Tag Archives: Book two of the Sentient Ships Series

Dragon Ascending Part 7: 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 family.  Last week Fury and his crew notice something unusual on Taklamakan Major. This week, they rescue some questionable characters.  I hope you enjoy.  In the meantime, if you have just arrived and would like to start at the beginning of Piloting Fury, follow the link, and enjoy! If you like what you’re reading, make sure to catch all of Dragon Ascending from the beginning.

Dragon Ascending :Book 2 of the Sentient Ship Series

On a desolate junkyard of a planetoid, scavenger Lenore Felik, disturbs something slumbering in a remote salvage dump and uncovers secrets of a tragic past and of the surprising role she must play in the terrifying present she now faces.

Robbed of her inheritance after her tyrannical father’s death, Tenad Fallon is out for revenge on her half-brothers, one who happens to be the sentient ship, Fury. Fury, with his human companions, Richard Manning and Diana McAllister, has his own agenda – finding the lost sentient ships and ending the scourge of indentured servitude in Authority space.

 

Dragon Ascending Part 7: Saving the Devil?

“There’s a ship coming in fast.”

“Shit!” Manning said. “Another Jaeger?”

“It is not,” came the reply. “And it is alone. It is sending a distress signal.” He put the other ship and it’s message on screen, but Fury and his compliment were cloaked and invisible to anything but another SNT.

The ship was tiny, an older starling class, battered and clearly not well cared for. “No doubt smugglers,” Manning observed.  “Probably down on their luck come to Taklamakan Major to steal from the salvage dumps.”

The pilot was a scruffy man, who looked like he could use a bath. Mac wrinkled her nose at the thought. He was speaking the common tongue. She glanced at the telemetry. “They’re venting oxygen, and there’s a radiation leak. Ship’s in worse shape than some of the junk in the yards.”

“It will crash onto the planetoid if I do not tractor it,” Fury said.

“Do it,” Manning ordered. “And ‘tran the crew into the cargo bay.” There was no real need to tell Fury any of this, but there was a routine they had fallen into, and it comforted them all when they were together for the long haul, without seeing another being for endless stretches of time. Not that they were ever bored, nor did they ever have cabin fever, not with Fury, but for each of them to fulfill a role, was the maintaining of a structure on which their lives were now built. Manning was the captain, Mac was the pilot and Fury contained them, maintained them and cared for all three of them.

“I have them in the tractor beam,” Fury said.

To which the captain of the smaller vessel responded, “what the fuck?”

“You’re being ‘tranned into our cargo bay for radiation treatment until we access and repair your ship,” Fury responded.

“Wait a minute, ‘tranned? Are you fucking crazy? No ‘tranning! There’s been -” The crew of three were ‘tranned mid-rant.

“They sound charming,” Mac said. “Though I suppose considering that molecular transport is illegal and not nearly sophisticated enough for human transport, you can’t really blame them.”

“There is little choice,” Fury said. “Their ship is not safe for humanoids and I cannot fix it with them on board, nor will I risk any of my compliment to treat them under such dangerous circumstances.”

 

 

“Can you fix it?” Manning asked.

“I can. It should not take long. The repairs necessary are not complex, only the ship’s crew cannot manage the task on their own, and they have not properly cared for the vessel.” The sharp edge is Fury’s voice at the poor maintenance of a ship made his disapproval clear, but then with Fury’s mix of tech and biology, he could not keep from being sensitive to what he viewed as mistreatment. “I already do not like these men,” he commented. Both Manning and Mac nodded agreement.

“Let’s get them treated and sorted and out of here ASAP,” Manning said.

A sudden sense of static ran over both their skin and they shivered. “What is it, Fury?” Manning asked. “What’s wrong?”

“There is the scent of sex on all three of these men, one woman, and there is the scent of her blood. It was not consensual.”

“Fucking hell,” Mac cursed. “And she’s not onboard.”

“She is not.” The static of Fury’s anger rose.

“Then blow the bastards out the airlock,” Manning said.

“No wait.” Mac laid a hand on Manning’s arm, and the other against Fury’s consol. “If she’s still alive, she may need help.”

Manning blew out a sharp breath and nodded. Fury cursed, something he seldom did.

“Then we shall question them severely. I will do it myself.”

