Happy Friday, everyone! Time for another episode of Dragon Ascending.  Last week Len was pulled into Ascent’s nightmare in a very violent way. This week she must find his heart if she hopes to awaken him. As I mentioned, I am now attempting to post episodes at lengths that will be better suited for the flow of the story and enhance your reading pleasure. Some will be slightly shorter, some will be longer. I hope you find this switch-up helpful. I hope you’re enjoying Dragon Ascending, the sequel to Piloting Fury, as much as I’m enjoying sharing it with you. As always, I love it when you share my work with your reading friends, so feel free. In the meantime, enjoy!

If you missed the previous episode of Dragon Ascending follow the link for a catch-up. If you wish to start from the beginning, of Dragon Ascending. Follow the link.  

For those of you who would like to read the complete novel, Piloting Fury, book one of the Sentient Ships series, follow the link to the first instalment.

Dragon Ascending: Book 2 of the Sentient Ship Series

On a desolate junkyard of a planetoid, scavenger Lenore Felik, disturbs something slumbering in a remote salvage dump and uncovers secrets of a tragic past and of the surprising role she must play in the terrifying present she now faces.

Robbed of her inheritance after her tyrannical father’s death, Tenad Fallon is out for revenge on her half-brothers, one who happens to be the sentient ship, Fury. Fury, with his human companions, Richard Manning and Diana McAllister, has his own agenda – finding the lost sentient ships and ending the scourge of indentured servitude in Authority space.

Dragon Ascending Part 31: In the Heart

“I know what it’s like, Ascent. I have bad dreams myself. Had one the other night, she said loping down the hall to the service ladder not really trusting the lift when Ascent’s dreams seemed to be in control of more than just an SNT’s dangerous version of nightmares. “Nothing’s put you off your sleep faster than a skin crawling nightmare and yours are doozies.” She continued to yammer on breathlessly as she shimmied up the ladder. There was no other direction to go. As far as she could tell her living quarters were in what might have once been the cargo hold. Hoping her voice would eventually wake him up, or at least sooth him back to dreaming about something more peaceful, she kept talking. Without schematics, she had no way of knowing how to get to his core, to his heart. All she had to go on was the one and only trip she’d made to Quetzalcoatl’s core with her uncle. Her uncle had taken her there not long before he left. The route was convoluted and confusing for the protection of the ship, but she had an eidetic memory where that sort of thing was concerned, spaces, distances, schematics, once she had seen them or puzzled them out, she remembered. It had surprised her that Quetzalcoatl had welcomed her, treated her as though she had been his niece, but her uncle told her blood relatives of a bonded compliment were often considered family to the SNT as well. Still being family and being allowed to approach the heart of a sentient ship were two different things entirely.

Ascent shuddered again, this time more violently, and she cried out, clinging to the ladder for all she was worth. She was glad she had used the head strap for the lamp. Surely she would have lost it otherwise. Without it she would have to find her way in total darkness. Ascent had shut off all essentials that did not involve her care and comfort. It took all she had to keep from falling to her death. “Goddamn it Ascent! Wake up! Your fucking dreams are not nice for either of us!” Her raised voice echoed around her in the service tube.

When the tremors calmed again, she continued on, sweat dripping down her forehead and stinging her eyes. There was no need for environmental controls in the tube and with each ascending step it grew hotter and hotter. Her hands slipped on the rungs twice before the all too recent memories of her fall in the salvage yard caused her to stop and, hanging with one leg wrapped around the rung below, she dug through the pack for a pair of thin climbing gloves, an item she had never been able to afford or salvage in Sandstorm, but one that would give her a firm grip on the rungs as the heat rose. Then she continued on, the heat and her narrow beam of light making the passage seem even more claustrophobic that it was. Still, she reminded herself, she had dealt with worse. Though nothing that had ever involved making an uninvited visit to an SNT’s heart, one she desperately hoped had not gone literally mad from his grief and loss.

