alex, half dressed, almost barged into her in A corridor.
The first thing she saw through the cockpit window was a convoy of sleek Royal ships unleashing a barrage of laser blasts directly at the Albatross. These were no warning shots. They were hell-bent on annihilation.
“Options?” she demanded.
McKendrick’s grimace seemed to contradict her gentle tugs at the wheel. She looked ready to rip the thing off and throw it through the window, but her pilot’s instincts proved unflappable. “A few more hits like that and we’re cooked. We’re sitting ducks, Cap.”
“What are you waiting for? Cut the tow cables,” Rex insisted, squeezing McKendrick’s seat back with his bear-like hands.
“Cap?” McKendrick’s finger hovered over the button for cable release.
It all flashed by in a horrid moment. Losing, dying alone, all her worst fears given laser cannons to blast her dreams apart. Without unfastening the cables, the Albatross would not have enough manoeuvrability to put up a fight. Steffi had no choice. But cutting Arne loose, even temporarily, felt like the severing of an umbilical between them. As of this moment, they would have to destroy all the enemy ships or else she’d never see him again. That last part felt unconscionable, but…she was the captain.
“Do it,” she said. “Cut them loose.”
Ghosting words.
A spurt of acceleration wrenched them all back. She crashed into an oxygen mask hung on the wall next to twin fire extinguishers. The uncoupling took place out of sight, in another place. She had, had to blank it from her mind.
Crunch!
Another hit started a staggering screech somewhere at the stern, as if metal was being rent apart one shimmy at a time. The Royal ships, swan-like bastards scything through space with impossible agility, circled overhead. They dive-bombed in perfect sequence. McKendrick lurched the Albatross over into a steep barrel roll, avoiding the entire barrage.
“Strap yourselves in!” she yelled, removing her sweater while holding the wheel between her thighs. “I hope none of you have just eaten.”
Crack!
McKendrick’s blood sprayed the window. Steffi spun round. That shot had come from behind them, from inside the cockpit.
“Chance! What the fuck are you doing?” Rex readied a fist. The pistol pointed at his chest was the only thing stopping him from tearing the newcomer apart.
“Open a comm channel—now.” Chance’s wild eyes shot back and forth between Rex and McKendrick.
“Chance, put that thing down,” ordered Steffi.
He spat at her. “Tell them we surrender. Do it! Tell them Corbin has control of the ship.”
Steffi couldn’t believe her ears. The man who’d helped them escape October, who’d shared their meals, their amazing discoveries, and even their beds, had been working for the other side all along? No chance. Not all this time! She spat back then ordered Rex to do as the traitor asked.
“But, Cap—”
Crunch!
Another blast shook the Albatross.
“Just fucking do it!” screamed Chance—no, Corbin. He wasn’t Chance anymore.
Rex pointed a threatening finger at him before opening a comm channel to the Royal ships. McKendrick flopped to the ground, the hole in her shoulder leaking profusely. Alex asked permission to see to her, but Corbin gave a grim laugh instead.
“That bitch can stay there and bleed,” he said. “She was a good fuck, I’ll give her that. But I’m sick of her whining. And no one in the galaxy will be sorry to see her go. No one.” He backed against the dashboard, still training his gun on Rex’s huge frame. “To the Royal ships, this is Corbin on the Albatross. Come in. Over.”
“Go ahead, Corbin.”
His desperate sigh and grin would have suited a French nobleman spared on the steps of the guillotine. “Hold your fire. I’ve taken the ship. Savannah is in my sights. Would you like me to execute her? Over.”
Fuming, Rex stepped across to shield his captain. Steffi peered past his massive arm. She tightened her fists. It had all happened so quickly, and right under their noses. On her ship. On her fucking ship.
“That’s a negative, Corbin. You’re to secure the prisoners in the cargo area ’til we board. Open the airlock a.s.a.p. Over.”
“Copy that. Make it quick. Over and out.” He kicked McKendrick in the stomach to make sure she was dead. She didn’t flinch. Her blood streamed across the cockpit floor, parting around Steffi’s boot.
“Everyone…move,” he said. “Anyone tries anything and I drill the princess first.”
Steffi heard Rex’s livid breaths all the way to the hangar. As if threatening his captain wasn’t bad enough, Corbin had now threatened the love of Rex’s life—his life-mate, in the lagoon folk’s parlance. Risky stuff, even if the traitor was armed. Steffi had seen Rex fight three men at once in a pool hall on St. Peter’s Island. None had lived longer than a minute into the struggle.
“Why are you doing this, Chance?” Alex’s head didn’t even reach as high as her husband’s chest. She hugged him around his ribs instead.
“Simple, princess. You guys hit the jackpot. Do you really think I’d let nature take its course with those billion-credit beauties all stabled up like that? We could have all been rich. If you’d have done the smart thing, I’d never have signalled these Royal assholes. They’ll take the lion’s share now. But at least I won’t be pissing into the wind on some jerkwater planet, watching the bluebells grow. Are you kidding me? You guys are stuck on nursery rhymes when there’s history waiting to be written. Fuck the myths. And fuck all you daydreamers.”
He flicked the safety catch off the airlock panel and pressed the release button with his thumb. A loud hiss denoted depressurization and free access to the Albatross.
Sitting on a metal bench, head in her hands, Steffi felt nauseous, lost. Somewhere out there, Arne would have to wait for her. And wait. She would never show. And he would never get to experience that freedom they’d dreamed of together. He would always be a prisoner to man’s insanity. They would keep him in a cell, in an enclosure, for observation or perhaps even voyeuristic pleasure. A perfect physical specimen the likes of which people had never seen outside comic books or virtual reality sex shows. Maybe rich women would pay vast sums of money to be pleasured by him, like they used to do in the days of Roman gladiators. All of this sunk her deeper into the dark bitter well inside her heart.
The door whooshed open and a well-spoken voice said, “Good work, Corbin. Take them into the mess while we bring the freezers across. We’re not taking any chances with the transfer. We’ll keep them locked in cryo-state ’til we reach October.”
“Yes, sir. Good idea, sir.”
As Corbin waved them into the mess room with his gun, Steffi lagged behind Rex and Alex. This might be her only chance to do something before more reinforcements arrived. Watching his gun arm from the corner of her eye, she tautened her shoulders and made ready to tackle him with a surprise duck and lunge at his legs.
Son of a bitch.
He shoved the cold point of his gun barrel against her cheek. “I saw that. You’re a slippery piece of tail, Savannah, I’ll give you that. But you’ve been slippery once too often, and now we expect it. So move.”
Two more guards arrived behind them to relieve Corbin, who hung back and waited at the cargo bay with the well-spoken officer. Steffi, Rex and Alex sat without speaking at the table for what seemed like hours, awaiting the strong, ironic smell of anti-freeze that accompanied cryo-capsules, and their last deep sleep of freedom.
The two guards kept checking their watches. One whispered something. The other nodded in agreement and went to see what was taking so long. Steffi glanced at Rex then at Alex. A clear, hyper-real vibe opened up the stagnant glumness of the mess room. It wasn’t visible but it was palpable all around. The remaining guard felt it too. He cocked his gun and backed away from the table, anticipating a revolt.
But Steffi had no intention of rushing him, and she didn’t think Rex had either. It would be futile, and the newfound clarity seemed to preclude any need for desperate measures. What was it exactly, this strange atmosphere? A change in the air mixture? A gas leak?
