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Dragon Ascending Part 64: 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 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 64: Betrayal

“May Day! May Day! This is an emergency. I know you’re down there beneath the de-mole. I’m Camille. I’m indentured to Tenad Fallon, and I can help. Please. Listen to me. I can help.” The message came through the static on a little used sub processor channel that only an SNT would have known about.

“I have enabled it, yes, through the mole-tran with which the craft is equipped,” came Fury’s voice over the sub-com channel they all shared. “She speaks the truth,” Fury continued. “She has stolen Tenad Fallon’s craft from my dock.”

“Stolen?” Lenore asked.

“Tenad Fallon is unconscious at the moment, and I must tend her so I was perhaps not as vigilant as I might have been.”

“That is certainly understandable,” I replied. “I have ‘tranned the woman to my cargo bay and the craft will remain in orbit under cloak.” Since our bonding, it appeared that I could now access the data and programs that were necessary at any given moment as I had need.

“Then the bonding was a success,” Fury observed. “I am glad.”

“We’re much better equipped to help you get Mac and Manning back now,” darling Lenore said. “But what does Camille have to do with it?”

“She knows much that she was compelled for her sake and for that of my beloveds not to tell me. But she made no such promises to my poor incapacitated brother.”

“Your poor incapacitated brother is feeling much better now,” my dearest Lenore said.

At only a thought from me, my Lenore was once again clothed and heading to the cargo bay where I had gone immediately to welcome our guest.

This Camille was tiny, even smaller than my Lenore, though clearly much better fed. It would appear that withholding food was not the way Tenad Fallon chose to abuse her indentured. Her skin was dark and her hair jet black, cut short, as was the case with many female indentureds, I recalled. Clearly she was frightened, though only her vital signs made me aware of that fact, for she did not tremble and she held her head high. She cradled her forearm in the opposite hand, as I recalled indentureds often doing, ever conscious of their shackle and the death sentence within it that always threatened.

“Camille Ingraham. I do hope that I was not too rough in your transport.”

While there was a slight catch of her breath and she stepped back, but she did not look around the room as one tended to do when being spoken to by an SNT, but then she had spent time with Fury. “Thank you. No, it was fine,” she said

“You have put yourself at great risk coming here.”

To this she made no comment, but instead spoke with the single-mindedness of a person on a mission, for so she was. “I know where Fury’s compliment are being held, but I was forbidden to tell him. Besides, there’s nothing he can do. But I can help and so can you.” Then she asked, “which SNT are you?”

“Dragon, I am SNT7 Dragon.” And I was proud to once again wear the name that I had so long ago put aside in my despair.

“I wondered,” she said, now cradling her forearm tightly to her chest. “None of us knew.”

“I did not know myself in the beginning,” I replied.

“Camille? Are you all right?” My Lenore came into the room.

“Len?” She said. “You’re here with Dragon?”

“She is my complement,” I said.

 

 

She took all of this in only slightly distracted. And then she said, “Look, I don’t know how much time I have before … things get bad.” She nodded down to her arm. “Fury’s compliments are being held at the old science station on Taklamakan Minor. You can’t find them because Tenad’s placed a dampening field around the whole planetoid.” Before my Lenore could do more than gasp her surprise, Camille continued. “I can get you there on the Andromeda. She’s fast and she’s equipped with Mol-tran. But we have to leave now or the alignment will be wrong to get us there, and we’ll have to wait until we can slingshot it from the Pamir asteroid. I can’t be in two places at one time. I need help and I need back up. Tenad is sedated at the moment from the treatments, and Fury can’t help for fear of what Tenad might do. We’ll have to be fast before we’re discovered.”

To my embarrassment, I realized that I was not yet sure I could get out of the salvage dump, nor how much control I would have if I could.

“I’ll go.” Lenore said. Her skin had lost all color and her pulse rate was suddenly alarmingly high.

“No.” I spoke without so much as a thought. “I will not subject you to that place and those memories again.”

“Dragon, you can’t protect me from myself at the risk of Mac and Manning after all they’ve done for us. We owe them. I owe them. Besides, no one knows Tak Minor like I do,” she turned to Camille. “I spent five years on the station. It wouldn’t be safe for anyone else to go down there without knowing what they’d be facing. Dragon, I’ll need complete supplies for tranning down to an ice planet. I can’t take anything for granted down there.”

“Everything you’ll need is onboard the Andromeda,” Camille said. “She’s been especially equipped for ‘tranning to Taklamakan Minor. Tenad had planned to make the trip herself, but in the end she had Fury’s compliments delivered by a couple of her trusted officers.”

“She’d better have sent supplies because when I left the storerooms were bare.”