He had not spoken to her since their last unhappy encounter, though he had aided her in the two forays she’d made into the salvage yard and she was pretty sure he had helped her to find several items that would fetch a good price back at Sandstorm. In the meantime she’d had free run of the places he had lit for her. Those passages he did not want her to find simply vanished into impenetrable darkness. If she couldn’t find her way to his core, she was at his mercy and he would continue to suffer. On the other hand, she was going there against his express wishes, an SNT maddened by his grief. Another agonized groan, this one she felt deep in her own chest, agony, pain, loss. She knew all three, and it was that shared suffering more than anything that drove her on, that made her willing to take the risk.

If Ascent’s schematics were the same as Quetzalcoatl’s, then the next bit would be the hardest. Best not think of that. An SNT’s heart was no easier to get to than a humanoid’s, and far more dangerous, though no less vulnerable, she thought as the world shuddered around her again in the throes of his nightmare. She continued on, not daring to think about what she might actually do or say if she made it to that broken heart. She could just make out the top of the tube barely visible in the beam of her torch.

“I’m coming, Ascent! Just hold on,” she called out as she crawled from the service tube, and another tremor nearly sent her tumbling back down. He had withdrawn from her, she knew, or she would have been able to wake him. For a second she lay on the deck far enough away from the hatch not to risk a fall if he shook again and caught her breath, but another groan sent her scrambling to her feet, where she stopped abruptly, teetering on the edge of the catwalk, the same type of catwalk that had her uncle had led her across to Quetzalcoatl’s heart. There was no rail. Her uncle had told her there never needed to be a rail for a compliment because an SNT would never let his compliment fall.

And now here was Lenore, a piss poor substitute for the woman who must have been magnificent to partner an SNT across the galaxy, to win his heart and his love the way she clearly had won Ascent’s.

“Ascent, I’m sorry that it’s me and not her. I would give anything if I could give her back to you. I’ve never known that love, but my uncle did, I felt it when he took me to Quetzalcoatl’s core, so full of hope, bursting with love. No room for pain or despair. Pain and despair, is that all there’s room for in a heart once it’s bereft of the things that matter most? I sometimes wonder.” The sadness she felt was no longer his, they were her own memories she was now unable to force back so close to a heart in pain that spilled over affecting her own suffering. Perhaps it was only that a heart in pain understood. She took a slow even breath and stepped out onto the narrow metal catwalk, forcing herself not to look to the right or to the left where there was nothing but what she knew would appear to be an endless drop. Instead she focused on the spiral at every SNT’s core, a spiral of perpetual energy that flexed and writhed and climbed, and trembled in the throes of the nightmare.

“Ascent, please wake up. I can’t stand to see you in so much pain. You’ve been so kind to me.” She forced a laugh inching forward on the thin plate of metal. “I don’t have many friends. I’m like you in that, I guess. I never allowed them in because friends can hurt you, people you love can hurt you.”

The whole catwalk shook and buckled and she screamed as she went over the side reaching, stretching, arching, but her fingers only brushed the very edge and she fell. Was this her death than for real? Would he even bother to save her now that she had done nothing more than remind him of what he had lost? Did it matter anyway? “I’m sorry, Ascent, I’m so, so sorry.” Then she relaxed and let herself fall.

It was the wind whistling around her and ripping the words from her mouth that made her aware that she actually was speaking, and she was falling. But she was speaking calmly enough, like falling to her death didn’t matter. It took her a little longer to make out her own words. “Please Ascent, it’s all right, I’m here. I’m here. I won’t leave you. Please wake up. I won’t leave you.” It took her even longer to realize that she wasn’t actually going to fall to her death, she was in free fall of a sort, slowly being pulled in toward the spiral of Ascent’s heart. “Please Ascent, please wake up. It’s a dream. It’s done. It’s past. You don’t have to live it again. Please.” And then she was pulled deep inside the pulsing spiral and lowered gently to the bottom, the deepest part of the heart of an SNT, who barely knew her. And then Ascent woke up.