“Let me do it,” Mac said.

“No!” Both of her men said at the same time.

“What? You don’t think the two of you can rescue me if three men with radiation poisoning in our tight little cargo cabin get stroppy,” she used the term cargo cabin loosely. Where the men were was the place maintained to isolate certain types of humanoids from the rest of Fury’s compliment and from seeing what was not meant for them to see. In essence it was a jail when need be.

“Of course we could easily rescue you from these wastrels, dear Mac. It was our concern that this task shall be difficult for you, Mac, after what has been done to you.”

“But it will make me a helluva lot scarier than either of you could ever be.”

Manning rubbed his chin and nodded. “I’ve seen you scary, Mac.” She could feel Fury giving the SNT equivalent of a nod.

“Then I shall keep a lock on you at all times.”

“I’d expect nothing less,” she replied.

“And I’m coming with,” Manning added.

“Fair enough. I’ve seen you scary too, Manning,” she said.

“And if the two of you are not scary enough, I reserve the right to be terrifying.”

“We reserve the right to let you,” Mac said. She knew of nothing that frightened her more that the lengths to which an SNT would go to protect his compliment.

 

Dragon Ascending Part 6: 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.  Last week saving our desert girl all came down to blood.  This week Fury and his crew discover something strange on Taklamakan Major. I hope you enjoy.  In the meantime, if you have just arrived and would like to start at the beginning of Piloting Fury, follow the link, and enjoy! If you like what you’re reading, make sure to catch all of Dragon Ascending from the beginning.

Dragon Ascending :Book 2 of the Sentient Ship Series

On a desolate junkyard of a planetoid, scavenger Lenore Felik, disturbs something slumbering in a remote salvage dump and uncovers secrets of a tragic past and of the surprising role she must play in the terrifying present she now faces.

Robbed of her inheritance after her tyrannical father’s death, Tenad Fallon is out for revenge on her half-brothers, one who happens to be the sentient ship, Fury. Fury, with his human companions, Richard Manning and Diana McAllister, has his own agenda – finding the lost sentient ships and ending the scourge of indentured servitude in Authority space.

 

 

Dragon Ascending Part 6: Something that should not be here

Diana Mac sensed Fury’s drop in speed more than felt it, and so did Manning, who struggled up from sleep next to her. Both felt the lack of Fury’s immediate warmth. Being an SNT ship, he was quite literally everywhere, and yet he usually shared their bed with a presence as nearly physical to them as their own, and both of his humanoid complements felt his absence when he withdrew. That was a part of the bond they shared.

As they felt his absence he felt their wakefulness, and they sensed something more than a random fluctuation in his normal functioning around them. It could only be defined in human terms as excitement laced liberally with tension.

“There is something in this sector.” He said before they could ask. “Something that should not be here.”

“Something like what?” Manning asked slipping into his trousers and heading for the deck, with Mac not far behind him. Being connected as they all were, they could have simply accessed his thoughts. But Fury had stressed to them early in their relationship the importance of compliments and their ship maintaining boundaries for the sake of sanity. He had said it so matter of factly, as though sanity were something that came and went like body odor or bad breath. Mac smiled at the thought. Perhaps that was the case with sentient ships. The data was still out she supposed, and if it were true, then they could be heading into either a wild goose chase or a shit storm.

On the deck, they looked out to find pretty much empty space, minus the dust. There was a fuck ton of dust in this sector for some reason. The only thing not completely obscured by the dust was a medium sized yellow star, and even it looked pale and anemic through the haze.

“I am certain I felt someone.”

“What someone?” Manning rubbed sleep from his eyes and squinted at the view screen. “You mean like an SNT? Out here?”

“I experienced a flash of power, of anguish, like nothing I have felt since the time of my own painful birth. It happened so quickly, even by SNT standards, and then it vanished.”

Mac was already checking the sensor logs. “I don’t see anything here.” She said.

“You would not.” Fury observed. “It was over too quickly. Nevertheless, I am certain.”

“So what you felt was an SNT in distress?” Manning turned and headed up to the map room and Mac followed. The three had only been together as a triad for a few months, but they were fully bonded and they worked as one unit. “Let’s see what we have in this area.” He pulled up the 3D map, “other than a whole lot of nothing.”