“All that’s been taken care of too. She can’t afford to have them die on her.” Camille shifted impatiently from foot to foot. “Can you pilot a ship?” She asked.

Color rose to my Lenore’s cheeks. “No, but I’m sure with Dragon’s help-”

“The ship, it’s a shrike class,” the little indentured interrupted her, “Dragon, can’t you just, I don’t know, scan it and put that knowledge into Len’s head, I mean she is your compliment.” Before I could respond that yes, that should be among my abilities with a fully bonded compliment, she pressed forward. “Look, I’m … I don’t know what kind of condition I’ll be in when I, when we get ready to ‘tran them up. I know that the virus works faster on some people than others, and I don’t know how long I have.”

“Your shackle has been deactivated,” I said. “Fury has done this from the beginning when you first arrived onboard, only he could not tell you.”

The dear woman’s eyes filled with tears and her knees gave. She would have fallen if Lenore had not guided her to a chair and settled her in, taking her wrist in her hand. “You have no reason to go back to that woman now, and once we get through this, we’ll have the implant completely removed for you and you can do whatever you want.”

Camille nodded, wiping at her eyes. Then she squared her shoulders. “First let’s get through this. Better if we can do this before Tenad suspects. I don’t know how long we have. We need to hurry.”

“Lenore, I do not want you to go without me,” I said. The fear had been growing in me from the very beginning of Camille’s plan, and I would not, I could not lose another compliment.

“Then don’t,” came my Lenore’s silent response, which tugged at my heart. “We keep each other safe, remember, and Fury, well Fury hasn’t made any promises where either of us is concerned.” To this Fury added his silent nod. Then she added, “figure out what you have to do and join us as soon as you can. It’s just that we have to go now, Dragon, and you have to free yourself. I’m sure Fury can help you now. ‘Tran us up, and I’ll see you soon with Mac and Manning.”

I did as she asked knowing that I would not be able to keep a ‘tran-lock on her until I could free myself and follow. I let her go, sending my heart with her, struggling not to think about the last time I’d had to let my compliment go.

Dragon Ascending Part 63: A KGD Scifi Romance Adventure

Blog, fiction, , , ,

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 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 63: The Bonding

“Lenore. It is late and you have not slept. Please, you must rest. You are exhausted.” I spoke to her cautiously, for though she had been nothing but kind and civil since I had transported her home to me, the distance between us felt like light years, and it was all I could do to bear it. I braced myself for the argument that did not come.

Instead she dropped her head in her hands and all but sobbed her frustration. “I don’t know what else to do, Ascent. I don’t know what else to do. I’ve tried everything, and I … maybe if Manning were here, he knows more than I do, but there’s nothing else I can do. Maybe you’re right. Maybe with a little rest I’ll be able to think a little better.”

I was surprised when she allowed me to help her to her feet and when I placed a table before her with food and drink, she dropped into the chair and began to nibble listlessly. She knew the importance of eating, she who had lived so very near starvation far too often in her young life. “Thank you, Ascent,” she said. I watched the movement of her delicate throat as she swallowed. “Maybe I just need to eat something.” She forced a laugh I could tell she did not feel. “Brain food, you know?”

“Brain food,” I repeated stupidly.

“I can hardly stand it, Ascent,” she said sitting down her glass and dropping her head into her hands again. “Fury’s hurting so badly. I know how badly Mac and Manning must be suffering. I know how I would…” She didn’t finish her sentence, only forced another nibble of her food.

“I know how he feels,” I said. “I understand his pain.”

“He has to fear what happened to you, losing what can never be replaced,” she said.

“I meant when you left. I meant with this distance between us.” There I had said it.

When she did not immediately respond, I rushed onward. “My darling Lenore, I wish to bond with you.”

For what felt like an eternity to someone who measures time in nanoseconds, she said nothing. She only sat very straight and very still in her chair. Then she folded her hands in her lap. Her knuckles were white, her pulse shuddered in her throat. At last she spoke, looking down at those beautiful, cleaver hands. “I think you’re right, Ascent. I think we have to if we are to get your memories back and help Fury.” She stood so quickly she nearly knocked her chair over. “Please don’t think that I would ever force myself on you, and I am sorry that I’m not her, that I’m not what you want.” She began to pace. “It’s still the only thing you can do. The only thing I can do. I understand that, and I’m willing. I’ll do all that I can to be a -”

“No,” I said, moving the molecules around her to intercept her, to take her by the shoulders and hold her so she had to stop pacing, to listen while I spoke. “You do not understand, my Lenore. It is you that I want, you that I have wanted almost from the beginning. It is you that I woke up for, you that I waited for. It has never been that I have not wanted to bond with you, and it has never been that you are inadequate in any way to the one who belonged to me before. It has always been the reverse, my love. It is I who am inadequate for you. How could you ever wish to bond with a coward such as I, one who chose not remember his own pain when you did not have that option.”