Happy Friday, everyone! Time for another episode of Dragon Ascending.  Last week there were unwanted memories for Ascent. This week they turn into a nightmare and Len is pulled in. As I mentioned, I am now attempting to post episodes at lengths that will be better suited for the flow of the story and enhance your reading pleasure. Some will be slightly shorter, some will be longer. I hope you find this switch-up helpful. I hope you’re enjoying Dragon Ascending, the sequel to Piloting Fury, as much as I’m enjoying sharing it with you. As always, I love it when you share my work with your reading friends, so feel free. In the meantime, enjoy!

If you missed the previous episode of Dragon Ascending follow the link for a catch-up. If you wish to start from the beginning, of Dragon Ascending. Follow the link.  

For those of you who would like to read the complete novel, Piloting Fury, book one of the Sentient Ships series, follow the link to the first instalment.

Dragon Ascending: Book 2 of the Sentient Ship Series

On a desolate junkyard of a planetoid, scavenger Lenore Felik, disturbs something slumbering in a remote salvage dump and uncovers secrets of a tragic past and of the surprising role she must play in the terrifying present she now faces.

Robbed of her inheritance after her tyrannical father’s death, Tenad Fallon is out for revenge on her half-brothers, one who happens to be the sentient ship, Fury. Fury, with his human companions, Richard Manning and Diana McAllister, has his own agenda – finding the lost sentient ships and ending the scourge of indentured servitude in Authority space.

Dragon Ascending Part 30: Waking Dream

“I will not! I cannot! I will kill them all for what they have done! We are innocent! We have done nothing wrong. You have done nothing wrong. Please my love!” Please! The room erupted in fire. She was hot, burning, skin blistering and melting from her body, oxygen to hot to breathe, and then sucked from the chamber. And then she was wrenched from my heart and she was no more.

From a long way off, she could hear his cries of anguish. “Lenore! Lenore, please do not leave me.”

She burst from sleep gasping from a dream of fire, of skin blackening, of anguished pleas for her not to leave. And she was thirsty, so thirsty. She stumbled to the bathroom and drank deeply from the faucet, not bothering with the glass, letting the water run over her head. There had been no fire in her past. Her nightmares had always been of ice, of being entombed alive in it forever, of trying to escape it, constantly trying to escape it.

Jesu Vaticanus! She had been in Ascent’s nightmare! She knew the SNT stories, she knew the disaster that had followed the massacre of the Phoenix. She stumbled back to her bed, reeling from the thought. How could one little transfusion of Ascent’s genetic soup connect her so deeply with him that they dreamed together? That was something only a bonded compliment could do, and that with years of training and injections of immuno- depressants to make the compliments compatible. She was only seven when the SNT disaster happened. Even if she had dreamed of following in her uncle’s footsteps onboard one of the next generation SNTs, she was far too young to begin the training when she and her mother had fled.

At first she thought the shudder that trembled beneath her feet and dumped her on her ass on the floor was an earthquake. They happened often enough on a planetoid of shifting sand with an erratic orbit, but it didn’t feel right. She’d been through enough of the little tremors and the big bruisers to know that this wasn’t that. It was only when she tried to stand that she realized the shudders in her own body mirrored those of the ship. Fear, anguish, and heat! Suddenly it felt like the life support systems were malfunctioning and Ascent was roasting her. For the briefest moment she recalled her fear that he was not sane, that he might hurt her, but there was little time to dwell on it as heat shimmered red in the air around her sheening her body in sweat and plastering her hair to her nape. She stumbled again and cried out and the space around her groaned.

“Lenore! Lenore please don’t leave me! Please, please! I will not survive without you, my love.”

“You will! You must! You have to live to fight another day.” The words were out of her mouth before she realized they were not her own. They belonged to Ascent’s complement. Fuck! They not only belonged to her, but they were her dying words, and Ascent, Ascent was only calling out her name in his confusion, in his pain.

“Ascent, it’s a dream! It’s only a dream! You have to wake up now.”