A low thump, thump, thump queered the situation further. What the hell was going on in the airlock, or outside, with the transfer?
The first guard raced back into the mess, his face white and glistening. “There’s someone out there!” Panic chopped his words into sharp fragments. “Someone attacking us.”
“Who? We’ve not been hit,” corrected the second guard.
“No. Our ships. Someone is attacking our ships!”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. It looks like…one of our own.”
“Bullshit. Let me see.”
Squeak!
The force of Rex’s backward thrust wrenched the bench from its screws. He struck like a trapdoor spider, snatching the second guard’s gun as he passed. In that same motion, he spun the gun around and blasted the man’s chest to pulp. Alex ducked under the table. A shot from the first guard missed Rex by millimetres. Rex’s reply was deadly accurate, right through the man’s ear, side-on.
Another two men stormed into the mess, guns blazing. One of them was Corbin. Incensed, Steffi ripped the bench up from its final screw and upended it in front of her. Two or three shots thumped and fizzed upon the metal shield, spewing sparks in all directions. Corbin darted toward the rolled-up yoga mats in an effort to flank her. She spun away from him and crashed into the table. Christ, that hurt. Another shot hit an inch below her fingers, ricocheting with scolding sparks up across her knuckles. She winced. Another hit like that and she wouldn’t be able to keep her grip. All hell had broken loose behind her in the kitchen and in A corridor—a full-on gunfight. She couldn’t escape that way. What then? Think.
The edge of a shadow slid across the floor between her and Corbin. He had to be moving, creeping toward her for a kill-shot. The shadow almost directly overlapped that of the bench. She glanced up. The height of the bench, if it fell, might reach him now that he’d advanced. Steffi clamped her boot on the bottom edge and leaned in with all her weight. The bench toppled and clattered. A random laser bolt hit the sink area. Fuming, Steffi dove at Corbin before he could regain his bearings. Her momentum knocked the gun from his hand and sent them both crashing through the cargo bay door. He got to his knees first and thumped her in the gut. It knocked the wind out of her—a wrecking blow she knew she’d never be able to compete with. Instead, she reached for a magnetic boot from the rack to her left, but the creasing pain in her abdomen doubled her up again. Corbin grabbed her by the collar and dragged her, groaning, across the steel gridiron. He tossed her upright, slamming her against the inner airlock door.
“What is it with you space bitches?” he snarled. “Playing at Buck Rogers when any man worth a shit could snap you in two. It makes me fucking sick.” He slugged her in the gut once more. Steffi was ready for it, but it still knocked her off her feet. Coughing, she clutched her side and grimaced, pretending like he’d cracked a couple of ribs. In fact, the bastard had only winded her again. But he seemed satisfied for the time being. He turned and pressed two buttons on the oily control panel: one to close the outer doors, then one to open the inner one. His plan was clear—to jettison Steffi into deep space.
Not while I’m still captain.
She launched a venomous double kick at his kneecaps. Crack. The impact crumpled him in a heap, and he let out a sickening cry. His white face began to shiver, his brow slick with sweat. Had she broken his legs? Probably. No time to make sure.
The inner airlock door scraped open, wheezing icy air into the Albatross. Steffi summoned an almighty effort, then dragged him by his legs into the airlock. He yelled through the pain, tried to grab her but she dodged. Holding her stomach, gasping for breath, she returned to the control panel and pressed both buttons again, this time in reverse order. The inner door squeaked shut. Steffi heard him pounding on the other side, but she couldn’t see him on the floor. The rhombus window was too high, too small. In moments, the outer doors drew apart. Corbin’s manic, scrabbling form flew out like a shred of newspaper in a gust.
She leant against the door, gathering her breath. “So much for Chance,” she muttered, wedging a crowbar through the two inner door handles. No one could get in now. The Albatross was hers again.
Yet, what had happened before the fight to panic the guards like that? There was no sign of the freezers on board. Had something transpired outside during the transfer?
Rex and Alex jogged into the cargo bay, out of breath.
“He’s gone?” Rex eyed the crowbar locking the doors.
“Yeah, the old-fashioned way,” Steffi quipped. “And yours?”
“Nailed mine in the old prayer room,” he boasted, before giving his wife a quick kiss.
“Come on, let’s go see what the hell’s going on.” Steffi started toward B corridor, nursing her side.
“You all right, Cap?” asked Alex.
Settling into a determined frown, Steffi replied, “I’ll let you know at the Amen.”
While the three of them made for the cockpit, Steffi noticed spots of blood near the suit hangers. More in B corridor. And a veritable trail leading from the floor outside the engine room to the cockpit itself.
“McKendrick?”
“It’s McKendrick!” Rex confirmed, pointing to the empty pool of blood beneath the pilot’s chair. “She sneaked out. Somehow. The crazy bitch! She must have got onto a Royal ship.” He made way for his captain to take the pilot’s seat. “It’s all yours, Cap. Please, get us the hell away from this.”
A ferocious dogfight was underway in the nothingness ahead of them. McKendrick had wreaked havoc in the Royal squadron. Broken wings and charred fuselages spun every which way. Fighters swooped here, pulled one-eighty reversals there, crisscrossed and collided with debris in vain attempts to double up on the crazy pilot in the centre of it all. It must have been a nightmare for the Royals. Who was who? From the Albatross, McKendrick’s ship was easy to spot. It jumped into formation cheekily, fired a few sly bolts—enough to cripple the vessel in front—then darted away for a sideways killing strike. Check. Repeat.
It was the best flying Steffi had ever seen. Out of eleven ships, only three remained. One of those was McKendrick’s. She took an unlucky shot to the tail, hindering her manoeuvrability. Steffi chewed her lower lip until she tasted blood. Another ship broke away from the chase and clipped McKendrick’s wing. Without the chaos, they seemed to have the measure of her.
“Break right!” Alex urged.
“She’s not gonna make it,” added Rex.
There didn’t appear to be much hope. Both enemy ships now formed behind her in textbook positions, one covering the other. Her starboard wing was smashed and her long tail looked ready for snapping in two. One more collision or direct shot and the ship would explode.
“Come on, come on,” Steffi whispered, bracing herself for the bitter ending.
The first ship fired, blasting the tip of McKendrick’s tail off. Her ship upended and continued spinning backward as though rudderless. The first ship fired again. Steffi held her breath. A quick snap of light from McKendrick’s engine tilted her to the horizontal, upside down. The enemy shots missed. But she was now facing the two attackers head on.
Steffi cottoned on to the ingenious gamble a split second before the crippled ship fired. Unleashing her entire arsenal, McKendrick demolished both ships in a few electrifying seconds.
Insane! Incredible!
Steffi realised she didn’t know her pilot at all. Who had this girl been before signing up for the Albatross?
“No!” Rex leapt to his feet and clasped his hands on the back of his skull.
Her wing collapsed. More debris from the exploded enemy ships hurtled into her, smashing her into a new, chaotic spin. A fiery snake struck up from her engine and coiled through space as she spun. The fuselage suddenly buckled, sucking the snake back inside. A final massive explosion lasted a fraction of a moment.
Then McKendrick joined the pitching, yawing, rolling litter of the silent battlefield.
Chapter Nine