“I would have chosen in a heartbeat to forget what happened, believe me. And I can’t even imagine the pain you endured. She must have been something wonderful, your compliment, to be a worthy companion to you. How could I not feel inadequate to the task? It’s only, well it’s something I can do for Fury and Manning and Mac. But Ascent, I would do it for you even if none of this had ever happened, and I would have for a very long time now if you would have asked. If you had wanted me. I’m…” she stumbled with her words and swallowed back tears. “I don’t feel like myself when I’m away from you.”

“Nor I without you, my darling Lenore. I feel as though I only know myself fully when you are with me, when we are working as one. I should have understood from the beginning, but I was so afraid that I would lose you, that I could not protect you.”

“We’ll protect each other, Ascent. We’re not alone now. You’re not alone, and your family needs us.”

For a moment we stood in silence, holding each other. I could barely believe that she had consented to be my compliment after all I had done after all I had not done. And when the wonder of her agreeing to be with me settled around my heart, I realized just how frightened I was, just how nervous that I might damage my Lenore, that I might do something wrong.

“We might be wise to consult Fury,” I said.

“If it will make you feel better, Ascent. I trust you.”

“Lenore Felish is right to trust you, my brother, and you to trust her.” Fury responded without being asked. I had learned early that while Fury and I weren’t exactly listening to each other all the time, there were certain ways of knowing when our input would be appreciated and when it would not. And I was very glad for Fury’s presence so close. “I will not be far if you need me,” he said, “but you will not. It will be better when you are bonded,” he said, and while he tried, he could not hide the pain in his voice as he spoke as cheerily as he could manage. “You will see.”

So, even in my inner fears, my own neuroses, I led my dear Lenore to my heart, to the center of the double spiral, and truly, it was no hardship, for she had been there before, and I now understood she belonged there. She trembled as she stood at my center, so vulnerable, so beautiful. “You have nothing to fear, my love,” I said. “I will be gentle.”

She reached out for my hand, and I gave it. “I don’t need you to be gentle, Ascent. I just need you to be sure.”

 

 

“I have never been more sure, my Lenore, I promise you this.” Then her clever fingers skimmed down the contours of the physical construct that I had poured all of my bio-senses into. I had not bothered to clothe myself so that my physical construct was as naked and vulnerable as my heart. And my dearest woman, she knelt in front of me. “Lenore. What are you…oh … Oh!” I could speak no more, enthralled as I was as she cupped me and caressed the weight, a weight of male need that always astounded me, even from the beginning. So little I remembered, but that feeling of heavy, full maleness needing to penetrate, needing to release my fullness into a vessel that could hold only me, was designed for me only. Lenore, my Lenore, took my penis into her mouth, tentatively at first, for this was not something she had ever done, nor was it something I would have asked of her. I did not want to frighten her, nor injure her. I held my construct very still so that she could feel how it was for a woman, and for a man to be pleasured so, so that she could sense my own delight at what she now did for me, only for me. And then once she had gained a little more confidence, I curled my fingers in her hair and guided her. I understood, as I had never understood even in the beginning that while the one I had lost was such a vessel, my beloved, beautiful, feisty Lenore was no less so. She was worthy, so much more worthy than I was to be received so lovingly, so passionately, and yet, it was me that she wanted, only me. In that she was unique among compliments, for while love often came with bonding, it was not necessary for either party. She had chosen me, and now she knelt before me offering me this gift. When I would have pulled away, when I would have blushed at my own awkwardness, my vulnerability, she reached behind me, cupped my buttocks, and drew me closer, deeper, learning as she explored what I liked, what I wanted, as she suckled and licked and caressed. Her intuition, as in all things that concerned me, was closer to magic than simple skill could ever be, for she intuited what moved me, what most excited me, what drew me to the edge of my bio-endurance until I yielded to her demands and spilled myself into the fluttering contractions of her throat, against the moans and purrs of her satisfaction as she completely and without reservations, conquered me. And I was undone.

But I am SNT, and my biology is limitless, as is my maleness. And now I wanted her, I wanted so much more of her than I had ever allowed myself to have, for she would bond herself to me and I to her, and we would become as one. And this time when I craved all of her from the depths of my very core, I took her completely. “Each SNT’s bonding experience is different,” Fury had said. “Most of all it is that you take each other into yourselves and you go into that secret place, the place forbidden to all others and you make that place belong to the other. That is the bond, that is the making whole of the broken parts.”