The room shuddered and groaned again. He hadn’t heard her. He hadn’t fucking heard her! “Ascent! Wake up, goddamn it! It’s a dream. You have to wake up now!” When the room tilted again and she all but threw herself on the floor from loss of her own sense of balance as the world shifted around her. She burst into action, throwing on her clothes as she shouted, again for him to wake up, shouted until her throat was raw. When there was no response but a harsh moan that sounded almost human, she slid into her boots, dug through her pack for a headlamp and ran for the door. On second thought, she grabbed up the whole pack and shouldered into it as she donned the lamp. She didn’t know the layout of whichever SNT Ascent was. She didn’t know how long it would take her if she couldn’t wake him, but she did know if she couldn’t wake him soon, she wouldn’t survive his nightmare. She had to find the way to his heart and hope he’d let her close enough to wake him up. If he didn’t want her there she could end up hopelessly lost until he finally woke up on his own, or until the dream passed. If she survived that long. She didn’t even want to think about the risk she was taking just going to his heart. At the moment she had enough on her mind without dwelling on worse case scenarios, of which there were too many for comfort.

Happy Friday, everyone! Time for another episode of Dragon Ascending.  Last week Fury and his crew got Ascent’s nightmare. This week, unwanted memories for Ascent. As I mentioned, I am now attempting to post episodes at lengths that will be better suited for the flow of the story and enhance your reading pleasure. Some will be slightly shorter, some will be longer. I hope you find this switch-up helpful. I hope you’re enjoying Dragon Ascending, the sequel to Piloting Fury, as much as I’m enjoying sharing it with you. As always, I love it when you share my work with your reading friends, so feel free. In the meantime, enjoy!

If you missed the previous episode of Dragon Ascending follow the link for a catch-up. If you wish to start from the beginning, of Dragon Ascending. Follow the link.  

For those of you who would like to read the complete novel, Piloting Fury, book one of the Sentient Ships series, follow the link to the first instalment.

Dragon Ascending: Book 2 of the Sentient Ship Series

On a desolate junkyard of a planetoid, scavenger Lenore Felik, disturbs something slumbering in a remote salvage dump and uncovers secrets of a tragic past and of the surprising role she must play in the terrifying present she now faces.

Robbed of her inheritance after her tyrannical father’s death, Tenad Fallon is out for revenge on her half-brothers, one who happens to be the sentient ship, Fury. Fury, with his human companions, Richard Manning and Diana McAllister, has his own agenda – finding the lost sentient ships and ending the scourge of indentured servitude in Authority space.

Dragon Ascending Part 29: Unwanted Memories

“You know they won’t leave us alone. They won’t let something good happen that the conglomerates don’t have control over, and they won’t ever willingly do away with indentured servitude.”

On the map and navigations deck, my beloved looked down at the image of the Taklamakan System that floated in space light years from its nearest inhabited neighbor, and its two planetoids only barely populated, barely habitable as they were, surrounded mostly by nothing but emptiness and dust. I did not understand her fascination with the kilometers and kilometers of salvage dumps that covered most of the surface of the largest planetoid, but she said all of that junk told a history of humanoids, adventurers, explorers like us intrepidly moving out beyond our own consciousness. I liked it when she became philosophical, so my interest in the hot, dusty space dump was piqued for her sake, and for the poetry of her beautiful mind. But still one had to wonder why we had come to this place, what we hoped to find when so many of my other siblings were doing scientific research, were carrying settlers out to new worlds, were making connections beyond the Rim, and yet we had chosen the most remote emptiest sector of space known to humanoids and of interest to no one. I did not understand her pessimism.

“But they will not need indentured servants once we begin to fulfill our mission, my siblings and I. And then Fury will be born, and after him a whole new generation of sentient ships, all with a much deeper connection to humanoids and to the betterment of all species. Oh how I wish we could witness that moment, the moment of Fury’s birth.” Knowing that SNT1 was both my younger brother and my elder as well, and that I owed a great deal of my better self to him made me long to know him in person as I had Merlin and Phoenix and Ouroboros and the others, whom I loved.

My dearest one laughed that bitter laugh of hers that always unsettled me. I did not like being unsettled when what lay ahead of us was a brand new adventure, even if it was not the one I might have preferred. And then a chill passed through me, or at least what I thought must be a chill, for I was still learning my physical nature through the aid of my compliment and her physicality, which I so delighted in and which so complimented the maleness with I had been endowed by my creators. But nonetheless I was very sure it was a chill I felt. “Is that why you requested the deep space mission for us, the one that I noticed no other compliment wanted?”

