Tag Archives: A KDG Scifi Romance Adventure

Dragon Ascending Part 57: 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 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

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 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.

Dragon Ascending Part 54: A KGD 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 54: Respite and Advice

Once she was showered and changed, she found Mac in the galley. “Fury’s a good cook,” she called over her shoulder, scanning through the replicator in the galley. I highly recommend the New Roma carbonara. I swear sometimes I think Fury has a time machine and he’s travelled back to actually taste some of these things. But then he tells me he really can’t experience taste. Not sure I believe him though.” She scrolled through the menu. “If you’re in the mood for something sweet, just plain old chocolate pudding is the best.”

“I’m not really hungry, though I’m sure it’s all delicious.”

“Do not be ridiculous,” Fury interjected. “You must keep up your strength. You are spent after today’s efforts. Besides, if you do not eat, I will think you do not like my cooking. I am very neurotic, as Diana Mac has said.”

Len couldn’t hold back a chuckle. “I would say there’s nothing at all wrong with your sense of humor, Fury.” Suddenly the galley was filled with a delicious scent and Manning placed a steaming plate of pasta before her.

“Guaranteed to make you feel better,” he said.

“While Ascent has been doing his best, it is not difficult to tell that you are still thinner than you should be,” Fury said.

“Trust me, our weights and measures are the least disturbing of what an SNT keeps track of behind our backs,” Manning said rolling his eyes.

Fury made a rude sound, and his compliment flipped him off. But the smell won out in the end, and she found after the first bite that she most definitely was hungry. Mac and Manning chowed down on their own pasta and the conversation flowed easily and relaxed with a lot of laughter, full of stories of their own adventures together, and her heart ached to think of how that might have been with Ascent, if he hadn’t pushed her away.

Later that evening they moved up into the observation deck while Fury pointed out distance systems and shared interesting facts. “I want to leave,” Len said, while staring at the distant smudge of the Omega Galaxy out beyond the rift.

“And you shall as soon as Ascent is operational again,” Fury said. “The two of you shall then probably see much more of the galaxy than you would like if we are able to engage you in our efforts to find the rest of our family.”

“I’ll stay until Ascent has his memory back and he’s able to leave on his own, but then, I’m leaving,” she didn’t give anyone room to respond. “I’ve had a little time to explore the salvage dump, and I’ve managed to scavenge parts and tech worth enough to buy passage on a respectable ship out beyond the Rim. From there well, I’m not afraid to work. I learn fast. I just need you to ‘tran me into Sandstorm, or maybe better Sunward. I’d have a better chance of getting a ship there. I would pay,” she added quickly.”

For a moment there was silence. Mac and Manning looked each other but said nothing. It was Fury who spoke. “You do not understand, Lenore Falish. If you leave Ascent, he will never regain his memory nor the will to leave the salvage yard. You are his compliment in all but the proper bonding needed to make you both more powerful.”

“I’m not his compliment.” She kept her voice steady as she could, promising herself she would neither get emotional nor would she cry. “I’m an uneducated salvage rat, nothing more, and he’s made it abundantly clear he won’t bond with me.”

There was another long moment of silence and Mac spoke. “I told you that SNTs are neurotic, and I meant it when I said you have no idea just how much so.”

“I nearly lost both of my compliments before we bonded, not because of anything they had done wrong,” Fury said, and Len swore she could feel the entire ship vibrating with his passion. “You cannot imagine the parallels between your story and ours, Lenore Felish. “I was born too early, and I did not have a bonded compliment when I was sent out into the world, though one had been set aside for me, had been created especially for me, for becoming my partner, my love, when my time came to be born, and she was old enough to bond with me.”

“Mac.” Len said.

“I was sent out without her, and I believed that I would forever be a fugitive, always to wander aimlessly and alone. I do not know if you can imagine what such a deprivation means to an SNT.”

“I know what it’s like to be alone, believe me, I do.” She bit her lower lip to keep it from trembling.

“And yet you strove far beyond all expectations, far beyond humanoid power to survive against all odds, Lenore Felish. I, like our dear Ascent, finished the one mission I was assigned and saw the futility of it all as the SNT dream was destroyed before my eyes and the blame for it all was placed on me and my remaining brothers and sisters. I did not want to live. I had found a remote place in space to shut down, just as Ascent has, and it was then that I happened upon the Pegasus with its distress signal, one life sign, and that just barely. That was my dear Richard Manning. His death saved my life.”

“You were able to bring him back?” Len spoke around the hammering of her heart in her throat.

