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Dragon Ascending Part 3: A KDG Sentient Ship Serial

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Happy Monday everyone!  I hope you are enjoying Dragon Ascending, book two of the Sentient Ship Series and the continuation of Fury’s journey to find family.  Last week an act of desperation. This week the offer of safety may be more than Len can survive. I hope you enjoy.  In the meantime, if you have just arrived and would like to start at the beginning of Piloting Fury, follow the link, and enjoy! If you like what you’re reading, make sure to catch all of Dragon Ascending from the beginning.

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 3: The Jump

Len grew up climbing, in the wreckage here on Tak Major and before that on the ice cliffs of Tak Minor. She was sure on her feet and strong, but then that was when she had not been beaten half to death. Not that she hadn’t taken her share of beatings before, but until today, she had always given as good as she got, most times better. She could easily see the route up. It was not very far. Any other time it would have been an easy climb. But now, weak as she was and with the breeze already brushing her face, it would be worse than climbing the Harbinger on Tak Minor. Injured or not, she’d have to try and she’d have to do it quickly. She didn’t waste her breath with the curses running through her mind as she pulled off the wrap from around her head and face and wound it as tightly as she could around her ribs, the string of silent expletives becoming more colorful as the pain made bright colors dance in front of her eyes. She would have pissed herself in the agony if there had been any water left to wring out of her dehydrated bladder. At last the binding was done, and without pausing for more than a shallow gasp of breath, she began her ascent. It was only ten meters, she told herself with every agonized breath, only ten. At least the coming cold of the desert night helped her stay conscious. Even so, the climb was a battle to stay conscious. It was the increasing nausea that kept her from passing out completely. Who knew fighting to keep from puking on herself could be anything one would be glad for, but the burn of bile in her dry throat focused her as the pain shot through each pull and drag, each pushing to her feet, each horrendous stretching upward. And then the fucking wind picked up again. It howled and gusted around her in swirls of dust that made her eyes water and stung her face, now exposed since she had used her head covering for her ribs.

She clung to her precarious perch, arms and legs trembling until each gust passed. Under normal circumstances, she would have just jumped for it and swung up those last few meters. She’d managed worse, but this time, this time she’d have to hold on and take it slow. Another pull up and her hand slipped for a harrowing moment leaving her hanging, fearing that she would pass out and fall and none of it would matter anyway. But if she did, knowing her stupid luck, she wouldn’t die, only break enough bones to become an easy feast for any predator that squeezed through the opening, or to have her bones scrubbed clean by the scouring of the sand driven by the wind before she had the good grace to fuck off and die. She closed her eyes fighting vertigo, nausea and worst of all despair. That was a waste of time she didn’t have. She steadied herself and reached out. It was only when her hand slipped the second time she realized it was bleeding. How much more goddamned blood could she have left to bleed out? There was no binding it, not from her unstable position. She gave it a quick wiping on her filthy trousers and tried again. The hand held long enough for her to make another lunge upward, with just enough space for her to puke off to the side without soiling herself any more than she already was. When the dry heaves stopped, she clung for another moment to the unstable heap of junk she ascended until she could steady herself. Her hand slipped again, new abrasions, more blood, a lot more blood. Fuck it all! She would have to jump. There was no other choice. The wind was all but howling around her now. If she didn’t act, it would blow her right off the mountain of junk. She waited only long enough for the gust to pass so that she could see, taking the opportunity to fill her lungs with what little breath she could manage in each painful gasp. The airlock was at least a little closer than it had been. And if she fell, she fell. She would do her best to do a proper hard splat of a landing and with any luck she would lose consciousness, break a few more bones, lose the rest of her blood and that would be that, or at least she hoped. Not so bad, she thought. Way better than this shit.

Somehow in spite of the pain, she found that place deep at her center, the place that felt bigger than the Outer Rim and the Great Rift put together, yet it was impossible to pinpoint. There she remained just long enough to draw in another tiny sip of breath. Then she gathered herself and wiped her hand one last time on her trousers. For a split second her vision cleared, the wind went somewhere else, and there was only her and the airlock tempting her to safety. One more painful breath and she jumped, heaving herself upward into blinding pain, arching and reaching and stretching with a banshee yell that came from deep in that same place.