Mac squinted at the image until she saw nothing but spots. There were dozens of medium sized asteroids orbiting the star they had seen from the view screen. For some reason the perfect star for the evolution of rocky planets and human life had never managed more than two planetoids and a sporadic lacing of asteroids orbiting around it creating a series of thin rings of dust and ice for several astronomical units.

“Both planetoids are habitable, though just barely,” Manning observed. Taklamakan Minor is little more than a block of ice. The only permanent structure is a science station. The data says it was automated after the last attendant died. It’s operated now by a loose organization of scientist from the Outer Rim Alliance. At the moment, it’s visited once every galactic year-ish.”

“Taklamakan Major, on the other hand is a desert. According to data, it’s only real use is as one giant salvage yard. There are three small outposts on it. Fuck knows why. “Sunward, Windward and Sandstorm, all placed strategically on the edges of the most frequented salvage yards. Except for Sandstorm, it’s right smack dab in the middle of the biggest salvage dump. It’s called Sandstorm because it shifts periodically. Well every night, actually. Something in the gravitation and the prevailing winds results in hellacious sandstorms every night It’s the most isolated of the three outposts, in the opposite hemisphere from the other two.

“The only reason ships come here is to sell salvage or because they’re caught out on a long haul and need replacement parts. The whole place belongs to the Outer Rim Alliance. A bastard stepchild kind of place. Almost no association with the Authority.”

“That makes it a holiday destination in my book,” Mac said, as she scrolled down through the database.”

“Sounds delightful,” Manning commented with a chuckle.

“I will pack our bags immediately.” Fury said. “We are long overdue for a vacation.” Fury claimed to need work on his sense of humor, but Mac often thought on the long hauls when they saw no one but each other, it was his sense of humor that kept the enormity of the task set before them in perspective. The responsibility had fallen on them to follow what slim leads they could find on the whereabouts of SNTs that might or might not still exist, while remaining as unobtrusive as possible. That task was made all the more difficult when said SNTs definitely would not want to be found if they did still exist. They understood only too well that you did your best not to be discovered when the Authority would hunt you down and destroy you if they knew you existed.

When Mac was shanghaied onto Fury, she had not known that he was an SNT, SNT1, in fact, the pinnacle of sentient ship technology, and as far as they all knew, the last survivor of the sixteen sentient ships that had been bonded to humanoid compliments and sent out to make life better for all species everywhere. They had been funded by the Free Universities, who refused any involvement of the Authority. They were ultimately designed to put an end to the Authority scourge of indentured servitude.

 

 

Their mistake was in assuming that the Authority and the Conglomerates wanted to do away with indentured servitude. People were now born into the debts of their families and even some areas of the Authority were breeding indentureds. The wealth of the Authority and its conglomerates was built on the backs of indentured workers, and it was not ready to give that up.

Somehow Abriad Fallon and his cronies managed to engineer a virus derived from the one that was contained in its inactive form in every indentured’s shackle to reassure they could never escape without dying a long and horrific death. They then sabotaged the sentient ships with reengineered virus designed to infect the brains of the SNTs. Two went berserk and killed millions before the rest of the fleet discovered what had been done. Of the fifteen, nine were destroyed, literally disintegrated. Three gave themselves up and were decommissioned, their compliments either killed or indentured and sent away to hard labor in the triaxium mines. Those ships were hidden away in remote Authority space docks. The fate of three others was unknown. Some were believed to have escaped beyond the Outer Rim.

Fury was not among these fifteen. His birth was far more complicated and much more advanced scientifically. He was to be the flagship of the next generation of SNTs until the world fell apart. Then he barely escaped as a fugitive, the only one who knew the truth.

Fury was no longer alone, though. Due to circumstances Mac could have never imagined, he now had three brothers, though one was Gerando Fallon, Abriad’s eldest son. Mac still battled to get her head around those details. He was the only humanoid among Fury’s siblings and was now bonded in a strange sort of way to Griffon and Commander Ina Stanislavsky. With help from Fury’s core material, the third ship in his new family, the renegade Dubrovnik, had been reborn as an SNT ship as well. Yes, Fury had three brothers and they were all fugitives at the moment. Though Fury was a damn rich one, thanks to quick thinking on Gerando’s part that meant Fury inherited a huge fortune from their monster of a father, Abriad Fallon, which he managed to liquidate into accounts beyond the Rim before the rest of Abriad’s monster brood could contest the will and find ways to prevent it’s execution.