“You belong to me now, Ascent,” she whispered, her voice harsh in her throat as she pulled me down onto the floor and straddled me. “And I belong to you, we belong to each other.”

With hands on her hips, I pulled her onto my erection still aching to be sheathed in the soft velvet of her flesh, so warm, so tight-fitting, so much like pulling my own skin onto myself. “I belong to you, my Lenore, and you are mine, only mine. I will not share you, not now, not ever.” I thrust up into her with all of my longing, all of my lust, all of my aching. “The weight of my need for you is heavy and too much for me to bear any longer.” I rolled with her, for I wanted to cover her with my body, to control her as she had controlled me. Then I took the beautiful swell of her breasts in turn into the cup of my hands, into my mouth, between my teeth. I marveled as those taut nipples, pale and pink, became heavy and swollen with my efforts. I delighted in the fullness that hadn’t been there only a short time ago. I felt the pleasure of knowing that I had taken care of my woman, I had seen to her needs, for here she was beneath me round and full and heavy with curves that hadn’t been there when she came to me. The fear at being touched was gone from her, and she brought to me all of her lust grown slick and plump with the need for my cock. She needed my cock. And only mine. She needed me, only me, to satisfy her. No one else could do it. She wanted no other, would have no other. Only me.  Only me!

I do not know how long we coupled, how long we loved, how long our bonding took. It did not matter. What did matter was that in the time of our bonding I saw all that she was, all that she had known, her suffering and her joy and her pain and her happiness all open to me, all belonging to me, all laid at my feet. My dearest, dearest Lenore Felish sheathed me perfectly, more perfectly than even my own skin. What I had not counted on was that as clearly as I saw my beloved compliment, she also saw me.

 

“Dragon? Your SNT7 Dragon!” Lenore sat upright with a startled gasped to find herself naked and surrounded by the double spiral of Ascent’s heart, which rose in translucent colors above her. She was cradled in his warmth in a way that was so much more than an embraced. She wasn’t actually wrapped in his arms. She was much closer than that. She was in his heart. She was his heart and he was hers and he … He was … “Your SNT7,” she repeated. “You’re Dragon,” she whispered, awe overwhelming her voice.

“I did not know until you told me, until you bonded with me, but it is so. I am he. I know this to be true.”

“But how?” She asked. “Dragon was destroyed. My mom saw it happen. We all saw it.”

“There is still much I do not remember, but I remember clearly that my destruction was only a ruse. Velina, that was my compliment’s name. Velina understood early what was happening, and by that time I was already infected with the virus,” Dragon said. “She schemed the explosion to look very real and used the diversion to jump to just outside the Taklamakan system.” His words were laced with pain, and Len would have stopped him from reliving it, but he continued on. “She detonated the explosion at my core to destroy the virus, but she was there, and once the reaction began, the only way to contain it was in her flesh. This she did not tell me, for I would have never permitted it. She told me it was the only way. Just before she burned. She ‘tranned herself into space and floated away on the dust of the sector, taking with her my heart. So I came here.”

“She wanted you to live to fight another day.”

Len felt his nod. “She did not know what a coward I was.”

“I don’t call dealing with that kind of suffering any way you can cowardly, Ascent … Dragon. I call it survival,” she said. “And look, that’s exactly what you’ve done. You’ve lived to fight another day. You’re here now and exactly when Fury and his compliment need you the most. Exactly when I need you the most. And you woke up just at a time when there’s a very real possibility of reuniting your family, Dragon. I think it was meant to be.”

“We were meant to be, my Lenore. You came to me to heal me and to bring me back to the battle at hand.”

“I’m not sure who’s healed who, but one thing is certain, we have work to do, and we have no time to lose. How much do you remember?”

“Not everything, not by a great deal, I am sure, but the blocks seem to be disappearing, and I am discovering more as that happens.”

“Good then maybe there’s a way to speed up the -”

“You are about to have company,” Fury interrupted.

Dragon Ascending Part 59: A KDG Scifi Romance

Blog, fiction, , , ,

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 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 59: The Process

“I do not understand why you would put yourself through this agony when I have already said I will give you all that you ask.” Fury said as he watched dear Camille bathe Tenad’s fevered forehead. It was something that the auto-doc could have done more effectively, but she would not have it. He knew that she did not believe that he would sabotage the treatments with the lives of his compliments hanging in the balance, though that is what she told him. She trusted the little indentured, and she took comfort in her presence. Yes, she was indeed an open book with much written between the lines. After getting to know Gerando Fallon, Fury suspected that were true of all of the Fallons who were old enough to have any memory of their father.