And she knew instantly, she knew that she would not make it. She was just too weak. “I’m sorry,” she whispered to no one there. The wind raged and the whole junk heap shifted, falling all around her. She cried out and reached upward feeling another  rib snap as the world flashed bright and she lost consciousness.

Piloting Fury Part 53: A KDG SiFi Romance

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Happy May, my lovelies! And what a warm one it’s starting out to be here in the UK.  It’s definitely time to read outside in the sunshine with a cold drink. I’m SO there!  Here is your Monday morning dose of Fury al fresco! In this week’s episode Mac discovers blood connections in strange places. If you have just arrived and would like to start at the beginning of Piloting Fury, follow the link, and enjoy!

 

Piloting Fury

“Win the bet and Fury’s yours. Lose the bet and your ass is mine.” It was a no-brainer. Rick Manning’s slightly inebriated offer. If he’d been sober, he’d have remembered indentured pilot, Diana “Mac” McAllister never lost a bet. All her life she’s dreamed of buying back her freedom and owning her own starship, and when Fury’s ne’er-do-well, irritating as hell captain all but hands Fury to her on a silver platter she figures she can’t lose. She figured wrong. That’s how the best pilot in the galaxy finds herself the indentured 1st mate of a crew that, thanks to her, has doubled in size. Too late, she finds out Fury is way more than a cargo ship. Fury is a ship with a history – a dangerous history, and one that Mac’s been a part of for a lot longer than she thinks. And Rick Manning is not above cheating at poker to get her right at the center of it all, exactly where he needs her to be.

Piloting Fury Part 53: Family Connections

I went to the control center to see if there was anything I could do to help. I needed to be busy, and I needed not to think about the fact that I hadn’t felt this much pain since the last time Fallon had hurt me. The communications officer was putting out a subspace on a channel that no one else used but Pandora and the folks helping escaped indentureds make it to Pandora, and now with the Svalbard gone, there was one less. So far, they’d contacted two small freighters only marginally larger that Fury, and a science vessel that was even smaller still.

I was scanning frequencies for any help we might be able to find when Keen came in. “Diana, if you please.” He nodded for me to follow him, and once we were outside the control room and headed down the corridor toward his lab and office, he spoke. “You’re wasting your time. Even if there were enough ships, and there aren’t, none of them are close enough to help us. We’d need an orca class big enough to evacuate the whole base, surely Ina told you that. Our only option is to hope that Gerando Fallon is right about the Apocalypse.”

“I need to do something. Anything.”

He turned on me so fast that I nearly ran into him. “What you need to do is go back to Fury and get about the damn business of bonding.”

“Don’t fucking tell me what I should do,” I exploded. “He kept the truth from me, and what the hell kind of bonding would it be when he makes a unilateral decision against my will. Knowing that … I mean Christu Vaticanus, he has to know what that monster did to me, what his son did to me, and yet there he is convalescing aboard my …”

“Aboard what? Your ship? The one you love?”

“Fuck you!” I turned on my heels and headed back for the control room, but he grabbed me in a powerful grip of an arm made stronger still by doing the work of two and pulled me back.

“Perhaps your father didn’t educate you fully in the roles of a ship and a compliment, so let me enlighten you. When a ship makes a unilateral decision, the compliment stands by him because there are some things a ship understands better than a humanoid does.” He nodded back to the control room. “That message. That message is the only contact Fury’s had with an SNT since the destruction of the Merlin. Do you have any idea what that means to him? Fury would die a thousand deaths for you, Diana, but that Gerando Fallon has some connection with Apocalypse and that the SNT, this civilized part of the Apocalypse has found something in a monster like Fallon’s spawn worth trusting, can’t you see why Fury did what he did, why he had to do what he did? You above all people should understand his loneliness. And that an SNT has been forced into the service of Fallon makes it all the more important for Fury to learn what he can so that he can free Apocalypse – not just because he wants to know his brother, but because another SNT, especially one living as an orca class ship, would give Pandora Base a fighting chance. If we can just –”

“Wait a minute,” I said. And it hit me like a smack in the face. “Why Gerando Fallon? Why did Apocalypse trust Gerando Fallon of all people?”