She pressed her lips together as she did when she wanted to make her response more gentle, for she was a pessimist by nature, and I an optimist. “It’s just a precaution,” she said then added, “honestly it surprised me when none of the other compliments requested it. I would have expected them all to be clamoring for it considering the political climate in Authority Space. Certainly they can’t be that naïve.” She cocked her head, looking up from her personal device. “You don’t mind do you?”

“Of course I do not or I would have said.”

She looked back down at the representation of the Taklamakan System, and I zoomed in on Talkamakan Major. “I just want us safe when the shit hits the fan.” My compliment was fond of ancient Terran slang.

After that it was dark, time passed, I felt it but it did not bother me. It was but a dream, a pleasant dream of my dear one. Would that I could stay in such dreams, within their comforting cocoon, in the banality that had made up our ordinary lives. Sleeping, talking, loving, caring for each other, while we went about the ordinary tasks of logging our journey and our discoveries. But dreams are not that way. One does not get to chose those warm welcoming spaces in which to linger, and often the images turn on a nanosecond.

“I do not feel … right. Like something is loose inside my mind, something I do not want there, something rousing feelings I should not have, feelings, emotions that do not feel like my own.”

My dear one was there, at the core of me, the seat of my sentience, of my physicality. She had attached probes, just as she had been trained to do, her hands gentle and warm against me. “So far the diagnostics are finding nothing,” she said, shaking her head. “Can you describe it a little better, the way you feel. Perhaps it’s a malfunction in your tactile nodes, they’re still learning how to process… wait a minute, I think I might have found something.”

“What is it? Is it only my tactile nodes? Is it only that I am still growing and changing?” I said these things hoping them true, but even then, I did not believe them to be.

“This is not right. This can’t be right!”

NO! In my head I roared out the word knowing, as I always did that I was dreaming, and also knowing that this dream above all others I did not want. This dream was the reason I wanted to sleep for eternity. For when I was truly asleep in that deep place, the dormancy that had been provided for all SNTs should the need ever arise, dreams did not come to me. And then Lenore disturbed that rest and now I was forced to relive this, the worst nightmare, the thing that had destroyed me. But I could not wake up and I could not go deeper into my slumber.

Helplessly I watched as my dearest told me that somehow, I the perfection of technology and science and humanity united, I the future of all civilizations, was infected with the virus that had been engineered to control indentured servants, and that it infected that which I valued most about myself, my mind.

Happy Friday, everyone! Time for another episode of Dragon Ascending.  Last week Tenad Fallon learned a game-changing tidbit about Kresho Ivanovic. This week Fury and his crew get someone else’s nightmare. As I mentioned, I am now attempting to post episodes at lengths that will be better suited for the flow of the story and enhance your reading pleasure. Some will be slightly shorter, some will be longer. I hope you find this switch-up helpful. I hope you’re enjoying Dragon Ascending, the sequel to Piloting Fury, as much as I’m enjoying sharing it with you. As always, I love it when you share my work with your reading friends, so feel free. In the meantime, enjoy!

If you missed the previous episode of Dragon Ascending follow the link for a catch-up. If you wish to start from the beginning, of Dragon Ascending. Follow the link.  

For those of you who would like to read the complete novel, Piloting Fury, book one of the Sentient Ships series, follow the link to the first instalment.

Dragon Ascending: Book 2 of the Sentient Ship Series

On a desolate junkyard of a planetoid, scavenger Lenore Felik, disturbs something slumbering in a remote salvage dump and uncovers secrets of a tragic past and of the surprising role she must play in the terrifying present she now faces.

Robbed of her inheritance after her tyrannical father’s death, Tenad Fallon is out for revenge on her half-brothers, one who happens to be the sentient ship, Fury. Fury, with his human companions, Richard Manning and Diana McAllister, has his own agenda – finding the lost sentient ships and ending the scourge of indentured servitude in Authority space.