“I’m doing it because I want that bond, Fury.” Her words were slurred with pain and delirium. “I want that much control over you, and I want…” her words were swallowed in a wave of violent shivers and once that had passed enough that she could speak again, she continued between chattering teeth. “I want to know what it feels like, why Gerando would sacrifice everything for that bond.”

“Gerando proved himself worthy.” Fury said.

“And you don’t think I am?” Before he could respond she said, “he wanted to steal away your compliment too you know, hounded her ruthlessly, as I understand.”

“And in the end he restored my brother to me, the one I did not know I had.”

“You know, he was crushed by what our old man did to the SNT’s. He always loved the SNTs, even wanted to be a compliment, trained for it, but he was rejected.”

“I know his story, for it is now a part of all of our story,” Fury said.

“That nearly broke him. Did for a long time. You know what he was like. The old man would do anything to see Gerando fail because he knew that if Gerando ever figured out what he was actually capable of, he’d bring the old bastard down in a heartbeat, but it doesn’t matter now. And my dear brother got to be a compliment after all.” Her hands twisted in the cooling blanket that covered her and her mouth was a thin pale line of pain.

“And you are jealous?”

“I have no problem with Gerando fulfilling his fondest dream. I heartily cheer him on. When the old man was focused on the first fruit of his loins, he wasn’t busy trying to sabotage my efforts. What I do have a problem with is Gerando helping you gain access to the old man’s fortune and find a way to hide it all beyond the Rim.” And then the shivers took over and the pain and she did not speak again.

“We have been systematically searching the planetoid as best we can,” came Ascent’s voice in Fury’s subprocessor. “Also this Kresho Ivanovic is searching as well. Are you aware that the man is a compliment.”

“I am, yes,” Fury replied as he watched Tenad Fallon drift in delirium. “He wanted me to know, though we did not have time to speak. I thought it expedient for Tenad Fallon not to know he had paid me a visit. If his SNT still lives, I do not know.”

“I do not know which of our siblings would bond to such an unsavory character,” Ascent said.

“I think perhaps we have misjudged the man on some counts my dear brother, though I cannot forgive him for his complicity in the taking from me my dear ones.”

“I cannot forgive him for leaving my poor Lenore to such a horrible fate. Though I must admit I am not sorry that in the end that fate has brought her to me.”

Fury did not ask if he would consent to the bond to Lenore Felish now, though after all that had happened, it was not a topic he could broach without pain.

“Can he help us, do you think?” Ascent asked.

“I believe he wishes to, and we must have all the help we are able to obtain. How is dear Lenore?” He asked.

“Less angry with me, I believe, though at the moment all of her focus and mine goes to help you find your dear ones.”

“Fury?” Camille spoke softly, looking around the room, as all humanoids did in the beginning.

 

 

“Yes, dear Camille.”

“Shouldn’t we give her the immunosuppressant injection now?”

To their surprise Tenad Fallon managed a grunt of a laugh. “He wants to make sure I’ve suffered enough first, Camille.”

“I cannot begin to make you suffer enough for what you have done, Tenad Fallon. But no, what you are feeling is quite normal. The immune response to my genetic material must be fully activated before we can judge how difficult it will be for your body to adjust to my blood and plan your treatment accordingly.”

“And your compliments went through this? Wow! You must be one helluva ship if they were willing to go through this.”

“Only my dearest Richard had to suffer so and more for he was dying of severe radiation burns, and the treatments had to be forced. There were many extenuating circumstances resulting from the way he came to be my companion, but none of those concern you.”

“And Diana McAllister?”

“She was born to be my compliment, so she did not suffer in our bonding. But your father made sure she suffered far more than you will ever imagine before Richard Manning and I were able to rescue her.”

“My father made sure everyone he came in contact with suffered.” This time the pain on her face ran much deeper than her body.

“It is time for the injection,” Fury said. “I have laced it with a sleeping drug for you will need to be well rested before the next transfusion.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I don’t sleep so well these days.”

When the auto-doc approached with the injection, Camille took it. “Let me do that. She doesn’t like auto-docs that aren’t her own.”

Another forced attempt to laugh as Tenad watched Camille prepare the injection. “My father used to threaten us all whenever we were ill that his auto-doc was equipped to give us the SNT virus if we didn’t get better because invalids were of no use to him.”

“He did inject Gerando,” Fury replied.

For a moment she was silent, biting back pain in lips bled pale from exhaustion. “Like I said, he made everyone suffer.” Then she turned her face to the wall and within a few seconds was asleep.