There wasn’t time to linger. More Royals might be on their way, and the massive alien ship, uncoupled from the Albatross, was on a collision course with an unknown planet. McKendrick’s navigation, like her flying, had been first rate. Rex found the vector in the navi-computer and steered them back to their original course.
Wreckage from the smashed birds clanked against the Albatross’s hull while she banked low to port. Alex muttered a lengthy prayer, asking God to accept brave Aurora McKendrick into His eternal fold, pleading with Him to let them find Flyte and Arne and Gerty and all those myths of Earth before it was too late.
“There’s something on radar, Cap.” Rex gave the bloody wheel a tap with his fingers, suggesting Steffi take manual control of the ship.
“It’s big,” she said. “That’s gotta be it.”
But now what?
They could try to reattach the tow cables, drag the alien vessel on to a new heading. But it was rocketing through space at a dangerous clip. They could point it to whichever planet they liked but it would still end up hurtling straight through the atmosphere and slamming into the surface or core. What they needed to do was slow it down. But how? The tow hooks would not penetrate its outer shell. Rex had tried. The damaged area was different—easy to clamp on to. But not the black exterior at the rear.
They could spin the huge ship through a hundred-and-eighty degrees and then fire the Albatross’s engine, try to reduce speed that way. Kind of like hitting the brakes. That could work, but it would be a big strain on the tow cables and the engine itself. Maybe too big. She might never recover. And all would be lost if the Albatross packed in.
“Yep, that’s definitely the hulk.” Rex sounded composed as he tapped on the radar screen.
“Good. So how do we slow it down?”
“Hmm, I’ve been wondering about that too,” he admitted. “McKendrick and I talked about it quite a bit. And Alex as well.” His reassuring, over-the-shoulder smile at his wife made Steffi glad to have him onboard. “Just last night, in fact.”
“And?” Steffi asked.
“And it’s impossible any way you look at it.” Geez, don’t sugar-coat it like that. What next? Handing out the cyanide? “There’s no way to get that ship safely onto a planet’s surface using the Albatross. No way. It’s dead weight. But—”
She raised her eyebrows to egg him on. There had to be a solution.
Elbows resting on the chair arms, he sank his chin onto the bridge of his joined hands. “But…we can transfer quite a few of the lagoon folk aboard. If they want to come, that is.”
Steffi realised what a half-baked and optimistic plan she’d harboured all this time. Perhaps being surrounded by all that miraculous alien technology, those amazing myths made real, had led her to believe anything was possible. Arne could touch a phosphorescent swirl in one of his walls and the ship would gloriously land itself on any planet they chose. He’d given her that wonder, that faith to play with. But when it came down to it, Isaac Newton held all the cards. Miracles happened inside the alien ship. Outside, math kicked all their asses.
Alex sat in her husband’s lap and slung her arms around his neck. “Do you think they will…come, that is?” She didn’t sound hopeful. “Even if it’s just Gerty and Arne. Having said that, Flyte might decide to stay with them instead. He’s hardly spent any time with us since he fell in love.”
All fair points. Too fucking fair. Steffi hated that she didn’t truly know what Arne would decide. He’d said he wanted to be with her, but what about now? Would he choose to leave his kin behind for a life on the lam? That was all she could offer him. Being hunted. A phantom of dubious criminal enterprise.
Her heart sank. The memory of the little girl dying in search of fairies lodged in the damp part of her brain. “We should never have stayed,” she admitted. “This was never going to have a happy ending, was it?”
“Probably not,” replied Alex. “But God smiles on good intentions. At least we tried.”
“How much time do we have?”
Rex began a nervous hum while he checked the navi-computer. “About eight hours.”
Hmm. Plenty of time. She stroked the faint cleft of her chin with her knuckles. Yes, plenty of time for what she had in mind.
“Whatever you do, don’t erase that vector,” she demanded. “We’ll need it to find them later.”
“Cap? You got something in mind?”
“Nothing major. I just want to scout ahead before we take this to the next level. McKendrick picked the planet, right?”
“Yeah, she picked one in what she called the terrestrial band—the right distance from the sun to have a temperate climate. It was also the bluest one. Not much to go off.”
Steffi leaned over the wheel to press the button for High Injection Boost. “It’s enough,” she insisted. “Blue is what we’re after. As long as there’s a bit of something else. Plus, McKendrick never let us down.”
 