Yes, they were all fugitives, but not without their purpose. Finding the SNTs was now the three ships’ mission, well two of them at least. Dubrovnik was a flying fortress born of an orca class freighter the size of a small city. It was home to the scientists, researchers and residents from Plague 1. Plague 1 had been one of the two Plague planets, where those indentureds who were suffering from the virus were sent to live out their miserable lives. It just so happened that it was on Plague 1 that the cure had been discovered for the virus that made every indentured’s subdural shackle a living nightmare. Fury was to seek out the SNT ships from beyond the Outer Rim, and Griffon was to seek out the SNTs that might be hidden away in forgotten space docs in Authority space.

“Taklamakan Major would be an excellent place for an SNT to hide,” Fury commented. “While it is only loosely claimed as a part of the Rim Alliance, it is too far away to gain the Authority’s attention. And certainly it has nothing of interest for them. It is a very long way from almost anywhere.

From what we can tell, there are two, possibly three, ships that might be hiding out beyond the Rim and three in Authority doc yards we know of. Raven and Quetzalcoatl we know for sure escaped beyond the Rim, though we do not know what happened after their escape. Possibly Ourobos escaped as well. We know nothing of her.” Fury always listed the ships as if Mac and Manning didn’t already know, as if they hadn’t gone over that list a hundred times. And yet each time he did, it was as though they listened to the reading of a sacred family tree because to Fury, that was exactly what they were, and both Mac and Manning knew better than anyone else just how much family meant to Fury.

Fury continued. “Apollo, Aurora, Valkyrie have been decommissioned and are hidden in remote dock yards spread throughout Authority space. Merlin, Phoenix, Orion, Archangel, Calypso, Nautilus, Hebe, Terrebonne and Dragon were destroyed.”

They all knew the assumed fates of all the SNT ships in the aftermath of the virus outbreak onboard, but none knew better than Mac, except for Fury. For Fury repeating all of their names and their fates was a naming of his dead and of those missing in action. They were his family, family lost to him before any of them had a chance to fulfill the bright destiny for which they had been created, and Fury mourned their loss, just as Mac still mourned the loss of her father and his SNT, Merlin. To speak those names out loud was to honor their memory, was to promise every effort of reunion with those who survived.

“There should be no SNT ships hiding on Taklamakan Major,” Manning said.

“While we are beyond Authority space, in a sector that no one would have much reason to visit, this is far from where any of my family disappeared,” Fury said.

The truth was they were now fairly well off their own course for traveling to the areas of the Outer Rim where it was most likely that Quetzalcoatl, Raven and Ouroboros had gone into hiding. As expected the Authority, and especially the worst of the Fallon clan, did not take kindly to Fury’s inheriting the family fortune, nor to the loss of possible SNT tech from right under their noses. Oh, none of them mourned their father’s loss. They were all a bunch of rabid dogs waiting to devour each other at first opportunity. Tenad Fallon, daddy’s eldest daughter, was taking the loss of the Fallon fortune very personally, and it had only been in the last two galactic days that they had shaken her Authority Jaegers. But perhaps this was exactly where they needed to be.

“There’s a ship on long range scanners coming in fast.”

Dragon Ascending Part 5: 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 family.  Last week we saw more acts of desperation in the salvage dump on Taklamakan Major. This week, it all comes down to blood.  I hope you enjoy.  In the meantime, if you have just arrived and would like to start at the beginning of Piloting Fury, follow the link, and enjoy! If you like what you’re reading, make sure to catch all of Dragon Ascending from the beginning.

Dragon Ascending :Book 2 of the Sentient Ship Series

On a desolate junkyard of a planetoid, scavenger Lenore Felik, disturbs something slumbering in a remote salvage dump and uncovers secrets of a tragic past and of the surprising role she must play in the terrifying present she now faces.

Robbed of her inheritance after her tyrannical father’s death, Tenad Fallon is out for revenge on her half-brothers, one who happens to be the sentient ship, Fury. Fury, with his human companions, Richard Manning and Diana McAllister, has his own agenda – finding the lost sentient ships and ending the scourge of indentured servitude in Authority space.