Dragon Ascending Part 28: Someone Else’s Dreams

“Fury is right. This is the only way, and you have to let me go”

“I will not! I cannot! I will kill them all for what they have done! We are innocent! We have done nothing wrong. You have done nothing wrong. Please!”

“No, no you won’t kill them, and it no longer matters that we are innocent, no one will listen, You have to understand that my darling. You will kill no one. You will let me do what I must and by doing so, you’ll save millions and yourself. There’ll be another time. I need you to live to fight another day. I need you to tell the galaxy what really happened, what they did to us, to you. I can go to my own death easily if I know you live on.”

“Please! Please do not make me do this!” Fury’s own voice, ragged in a way his compliment had never heard it before, begged over and over again, but the woman, the woman consumed in flames was not his compliment, his own dear Diana Mac, who had already suffered so very much loss and pain, and yet the pain he felt was as though it were her, or his precious Richard Manning. Agony like he could not have imagined, agony that he was certain he would not survive.

“Do it out of love for me.” The woman’s voice rose above the crackle of flames. “Do it out of love for your brothers and sisters. Do it out of love for all of those who can’t fight back.”

“This is not how I meant it to be! Fury cried out. “Please, you do not have to die, please do not sever yourself from the bond!” The message he had sent out into the galaxy hoping against hope to save his brothers and sisters who had not already perished was short, sharp, desperate, but this was not what he had intended. Not like this! Not like this!

“I cannot! I cannot! I cannot! Please do not make me do this! Please! I cannot bare it. I will not survive alone. I cannot! I cannot! Please! Please!”

“Do it out of love for me.” Sobbing out the words, Mac sat bolt upright in the middle of the bed she shared with Manning and Fury, both of them sat next to her. She and Manning were in tears, inconsolable, as together they wrapped their arms around Fury, in that same instant, they realized it was his dream they felt so deeply.

“But it was not mine. The dream was not mine. It was not you, dearest Diana Mac, who was lost to the flames, and it was not my agony you felt.”

“The SNT on Tak Major,” Manning said scrubbing his hands over his face, still drenched in sweat from the dream. “We dreamed his dream.” It wasn’t a question. They all knew that the dream did not belong to them, and yet it felt like it did.

“How anguished he must be,” Fury said. And to Mac, it felt like Fury’s own anguish. “If truly we are seeing how he lost his dearest compliment, then surely I am to blame for his suffering, for I had not intended it to be so, it did not have to end so, there were other ways to accomplish the purging of the virus.”

“Fury, listen to me,” Mac said, making every effort to hold the physical representation the ship offered still closer, “you don’t know what happened, what the circumstances were, and I know the story of how desperately you flung the message out that high doses of radiation would kill the virus. Vaticana Jesu! It’s a wonder that any of them got the message at all, garbled or otherwise. And considering their circumstances, they were already all fighting and fleeing for their lives. You are not to blame.”

“That is not how it feels when I have been plunged into my poor brother’s loss and agony.”

Manning frowned and cocked his head. “Fury, how closely connected are you to the emotions of your siblings.”

“I am very closely linked to Griffin and Dubrovnik because of our shared experience in their births. Sadly my other siblings were so very far away from me when the Authority sabotaged them that I was not certain my message was even received by them, or that they would recognize who it was from if it did. I was not due to be born for several more years.”

“Well at least you know it reached this SNT,” Manning said.

“And yet this one has lost his compliment. How can he ever forgive me for that? I would not have severed one of my siblings from their beloved companion for anything.”

“There were very few choices back then,” Mac said. “My father was happy to sacrifice himself for Merlin, and I know Manning and I would do the same for you. We would want you to go on if it came to that, to find another compliment, to move forward.”

For a long moment their shared sleeping chamber felt charged with icy hot pain, and Fury said at last, “I do not know if I could go on without my beloveds. I do not know how any SNT could survive such a loss. Because you came to me when you did, dear Richard Manning, I did not have to endure the loss quite the same as the bereaved SNT below must have.” Once again there was silence. Mac knew that Fury was checking their vitals, their physical needs, their emotions after such a nightmare. And then he said, “I do not believe that any of us will sleep again soon. Perhaps we should adjourn to the galley for a late night snack, something soothing that might once again induce slumber.”