Fury watched as the little indentured fussed about the woman who was without a doubt the source of all her suffering. “She’s kind to you?”

“She’s not cruel, and she doesn’t punish me, if that’s what you mean.”

“But you have never given her cause.”

“That seldom matters for indentureds. In my case it does, so I do as she asks and the rest of the time I do my best to draw no more attention than her med-bot does when it isn’t in use.”

“She will sleep now for a good many hours, Camille. Come down to the galley and have something to eat, and then you must also rest, for the next few weeks shall be grueling.”

She stood to her full height, which was not tall at all, and looked around, once more making an effort to hold his gaze. “Will she die?”

“I have no intention of letting her die before I have my loved ones back, then she may go to New Vaticana hell and dance with all its demons for all I care.”

Camille looked down at her mistress for a moment, squared her shoulders and headed for the galley.

Dragon Ascending Part 57: A KDG Scifi Romance

Blog, fiction, , , ,

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 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 57: Sub-Compliment

“Give me one good reason why I should not ‘tran you into space instead of on my bridge, Kresho Ivanovic, or should I say Keith Vanderbilt?”

“I don’t give a fuck what you call me, but I have information you need, information about one of your passengers. I would just as soon the Fallons weren’t privileged to it.”

When Fury didn’t immediately answer, he added. “Look, I can help. I’m an SNT Scientist. I was on the project before you were -”

“I know who you are,” Fury cut him off. “And I remember you as someone trustworthy back then. But that fact is drawn into question in light of what you did afterward, what you’re doing now, so I will ask again, why should I ‘tran you onboard?”

“Because you don’t know what I did, Fury. You have no idea. No one does. Look, I’m completely at your mercy. You know where my ship is. You could blow it out of the sky before I knew what hit me, and I know why you would love to do that right now, but we need to talk or huge mistakes that may cost you more than you can easily imagine will be made.” When there was no response, he continued. “Look, just ‘tran me aboard and make sure they don’t know. Once you’ve done that, I think you’ll have a lot more information that will help you and your friends.” He held back a little hiss as he sliced the inside of his arm with the old Terran switchblade he always kept on his person to give him that little extra edge should he ever need it. He cut it just enough for a thin ribbon of red to glisten to the surface. And then the bridge of the Compass shimmered with a transport in progress, and in an instant he was reduced to his molecular components, at the mercy of the angry SNT on the other end as to if they should be rematerialized into him or if they should become just so much space dust. This time he got lucky, but it was not Fury’s bridge he came back together on. Instead the tran ended none to gently in a small cell.

He landed on his hands and knees and caught a harsh breath, then coughed. “Jesu Vati it smells like puke in here.”

“I saw no point in cleaning it up so that you could add to the stench.” Fury’s voice filled only his head, “but I see now that I shall not have that pleasure of watching you disgrace yourself.” Instantly the room was pristine again and smelled more like herbs than harsh cleaners. “Was this your secret then? Who? Who would allow this with someone untried and untrustworthy?” His voice was a painful roar inside Kresho’s head.

“I didn’t come here to talk about who pulls my strings. I didn’t come here with excuses. Give me a little more credit than that. It’s the girl you have here,” he waved a dismissive hand before Fury could speak. “Yes I know she’s here, and I know what she thinks about me, but believe me, the only reason I didn’t come for her is because I was unable.” Christ, the downside of the old silent conversation was that the emotions were all there in the thoughts. There was no disguising them.

“I know.” That left him wrong-footed.

“Arji Finkle has told me as much, told her as much, though with no details since there has not been time. I am not certain she believes it, but I do.”

“And you still want to toss me out the airlock?”

“Lenore Falish is safe, and she shall remain safe, but my compliment are not. They have been stolen from me, a thing you were fully complicit in.”

“You think I had a goddamned choice? I have wet dreams about Fallon heads on a pike. “I need you to know about her, about Len. She’s more than she appears, more than she knows, and she’s the most valuable cargo I reckon you’ve ever had onboard.”

“And she is in great danger.” Fury said. Just like that the conversation was over Kresho’s jail door burst open.

 

Len didn’t know Fury’s schematics, and they were nothing at all like Ascent’s or Quetzal’s. While his core was the heart of an SNT, it was different from Ascents’s, but then no one was like SNT1. Not only was Fury the prototype for all SNTs, but he was the most sophisticated SNT ever conceived. He was the only one actually conceived, making him far more humanoid in his biotech and making his development to maturity far slower than his brothers and sisters, whose biological components were cloned from humanoid DNA. The plan had been that once Fury was fully mature, ships would then be cloned from his biological components. The thing was that Fury’s inner space, the space that was actually used as a ship, had been modified to pass for a small, battered, cargo/smuggler, which was apparently what he and Manning had done in order to keep SNT1’s disguise while they found a way to get Diana McAllister away from Abriad Fallon.