 

Dragon Ascending Part 5: My Blood

But then she stopped breathing! And suddenly all that mattered was that she breathe again. I would not have her work so hard to get to me only to die. This was not acceptable. I would have given her my breath, but I had none to give. Somewhere from the depths of all I had forgotten I accessed that compressions to her chest could restart her heart. Again, I do not know how I did it, but I formed from the molecules I was able to manipulate a crude compression device. I could not say that what I had created resembled hands, these appendages of mine. But they fit firmly between her breasts against that too thin chest beneath in which her heart should beat, must beat if she were to breathe, if she were to survive.

It seemed to me that I should be able to breathe for her, and the longer she did not, the more desperately I tried to access data that had to be there, abilities that I knew was there, all the while continuing with the compression of her chest. How horribly those compressions would hurt ribs that were already damaged. And what if, due to my efforts, a damaged rib punctured her lung. What if I could not access the information to heal her. All of these humanoid thoughts I did not wish to access were all too easily accessed.

I compressed and compressed while I accessed and accessed. Solar systems’ worth of information, worlds and lifetimes of information. Some of it helpful, some of it trivial, some of it I had never accessed before. And yet that which I needed hid itself behind the fog that was left of my memory. And still she did not breathe. Still her heart did not beat. What was I to do? Were it simply an act of will, a matter of me mentally making it so, I would have done, for I willed it with all of my being.

And just at that moment, just when I had begun to despair, my will moved inside her body, massaged that muscle that was her heart and inflated those lungs too tired of breathing to draw in the oxygen they could not survive without. And I did, in fact breathe for her, cause her heart to beat, as I would have the one I had lost.

It was not magic. It was simply the manipulation of molecules at which I had once been skilled. This I only remembered as my woman’s back arched and with a gasp that sounded like determined agony, she drew her breath anew. Then she rolled onto her side, forced herself up on one elbow and vomited again. Blood! She vomited blood. There was damage I had not seen, her injuries needed more than my puny efforts and ancient Terran first aid could provide.

There was a place, a place that was not this place in front of this airlock. It was there where she needed to be, a place that was specifically designed to treat humanoids when they were injured. And there was a place, deeper inside, a place at my center, a place so deep in the fog of lost memories that it hurt to even attempt access, and yet access it I must. I held her as her strength gave and she vomited again. The scent of blood permeated the airlock. I had been so intent on getting her heart to beat, getting her to breathe, that I had not seen the blood that now covered the wrapping of her ribs or the blood on her thighs. She had to have help from my center, and yet to move her might be fatal.

In a blink that was not a blink, the air lock disappeared and we were at that place where she must be if she were to live. Medico. A place of healing. I accessed file after file, on internal bleeding, on blood loss, on broken bones. All could be treated. All would be treated. All could be healed, and in an instant the computerized surgery began to work on her. Removing the filthy rags of her clothing, revealing how painfully thin she was. It was not difficult to see which ribs were broken, and there were three. What little flesh she carried on her delicate bones was nothing more than muscle beneath skin. The blood between her thighs was the blood of violation, a thing that made me rage for her, for I knew the damage of such injuries went far deeper than flesh and blood. Once again I wished the three who had violated her painfully dead, hoping as I saw her suffering, that I had sent them to just such a death. The auto-doc, my companion had called it, this bed on which my woman now lay, with its myriad robotic arms and devices. It was designed to heal humanoids. Though the one I had lost seldom needed this auto-doc, for she shared in my robust nature as she travelled with me.

 

 

But she had needed it, hadn’t she? In the end she had needed it. In the end I brought her here. The fog closed like a heavy nebular cloud tightly enfolding, obscuring that memory, for it was not one I ever wished to access again. And when this one was healed, I told myself, I would send her back home and return to my slumber so that I could be once again removed from those memories, so that it could once again be as though I did not exist.

These kinds of thoughts are never productive, and thus my desire to sleep beyond their reach. They are never productive and they were not then, for I needed to be clear-headed. There was something missing. There was only so much that the auto-doc could do for this one. The message on the auto-doc’s computer flashed bright. Core nanites needed! Core nanites needed!