“In a manner of speaking. You see I was new and untried and I did not know what to do to save him. I only knew that I could not bear to be alone. I made many mistakes in bringing him back, and there was not a day that went by that I did not feel my own inadequacy, even though Richard Manning never saw it, never condemned me, never left me to wallow in my own inadequacy. He gave me a purpose and became my companion. In spite of all that I had caused him to suffer.”

“We weren’t compatible, you see,” Manning took up the story. “I was a smuggler, not connected even remotely to the SNT program. I had spent the last three years of my life shackled in a triaxe mine. My body rejected Fury’s genetic soup over and over again. I don’t know how many times I died.”

 

 

“Five,” Fury said, and this time Len was certain she felt the whole ship vibrate. “And when I could not bring him back…”

“When he couldn’t bring me back, when I finally died for good, Fury did the unimaginable. He created a physical matrix for my consciousness so that I would have one last chance and so that I would not reject his nano-blood.”

“I made many mistakes for which Richard Manning has suffered,” Fury said. “I created the tether that binds him to me too short, and he is somewhat limited to the amount of time he can be away from me.”

“Not so much anymore,” Manning said with a shrug. “Not now that we’re properly bonded and Mac is here. You see it was Mac who was Fury’s intended,” Manning said.

“And you didn’t ever feel inadequate, jealous of her?”

“I might have felt inadequate, I mean I was a smuggler, and this goddess was conceived from the beginning to be Fury’s compliment. But I fell in love with her early on in our efforts to recover her.”

“That took a lot of years,” Mac said with a shiver.

“You were indentured to Abriad Fallon.”

She nodded. “Fury and Manning followed me quietly all around the galaxy until they had the opportunity to take me back.”

“Even then, she did not know that she was my intended compliment,” Fury said. “I kept it from her.”

“Why?” Len said, almost feeling the adoration between the three of them as if it were for her, and god, she wished it was.

“Because, dear Lenore Falish,” Fury said, “I felt inadequate.”

“But why? You’re SNT1, you’re amazing.”

“I feared I would do to her what I had done to Richard Manning, and in our bonding I would make the tether too tight. I feared my own inadequacy, that I did not know how to be an SNT, that so much of my education was missing, even though by then we had reconnected with Professor Keen, who helped me regain so much, and still I doubted. You see, Lenore Felish, I felt unworthy of her, and there are times that I still do, unworthy of both my compliments. I nearly lost my darling Diana Mac because of my own fears, for you see, she felt it was my doubts of her that had kept me from telling her the truth when, indeed, it was quite the opposite.”

“Ascents’s only memories are of loss and pain and of the fact that his beloved compliment is gone, that he couldn’t keep her safe.” Manning said. “I doubt you have any idea what that does to a male ego, any male ego, when he can’t keep the one he loves safe. It doesn’t matter at all if there was nothing he could do. He feels inadequate.”

Len turned away and stared up at the sky through the small dome. “It’s just a theory. Ascent’s not you, Fury.”

“Did he not wake up for you? Did he not bring you back to life when you were dead, even when the knowledge of what needed to be done had escaped him? That he woke for you from his stasis, and that you are compatible with an SNT is a thing I do not understand,” Fury said, “but I have no doubt that if you had died over and over again, in the end he would have done exactly as I have done for Richard Manning in order to keep you safe. You see, Lenore Falish, he woke for you, and he saved you because you are capable of becoming his compliment. For anyone else, he would not, could not have awoken.”

“That doesn’t mean he can’t reject me,” she said.

“But he has not rejected you,” Fury said. “He has allowed you to come to his heart. Anyone else would not have survived the approach. It is only that he fears he will lose another compliment. I do wish that Professor Keen would contact us. He could certainly ease Ascent’s transition, and he would know, perhaps what is to be done. You see, I believe his fear is his block, the fear that he will lose you, that you will leave him like his first compliment did.”

“Well I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t leave him. He should know by now I won’t die so easily.” She wiped at her eyes, unaware until now that there were tears. “But I won’t stay where I’m not wanted either.” She left the observation deck and went back to the galley. She had just replicated herself a pint of ale when she realized she wasn’t alone.

“That recipe is from a planet that no longer exists,” Fury said. “It was destroyed long before the Authority ever existed when its star went supernova.”

She stared down into the glass. “How did you get the recipe then?

