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Dragon Ascending Part 16: A KDG SciFi Romance

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Happy Monday everyone!  I hope you’re enjoying Dragon Ascending, book two of the Sentient Ship Series and the continuation of Fury’s journey to find his family. 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 16: Bring Her Back

“That’ll put hair on your balls,” Manning said with a shiver.

 “If you ain’t got any already, then this stuff’s just the ticket,” the bar-keep said with a congenial chuckle, then he turned to Mac, “begging your pardon, Ma’am.” Mac waved away his apology and took another sip. “Had some bad luck, I assume, if you’re hunting the scrap heaps here in the ass end for what you need,” the man said, then before either of them could answer he said, “if it’s wet ware you want, talk to Digby Sellers. I can set you up. He don’t meet with anyone unless it’s been prearranged.” The dismissive wave of his hand caused is stogie to flare bright and waft a trail of eye-watering smoke. “Oh he don’t deal in indentured or anything like that. Hell half the people out here got family back in Authority space that’s indentured. He wouldn’t survive long if anyone ever found him dealing in indentureds. If you need extra crew, he can hook you up. Plenty of people’d be happy to work off their passage out beyond the Rim. Told me once he’s always got a waiting list.” He scratched at a small paunch, the only thing on the man that wasn’t rake thin. “If you need someone to warm your bed, he can arrange that too, though looking at the two of you, I figure that’s ain’t a problem. He can even find you someone with some real skill on a long hauler if you need.” He wiped at the hopelessly filthy counter with an equally filthy cloth.

“Anything else you want, well ole Fido up the road there, he’s the most trustworthy of the lot here, knows his stock fairly well too, that’s as much as anyone can with the sands shifting all the time. If he has it, he can find it, not like most the fuckers here. They’ll send you out to find it yourself. Mind you,” he shook a leathery finger at them, “try to steal something from ‘em and they’ll catch you, take you out in a sand rover and leave you to roast alive, that is if they don’t drop you off at night. That ain’t no better. If an infestation don’t take you, there’s always glass vipers,” he shivered,” Nasty little piss lickers.” He leaned an elbow on the bar, and gave both of them a serious glance, making sure they understood the seriousness of their situation. “But the worst part about night in Tak Major is that the wind kicks up somethin’ wicked, whips the sand into a frenzy that’ll scour the skin right off you and then keep right on going. Bad winds grind down bones and all.” He shook his head and took a drag from his stogie.

“Sounds like the perfect holiday destination,” Mac said.

The man gave her a raised eyebrow and chuckled smoke out his nostrils. “We like to keep that little secret to ourselves, Ma’am. Don’t want all the damned tourists crowding out here messing up the place. Now then,” he took another puff, “if you tell me what you’re looking for, I can point you in the right direction.”

Mac wondered if he got a little kickback from recommendations, but you’d almost need someone’s help to find anything here, and to navigate without ending up disappeared in the sand somewhere.

“We’re looking for a young woman called Len.” Mac said.

The smile disappeared, and he squared his shoulders and took another drag and blew it out with a harsh huff. “You friends with the crew of the Dart? Those bastards come back here I will personally make sure they never piss again.”

“Trust me,” Manning leaned over the bar into his personal space and held his gaze, “those bastard won’t be coming back.”

The man took another drag, then looked from one of them to the other. “We all warned her not to go with those piss wasters. We told her just to wait, that another ship would come eventually, a more reliable one, but she wouldn’t hear of it, said she couldn’t wait. Well fuck me!” He snubbed out his smoke with such violence he nearly broke the flimsy ashtray. “I don’t know why in New Vaticana’s hell she wanted to go to the Sea of Death anyway. There’s nothing there. But she insisted there was. She never would say exactly what, but she damn near had a couple of punters here willing to take her out by sand rover figuring surely there must be something really valuable out there if she wanted to go back so damned bad. But in the end nobody really thought it was worth the risk. Too damn bad, really.”

“The crew of the Dart said they left her out in the Sea of Death and that they planned to come back for her,” Manning said.

“They were lying, unless they thought there was something in it for them,” Arji said. “If they left her there, then she was either dead when they dumped her off or she is by now. Damn shame, I was thinking to ask her to share my bed. I could use the help here, and she could have used a steady job, you know with regular meals and decent water rations. She deserved better.”

Mac thought the man must surely be old enough to be Len’s father. But in her ear, Fury responded, “Not as old as one might think. Besides that does not matter so much when one is struggling to survive.” She knew for a fact that was true. Her attention returned to the conversation at hand.

“What are the chances she survived,” she asked, shivering at the thought of the death she might have met out in the open.