I understood instantly. A blood transfusion would be necessary, one of my own blood, as it were. The nanites from my own core. That was also not hard for me to access, as the auto-doc prepared the anti-body suppressants that would be required if this one was not to reject my blood, for I always thought of it as my blood, and indeed, I suppose it was. My companion had been prepared by taking small doses of my blood over some time before we came together. This one had not. This one could very easily die without the antibody suppressants.

My blood. My blood! For a moment I hesitated. Surely this one did not deserve my blood. The only one who deserved my blood was no longer here. What great things had this one done? What sacrifices had she made? She was nothing but a skinny sand gypsy with no education, with nothing to recommend herself.

Core nanites needed! Core nanites needed! The message flashed over and over, urgent, demanding, and all the while the woman on the table grew weaker, fought less and less, the determination that had been her true scent when first she approached me, so unknowingly was fading, would soon become the smell of death already waiting to envelope her. Core Nanites neede! Core nanites needed!

Determination. Why? What had she to be determined about? What purpose could it serve in this desolate place? I moved closer to her, studied her in her pain, in her frailty, lost, alone, and still she struggled. Perhaps it was I who was unworthy to offer her my blood, tainted as it was with the loss of the one I could not save. Perhaps I would bring upon her my own contamination, contamination I would never be rid of.

Core nanites needed! Core nanites needed! 

And then, as I hesitated, this woman’s life in my hands, she did something I would not have thought possible in her condition. She opened her eyes, her silver grey eyes, and looked right at me, as though she could see me, as though she could look inside and discover all that plagued me, all that I did not want anyone to know, all that I did not want to know myself. And then, she went into cardiac arrest.

Dragon Ascending Part 3: A KDG Sentient Ship Serial

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

Dragon Ascending :Book 2 of the Sentient Ship Series

On a desolate junkyard of a planetoid, scavenger Lenore Felik, disturbs something slumbering in a remote salvage dump and uncovers secrets of a tragic past and of the surprising role she must play in the terrifying present she now faces.

Robbed of her inheritance after her tyrannical father’s death, Tenad Fallon is out for revenge on her half-brothers, one who happens to be the sentient ship, Fury. Fury, with his human companions, Richard Manning and Diana McAllister, has his own agenda – finding the lost sentient ships and ending the scourge of indentured servitude in Authority space.

 

Dragon Ascending Part 3: The Jump

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

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

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

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

Dragon Ascending Part 2: A KDG Sentient Ship Serial

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Happy Monday everyone!  I hope you enjoyed the first episode of Dragon Ascending, book two of the Sentient Ship Series and the continuation of Fury’s journey to find family.  Last week we found ourselves on a desert waste of a planet, where in the desolation, something is awakening  beneath the remotest salvage-yard. This week an act of desperation. I hope you enjoy.  In the meantime, if you have just arrived and would like to start at the beginning of Piloting Fury, follow the link, and enjoy! If you like what you’re reading, make sure to catch all of Dragon Ascending from the beginning.

Dragon Ascending :Book 2 of the Sentient Ship Series

On a desolate junkyard of a planetoid, scavenger Lenore Felik, disturbs something slumbering in a remote salvage dump and uncovers secrets of a tragic past and of the surprising role she must play in the terrifying present she now faces.

Robbed of her inheritance after her tyrannical father’s death, Tenad Fallon is out for revenge on her half-brothers, one who happens to be the sentient ship, Fury. Fury, with his human companions, Richard Manning and Diana McAllister, has his own agenda – finding the lost sentient ships and ending the scourge of indentured servitude in Authority space.

 

Dragon Ascending Part 2: Racing the Night

This place is but shifting sand. One can never return to the same spot even from day to day. Therefore in her condition, I feared the woman would not find me and that she would have no shelter. It was no hardship for me to open a breach in the de-mole fence, to make it even larger to accommodate her injured condition. This time she bore no pack and her clothing was torn and bloody. How brave and determined she was to have sought me out. But beneath the shifting of the sands, I feared she would not be able to find my shelter, and I could not bear for her have come so far in vain. This time her needs demanded frantic searching through the fog that ever obscured my memories if I were to assure her safety. She would need an entrance, a door into a space that had not been breached since my loss. And in my rising consciousness I found I could give that to her. However putting it where she could easily access it in her weakened condition was a thing I could not recall how to do.