Slashes of midnight blue cut the turquoise-tinted cloud cover into striking ribbons. The two hours had passed quicker than a gripping chapter of her book. Repairing damaged tail panels, fixing loose lighting cables to the crew quarters, scrubbing up as much of McKendrick’s blood as possible, unceremoniously jettisoning the dead Royals—there had been much to do and far too much to think about while doing it.
The three of them scrutinised the dark slashes in the cloud for signs of anything underneath. A slow-spinning planet, eleventh nearest the huge but not terribly bright star—its brood of planets numbered around thirty—McKendrick’s world looked at least seventy percent water. The rest either consisted of frozen mountainous regions or was hidden by blanketing clouds.
But what lay under the clouds?
The ship’s environmental scans hypothesized a thin oxygen atmosphere, with rather too much nitrogen and methane to support human life. But the scanners were so old they could probably be used to play Pac-Man if a pilot got really bored. They had never been very reliable forecasters—more of a rough guide to junior school chemistry than something on which a girl could hang her life hopes.
Steffi was sure she glimpsed brown contours inside the dark slashes. And once or twice, even grey craters. She shook her head. Even if the air was breathable, without some kind of ecosystem in place, the world could not be habitable unless an expensive, sustained colonisation was undertaken. A handful of people could be holidaymakers, nothing more.
She lowered their orbit to ninety-five miles, close enough to see dribbles of purple on the lower slopes of the ice peaks. What could that be? Some kind of strange sedimentation? Out-gassing from pores in the rock? Or vegetation?
“What do you think we should do, Cap?” Rex looked her over from head to toe. “It’s got potential. Those mountains—”
“Do you fancy living in a freezer?” Alex butted in. “I sure don’t. If it came to that, we’d be better off ditching this ship and living around Arne’s lagoon.”
The idea had its appeal. Steffi considered it for a moment. Anything to be with Arne. Had she been dumb all along and the solution was right there blushing in her face? The lagoon was bigger than her brain’s compartmentalizing of it. Far bigger. They could lounge about on the grass and swim in the water and visit the amazing mythological zoo whenever they wanted. And she could make love to him anywhere, anytime.
What could be—?
Thrum-thrum…thump-thump-thump.
The ship’s engine slowed to a floor-slapping cycle, then stuttered, spat, and finally rolled into a quick buzzing death rattle. The faded black wheel slammed right and wouldn’t budge, tilting the Albatross ever so slightly to starboard. Steffi wedged her boots against the under panel and yanked it with all her might. No use. The thing was stuck, and something had to be venting from the engine into space, acting like a rudder.
They were veering into the planet.
“Let me try.” Rex’s titanic grip bent the rim of the wheel, but he couldn’t budge the gimbal. He took his sleeveless shirt off and wrapped it around his right elbow joint. It cushioned his arm while he hugged the wheel rim between his biceps and forearm. He pulled until a roadmap of veins bulged from his brow and temples.
“Jesus!” He reeled away, panting, as the curvature of the planet began to straighten and the clouds loomed nearer and nearer. “We could rip that thing off and it wouldn’t alter our course. Whatever happened to the engine, it’s shut us down good.”
Alex held him. He suggested going to the engine, but Steffi knew he’d be no use there. Strength was his forte, not fiddling with moving parts. What she wouldn’t give to have Flyte aboard right now. He was smarter than the rest of them put together when it came to engineering.
She flew down B corridor and wrenched the hatch to the engine room open. A noxious smell of cooked grease hit her. Running along the gridiron floor to the tail section, she observed two buckled pipes leading to the wing thrusters. Serious steering-killers. Her steps grew heavy as she feared the full extent of the damage. The trusty old extractor fans worked overtime sucking the black fumes out into the exhaust vent. She stopped at the engine. A twisted ten-inch bolt had stabbed right through one of the overhead lights. The filament crackled around it, flickering in the smoky gloom. The engine itself, a super-hot tubular shell kept horizontal by an electromagnetic metal scaffold, had fallen to ground. It had seared holy hell into the reinforced floor, perhaps even melted through it. The propeller shaft at the rear had also buckled, and condensed purple Psammeticum dripped out of a small gash.
Bitter, she bowed and cursed herself. Why had she not run an engine diagnostic after the attack? Without Flyte, it would only have been a second-rate check, but it might have alerted her to this ticking time bomb.
Now they were just as helpless as the alien juggernaut.
Oh, Christ. Only one thing left to do.
Jump.
She ran back to explain the situation to the others, and they both threw her harsh stares while the bluish clouds grew whiter below and a livid halo gathered around the Albatross’s nose.
Entering the atmosphere piled thunder into the ship, knocking them off their feet and into each other. Everything blurred in a violent oscillation. Steffi tried to stand but the g-force threw them all down B corridor in a tumbling heap. The ship seemed ready to prize apart at the seams. Ferocious external heat warmed the walls and hot-ironed the floor around the cargo chute.
She screamed, “Get in your suits!”
Dressing on the rim of an erupting volcano required practised hands. A foreknowledge of every strap, buckle and magnetic clip. The ship shook so wildly, Steffi’s vibrating vision elongated everything. She snatched a quick breath then closed her eyes. Memory served her better than sight. Braced against the rear wall of the cargo bay, she struggled into her suit, then her boots, then her tricky helmet. She helped Rex and Alex into theirs, fighting against the burrowing force of the descent.
It softened all at once like a bullet train exiting a tunnel. The relief buzzed her scalp and electrified her limbs into action. She knew neither their speed nor their altitude. Only that they were still falling.
She unclipped an emergency survival bag from under the bench. Steadying herself on the metal suit hangers, she made her way to the airlock. With one hand, Rex yanked the crowbar loose from the inner door. He held his wife tight with his other arm. Steffi unpacked the emergency chute canopy with frantic, clumsy fingers. She attached the harness to Rex’s suit—he would have to hold both women close to him in freefall—then wrapped her legs around one of his. Alex did the same on his other side.
Steffi mouthed a quick countdown in tandem with emphatic hand gestures. At one, Alex pulled the lever to release the outer airlock doors.
Whoosh!
The wind filled the canopy and sucked them out into a sapphire-purple world. Her helmet chattered against Rex’s. She braced her arms around his neck, overlapping Alex’s. The squeeze soon began to ache. Rex gripped her waist, holding her firm. She peered down at the wingless, smoking shell of her ship scarring the sky far below. The white summits of monstrous waves creased the ocean into dark rolling valleys. A severe, raking wind got hold of the chute, pulling Rex horizontal. She hung on for dear life as rain pelted her from all sides. Farther and farther from their initial fall, they twisted and jolted through chaos. She only recognised the splash from the crashing Albatross by the smoky trail dissipating above it.
 