“I don’t know, but clearly the kid has turned against his father and with damn good reason, I’d say.”

“I know that. There never was much love between the two to begin with, but it’s not just the matter of trust, it’s a matter of how the hell did he connect with Gerando in the first place if Apocalypse is only partially SNT and he’s controlled by Fallon, how could he connect unless …”

“Unless there’s a blood bond.” Keen said, scratching his chin.

“But I thought you were the donor for Fury?” I said, suddenly feeling as though the floor were tilting beneath me.

“No. I never donated. I figured it would make me connected in ways that wouldn’t be helpful, and it might bias me in my work, work that I couldn’t afford to be biased in. I thought of all of the SNTs as my children, and I loved them all equally, or I tried to. But Fury had my heart anyway, it didn’t matter that he wasn’t my child physically.

“Manning had always referred to me as Fury’s father, and in a way I am, as I am to all of the SNTS. But mine was not the sperm that gave Fury life.”

 

 

I felt as my heart would explode from my chest. “It’s Fallon then, isn’t it? Fallon was the donor. And Apocalypse is also from his sperm.”

“It’s more likely that Apocalypse is cloned from Fury. It’s not impossible that Fallon could have bribed someone for a sample of Fury’s genetic material before Fury was born. It’s always easy enough to trump up charges and threaten someone or someone’s family with indenture. That would explain why Gerando could communicate with the Apocalypse. Technically, they’re brothers, just like Gerando and Fury are.”

As we moved into Keen’s lab, I dropped into the nearest chair, my mind racing. “And Fury knows this.”

“Of course Fury knows this, though he didn’t before Gerando and the message from Apocalypse. It wasn’t difficult to figure out.”

“And yet I missed it. I fucking missed it,” I said, scrubbing a hand over my face.

“Of course you missed it. You were face to face with a man who had tortured you and made your life a living hell. That’s the reason SNTs can override their compliments when the situation demands it.” He laid his hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “But most of the time, most of the time, the compliment has the last word because it’s the humanity of the SNTs that makes them so powerful, and that humanity can only be fully accessed through the compliment.” He heaved a sigh. “I guess it’s the same as any mated couple. The two are always more themselves, stronger, better when they’re one. It’s not simple mathematics in a humanoid bonding. One and one is always way more than two. But that’s ten times more the case with a SNT bonding.” He chuckled softly and his lips curved into that inward smile I’d seen on people’s faces when they took a little private walk down memory lane. “I used to lay awake at night dreaming about what Fury would be like when he was bonded. I saw astounding results in all of the SNT pairings – every one unique, every one opening up possibilities that I would have never even thought of before the bondings. And Fury, well Fury was so much more than we could have ever imagined just by the nature of his creation. That you were created the same way, that you were so much his compliment that it was like you were already one even before he left space dock. I’ve ached for him and his emptiness so often. I tried to get him to bond with Ina, because the pairing would have worked, and because I didn’t think you would ever be free, I didn’t think you would even live to meet Fury.” He settled into a chair next to me, and held my gaze. “You see, Fury and Manning didn’t let me in on their little plan to rescue you from the Dubrovnik – not that I had contact with them all that often. They also didn’t tell me that they’d been keeping a close watch on you for a long time before that.”

I shook my head, fighting back emotions that if I lived, if any of us lived, I would one day have to deal with. “I wondered why I always felt close to Manning when we’d meet in ports, and we both laughed at the coincidence, which was no coincidence at all. And the first time I boarded Fury, it was like coming home.” I swallowed back the tightness in my throat. “He … he fit me, both he and Manning.” I forced a laugh, “I actually remember thinking once that we were like an old mated couple, like I was his wife, intuiting his needs and what he could do for me, and wanting to find ways to thank him, to please him. All right, I know that pilots are a superstitious, sometimes a bit loopy, but with Fury it was different from the beginning, like I’d found the other part of me.”