“The planet knew of its fate long before it happened of course, and it sent out people and drones with all manner of memorabilia about their home, including recipes. It is thanks to their efforts we know anything at all about them. Oh there are claims that they some of them are the present day Digans, and other claims that they are the New Vikings far beyond the Rift. Sadly they were not so careful about keeping records of their progress after they left their home world.”

She sipped the beer. “It’s nice.”

“Yes it is, and that is why it is my theory that they must surely be the New Vikings.”

She laughed and took another sip, plopping down at the table. “Lenore, if you wish to stay here tonight, the guest room is ready for you. Ascent has known from the beginning that you are here and that you need some time. He knows that I would not let anything happen to you.”

“Thank you, Fury. I do need some time. I don’t want to face him just yet.”

“I understand. We are here if you need anything dear Lenore Felish. Do try and get some rest. You are exhausted, as we all are.”

 

Dragon Ascending Part 51: 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 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 51: Finding SNT1

“I hope you have something for me, Ivanovic. I could use some good news,” Tenad Fallon said, welcoming Kresho into her private suite. She gave him no chance to reply with anything but a nod. “I’ve been pulling my hair out, frustrated as hell. I know SNT1 is out there. I know it in my bones, and I’m betting he’s in synchronous orbit above the Sea of Death, and yet with all our tech and all the creative minds who work for me, so far, we’ve found nothing.”

She ran a hand through mussed hair, invitingly loose around her shoulders. It was longer that he’d thought. Her white blouse was untucked, and her feet were bare. The delicate skin beneath her green eyes looked bruised from lack of sleep. He knew the woman was tenacious and disciplined, quite possibly the only Fallon who was, but seeing her in that mode was way too endearing for his comfort. She motioned him into a large room that served as her office. Beyond one open door he could see her bed, large enough for an orgy. He turned his attention back to the office to find Camille scurrying about tidying, burdened with a large tray loaded down with empty teacups, several half-eaten plates of food, and half a dozen crumpled linen napkins, clearing away the detritus of what appeared to have been a long and fruitless night’s labor.

“Camille,” he nodded a greeting, which she returned, looking him in the eye. He liked that about her. He supposed it said something about Tenad Fallon that she let her get away with it, that she had chosen not to break the girl’s spirit. But he wasn’t willing to give a Fallon any benefit of the doubt. His experience had been that none of them deserved it.

“Name your poison.” Tenad said.

“Coffee, black.” While he seriously wanted to start in on the cheap New Hibernian and not stop until he couldn’t stand up, he needed all his wits for what Ori had sent him to do, for what he feared he might enjoy too much, and to his own detriment. That he had never seen her in such disarray and so vulnerable made him fear that enjoyment even more.

She gave Camille a nod and the girl disappeared into the other room. “Too early for booze?”

“Never,” he said. “The stuff’s like mother’s milk to me. Still, if I’m gonna be hole up with a Fallon for any length of time, best keep my wits.”

She threw back her head with a laugh that sounded like it belonged in a brothel, not coming from the richest woman in Authority space, daddy’s fortune or not. “I’d say you’ve done your homework well then, Ivanovic. I wouldn’t trust any of us any farther than the shove us out the nearest airlock.”

“Is that a warning?”

“I doubt you need to be warned. I’m just stating facts.”

“Arji tells me you picked up the tab for everyone at the Dust Bowl last night and paid him in water rations.”

She shrugged. “Water’s not hard for me to come by, and better for my Atlas account than credits, though I’m okay with either. I’d rather have the people of Sandstorm hating me less rather than more.”

“So that’s how you’ve managed to grow your own conglomerate so quickly?”

Camille returned with coffee and another tea for Tenad. While she poured, Tenad said. “Kindness appropriately applied at the right time in the right places is worth more than all the Triax in the Authority mines. It’s currency, sometimes the best currency.”

“Fuck if I’ve ever seen anyone so mercenary,” he said, thanking Camille for the coffee.

“Oh don’t be so modest, Ivanovic. I know full well you could write a few books on being mercenary yourself.”

“You do what you have to.” He spoke about his present situation as much as anything.

“Yes, you do.” She settled in at a small dining table and nodded for him to do the same. As he pulled out his chair, for the briefest of moments he caught a fleeting glimpse of the soft curve of her breast swelling below the open neck of her silk shirt, and when she shifted to pick up her teacup, he saw even further to the pale peach nipple unhampered by a bra, and he knew the task before him would be more difficult than he’d ever feared and far too easy. Hell, in her unassuming and disheveled state, she was, stiffening his cock. Maybe especially for those reasons. Quickly he settled into place his lower half tucked safely under the table out of sight.