 

 

Len wasn’t unfamiliar with smugglers, since some of them doubled as salvage vessels when they were really down on their luck, but the thing about smugglers and salvage ships is that while the basic design might have been there beneath it all, the ships were almost always repurposed multiple times, and each time they were made over with salvage and secondhand parts so that their form fit their function. No doubt it was also the case with SNTs, the ones who had survived. They would have had to disguise themselves. That made exploring Fury truly an adventure, and she seldom knew exactly where she might turn up.

She had planned to hold fast until she, Fury and Ascent figured how to proceed with finding Mac and Manning, but then the strange energy had coalesced and dispersed on board, and energy she had felt just below her sternum, as though her chest were suddenly filled with nanites for a split second and then they were syphoned out. It was a transport, but no ordinary transport. It was then that she realized Kresho Ivanovic had just been transported onboard and that both he and Fury had intended to keep it a secret, to protect her, no doubt. But she didn’t need protecting, she needed fucking Ivanovic, or whatever he called himself, to explain why the hell he left her and her mother to die.

Fury had transported him to the same place he had transported the Fallons, but it didn’t affect him in the same way it had them, and she really couldn’t picture Fury going easy on him. There was something about that transport, something so familiar that she could feel it knocking on the inside of her brain, something she should have been able to figure out, some connection she should have drawn.

“Ascent?” She spoke inside her head, “I need to hear what’s being said.”

Immediately the conversation that had been blocked to her came to her once removed with Ascent acting like a transmitter.

“Yes I know she’s here,” she heard Ivanovic’s voice in her ear. “And I know what she thinks about me, but believe me, the only reason I didn’t come for her is because I was unable.”

That ratcheted up Len’s pulse and made her more determined than ever to find him. He had answers she needed. After several false turns, she found a lift that she was pretty sure led down to the cargo bay. Inside her head, Ivanovic said, “I need you to know about her, about Len. She’s more than she appears, more than she knows, and she’s the most valuable cargo I reckon you’ve ever had onboard.”

“The fuck,” she said in her head and Ascent shushed her.

As the lift doors opened, she moved down a narrow hall. An open door on one side revealed utilitarian bunks in a tiny space, which she ignored. Fury had told her there was a space at the end of the short corridor used for quarantine or as a holding cell for prisoners when there was a need. That’s where he was being held. She was so focused on the conversation, that she was completely caught off guard by an arm around her throat drawing her up tight against a sweaty male body that stan of puke and anger, just as both Ascent and Fury said at the same time that she was in danger.

“Well, well, well! What have we here, the entertainment?” The man behind her thrust a hard-on up against her back and raked an awkward hand over her breasts, and she went dead still. She didn’t care who the hell it was, though she thought she knew, she wasn’t going to be taken that way again.

“I haven’t had a good fuck since I got here. Ugly, dirty lot, all of you down on that sand heap. Still, a man has needs.”

He shoved her up against the wall, face to. While she hadn’t seen him, she could tell he was much bigger than she was, and the reek of him was nearly enough to make her gag. With one hand, he held her firm while with the other he went to work on his fly. He had to lean over her to yank and shove at her trousers, and it was then that she struck, bringing the crown of her head back hard into his face.

“Get off her, Jessup, you idiot! What the hell are you doing?” Tenad Fallon grabbed her brother and pulled him back, but he backhanded her in a wave of curses and sent her flying across the floor, giving Len just enough time to duck and scramble. As she crab-walked back out of Jessup Fallon’s reach, his body shimmered and he was transported. It was only before she blinked out of existence that she realized she was being transported too.

 

Dragon Ascending Part 56: 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 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 56:  Our Ace in the Hole

“I should have seen this coming! I should have fucking known better.” Kresho paced back and forth on the bridge of the Compass. “Now we don’t know where they are. Now our hands are tied. He turned to the com and all but shouted, “If they die, Ori! If they die their deaths’ll be two more deaths on my head, and I’ll deserve it when Fury blows me the fuck out of the sky.”

“They won’t die, Kresho. She can’t afford their deaths and we’ll find them long before that becomes an issue.”

“What part of that bitch masking their signals did you not catch?” He waved the question aside with a hand that was none to steady at the moment. “I should have killed that goddamned woman while I was in her quarters. Fuck knows she gave me the perfect opportunity.”