Keen touched my hand where it rested on the desktop. “Because you had found the other part of you. Listen to me, Diana, the one thing we don’t have is time, and we need a fully bonded SNT if we have any chance of surviving when clearly we can’t evacuate. As much as it will break my heart to do it, if you don’t bond with Fury, I’ll have to force the issue and bond him with Ina.”

The thought made my heart clench so hard, I thought it would stop beating, but before I could speak, Keen continued. “It won’t be right. It’ll break his heart and hers, and certainly Richard’s, and he won’t be nearly as powerful as he would be if he were properly bonded to his intended, the one born to him, but if I have to, if you force me to I will. There’s too much at stake.”

“I was born for him,” I grabbed his hand and squeezed it so hard that knuckles pop. “Keen, don’t you see, I was born for him. If I was created for Fury and Apocalypse is cloned from Fury, then surely Apocalypse will sense me and reach out to me in the same way, maybe even more so than he did with Gerando and Fury, if it’s true what you say and an SNT isn’t complete without his compliment then perhaps I can connect, communicate with him.

Keen’s forehead wrinkled in thought, then he opened a channel. “Well it’s worth a try.”

 

Piloting Fury Part 46: A KDG Scifi Romance

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Good morning, my lovelies. Hope your morning is full of delicious decadences to make Monday a little more palatable. And here’s another cheeky Monday read to help out!  In this week’s episode Mac learns the truth of her birth.  If you have just arrived and would like to start at the beginning of Piloting Fury, follow the link, and enjoy!

 

Piloting Fury

“Win the bet and Fury’s yours. Lose the bet and your ass is mine.” It was a no-brainer. Rick Manning’s slightly inebriated offer. If he’d been sober, he’d have remembered indentured pilot, Diana “Mac” McAllister never lost a bet. All her life she’s dreamed of buying back her freedom and owning her own starship, and when Fury’s ne’er-do-well, irritating as hell captain all but hands Fury to her on a silver platter she figures she can’t lose. She figured wrong. That’s how the best pilot in the galaxy finds herself the indentured 1st mate of a crew that, thanks to her, has doubled in size. Too late, she finds out Fury is way more than a cargo ship. Fury is a ship with a history – a dangerous history, and one that Mac’s been a part of for a lot longer than she thinks. And Rick Manning is not above cheating at poker to get her right at the center of it all, exactly where he needs her to be.

 

Piloting Fury Part 46: Born to a Purpose

Just then Professor Keen walked through the door, and I thought Stanislavski was going to pass out from relief. She pulled away from my less than gentle grip and all but ran to the professor. I, on the other hand, was not about to pass out, not about to be budged until I knew what the fuck was going on.

Keen glanced at Stanislavski and then me, and the look on his face darkened. He offered Stanislavski a buss on the cheek and she said her good-byes, knowing goddamn good and well that the only reason she was escaping was because I figured Keen had more answers than she did, and he wasn’t getting away until he gave them up. But before she left, she glanced at me and then turned her attention to the Keen. “They haven’t bonded,” she said.

“Yes, I know,” Keen replied.

Then she offered me a worried look that made my stomach clench, and she left. “Is she always that much of a snitch?” I asked, feeling even less magnanimous toward the woman at the moment that I usually did.

“She has reason to be, in this case,” he said, offering me a sympathetic smile, and my insides knotted still tighter.

“Reason to be? What reason? You wanna tell me what the fuck is going on?” I barely managed to wait until the woman was out the door. “What the hell is Stanislovski talking about, me being bonded? I’m a fucking pilot. Nothing more.”

This time when the waiter approached cautiously as though he feared I might use my laser beam stare on him, Keen politely ordered two cappuccinos and offered the poor man an apologetic smile. Before I could launch back into what the fuck you mode, he asked, “Diana, how much do you know about your birth?”

“I know that my father was widowed when I was barely more than an infant. I lived onboard a ship with him from, well for all my life until the Merlin, except for time spent with an aunt.”

“And he never talked about your mother, did he?”

“No,” I replied, realizing that this was the first time I had ever even thought about the mother I never knew. “I … he never mentioned her.”

“Don’t you think that’s rather strange?”

I could manage nothing but a shrug. For some reason, I felt as though I’d just been shoved out an airlock into empty space.