The roar finally receded. A soporific whir took its place. They had no way of knowing how far and for how long the storm had blown them. A few hours? Half a day? By the time Rex wriggled to alert them, Steffi’s entire body felt rigor-mortised.
She opened her eyes to a beautiful sight. Less than a thousand feet below, banks of crisp breakers pummelled a rocky purple shoreline. The rain had cleared, and the rocks farther inland were slick and inviting as amethysts.
Rex let go of her waist, then his wife’s, in order to manoeuvre the parachute by its cords. He aimed for a secluded cove and landed them in the shallows to cushion their three-man weight. The chute was only meant for one person. If they hit rock, they would break their legs. The watery impact jolted through her. The tug of the tide almost carried her out to sea. After staggering ashore, they all collapsed against the same purple sandbank—a fleeting ending—before gathering themselves for the ordeal that was yet to come.
Steffi looked out over the icy alien ocean. It was just as endless and empty as deep space, but water always seemed more alive.
Alive. If only for a little while.
Chapter Ten

For miles and miles, the purple wasteland stood just above sea level. She reckoned a rogue wave could wash most of the way across it. If life had ever existed here, it had died out long ago.
They set off toward the centre of the land mass, to see if it really was as desolate as it appeared. A few hours in, they came to a plateau of wet maroon sand. The smooth rocks scattered herein had burgundy veins of some glittering new element. Otherwise the land was empty and predictable. Endless rain pools and variations of the same flat amethyst rock in all directions.
Her cuff sensor determined a much higher oxygen atmosphere than the Albatross had predicted. More than enough for them to breathe. Methane and nitrogen, in the amounts present, were not poisonous. They removed their helmets but not their suits, then sat together around a small pool rippled by the wind. She didn’t feel like speaking and the others didn’t say anything either. Not much eye contact. A cold wind, made colder by the sustained sweat having opened her pores, whistled dully about them. Steffi braved the first sip of alien water, if only to break the monotony. It was the crispest, purest liquid she’d ever tasted.
“Help yourselves,” she said in a husky voice. “For what it’s worth.”
What else was there to say? There were no uncertainties, no grey areas, no dilemmas awaiting discussion.
Death. The where and when. The blank fact of it.
Funny how she’d always imagined herself going out in a blaze of glory, battling against impossible odds to the bitter end. Usually in a gunfight. Smuggling did that to her—presented imminent death and made her imagine herself coping with it. She’d never seen herself going out with a whimper. A bang. Always a bang. But here there was no fight to be had that hadn’t already been decided.
She waited for the emptiness to throw her an obstacle. None came. Only time mattered now, and that she could count in breaths and heartbeats and the languid visits of the sun. Alex asked her to join them so they could all snuggle together and say a prayer. She accepted for their sake. The next silence confirmed something she’d already suspected. God meant nothing to her, even here at the end of all things. Not one contrite cell existed anywhere inside her. She felt neither proud nor incomplete for that. It was just…Steffi.
At the close of his prayer, Rex gave an almighty sigh before he glanced skyward. The next thing Steffi knew, he’d yanked them both upright and was pointing at the clouds.
“It’s here! It’s made it! Look, they’re entering the atmosphere!”
What? Where? The memory of Arne’s beautiful face branded her daze. She followed a diagonal trail flaming through the pallid sky. The thought of him re-entering her world lifted her then threw her to ground. Now he’d have to die in front of her eyes as well. Too much all at once. She couldn’t watch but she had to. Her indifferent stupor had made her feel like she was already dead. She shuddered. That wasn’t the Steffi Savannah she knew.
The slow-burning streak coughed awful black smoke rings. The ship appeared as a smouldering grey cigar as it left the upper atmosphere. Paler smoke rings in its wake seemed almost rhythmic, rather like enormous sound waves. Steffi’s frown set and ached. She couldn’t quite quench a queer excitement in her stomach. Something bizarre was happening to the vessel.
The midsection snapped and hovered beside the two halves. Its grey exterior peeled away, revealing a reflective bubble-like surface. The dark blue interior of this bubble contrasted with the pale purple sky. It appeared very much like…the sea? An extraordinary idea occurred to Steffi.
Loch Ness? Did the bubble contain…Loch Ness?
More sections separated in quick succession, each pared down to a bubble of unique size and colour. Some were minute, almost empty; others had the consistency of forests. The biggest one floated off across the ocean, toward the icy peaks. It resembled a snow globe as big as a New Vegas hotel. The partial mountain slope inside it seemed perfectly still.
No words. Rex placed a gentle arm over each woman’s shoulders. Somewhere in the fear and awe, Steffi wanted to prod herself awake. This was all so far beyond impossible there had to be a twisted nightmare driving it. But the myths floated. They chose directions. Loch Ness headed straight down for the ocean. Bigfoot’s forest sailed overhead, its acres of dark soil and gangly roots blotting out the sun for half a minute. It lowered behind them, miles away toward the horizon.
The last will and testament of a doomed ship.
A dozen medium-sized spheres floated far out to sea. Two others headed to Steffi’s left, sticking to the coastline. Both contained green vegetation. The larger appeared more colourful; when it dipped low enough for her to see grass as well, a glimmer of turquoise water blinded her. She pulled away from Rex and whispered between snatched breaths, “Arne!”
She bolted in that direction. Rex called after her, but she didn’t hear what he said. The flat terrain seemed paved, not empty. Her chest was tight but her limbs felt surprisingly loose. Running in her heavy boots gave her excitement a wonderful clinking rhythm. The lagoon bubble touched down many miles away, either in the sea or on the sand. Too many questions traffic-jammed in her brain, so she concentrated on the rhythm instead. A delirious countdown to…
The bubble faded in a few terrifying moments. Would everything inside fade with it? But the green was still there, and the dark hump on the horizon to her left where the redwood forest had landed lifted her heart again. No spheres, but the contents had survived. She readjusted herself to the rhythm. Antsy magic now swirled in the cold alien wind.
 