“So what do you have for me?”

Fuck! Did the woman do that on purpose?

He pulled a computer tab out of his jacket and called up the images Ori had shown him and shoved it toward her.

As she pulled the tab to her, he noticed that her nails were badly bitten, and he liked her better for it. She scanned through the images once, twice. “Look, I don’t mean to be dense,” she started the third scan and her breath caught, nipples practically shoved their way through her shirt and bright color rose in her cheeks. “Oh. Oh! Holy Vanticana Fuck! How did you ever find this?”

“I worked with the SNT project, remember? Part of my job was to find vulnerabilities and correct them. That’s a transport you’re seeing there. And that means we know exactly where SNT1 is.”

She blinked. “But couldn’t it move around for safety sake?”

“He could, but he hasn’t. There have been four transports and all from the same location. He’s well-hidden and he’s exactly where he needs to be.”

“So, what’s he transporting?”

“Oh my sweet summer child,” he said. “Not what, who.”

She blinked then blinked again. “What? You mean humanoid transport? I mean I had heard rumors, even heard that the old man had them on his orca class, but I never actually believed them. Even our best technology in the Authority isn’t anyway near that good.

“A part of why mole-tran tech was made illegal in Authority space is because only SNTs had the kind of mole-tran that was dangerous to civic safety, or some such horseshit my father made up after he orchestrated the whole SNT disaster.” She grunted a bitter laugh. “After the death of several million humanoids was laid squarely at his feet, he decided maybe he’d better be a little afraid of the SNTs who might have survived the mess and might be gunning for him.”

“And that doesn’t scare you?” Kresho asked leaning over the small table holding that bright green gaze.

“Of course it does. It scares me shitless. But then lots of things do. And if SNTs are as bright and as logical as they’re supposed to be, they’ll know that I was away on the Rim when the whole disaster happened, and I had no idea about any of the old man’s plan. I seriously doubt any of his bastards did unless it would help play one against the other. I would have been happy for the SNTs to survive and thrive. I figured in time we’d come around to some sort of partnership that worked for us all anyway. But sadly, that was not to be.”

 

 

Kresho wasn’t sure he believed her, but he was pretty sure she believed herself. He finished his coffee in one and came around the table. As he leaned over her, there was a barely audible catch of her breath. He made a couple of quick swipes with his finger and she studied the screen in concentration “There are three other transports that I’ve found. That was the most recent one, the one that alerted me to the situation.” He leaned over her shoulder and magnified the frame. “Here.” He pointed to the spot.” Her hair smelled like she’d been outside in the sunshine, real sunshine. “This was the first transport I could find, two signals down to Sandstorm and back.”

“SNT1’s compliments then.”

“Has to be, unless Fury has someone else on board we don’t know about. This was the first one I could find” He swiped again. “And this one, this a single transport. Believe it or not this one is from inside the de-mole up and here, back to the surface.”

“Wow! I had no idea SNT’s could do that, transport through a de-mole barriers, I mean. I had no idea the kind of tech and the funding for that size and sophistication of a de-mole perimeter even existed. Did the other SNT do that, you think?”

“It’s possible, I suppose, but I can’t see why an SNT would waste energy putting a barrier around the whole damn salvage yard. That thing covers half the Sea of Death. And anyway De-moles are really not SNT style.”

“Well it certainly didn’t do any good against another SNT, did it?”

He grunted a laugh. “You don’t seriously think he was trying to keep SNTs away, do you?”

“No. I guess not.”

“Here, here’s another ‘tran through the de-mole.” He swiped the tab, “that one is down and back, and it’s a double transport.”

“SNT1’s two compliments maybe? Down to our SNT in hiding?”

“That would be my guess, yes. The last one, though,” he swiped back to it, “That one is into Sandstorm, as far as we can tell. It’s hard to say where with all the built-in blind-spots.”

“One of SNT1’s compliments, you think?”

“Probably, but here’s the thing, the transport times coincide with the times when you and I were both there. More than likely, they came into the Dust Bowl right under our noses. I doubt there’s anyplace else they would go, and certainly that’s the place they would come for information. I wouldn’t recognize either one of them. Would you?”

“One I would have recognized for sure. Diana McAllister. She was my father’s most prize possession, shackled for the -”

“For the debt of her father and the loss of Merlin,” he finished for her. “Fuck! How could I forget that? I only saw her as a child, and then only once. McAllister was very protective of her. He always had her either onboard Merlin with him or hidden away somewhere secret-like. And after the SNT disaster, after I fled, it was several years on before I learned what your piece of shit old man had done to her. Well bloody good for her!”