“Diana, you were born to be Fury’s compliment.”

And now I was sure I was in free fall, but before I could do more than open my mouth, he continued. “As Fury told you most of the early SNT experiments with fertilized humanoid eggs failed in the early weeks after fertilization. His was the only viable fetus that took to the nano technology and thrived in the hybridization that followed. There was, however, one other that survived, a humanoid female of your father’s sperm and an unknown doner. When it became clear that you weren’t suited to become an SNT, your fetal material was slated for termination, but your father wouldn’t allow it. I helped him make sure you were safe and hidden away until your birth.”

 

 

For a moment the world spun around me and shifted in ways I couldn’t have imagined. I wanted to run. I wanted to wake up safe and loved aboard Fury. I wanted to believe that at least some part of my mess of a life had been normal, and now that had been taken away from me. “So you’re telling me I’m a failed SNT experiment?” I managed, barely finding the breath for the words.

“Of course that’s not what I’m telling you. What you became is no less astonishing and marvelous than what Fury became. What you became is so much more than just a pilot. What you were born to be was the perfect complement for Fury. Even your father knew this in his heart of hearts, which is why he raised you and spent so much time with you onboard starships. However, he also wanted the choice you made to be your own. Sadly, due to the circumstances, you never got that opportunity and neither did Fury.”

I felt as though I’d been gut punched and then had my heart ripped out. “Then why hasn’t Fury told me? Why hasn’t he come clean? Does he not want me?” I felt stupid the second I said it. I sounded childish and ridiculous. It had never mattered to me before if anyone had ever wanted me. Hell, I’d kept every man who’d looked at me with interest at arm’s length, including Manning, whom I had always been attracted to, and now I was upset because Fury hadn’t been honest with me about my past.

“Don’t be daft! Of course he wants you.” Keen took my hand in his rather calloused one, a strong grip that cracked knuckles. “He’s lived for you, and so has Manning from the moment Fury told him about you. They both want you. They both need you and, in fact, the ship I created Fury to be won’t be complete until you’re a part of that matrix. Manning was never your replacement. Manning was Fury’s salvation in his loneliness, and from that their bond has grown.”

I found myself painfully close to tears, as I listened.

The waiter brought two cappuccinos and we sat quietly until he’d left.

Keen picked up the spoon and toyed with the foam, then he took a deep breath and spoke. “One thing you must understand about Fury, he’s not programmed. His heart is his own in a way that was not the case with the other SNTs. Fury has a deep capacity to connect, to relate and to love, and with that, the capacity for guilt and jealousy and all of the other emotions that humanoids deal with on a daily basis. Fury is as much humanoid as he is technological.

“Once his commitment was made to Manning, once they were bonded, that bond could never be broken except in death. However, your place remained empty. It might have been less of a trauma for Fury over the years had he not partially bonded with you when he rescued you from the Merlin. It was the first time he saw you, and that the bonding would be so strong and so instantaneous on his part, I had not foreseen. I mean everyone has heard of love at first sight, but it really doesn’t happen very often. Quite literally, Diana, Fury has loved you since he first saw you. You were never meant to be just a pilot. You were meant to be an SNT Pilot, more specifically the pilot for SNT1, you were created especially as his compliment. You were created for him and he has felt the need for you and the absence of you every day since he was raised to consciousness.”

“If that’s the case, then why didn’t he tell me? We’ve had time. We’ve been together for almost a month now and we’ve been … together, the three of us.”

“You know Fury’s heart. He’s laid as much bare to you as he had the courage to. Fury’s afraid of rejection, just like you are, just like we all are. But it’s more than that.” He pushed the tepid coffee aside and leaned over the table toward me. “You see when he bonded with Richard, things didn’t quite go according to planned. Fury was so young, and so inexperienced and so totally alone. There were complications. Fury fears he’ll not be able to bond with you without such complications. I’ve reassured him that won’t be the case, and if the two of you bond here, I’ll be here, if for no other reason, so that he feels more secure.”