“Besides,” Mac added, “we need to talk about what just happened.”

Mac and Manning slipped into loose fitting robes that Fury had designed for them and padded to the galley, feeling Fury’s presence as though he walked beside them. They replicated simple chocolate pudding, which had early on become one of Mac’s favorites. For a moment the only sounds were the smacking lips and the appreciative groans of food well enjoyed, and then Mac spoke around a lingering sip of Digan cinder flower tea. “The woman, Lenore Falish, she’s still with him. I wish we knew if he’s keeping her prisoner or if he’s …”

“Enamored of her.” Furry finished for her.

“Is that possible?” Manning asked.

“Based on our relationship, Richard Manning, I am sure you already know the answer to that.” Both Mac and Manning felt what could only be called an affectionate stroke of their cheeks.

“Then that’s good, isn’t it?” Mac asked. “I mean sometimes the healing of a broken heart needs a little outside help.”

“That is true,” Fury said, then added more cautiously, “It could be good.”

“But?” Manning said.

“But this SNT is going out of his way to conceal himself from us. He only revealed himself when he fired at the Dart, certainly to avenge the woman. I do not believe I would have discovered him otherwise, and it is clear now that he knows we are here, and he does not want contact. I do not know why, but I can speculate many possibilities, none of them are very good.”

“Could he think we’re an Authority vessel,” Mac asked.

“No. That is not a possibility. It is in our biological and technical make-up to recognize Authority ships and the threat they could pose, but more importantly still, to recognize each other.”

“But the SNT virus was engineered to go straight for the SNT neural net and the brain, wasn’t it? Manning said.”

“That’s right,” Mac agreed. “Maybe the virus has affected this SNT’s memories and primary net.”

“If this SNT has lived through the events of his nightmares, the loss of his beloved compliment, then he would have been cured of the virus long before there could be any permanent damage.”

“Then what? And what can we do?” Manning said, helping himself to more pudding. “Do you think Lenore Falish will come back out, and maybe we can try again? If we could question her, we might be able to find out what’s going on with your brother down there.”

“She has already been out while we slept,” Fury said.

“What? Why didn’t you wake us?” Manning nearly dropped his spoon.

“Our SNT kept a lock on her and he has also improved his shields. I believe I may still penetrate his shields at will, but I may not take her while he has a lock on her.”

“Then what?” Manning asked.

“For now we must wait until an opportune moment when he believes it is safe, that we have left, and lets down his guard. But we must also consider in the taking of this woman from my brother, his response will without a doubt be very hostile. We must handle the situation and its consequences very carefully.”

“And in the meantime,” Mac said.

“In the meantime, my dear Diana Mac, it is the middle of the night, we have all been wakened from a nightmare that was not our own. If we are sensitive to my brother’s nightmares, perhaps he may be equally susceptible to our feelings for each other. Shall we see if perhaps we can comfort him, and us? Perhaps he shall take comfort from our lovemaking.”

Manning chuckled salaciously. “I don’t know about him, but I certainly will.” He slid his hand inside Mac’s robe and cups her breast in the very same instant Fury mirrors his action on the other side.

She caught her breath and leaned back in the chair allowing the robe to fall open as both her men replace very skilled fingers for even more skilled mouths. “I cannot tell you how happy I am that you have two such lovely breasts, Diana Mac, or else Richard Manning and I might find cause to argue over such carnal delights.”

“Not as happy as I am” Mac said. “I love what you- ” Her words ended abruptly in a little gasp as Fury eased her thighs open and left her breasts to Manning while his very talented mouth went to work on all parts south. How could the other SNT not be enjoying this, she wondered. She wondered if he made love to Lenore and found solace in their passion. She hoped so for both of their sakes. Certainly the poor woman’s life had been short on tenderness and passion, short on simple human kindness, something Mac understood only too well.