 

 

“Slim,” came the reply as Arji lit another smoke and blew out a long breath. “If anyone could survive that hell hole, Len could though. She was tougher than a glass viper’s hide. A survivor, she was.” He smiled and looked out past them around the empty bar. “That woman, barely more than a little girl at the time, crammed herself into an environmental suite, boarded a drone supply transport making a drop-off at the science station on Tak Minor, reprogrammed the damn thing and fuck me if she didn’t survive the trip from there to Sandstorm. I have no idea how she managed to manipulate the guidance system. Them drones were sent every three months from one ass end to another, usually from Vodni Outpost. Some ship from the Rim would send supplies and Vodni would shove them into a drone and out they’d go to Tak Minor. You think this place is a shithole.” Arji shuddered, stood for a moment lost in thought, then poured himself a pint in a cracked stoneware mug. He sipped the swill like he was testing it to see if it was safe, and then said thoughtfully. “Fire or ice, that’s the Taklamakan System. Tak Minor is frozen solid. Chances of surviving outside in that deep freeze without an environmental suit are nil, or so I’m told. Anyway, Len knew she couldn’t survive the trip back to Vodni, or even to the other side of Tak Major to Windward or Sunward. Oh she’d done all her calculations just right so that if she rerouted the drone, then tucked herself in all decked out in an environmental suit and gave herself a hefty dose of deep sleep drug, she might just make it to Sandstorm. And she just barely did. Holy Vaticana Jesu on a cracker, she was damn lucky!” He bit his lip and swallowed back the rest of his pint. “It don’t seem right that after surviving against all odds in that shitter after her mother died, that she should bite it out in the Sea of Death.”

“But you said she might have survived out there. How?” As interested as Mac was in Len’s story, their priority was to find out if she was alive and then keep her that way. She figured Fury could do a little research on the woman and find out more than Arji knew.

“Well she’s a scavenger, isn’t she? While she was never very good at the scavenging bit, she could hole up in the most god-awful places, places that would have shriveled your pisser and dried you out like so much journey meat. She’d just burrow down into a salvage pile, find a sheltered place from the night and the winds and wait it out. She’d do the same with the Shimmer. I reckon if she survived the trip from Tak Minor, and her not much more than a kid, she has a knack for keeping herself alive. She carries this pack damn near as big as she is with a survival tent, one she’d scavenged somewhere, old and ratty, and I wouldn’t have trusted it out in the desert, but when she was caught out, she just hunkered down in it and survived. She survived. Don’t know how the fuck she did it, weighing no more than she does, I’m surprised the wind didn’t just blow her and the tent all away on the spot. If she’s like most of us, she’s drank a fair amount of her own piss run through filter packs, and knew every way imaginable, and some I never heard of, to eek out a little extra water and make what she had last. Like I said, if anybody can survive out there, Len can.”

Then he leaned over the bar again and gave them both the evil eye. “What the hell do you want with her anyway?”

“Nothing,” Manning said. “When we questioned the Dart’s crew a little more seriously than they’d have liked, they admitted that she’d been with them and …”

“They hurt her.”

“Yes,” Manning held his gaze. “We have her pack. All we want is to find her and bring her back safely, if she’s alive.”

“What’s in it for you.”

“Maybe another pint or two of you fine brew,” Manning said.

Argi did not smile at first, but his face softened so that the hard, leathery lines looked warmer somehow. “Find her, bring her back alive and I’ll give you the whole damn bar if you want.

Dragon Ascending Part 14: A KDG Scifi Romance

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Happy Monday everyone!  I hope you’re enjoying Dragon Ascending, book two of the Sentient Ship Series and the continuation of Fury’s journey to find his family. 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 14: Seeking the lost

“The girl’s a scavenger, and not a very good one. Don’t know how she survives on the credits she earns at it.” The filthy man behind a makeshift desk of some kind of fabricated plastic meant to look like wood picked at his ear absently. “I slip her an extra credit or two whenever I can. Proud little thing, though. She won’t let me get away with it if she catches me, and she’s a smart one.”

“He is telling the truth,” Fury spoke inside their heads.

The man continued, looking at whatever it was he had excavated from his ear, “I warned her not to trust the crew of the Dart even to point her to her own ass. No one around here trusts them.”

“But she went and she hasn’t returned.” Manning said.

“If the bastards on the Dart did what she paid them for, credits she couldn’t really afford, then she won’t be home for at least another four days. There are times I go for weeks without seeing her.” He nodded out the filthy reinforced window to the endless heap of junk beyond. “There’s plenty of places around here for a scavenger to scrounge. And that one, she gets sidetracked. Every little thing fascinates her. Too much curiosity by half Len has.” He wiped his excavation finger on his trousers and shifted in a creaky chair. “Hell for all I know she took me at my word and didn’t go with those piss lickers after all. I saw the Dart dust off, but didn’t know if she was on it or not.”

“He is trying to protect her,” Fury said. “He does not know you, so he cannot know if he can trust you.”

The man continued, “All I know is that she was hell bent on getting out to the Sea of Death, fuck knows why. But she could just as easily be somewhere in the salvage heaps trying to make a living, like the rest of us. ”

“She went with them,” Mac said.