“But those complications. They were due to Manning’s condition, weren’t they? And the fact that Manning wasn’t Fury’s intended compliment. I mean from what Fury told me, it was nothing short of a miracle that they were able to make a bond when Manning was neither his intended nor was he trained to it. Stanislavski said something about a short tether. I don’t know what that means, and neither Manning nor Fury mentioned it to me.”

For a moment Keen studied me as though I were a problem to be solved until I squirmed under his scrutiny. “Richard has not broached this subject with you, what happened the last time you were here?”

“No. No he hasn’t.” I felt a blush climbing my neck. I don’t know why. For the past couple of hours I’d been in the presence of people who knew both Manning and Fury better that I did, and I couldn’t help it, I was more than a little defensive that everyone seemed so surprised by my ignorance. “He doesn’t seem to want to talk about it, and I didn’t push.”

“Well then, he won’t be happy with me, but you need to know. You need to know about both of your boys if we’re going to get through this situation intact.”

Piloting Fury Part 23: KDG Scifi Romance

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Good morning, my lovelies. Welcome to another  Monday morning read. Here’s this week’s episode of  Piloting Fury.  

Last  week Mac got a crash course in smuggling. This week the deal doesn’t quite go to plan

If you have just arrived and would like to start at the beginning of Piloting Fury, follow the link, and enjoy!

 

Piloting Fury

“Win the bet and Fury’s yours. Lose the bet and your ass is mine.” It seemed like a no-brainer — Rick Manning’s slightly inebriated offer. If he’d been sober, he’d have remembered indentured pilot, Diana “Mac” McAllister never lost a bet. All her life she’s dreamed of buying back her freedom and owning her own starship, and when Fury’s ne’er-do-well, irritating as hell captain all but hands Fury to her on a silver platter she figures she can’t lose. She figured wrong. That’s how the best pilot in the galaxy finds herself the indentured 1st mate of a crew that, thanks to her, has doubled in size. Too late, she finds out Fury is way more than a cargo ship. Fury is a ship with a history – a dangerous history, and one that Mac’s been a part of for a lot longer than she thinks. And Rick Manning is not above cheating at poker to get her right at the center of it all, exactly where he needs her to be.

 

Piloting Fury Part 23: The Set-up

My gut twisted into a double knot. “Mol-tran him back, now.” Manning was already dematerializing from Blake’s ship before the words were out of my mouth while Blake bellowed a string of curses in several different languages.

“Blake is powering to jump,” Fury said as calmly as though he were telling me the weather.

“Fuck! He’s hanging us out to dry.”

I heard the bastard say something about sending us coordinates to finish the transaction. Manning’s lock I got, but somehow Blake had managed to shield the whiskey. Manning ended up sprawled ass over teacup on the deck cursing profusely, and Blake jumped. We, on the other hand, were well and truly trapped.

“I can’t jump from here, and they’ll have a visual in ten seconds,” I shouted as Manning strapped himself in, but he wasn’t listening to me.

“Fury, cloak,” was all he said just as the three Authority hunters came into view and then cruised right on by us at troll speed. I held my breath, hands pressed flat and sweating on the console, ready to ease out and make the jump, if we all survived that long. I would be plague bate if we were caught, but I’d made the decision ages ago when I first joined the crew of the Dubrovnik, I’d throw myself out the airlock before I’d let Fallon take me again. Nobody had cloak technology, not since the SNTs. It was highly illegal. It would be a plague planet punishment for Manning too if we were caught, or at the very least a shackle and a one-way trip to the triaxium mines. I said nothing. I barely breathed. I’d been so damn careful all these years, so afraid of what my punishment might be, so afraid that Fallon would toy with my shackle just a little too long, and I would end up dying by inches on some plague worlds. No one would ever know what had actually happened on board the Merlin. And my father would never be avenged. For one horrible second, I thought I would vomit on the console, and then I felt Fury rise up around me like a bird of prey on the glove aching to mount the sky and fly. For a moment I felt the embrace, and I looked up to find Manning’s stormy eyes locked on mine. In an instant everything that went before was over and my life was ahead of me. And from a split second I went from being sure I would vomit, feeling horrible gut-wrenching fear of the shackle to feeling free, an experience I’d never expected to have again.