The woman offered him a quirk of a smile, plenty of smug in such a small gesture. “Apparently she was instrumental in my father’s much-celebrated demise.”

“Like I said, good for her!”

“All of his loving bastards would have had a party in her honor to celebrate if any of us could have stood being in the same room together.”

“And Gerando got the final laugh,” he said.

“Game’s not over yet, Ivanovic, now do you have a plan yet?”

“I just discovered SNT1’s location and the fact that he’s not moving around. I have some preliminary ideas. The rest will come.”

For a long moment she studied the tab in front of her, flipping back and forth to the four ‘trans, then she leveled that green gaze at him. “You do know what will happen to you if you cross me?” She glanced back to where Camille sat quietly on the floor in the corner. “I’ve had indentureds who crossed me, Ivanovic. They don’t live very long, though most of them live a lot longer than they would like. I won’t be kind to you.”

“Believe me, Fallon, if I thought there was a way to drop you in it, I would do it with great gladness and then when the deed was done, I’d dance at your funeral. I’m the only chance you have of gaining control of SNT1. I just want it done so I can get you the fuck out of my life. You want SNT1, I’m the only one with any chance of getting him and if I don’t get this plan right, then you won’t get the chance to shackle me. You’ll be dead just like your father. But if we take the little extra time to get it right, and you get control of SNT1, you can get command of whatever SNT is hidden in the Sea of Death. After that, I’m fucking off back to Vodni Station and waiting for the fireworks.”

She raised a russet eyebrow. “Fireworks?”

He folded his arms and sat back in the chair. “You seriously think Every SNT in the galaxy won’t be gunning for you?” He stroked his chin thoughtfully. “What was the final death count, by the way? Refresh my memory.”

“Three and a half million,” she said.

He poured himself another cup of coffee and gulped it, tepid or not, the bite helped him fight down the rage he felt at the loss of everything that had mattered to him for nearly fifteen years of his life. “Let me see then, the compliment of a standard Jaegar is what, somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty, maybe seventy people on one this size, I’m guessing. And that doesn’t take into account all the servants and indentureds and seconded crew you think you might come in handy for this little venture. That’s three Jaegers and one Dreadnaught. Those are more like a hundred and fifty, aren’t they?” He shrugged. I’m not really up on the numbers, but I’m guessing the SNTs will find that an acceptable loss when they come for you.” He stood and moved to her chair, leaning over her so that she was trapped nose to nose. “Or are you thinking that with SNT1 on your side, you’ll be able to talk them all around?”

Her lips were parted just enough that her breath was warm on his face, her chest rose and fell as though she had been running, and she sat up straighter in her chair, just enough that their lips nearly touched. “I can be very persuasive.” Her voice was barely a harsh whisper.

“Good luck with that.” He pulled away and turned toward the door.

“Where are you going?” She all but tipped over the chair in her efforts to stand.

“Back to my ship. I have work to do if we’re going to pull this off and save your pretty little Jaegers.”

“And if I want you to stay?” She moved like a predator on silent bare feet, fingers on the top button of her blouse.

Dragon Ascending Part 50: 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 50: Frozen Dreams

I did not have to lie there next to Lenore contained in as much of a physical form as I had ever managed since my reawakening, but I could not bring myself to release her, silently willing her to accept me back to her heart. I could feel her isolation as though it were my own, the stories that she had not told me, the pain that she had suffered. And in my cruelty, my jealousy, I had unintentionally brought it all back to her. How had I missed her pain, her trauma at seeing this man from her past who had left her to die alone in such a horrible place? How could I have let my own pettiness, my own selfishness blind me to the trauma she had experienced, and that for me, so that I might possibly become whole again. All of what had been, what she had endured was laid bare to me. Our loving had created an opening, and her heart, her beautiful, wounded heart, was as open to me as my heart was when I bonded with my beloved. I would have left. Perhaps I should have, for I felt the shifting in her brainwaves as she began to dream, and yet I stayed for I wanted to see, to know her pain, to share in it, but she had not invited me. I was an intruder again, betraying her trust again. And still I stayed there, close to the heart of Lenore Felish. But this time it was not her dream that took me. This time our intimacy had grown such that I was pulled into the very center of the woman herself, the seat of memory. The very thing I had denied myself, she had faced every day of her young life, and she had faced it alone, without a compliment, without a beloved to comfort her in her pain, and she had not the luxury of shutting down and blocking all that caused her suffering from her mind.