No lagoon. Most of the lakeside trees and the grassy perimeter were now beneath the sea. For one horrible moment she thought the alien navigation had screwed up, dumping them all in an icy grave. The beach looked deserted. Vegetation fluttered in a light sea breeze.
She approached the pocket of green, shaking with exhaustion and trepidation. The purple sand and earthly plants looked ridiculous together. Nothing about the place seemed right.
“Cap. Cap! Over here!”
She couldn’t be sure where the voice was coming from. She glanced behind her but Rex and Alex were dots in the distance.
“Cap! Captain Savannah! Your two o’clock!”
Now then. That sounded more…scientific?
“Flyte!” She stumbled and fell face first down the embankment. Spitting sand, she glimpsed Flyte and Gerty running toward her over the grass. Gerty was naked, a perfect slip of a girl who kept falling, as though she’d never learned how to run. Flyte wore only his thermal undersuit.
He threw his arms around Steffi. “Am I glad to see you,” he announced with the sweet verve of a long-lost brother.
“Me too. You’ve no idea.”
But the moment passed and she began to scan the shoreline. Plenty of heads bobbed about in the choppy sea. A few large fish surfaced close by, their green and gold tails shimmering delights. Former residents of the lagoon, or indigenous fish?
Gerty stepped aside to wave to her kin playing in the water. Her legs looked badly chapped, even wrinkled. Steffi swallowed hard. Had something bad happened in the descent? What if they hadn’t all made it? What if the heat had burned away part of the lakeside, the part with…?
No, don’t even think it.
She noted how playful the voices were and how incongruous that was with her fear.
“Flyte, can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
She pulled back to look him in the eyes. “I need you to…I mean you have to tell me…is Arne…?”
“Is Arne what?”
The words tumbled off her tongue. “Is Arne alive?”
“Yeah, he’s around somewhere.”
She gasped. Just like that—a Beach Boy’s answer to a life or death question.
“He was on his own,” Flyte added, “watching them do somersaults. Over there.” He pointed her to a slender promontory to the left, away from the vegetation. “He’ll flip when he sees you, though.”
Flyte’s quick wink dispelled all the agony of her ordeal. Such a fleeting gesture. She wanted to cry but the tears were stubborn. An exotic perfume filled this odourless world. Ditching her boots and suit on the grass, she felt light as a feather while she peered through tree trunks, hoping for one glimpse of him. The beautiful people were in their element. Loud splashes and high-pitched screams of delight drew her to a group of six in the water on her side of the promontory. She smiled to herself and tried to steady her heavy breathing.
Splash.
She stopped dead in the shallows. A woman, one of the brunettes, had just somersaulted through the air. Huh? Without jumping from a rock? Steffi blinked and looked again. One of the men did exactly the same thing. Not jumping in, but taking off from and landing in the water. How? What was propelling him? She gasped when a redheaded woman leapt up…
…tail and all.
“Hello, Steffi Savannah.”
She reeled back, gawping at the perfect form of the man standing before her. Chiselled shoulders and pectorals, flexing abs, wavy blond hair straight out of Surfin’ USA, and the most handsome face any man ever had. She recoiled half a step when he moved in. Still in shock after what she’d witnessed, Steffi watched for dangerous hidden depths in the blue of his eyes.
“Why do you flinch?” he asked.
“You’re not human.”
“You already knew that.”
“But…why didn’t you tell me what you were?”
“I wanted to show you instead. This is not exactly what Hans Christian Andersen had in mind, but it will do.”
She glanced at the mermaids and mermen frolicking in the alien sea. They seemed so…at home. “What will this mean for us? For you and me?”
“We are life-mates, Steffi Savannah. Nothing can come between us.”
She paused, trying to fathom the extraordinary biology—the transformation from legs to—
“Let me show you.” He drew her close. Steffi’s burning desire devoured the ancient innocence of his eyes. Their body heat touched and effervesced. Arne cupped her face in his hands. With supple, deep longing, he kissed her like she’d never been kissed in her life.
She wanted it to last forever.
“Arne?” she whispered in his ear.
“Mm?”
“I love you.”
He laid his head on her shoulder, then glided his fingers through the loose, breeze-drawn strands of her hair. “And I love you.”
In that moment it was as though her long years spent stubbornly alone drifted out of reach and faded in the tickling fizz of surf on sand.
Without warning, he lifted free and sprinted into the white and sapphire sea. He submerged twenty feet from her. Steffi licked her lips, tasting the lingering passion. And when he shot up like a glistening dolphin against the purple midday sky, his green and gold tail curled majestically. She giggled with wonder.
A merman.
Her merman.
The others clapped or splashed their tails around him. A whistle from behind swung her toward the foot of the embankment. Rex and Alex were standing there alongside Flyte and Gerty. They all waved.
She looked farther afield, to the silhouette of the great redwood forest, then to the emerald woodland a long way up the coast. The land of the unicorns? Ecosystems transplanted by alien technology to an alien world. She sucked in a lungful of sea air. It tasted a little of sweet fruit from the partially submerged trees. A food source to get them started?
Would other mythological creatures come to eat from these trees? Might they be willing to share their own sustenance? For they were no longer elusive legends; they were now the natural inhabitants of this new planet. They would thrive and wander, evolve to create their own nature. She tingled at the thrilling possibilities.
The sun began to set over the ocean. The end of their first day on… What about a name? Someone who deserved the honour? Someone they could dedicate their survival to?
Only one name sprang to mind. An easy choice. The last choice she’d get to make as captain of the Albatross. Steffi crouched and raked up a handful of purple sand. Letting it run through her fingers, she dedicated it to the selfish cynic who’d given her life to save a ship full of myths.
“Planet Aurora.”
Then she stripped naked and bounded into the icy waves.
About the Author

English author Robert Appleton maintains he was born a century too late. His love of science fiction began with boyhood jaunts through the worlds of Wells, Verne and E.R. Burroughs. Then he found Patrick O’Brian’s maritime epics and vowed to sail the seas. A natural adventurer, he often writes stories set in Earth orbit, or survival-themed odysseys on alien planets. Dogged Englishness abounds! But like those authors’, his tales are tinged with romance and the excitement of discovery.
When he isn’t reading, Robert can be found either gliding on the sea in his kayak or racing around the football pitch like a madman.
To catch up with him, visit his author website www.robertappleton.co.uk or his Mercurial Times blog http://robertbappleton.blogspot.com.
The invaders thought they had crushed humanity. They messed with the wrong species.
 
Metal Reign
© 2010 Nathalie Gray
 
An Impulse Power Story
Francine Beaumont is tired. Tired of waiting for an armada of Imber ships to finish off what’s left of humanity. Tired of fear and privation. Tired of living like a rat, feeding off what scraps the cat lets her have.
When the chance comes to hit the Imbers where it really hurts—right at their fuel supply—she takes it. One stealth cruiser. One pilot. A cargo hold filled with explosives. A suicide mission for sure, but better that than doing nothing.
As the ship’s cook, John O’Shaughnessy knows everything that goes on aboard the warship. And something is definitely up with his Frankie. If she thinks he’s going to let her carry out this crazy plan of hers alone, that stubborn woman has another think coming.
Frankie thinks she’s gotten away clean…until her instincts tell her she’s not alone on her mission. Still, it’s a shock to find her peace-loving John standing there with eyes that spell murder. Now is a hell of a time to discover they’re more than friends. But there’s no turning back…
 
Warning: Space invaders were seriously harmed in the making of this story.
Working together is unavoidable. Falling in love…inevitable.
 
Hearts and Minds
© 2010 J.C. Hay
 
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.”
With the fate of the galaxy at risk, love may not be enough…
 
Starjacked
© 2009 Karin Shah
 
In the lawless fringes of deep space, pirate Tia Sen has a rep for being hard as plascrete, tough as Amalan leather, and as strong as she is beautiful. She also has a secret that courts death: For years she has been freeing enslaved children. Stepping in to rescue a valiant mechanic from a near-fatal beating risks more than her life. Thanks to her traitorous heart, her web of lies is in danger of unraveling.
Undercover operative Rork Al’Ren is no stranger to lies. Emotionally scarred by the murders of his wife and unborn child, he wants nothing more than to eradicate every bit of pirate scum in the galaxy. Then his mission goes sour, and he finds himself Tia’s personal slave—and falling in love with the very pirate he’s sworn to destroy.
Yet love is a luxury he can’t afford. Tia possesses a powerful new weapon that could overwhelm the Union of Planets and plunge the galaxy into war.
If Rork can’t convince her to surrender it, he may have to break her trust—and her heart.
 
Warning: This title contains sensual love scenes and kick-ass, nail-biting action. May cause reckless behavior, lapses into daydreams, belief in happily-ever-afters, and is certainly habit-forming.
 