“Can you jump while cloaked?” I asked Fury.

“I can, Diana Mac. Shall I?”

 

 

Manning was already entering the coordinates. He nodded he was ready and just as the backend of the last hunter past us, I made the jump with a bellow that would have put Banshee Blake to shame. But we’d barley made it before Manning was entering coordinates again and my stomach slammed against my backbone as we came out. “What the fuck?”

“We’re on the dark side of Outer Kingston,” he said without looking up at me. “If I know Blake, the bastard’ll be patting himself on the back for getting us in trouble with the authorities and getting off with one hundred thousand credits worth of New Hibernian. And doing his best to drink the profits.” He waved a hand in my direction. “Oh he has no intention of sending us rendezvous coordinates. He reckons we’ll be in enough trouble he’ll be safe for at least a year or so, and if he sees me again, all he’ll have to do is claim he had to dump the cargo and share in the bad luck.”

“So you know where he’s going then?”

“I know where the whiskey’s going because I tagged it. I always tag my cargo, and then when the deal goes down according to planned, the tag disintegrates. If the deal gets fucked for whatever reason, I at least have some recourse. There.” He pointed to a red blip on the grid of the space dock of Outer Kingston Prime. “Gotcha, you fucker,” He jabbed a finger at the monitor.

“Now what?” I asked.

“Well,” Manning drug his teeth over his lower lip and rubbed his chin. “We won’t be able to beam out the whiskey. It’ll be well shielded. In fact, it’ll be all but invisible, and if we turn the authorities on him, we’ll never see any of those hundred thousand credits.”

I undid my harness and stood on legs still none too steady from that last quick and dirty jump, then I began to pace. “I don’t suppose you’d know what watering hole he hangs out in?”

“It wouldn’t be that hard to find.” Manning watched me pace. “What do you have in mind?”

“Fury, you’re a fabulous ship, and you make a mean breakfast, but how are you as a seamstress?”

“Is your apparel not satisfactory, Diana Mac?” the ship asked.

Manning broke into a wicked chuckle. “Not for what she has in mind, Fury.”

“I need a sexy dress that might make a lonely smuggler like Banshee Blake want to buy me a drink and maybe pass a little time with a friendly game of poker while he admires my well-displayed cleavage.”

“I see,” Fury said. “How soon do you need it?”

“Just let me make a few inquiries,” Manning said. “I have a lot of friends in Outer Kingston, and since you’ve never been, and that fat bastard doesn’t know you’re working for me, he won’t even know what hit him.”

Dragon Ascending Part 78: Brand New KDG Read

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Happy Friday everyone! Time for another episode of Dragon Ascending. Wow! We’re down to the last three episodes in book 2 of the Sentient Ship Series! What a wild ride it’s been. I hope you’ve had as much fun with it as I have. In this week’s instalment, Gerando Fallon deals with a family problem. 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. This is especially true as we draw nearer the end of the novel. 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 ofDragon 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 Felish, 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 78: Refuge for a Fallon

Food was served in the big dining room and, from somewhere on the station, Gerd had actually come up with a small band that played upbeat, danceable music. Who knew she was so good at party planning?

“This room is amazing,” Keen said as he watched Rab spin Flissy around the floor.

Kresho felt a surge of Ori’s pride, pride in him. He could feel her construct sitting close to him, hand resting on his thigh. “We wanted a place where all SNTs could come and bring their constructs to interact with their brothers and sisters and their compliments. I don’t think either of us imagined that we would be dealing with SNTs taking multiple compliments, but that makes the space even more essential, I think. When it’s not being used as a dining room and gathering space, it can be subdivided into smaller spaces where small groups of the family can get together and chat over a meal or wine or just nothing more than simply be with family.”

“I doubt there is anything we SNTs have missed more than family, more than being with others,” Ori said.

“And everyone onboard Vodni Station knows about you?” Fury asked.

“They do, yes,” Ori said. “The survivors of the battle with the Authority simply think of me as their home. They teach their children about the battle and about how the station became sentient. I am aware of everyone who lives here. When new people come in, they find out before long. Most stopped thinking of me as an SNT a long time ago.”

