Happy Friday, everyone! Time for another episode of Dragon Ascending.  Last week Len ‘tranned down to Sandstorm and had a very enlightening chat with Arji. This week Kresho gets his own painful case of enlightenment. 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 Ascendingfollow 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 44: Who’s the Girl?

“Thank you, Camille,” Kresho said when she sat the two drinks in front of him. He noticed Tenad always stiffened when he addressed her indentured like she was something more than a serving bot. He supposed it never entered the bitch’s mind that his behavior was simple common courtesy. But he also noticed she never punished the girl, never even raised her voice. Of course he had no idea how she treated her in the privacy of her suite.

“Thank you for the gesture, Ivanovic, but I really don’t drink,” Tenad said.

“It’s on your tab,” he said. “Besides, I didn’t get it for you,” he downed the first glass in one, still staring after the woman chatting to Arji, then gave a shiver at the aftershocks. Once he could catch his breath, he turned his attention back to the indentured. “Camille, who’s the girl?” he asked. “The one you were with.”

“I don’t know. She didn’t introduce herself.”

Tenad gave a grunt of a laugh. “Of course she wouldn’t, Ivanovic. She would know that if I happened to be curious enough to ask Camille her name, as an indentured, she would tell me.”

When Kresho didn’t respond, only kept craning his neck toward the bar, Tenad followed his gaze to the woman who stood talking to Arji after he all but swallowed her face.  “Clearly you think you know her.” The thing about Tenad Fallon that he couldn’t afford to forget was that she never missed anything.

“Thought she might be one of the whores I used to visit every now and again when I had the misfortune of having to come to this rock.”

“You thinking you might need a little entertainment tonight, are you?”

“Might need to blow off some steam after hanging out with you lot.”

“She’s tiny. You like ‘em young, do you?”

“I like ‘em consensual,” he said, wishing like hell the woman would turn around. It couldn’t be who he thought it was. He’d be unlikely to even recognize her now even if she had survived. “Besides,” he said, “No one born on this shit pile gets very big. Everybody here is slightly malnourished and dehydrated. Most people made sure they’d not sentence a child to grow up here, so they make sure they can’t have any. Still, every once in the while someone gets someone knocked up and the poor woman doesn’t have the heart to do the fetus a solid and end it before it’s born into this mess.”

“She must be good, the way you keep staring at her.”

He shrugged, careful to keep his angst to himself. “She does the job, and she’s not bad on the eye. Cheap too.”

“I always did like a bargain. Does she do women?”

“Never pictured you as a slummer, Fallon,” he said, glancing over at her. “But then again, I’m guessing you did the Dart’s captain before you shoved him out the airlock. He wasn’t hard on the eye, and I assume it wasn’t that hard to treat whatever SNT1 did to him so that his cock worked without him puking on you.”

 

 

She shrugged and ran a finger around the rim of his full beer glass, then looked up at him with those bright green eyes. “I’m a woman without an inheritance, Ivanovic. Waste not want not is my motto. Ah, you snooze, you lose. Looks like our gracious host beat you to it.” They both watched as Arji led the woman into the back room.

Kresho lifted her finger away from his drink. He didn’t miss the way her eyes followed the drink to his mouth and lingered on his lips. Fuck, the woman was a real cock straightener, wasn’t she just? He sipped, then licked the foam from his upper lip. “It won’t take ole Arji long. He’ll be finished in no time.”

She threw back her head and laughed a rough-edged laugh, which would have made him good and stiff, if the woman with Arji hadn’t turned and glanced back at the rest of the bar just before she followed him behind the curtain, and it was all Kresho could do to keep his heart from hammering through his chest. Christ, it couldn’t be her! It couldn’t. It wasn’t possible.”

“You looking forward to her that much?”

Too late he was reminded again that Tenad Fallon never missed anything. He shrugged, trying to bring his heart down from a gallop. “Man needs a good emptying of his sac every once in the while.”

One corner of her full lips quirked up. “You don’t seem to me to be the type of man that has to hold his load too long if he chooses not to.”

“A life of power is a lonely life, Fallon. You know what I mean, I’m sure.”

All sense of humor fled her face and she looked down at her hands folded on the table in front of her. “I do know exactly what you mean.” The smile returned, bright as sunshine, if a little forced. “It’s lonely at the top.”

“Tenad, you cunt! You think I don’t know what you’re up to in here without me!” Jessup Fallon all but fell into the bar shoving aside a couple of locals and spilling their drinks in the process, before two of Tenad’s security detail flanked him with Gert and Dyrg shadowing them.

She came to her feet, her eyes on her brother. “Camille go to the bar and have the barmaid make sure those two Jessup disturbed have free drinks for the rest of the night and anyone else my idiot brother has disturbed.” The girl did as she was ordered and Tenad spoke to Kresho, without taking her eyes off her brother. “The thing about the top, Ivanovic, is that there’s always someone thinking they belong there in your place, most of them without the balls it takes to actually get there. If you’ll excuse me.”

It was exactly the kind of break Kresho needed to get away from Tenad and find out if he was going crazy or if he’d actually seen the impossible. He shoved back from the table and headed for the back room as fast as he could shove his way through the crowd.