Enjoy the following excerpt for Starjacked:
The engine-room door slid open and Luble came inside, drawing their attention. He held a piece of paper in his hand. “The following slaves are to come to me.” He read slowly from the list and soon a group of slaves stood around him. Kaber exchanged a glance with Tia, and the blonde strode forward. “What’s going on here?”
“I’m on a spy hunt. Captain Sen asked me to question the slaves from escape pod Alpha.”
Rork stiffened slightly. This could get ugly.
Tia nodded. “Well, get on with it.”
The questioning went quickly, at first. The new slaves were too frightened to do more than answer the Coian to the best of their abilities.
But Luble grew increasingly agitated as each slave was dismissed, and when he came to a tall, brown-haired human, he seemed to snap, burying his blue fist in the man’s stomach. The human fell to his knees, choking from the pain.
Rork barely restrained himself from attacking the Coian. He took a step, but Kaber’s hand on his arm reminded him where he was. She gave him a warning look.
“I am going to get some answers,” growled Luble as he paced in front of the slaves. “Or someone’s going to die.” He grabbed the kneeling man by the shoulders and kneed him in the groin. He slid to the floor, but Luble wasn’t finished. “You’re the spy! Admit it!”
Anger and fear burned in Rork. What could he do? If he stepped forward, he would be killed. But if he didn’t, an innocent man might be beaten to death before his eyes.
Luble kicked the human on the floor. As the man cried out, Rork made his decision, but before he could shrug off Kaber’s meaty hand, Tia spoke. “That’s enough, Luble.”
The Coian turned to Tia. “What are you? A spy lover now? You were awful cozy with that Union scum Captain Sen flushed into space.”
Rork’s eyes flashed to Tia’s face. The man the other pirate was talking about could only have been John.
“Tia wasn’t even here when that happened, Luble,” Kaber interjected.
“Oh, yes,” Luble sneered. “You were off on one of your convenient little ‘trips’.”
Tia’s voice was calm. “My father ordered you to question the slaves, not kill them. Dead men don’t turn over spies and they don’t run engines, or bring in any credits either.”
“Your father’s not here now.”
Tia tilted her head. “Are you challenging me?”
Luble turned, as if backing down, then spun back, a laserblade glowing in his hand. He cut a streak of blue fire in the air. “Yes!”
Rork held his breath.
Tia leaned back out of the way of the blade and it went skimming past. A laserblade appeared in her hand. “Good. I was hoping you would.”
The slaves scattered out of the way. Kaber dragged Rork, his heart thudding madly, back against the pipe-lined wall.
“Get him, Tia!” she called, as Tia dodged Luble’s second laserblade thrust, a lithe blur of lean strength and flying blonde braids. She grinned, white teeth flashing in the inadequate light, but it was more of a primitive baring of teeth.
She was magnificent.
Luble thrust again, but Tia was ready. In the blink of an eye, she blocked up with her forearm, forcing his knife hand high into the air. Sliding her arm behind Luble’s elbow, she managed to lock his arm. His weapon out of play, she brought up hers and placed it at his throat. The blue light cast by her blade turned the Coian’s face into a grotesque skull. He turned his head aside, but didn’t speak.
“Yield or die.” Tia moved her blade closer to the artery pulsing in his neck.
Luble met her eyes with a flash of hate, before looking around the room. “I yield,” he muttered at last.
Tia scooped his laserblade off the floor and slipped the weapon in her pocket. “You can tell my father I’ll do the questioning from now on.”
Luble, still breathing heavily from the fight, nodded shortly, then left.
Tia looked about the room. “Get back to work. Kaber, can you take over?”
“Aye.” Kaber nodded.
Tia gestured toward Rork. “Ren, come with me.”
Neither of them spoke as they made their way back to Tia’s cabin, and Rork was infinitely conscious of the sound of Tia’s breathing and the warm smell of exertion that hovered around her.
When the door to the cabin slid open, Tia headed into the bathroom. Rork glanced at the open door to the corridor, fingered the collar he wore and closed the door. There would be other, better opportunities to escape.
The hiss of the shower abruptly flooded the room. The Tiger was only equipped with water showers, and Rork fought off the image of soapy water flowing over the perfect body he knew was beneath Tia’s clothing. Rork heard a sensual groan over the sound of the water, and his body hardened as his imagination wandered into forbidden territory. In his mind he could see the pink nipples that crowned her full breasts, firmed by the brush of her hands as she washed. Water, glistening on creamy skin, as it followed the concave curve of her belly down to a golden tuft of hair. Unable to stop himself, he visualized joining her in the tight confines of the shower stall. He could see himself standing behind her, cupping her breasts in his hands, licking beads of water off a satiny shoulder.
Another groan met his ears, but it wasn’t hers. He wrenched his mind away from his fantasy. His breath was coming in staccato pants and he ached with desire.
The water shut off and when she emerged several minutes later, he was almost composed. That composure was sorely tried when he realized she hadn’t dressed in the bathroom as had been her practice since he’d been there. She wore a light, silky, blue robe that clung to each curve of her damp body. Her braids were water-darkened and highlighted the ivory skin of her face. She held a tube of something in one hand and a large adhesive bandage in the other.
She moved to the bed, sat on the edge and extended the tube to Rork. He took it. “Put this on my back,” she said, and allowed the back of the robe to slip down, revealing first one sleek golden shoulder and then the other, exposing almost her entire back. She held the robe closed over her chest with one hand and used the other to sweep her hair to the side, baring her nape.
Rork gasped. He had expected to find healing flesh, but what he saw rocked him to the core. There were fresh stripes, but instead of being laid on lustrous, healthy skin, as he had thought when he’d seen her back the day she’d been whipped, he could see they overlaid dozens of old scars, some still puckered and red, others silvery with age.
A little uncivil disobedience is good for the soul…
 
Happy Snak
© 2009 Nicole Kimberling
 
Gaia Jones is on A-Ki space station for one reason, and it’s not to ogle the hermaphroditic aliens. She’s out to make a name for herself and her line of intoxicating human snacks. Not easy in A-ki’s tightly controlled society. Her task gets even more delicate when she rushes to the aid of a dying alien—and finds herself the unwilling guardian of a shunned alien ghost named Kenjan. And the new owner of his slave.
The danger mounts when Kenjan’s grieving lover, the powerful leader of the Kishocha, offers her a dream and a nightmare rolled into one: a new store all her own with a strange double purpose—half snack bar, half shrine. The catch? She must spend the rest of her life there, tending Kenjan the Heretic’s ghost. Or the entire station will be destroyed.
There’s only one way to gain both her freedom and justice for Kenjan—teach both the powerful government elite and the Kishocha theocracy a lesson in uncivil disobedience…
Warning: This book contains excessive consumption of clams and clam-based snacks. Also, gratuitous abuse of orange dye, as well as summary decapitation, forbidden love, alien sex and one beloved hamster named Microbe.
 