 

As there is heat and sand in the Sea of Death, so there is snow and ice on Talkamakan Minor, farther from the sun, thinner of atmosphere.

 

“I promise I’ll make it off Mama. I promise. And I promise I’ll come back for you. I won’t leave you here alone.” Tears froze on Lenore’s cheeks. She knew better than to be out without a helmet as the temperatures plummeted and the winds howled, but she couldn’t leave her mother unprotected where she had fallen. The effort to drag her from where they had murdered her to the ice cave near the generator kept her warm, but it also exhausted her. Her limbs ached. She was sure her fingertips were frostbitten, but she would not leave her mother to be stripped molecule by molecule, taken apart by the icy wind until by morning there would be nothing left of her. She didn’t care if maybe that was better. She couldn’t part with her, not yet. Deep in the cave that housed the generator, she would stay safe and undisturbed until Len could return for her and give her a proper burial. And she bloody well would return! There was little she could do to clean her mother’s body, the blood already frozen black in the dancing shadows of her headlamp. She could barely manage to drag her to a protected place against the back wall and lay her down. “Bye for now, Mama. I’ll come back for you.” She placed a kiss on her forehead and touched her cheek. One last look and she dragged herself up on trembling legs. “And I swear, Mama, whoever did this to you will pay. I’ll see to it.” That was the fire in her gut that would keep her warm until she could make that promise good.

With the last bit of strength she could manage, she fought the wind back to the station and shut the airlock behind her as the temperatures outside plummeted. No one could survive out there at night. Then she sat down with her back against the door and sobbed herself into a sleep of exhaustion.

 

 

But unlike the coward that I am, dear Lenore would wake again, and she would wake to those dreadful memories, to the agony of loss. She would not have wanted me to see her so vulnerable, but our loving had rendered her memories an open book to me, a thing that should only have been possible with a bonded compliment, and I could not look away, though I was a trespasser, uninvited. She had been just a child, only a child.

 

Len woke up shivering convulsively. She had bitten her tongue, more than likely what saved her life. The heating in the station proper never remained above freezing at night when the generators went into recharge mode, and she was still dressed in only her outdoor gear, not the environmental suit needed for protection once the anemic sun fell below the horizon. Tak Minor was much farther from the sun than Tak Major and the light was never more than a pale gray of twilight, never enough for much heat. It was just that the winds died down enough to survive outside without an environmental suit during the daytime. At night, they howled to unbearable levels, barely kept to a dull roar by the thick protective walls of the station shelter. Even inside the station, Len and her mother had to retreat to the small atmosphere tent at night, which was the only part of the station above freezing. It was little more than a huddled thermal dome designed to keep two residents from freezing to death until morning came. The builders of the station, who clearly had not had to live there, had made an executive decision that the plummeting in temperatures and the wind chill at night was too much of a strain on the generators to maintain a comfortable temperature inside the facility. The money allocated for more powerful generators, for a more comfortably built structure, instead went to pad some bureaucrat’s Atlas account. So, the generators powered down until the winds died and only then did they kick back in to warm the station internals. The place had been slated to become automated at some unforeseen date. In the meantime it served as more or less a punishment for any scientist who displeased the powers that be.

Supplies were brought in periodically by drone ships, automated only for the return journey to whatever space station had sent them. Once a year a manned ship came to make sure the present inmate was still alive and relatively sane. If one or the other was not the case, they would bring another unlucky scientist or two in their next visit. If the researchers managed to survive the isolation relatively sane, they were replaced every five years by some other poor soul. No place on Tak Minor was ever comfortable and no place was ever completely safe. And now, Len was alone.

 

Every detail of her memory from that horrible time was now mine, every ache, every pain, every fear, and mostly the loneliness. Oh how I understood loneliness. And yet she had chosen to move on. I had not. I had been a coward, and now there was a great deal at stake, and all that I was, all that I had known, had contained, had been, I was unable to access because I was a coward. It was as she squirmed in her sleep and snuggled closer to me that I knew I would do what I had to that she would not suffer again, that Fury and his brothers, my brothers, would not have to fight this battle alone.

“I am here, my darling Lenore. I am here.” She calmed at the sound of my voice and moved still closer. And while I knew she did not hear me, maybe it was because I knew she could not hear me in her sleep, I continued. “That’s it, my darling, my brave, tender hearted one, only rest awhile, and tomorrow Fury and Diana Mac and Richard Manning will help me to take back my memories.”