 

Len managed to stay upright to the perimeter of the salvage yard, but the crawl through the opening in the de-mole defense shield wouldn’t do her broken ribs any good. She hadn’t bothered to bind them, racing time to reach shelter before nightfall. Pain is a good thing, her uncle had always said. It meant you were still alive. Her uncle was full of shit. Or would have been if he was still alive. No one believed he was, but her mother had never given up hope, so neither would she. Still, she thought he was full of shit about pain. Pain, she’d had more than enough of, and she’d not liked any of it one little bit.

She was surprised to even find the de-mole breach again. Not that she much cared. A quick death by being disintegrated at the molecular level might be preferable to what was likely to be her fate. But while she wasn’t afraid to die, she wasn’t ready to bring it on any quicker. The breach was bigger than she remembered. She could actually crawl through this time. She dropped to her knees in a wave of nausea, the threat of unconsciousness accompanied the grating of her ribs with each breath. Still, she struggled forward on hands and knees. Her uncle, she supposed, would be pleased. She and managed not to vomit from the pain until she was through the breach. She hoped nothing would scent her blood and follow her. That was the downside of the breach expansion. She doubted the shield had been serviced in maybe twenty galactic years, and yet whatever was hidden in the salvage yard here in the worst part of the Taklamakan had been valuable enough to put up a de-mole defense shield, expensive and illegal for use other than military. And not even the military wanted anything to do with this place.

No one ever came to Taklamakan Major, and it was only bad luck that she and her mother had ended up on Taklamakan Minor. Or maybe not so bad, since the Authority left them alone, and both she and her mother would have been taken into indentured servitude had her mother not booked passage on the first transport to anywhere. It never mattered with the Authority how young a child was, or even if it had been born yet. The debt of the family was visited on the children, and her family’s debt was colossal. Though this desert was a shit hole at least as bad as Taklamakan Minor, it beat the hell out of being shackled as an indentured.

 

 

Taklamakan Major was one continuous salvage yard with a few outposts where no one came but criminals and fugitives, and only then in desperation. Even those trying to escape the shackle avoided the Taklamakan System, if you could even call it a system. But her mother had said she would have happily endured worse rather than be shackled to some conglomerate pig. Her daughter would grow up in the free world. Len only knew the stories she’d heard of the Authority and of the conglomerates that ran the system, stories that her mother had told while they shivered in the science station on Tak Minor. In the Taklamakan System, you had two choices, freeze your lungs out or fry your brain, and yet the place was still better than a shackle in Authority space. Anyone who lived there would tell you that. She had turned six on the yearly long-haul supply ship that delivered them to the science station on Tak Minor, the only inhabitants of the tiny planetoid. And now it seemed she would die here in the dust and swelter of Tak Major without ever seeing the stars her uncle told her tales about. If this was her life flashing before her eyes at the instant of her death, well she reckoned she didn’t have long at all, because it was full of mostly nothing interesting.

Len shoved her way into the salvage yard and then forced her way up to her feet. She swallowed back bile in a wave of pain that her uncle would have found reassuring. The farther she got from the breach in the perimeter, the safer she would be, but in her condition that couldn’t be far. The place went on for kilometers, but she would be forced to find something close and find it soon. Inside the perimeter at least she wouldn’t have to spend her last hours being eaten alive by an infestation. She’d rather throw herself on the de-mole.

But the night was coming on. Once the winds got up, she’d have no hope of finding shelter if she didn’t do it now, so she forced herself onward. The temperature was already dropping and she clenched her jaw trying to keep her teeth from chattering. Any noise might expose her, even in the relative safety of the salvage yard. If she could get through the breach in the de-mole, so could other things seeking shelter for the night, things she would rather not spend time with.

She didn’t know if you could lose consciousness while you walked, but she was pretty sure she’d done just that. In the next lucid moment she was looking up at an open airlock some ten meters off the ground. The shifting sands had apparently lifted the hulk of a junked ship, the open maw of its airlock gaping black in the growing dusk. The remaining light reflected off the metallic skin of what was, at the very least, some kind of escape pod. If she could manage the climb up to the airlock, she was pretty sure she would be safe for the night.