“Well shit.” He leaned back in his chair slowly shaking his head. “Then something’s happened to her?”

“We questioned the crew of the Dart,” Manning said, cracking his knuckles to make it evident exactly how that questioning had gone.

“The man’s rugged face cracked a wicked leathery smile. I hope the spunk bags never take another proper piss again.” Then he said. “Ya might talk with Arji over at the Dust Bowl. He usually sees everythin’ that happens. He … well he has a soft spot for her.”

They thanked the man and slipped him a couple credits, which Fury informed them was just politeness on Taklamakan Major, then they left his shop.

“Like a damned inferno out here,” Manning said as they stepped outside into the early evening, and checked their PDs for directions Fury had placed there for them. The place was an absolute maze of rubbish and salvage. It smelled of heat and rust and dust.

“It is much cooler than it would have been had you ‘tranned during the heat of the day,” Fury commented. “I understand the locals call it the Shimmer, and it is such that even a little time out in it could be fatal to those who have not acclimated, and even they venture out as little as possible.”

“And what about these scavengers,” Mac asked, “when do they work? They must have to be out in the heat in order to get to anything but the edges of this dumps.”

“They burrow into tunnels they create for themselves amidst the salvage, and hide in the shade it offers.”

“I would think that would be like stepping out of a fire into the oven,” Manning commented.

“They are very resilient,” Fury replied. “Nevertheless, please hurry,” he added. “I do not like you out in such heat even now.”

 

 

“Not too keen on it myself,” Manning said. “Jesu Vaticanus, why don’t they build underground?”

“They cannot,” came the reply. “The whole planetoid is nothing but shifting sand with a solid nickel core, but too far beneath the surface to tunnel to. What has been built is built upon rubbish, and has to be periodically rebuilt in the event of a bad sandstorm.”

“It’s a wonder our girl survived as long as she did. It’s a wonder anyone does,” Mac said.  “At least the Dust Bowl isn’t far.”

They pushed through a pressure door designed to keep the worst of the heat and grit outside and into the recycled stale, but much cooler air of the only bar in Sandstorm, and it was just barely that. It sported a bar that looked to be built of the salvage material from the nearest dump, as much rust as metal from what Mac could tell. There was a scattering of tables made of the same and a curtained off room to one side, more than likely for hook-ups. For a small fee, no doubt. There might possibly be a whore or two. There almost always was no matter how remote the outpost.

“You pissed today?” The man behind the bar waited expectantly for details.

“Yup, you?” Manning said with only a slight twitch of a smile at the corner of his mouth.

“Not yet. One of those days. Feel like my bladder’s full of sand,” replied the leathery man of indeterminate age behind the bar. “Should spend more credits on water rations and less on smokes, I s’pose.” He nodded to a rolled up stogie of some non-determinant brown substance smoldering away on the rim of a small plate. It looked more looked more like a desiccated clod worm and smelled more like burning garbage than something one would take pleasure in inhaling.

Inside their ears Fury commented that it was a good greeting, that the functionality of kidneys and bladder voiding in a place that always rationed water was essential information and a courtesy to one’s neighbors. Although, he added, the man really should quit with the smokes and drink more water.

“None of their business and TMI if you ask me,” Manning mumbled in response when the man turned his attention to Mac’s bladder, giving her a serious eyeballing, but then he’d eyeballed Manning the same way. Probably you couldn’t be too picky in a place like this, she thought.

“I certainly find such information about the two of you vital in monitoring your health,” came the ships slightly offended response.” Both of his humanoid complement cringed at information they knew but didn’t want to think about, and certainly didn’t want to discuss over their sub-neural coms.

“A pint?” The man asked glancing back and forth between the two. He didn’t ask of what. There was only one choice. When they both nodded, he picked up two dodgy looking glasses. “S’pose you didn’t bring your own?”

When they both gave confused nods, he said, “Cost you extra – me furnishing the glass. Most folks ‘round here bring their own.” He glanced down at the glasses and shrugged. “These ain’t the cleanest, true enough, but it don’t matter much. The hooch’ll kill anythin’ what might make you sick.”

“I am not reassured,” Fury observed. He was sometimes overprotective of his compliment.

As the man drew up the pints that, after their discussion of bodily functions, looked disturbingly like urine, Mac found herself hoping the place had a good waste water filtration system. “Guaranteed to make you piss.” The man set their drinks down on the bar and wiped his hands on a dirty bar towel. Mac noted everything on Taklamakan Major was dirty.

“Bottoms up,” Manning said, and slugged back half the pint in a single go, but then he always did have a high tolerance for bad booze and a cast iron stomach, Mac recalled as she lifted her own glass in salute and sipped at it more cautiously. It was vile, all right, but she’d had worse too. “That’ll put hair on your balls,” Manning said with a shiver.

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.”