Enjoy the following excerpt for Happy Snak:
“Are you troubled, my master?” Wave asked.
Gaia jumped and knocked over another stack of boxes. Wave was awake and looking more refreshed than before.
“Please, just call me Gaia.”
“Of course, I am deeply regretful to have caused need to correct me again.” Once more Wave lay flat out on the floor.
“Please stop doing that too. Humans just don’t prostrate themselves before others. Well, Americans don’t, at least.”
Wave shot bolt upright. “Is this pose correct?”
“Good enough.” Gaia slouched forward, compensating for Wave’s now excellent posture. “Look, Wave, I want to talk to you.”
“And what a coincidence. I love to talk!” Wave folded its white hands and leaned far forward so that its muzzle was lower than Gaia’s nose. Gaia decided to ignore this submissive posture. She could explain about groveling and related annoying topics later. “Can I ask what’s troubling you now?”
“I’ve got a lot of messages to answer and—” Gaia broke off, looking at Wave. “I just can’t figure out what I’m supposed to do with you.”
“Anything you want. I am your servant.”
“That’s just so wrong.”
“No, I am a good servant.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Gaia said. “Anyway, what can you do? I mean, what do you usually do?”
“I am the Grand Experiment.” Wave dropped its voice theatrically.
“And that is…?”
“I am the proof of Kenjan’s wisdom. I was the lowly servant chosen by the exalted Kenjan to learn.”
“Learn what?”
“Everything!” Wave opened its arms expansively. “I know many various things. The exalted Oziru am Kenjan taught me stories and philosophy and mathematics and English language. And I learned. And, as a result, that one’s wisdom was proven. Even the wise Righteous Sea had to admit that I could learn.”
“So you can learn.” Gaia tried not to sound nonplused by this proclamation. She knew the point eluded her, but didn’t feel up to pursuing it to its murky and dubious end.
“Yes! I can learn. I can learn to do anything for I am intelligent.” Wave sang out this last part. “Any task I can comprehend. Tell me what to do and I will learn to do it. I am flexibility.”
“Do you want to work for me?”
“I not only want to, Gaia Jones, but I must. For I am a good servant, and you are my new master.”
“If you don’t want to work for me, I’m sure I can get the embassy to get you a stipend,” Gaia said.
Wave blinked at her in confusion.
“Money to help you live,” Gaia clarified.
“Um… Money pieces…?” Wave looked even more perplexed. The alien cradled its bandaged arm.
“You don’t have to be my servant.”
“But”—Wave sagged—“why do you not want me? You are the master of a food-making place, is that right? I can make food. I told you I could learn.”
“I do want you, but only if you actually want to work for me.”
“What else would I do? Please, explain my duties and allow me to serve.”
“Are you sure you’re up to it?” Gaia asked. “I mean, you’re hurt and…things.”
Wave looked down at its hands. “Work and learning is sometimes a strong distraction from sorrow.”
The Kishocha didn’t really understand the concept of paid employment, Gaia realized. Kishocha castes being as rigid as they were, aliens were simply born into a profession. So she spent the rest of the day explaining what she expected of her new employee, beginning with using a human timepiece (Gaia’s ex-husband’s watch) and ending with the Kishocha’s wages.
“I don’t understand,” Wave said apologetically. “You give me money pieces, but then what will I trade my money pieces for?”
“Whatever you want.”
“I see.” Wave’s gaze wandered over the room. “So after this, where will I be allowed to sleep?”
“Where do you sleep now?”
“I used to sleep in Oziru am Kenjan’s forechamber on an eel-skin sponge nest, but not anymore.”
“So you don’t have anywhere to stay?”
“I thought I would sleep on a floor, like I did just now.” Wave gestured to the spot where she’d dragged the Kishocha’s unconscious body the previous evening.
Gaia rejected the notion entirely. “You can’t just lay on the floor in my bedroom.”
“Can I lie under a table?”
“No.”
Wave looked hurt. “Do I have to sleep in the shrine? It’s spooky in there.”
“We’ll think of something.” Gaia wondered where she could get a sponge nest, then realized she didn’t even know what an eel-skin sponge nest was. Luckily the very same was delivered to Happy Snak in the early evening by Oziru’s servants. The sponge nest was, literally, a nest. It was approximately six feet in diameter, with a red eel-skin exterior and an inner lining of soft yellow sponges. Along with the nest, the servants brought two green bowls and a transparent orb. The orb was about the size of Gaia’s head and filled with squirming creatures that closely resembled baby snakes.
Wave once again fell to the floor, gushing effusive thanks to Oziru’s servants. About halfway through Wave’s speech, Gaia realized that the alien was thanking Oziru on her behalf. The items were for her, not Wave, in spite of the fact that she’d have no use for a sponge nest of any kind. It was then that Gaia began to get a feeling of the true separation of the Kishocha castes. She realized that Wave’s status in the hierarchy was somewhere near Microbe’s or a dog’s. Oziru was, in effect, saying, “Here’s Kenjan’s ex-pet Wave, and here’s its bed and bowl.”
This was not a working environment Gaia felt comfortable promoting.
As soon as the other Kishocha left, Gaia turned to Wave. “Well, where are you going to put your stuff?” she inquired innocently, as though she had no ulterior motive.
“Oh, these are not mine. These are yours, to do with as you see fit.”
“Mine? I thought they were yours. Isn’t this the bed you used to sleep on?” Gaia scratched her head in mock confusion. “I don’t really have any use for them. I guess I’ll throw them in the garbage.”
Wave’s eyes widened, and the Kishocha’s mouth dropped open. Wave looked so sad that Gaia was nearly deflected from her lesson in personal possessions.
“…garbage?” Wave whispered.
“Unless you want to buy them from me.”
“Trade them for my money pieces?”
“Exactly.”
“I don’t have any money pieces yet,” Wave said.
“But you will. So do you want me to save them until the end of the week when you have some money?”
Wave nodded.
“The question is: Where are you going to put it all?” Gaia suppressed a rush of guilt. This was a little cruel. “I happen to have a little supply room that you could rent from me for one dollar per month. Would you like to see it?”
“If you deem it proper and wise, then I don’t need to see it.”
“You’re not even curious?”
“Slightly,” Wave admitted, “but not because I question your judgment.”
“Of course not.” Gaia led Wave back through the kitchen. The supply room was adjacent to her bedroom and measured eight by ten feet. Because it was meant for storage it had a plain tiled floor with a drain in the center. One wall was Kishocha-made, so it emanated a constant heat, which would be advantageous to Wave. Gaia could tell the sponge nest was an inherently damp furnishing. The sponge nest took up about half the room and left a little space where Wave could keep its baby-snake orb.
Gaia gave Wave the room key, which prompted another long discussion about personal space and privacy. Wave asked if it had to keep the door closed, even when it was lonely, and Gaia assured the alien that solitude wasn’t mandatory.
“The idea is that you have your own room, and I have mine, and we don’t go into the other person’s room without asking.”
Wave experienced an epiphany. “Is it like we are playing democracy?”
“What?”
“We’re playing like we’re equals. I love the game democracy. The lovely Kenjan and I used to play it all the time.”
  
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