“Besides,” Kresho added, laying his hand over hers, “we’re all a bunch of rebels and smugglers here, trying to make a living as far away from the Authority as possible. There’s not one person on Vodni who wouldn’t fight beside the SNTs to bring down the Authority.”

“And no one ever betrays you, Ouroboros?” Gerando asked?

“They don’t live very long if they do,” Kresho replied. And then he waved a dismissive hand. The people sort that out. Other than my governing the place… ish, the local government, law and order, punishment for crimes, that’s all in their hands, and the one thing they don’t tolerate is betrayal of home or family.”

“Was it station justice where Tenad and Jessup were concerned?” Gerando asked.”

“It was I who ‘tranned Jessup into space,” Dragon said. “He was going to violate my beloved.”

Gerando’s hand flinched slightly around Stanislavski’s and she shot him a sympathetic glance. “I only ever met Jessup once. He was a mist head even back then. Tenad, I knew a little better. Tenad scared the shit out of me.”

To everyone’s surprise it was Griffin who responded. “Perhaps too much of our father’s blood in them.” Then he added matter of factly, “I did the same to him for killing my brother and threatening my eldest brother’s beloveds.”

“Nary a fucking shit stain deserved it more than Abriad Fallon,” Rab commented.

 

 

Gerando slid his arm around Stanislavski, drawing her closer, only nodding at Rab’s remark. After a sip of Andavinian coffee he cleared his throat and said, barely opening his mouth. “My sister?”

“I gave her what she demanded,” Fury replied.

Stanislavsky nearly came out of her chair. “Was the woman crazy? Didn’t she understand the risk she was taking, that it would kill her?”

“Of course she did. I explained everything.”

“She couldn’t have undergone the series of necessary treatments in such a short time,” Gerando said.  “It took me nearly a year and I handled the side effects better than most.”

“She was very ill,” Fury replied, “but she insisted hurrying along the process and when dear Camille, the woman was then her indentured – you shall meet her later — escaped with knowledge of her plan, she wished to bond with me immediately believing that she could then command me.”

For a long moment there was chilled silence as they all thought about the implications. Finally Keen heaved a sigh and said, “at the risk of sounding like a calloused bastard, I would like to autopsy the body, if that’s okay,” he glanced over at Gerando. “Perhaps what I learn can help us to ease transitions for future compliments.”

“Oh Tenad Fallon is not dead,” Fury replied. “She is just not functioning at present time.”

There was a collective gasp around the room and a low rumble of comments. Then Fury continued. “We have done what we could to make her comfortable in her catatonic state. As you know all bondings are different and they often involve more looking inward than looking at ones future partner.”

Gerando gave a shudder. “She’s a Fallon and I have yet to meet a Fallon who could relish looking inward. That part of the bonding nearly killed me, probably would have if it hadn’t been for my brothers.”

“I would request a place for her onboard Dubrovnik where she might receive the best care science may give her,” Fury said.

“Is she dangerous?” Harker asked. “I have too many vulnerable people onboard to risk a Fallon running a mock.”

“Captain Harker, I do not believe she will ever be the same if she does recover, and I do not know if there is any hope to hold out for such a recovery since nothing like this has ever happened to any of us before.

“All the same, she’s a Fallon. No insult to you intended, Gerando,” Harker said.

“I agree with Harker,” Gerando said. “I wouldn’t have her on Griffin.”

“I would override your choice if you did want her onboard,” the ship replied.

“She can stay here,” both Ori and Kresho said at the same time. And Kresho felt the reassuring squeeze of Ori’s hand.

“I’m not Keen, I know,” Kresho said, “but I’ve probably had more hands-on experience with an SNT than anyone here, and Ori can speak to how hard she fought in the beginning to keep me alive. My scientists have made some huge breakthroughs with Ori’s help, and we have space for her.”

“And what about your people,” Keen asked. “You’re not afraid for their safety.”

“My people have handled worse,” Ori replied. “They have no reason to fear her.”

“As I have said, I do not believe she will ever be a danger to anyone again.”

Fury commented. “Though of course none of us can ever be sure.”

“None of us has ever been sure, Ori said. “Of anything.”