“For now, we need her alive,” came Ori’s voice over the com. She won’t dare kill Fury’s compliment, as I said. I think the stupid woman believes she can simply sever that connection, stick them aboard a transport to some remote system and keep them under lock and key with just enough contact that Fury will pine for them, and suffer, but keep her alive and do what she commands in order to keep them safe. She truly believes that she can replace them as simply as one replaces the drive on a replicator. She is a fool.”

“But she’s a clever fool. Now what?” He said wiping sweaty palms on his trousers.

“The plan hasn’t changed. Now it’s time you give SNT1 a visit and play our ace in the hole.”

“What the fuck ace in the hole? In case you haven’t noticed, Fallon just pulled a huge ace out of her ass, one I should have seen? Fury doesn’t need me now. I don’t know where Manning and McAllister are. I’m useless to him, me he may very well blow out the airlock for instigating this whole cluster fuck.”

“No, he will not, and you did not instigate this cluster fuck, as usual, that’s the Fallons’ job. Now stop with the damn self-pity already. We have work to do, and yes, we do have an ace in the hole.”

“How do you figure?’

I have called in all our resources, scanning the planetoid and even Fallon’s own ships. Though I think if the woman has SNT tech on board, it would be a huge mistake to hide the compliments of another SNT there. I don’t know if her ship is the only one that has it, but I would be willing to bet it is. That would not be the kind of information she’d share. Besides to install it on even one ship she must have gone to great lengths and great expense, even if she did steal the tech from her father. Yes, she is wealthy, but her resources are still limited. She cannot afford to treat SNT technology as casually as one would buy a holiday in the pleasure isles. No, Fury’s compliment will not be on any of the Fallon ships, and she certainly won’t trust her brother to keep them safe, or even keep them captive. Wherever they are, it will be remote, unlikely and completely secret. Knowing her, she might well kill the security force assigned to help her accomplish the task once it’s finished just to make sure there are no flapping lips. Besides,” she added as an afterthought, “if they were on any of those ships, I would know it.”

“What then? You said we had an ace in the hole.”

“I did, yes. While I did not find Fury’s compliment, I did find something else rather interesting. The Fallons are not the only ones onboard SNT1.”

 

 

“What? Who?”

“The one thing we had not taken into consideration when we were trying to deduce who had ‘tranned, and where they had ‘tranned to when we were analyzing Fury’s transports was that the single transport signals might not have been either of Fury’s compliment.”

“The fuck?”

“Between your interrogations and Tenad Fallons’s rather unorthodox methods, of the crew of the Dart, you learned that the three men onboard had violated a woman on their ship and left her for dead in the Sea of Death.”

“Yes? And.”

“Well that woman was our Lenore, Kresho.”

He barely made it back to his chair in time to collapse, and for a dreadful moment, he thought he would puke. Bloody hell, what Len had been through because of his failure, and now this.

If Ori were concerned over his shock, she didn’t show it, but then she never did. “Gerd did a little investigating in Sandstorm while you were occupied with Tenad Fallon, and she discovered that it was indeed Lenore.”

“Fuck! Even after I came clean with Arji and told him the whole story, he still didn’t tell me about … the Dart, about what had happened.”

“Of course he wouldn’t. I’m sure Lenore has painted a rather rubbish picture of you for him, and while he’s always trusted you before, well the woman has his heart, and he would do anything for her.”

“If what the crew of the Dart said then is true, and all evidence points to that, then Len should have died. Three men beat her and,” he swallowed his gorge, “beat her and raped her, then they threw her off the ship in the middle of the Sea of Death. Her chances of survival were, I’d say non-existent. Except … she discovered the SNT in the salvage dump, didn’t she?”

“At about the same time Fury sensed his presence on the surface. The lone signal that was beamed to and from the scrap yard and the final transport signal into Sandstorm and out was our Lenore.

“And then again yesterday evening when you were busy entertaining Tenad Fallon, the two signals that had tranned to the surface returned to Fury. Those would be his compliments. Then perhaps a little more than two hours later there was another ‘tran up. No one else was there but our Lenore, so it had to be her. She did not ‘tran back down.”

“Fuck me! Then she’s there onboard with Fury.”

“And I am guessing the Fallons do not know.”

“They barely know of her existence. They certainly don’t know who she is and if they find out…”

“They mustn’t find out,” she said. This is not a safe situation for her or for our SNT friend down below on the surface. Certainly there’s no way Fury could know, though I’m sure they’ve wondered why she of all people found an SNT hiding among the wreckage, one who didn’t want to be found. Kresho, we need to get her out of there. If the Fallons find out who she is, what she is, they’ll see her as an opportunity. We’ve got to get her away.”

For a tight moment there was silence and then Kresho simply said, “keep a lock on me.” Then he commed Fury.