Happy Friday everyone! Time for another episode of Dragon Ascending in which Len gets a message from beyond the grave. As I mentioned, I am now attempting to post episodes at lengths that will be better suited for the flow of the story and enhance your reading pleasure. Some will be slightly shorter, some will be longer. This one is particularly long in order not to break the flow of events. I hope you’re enjoying Dragon Ascending, the sequel to Piloting Fury, as much as I’m enjoying sharing it with you. As always, I love it when you share my work with your reading friends, so feel free. In the meantime, enjoy!

If you missed the previous episode of Dragon Ascending follow the link for a catch-up. If you wish to start from the beginning, of Dragon Ascending. Follow the link.  

For those of you who would like to read the complete novel, Piloting Fury, book one of the Sentient Ships series, follow the link to the first instalment.

Dragon Ascending: Book 2 of the Sentient Ship Series

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

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

Dragon Ascending Part 74: Truths from the Grave

Silence fell in the room and Kresho, like a starving mongrel, lapped up the warmth of Ori’s closeness, the comfort he knew she saw as nothing more than practical, only ever offered when necessary. Still right now he’d take all the comfort he could get. He let out a slow breath and said softly. “When I was finally able to return, I found Janesha’s body. Of you, Len, there was not a trace. I thought … I thought I had failed both of you.” He looked up into her eyes. “And you were my one mission above all else. I promised your mother that I would protect you and your gift.”

Len wiped at her eyes, having forgotten all about her efforts at a stiff upper lip. “What gift? I have no gift. I don’t even have a proper education.” To this both Dragon and Ori bristled.

“She does not know? You do not know?” Ori asked. There was a long moment of that static charge that Kresho had long ago come to know as tension in an SNT. In this case two SNTs.

“How could she,” came Dragon’s response, “when I only just discovered it myself. I would have never kept such a thing from her.”

“What thing? Kept what from me?” Len asked.

At last Ori spoke. “I believe you know Diana McAllister’s story, the story of her conception and how she came to be?”

“She told me, yes.”

Ori drew a long, unnecessary breath. “Well, Lenore Felish, it would not be wrong to say that she is your sister.”

They had adjourned to a galley which Dragon seemed to have patterned after Fury’s. He insisted they all needed sustenance and Ouroboros had heartily agreed, though Len had only eaten a few bites of the chocolate pudding, also from Fury’s recipe, to keep Dragon from nagging. She noticed Van, Kresho, wasn’t doing much better and Ouroboros was at least as good as Dragon at mother-henning. And then his SNT said to him out loud. “Shall I not give it to her, Kresho? It will explain far better than either of us ever could.”

“Give me what?” Len asked, noting how uncomfortable Kresho was.

“I believe it is a data chip that contains a message from your dear mother,” Dragon intervened. “I imagine it will be identical to the one I retrieved from the computer system in the science station.”

“She told me that she also planned to save an encrypted copy for you there, just in case,” Kresho said. “She was afraid something would happen to her and you’d never know about yourself.”

“I checked everything before I left,” Len said. I couldn’t take anything with me when weight was such an issue in the drone, so I committed all the files on her computer pad to memory, all of them,” she said biting her bottom lip to keep it from trembling, “even that horrible recipe for seaweed soup. But I didn’t find anything unusual. I didn’t really expect to. Mama never kept secrets from me. Or so I thought.”

“This one she kept only for your own protection,” Kresho said, “and honestly, she had every reason to believe I would be back for the two of you within a few months, a year at the most.” The pain in his voice cut Len’s heart. She knew how much her mother had loved Van, how much she had loved him.

For a long moment Len stared down at her hands clenched around the warm cup of English Breakfast tea Dragon had replicated for her, feeling only the cold of that awful place and the isolation she had felt after her mother’s murder. And then Dragon whispered in her ear. “You are not alone now, my love, and I will keep you warm, and our family will make sure you are never again isolated.”

“If you would like,” Kresho said, worry in his eyes, “we can leave you alone to listen to it in privacy.”

“No! No,” she said, finding her control once again. “I don’t want to be alone. You two know me better than I seem to know myself, and I,” she took a deep breath, “I need my family around me.”

She didn’t miss the misting of Kresho’s eyes, nor the flood of relief she felt from both him and Ori. She reminded herself that Kresho was also an SNT compliment, a compliment to Dragon and Fury’s sister, and that made him family again. She was happy for that. She’d missed him.

“I’ve missed you too,” came his thoughts down the sub processor link, “I’ve missed you so very much.” It was then that she felt Fury, Mac and Manning adding their warmth and encouragement. She took a deep breath, then reached over and took Kresho’s hand. ‘Okay. I’m ready.”

The room was suddenly awash in her mother’s voice, and she closed her eyes as though she lie in the darkness of their enviro-tent at the station listening to her mother talk to her on one of their late night chats.

“Lenore, what I’m about to tell you, only four people in the world know, and two of those may be dead.” The woman laughed softly. “If all goes according to planned, then I am sharing this with you on your fifteenth birthday and you won’t ever need this message. If not, then I may very well be dead too when you find this, but if that’s the case, you already know that your first priority is to get the hell off this ice ball and find your uncle and Quetzalcoatl. If they’re still alive, they’ll tell you everything. If they aren’t, then what I’m about to say won’t matter much to you anyway.

“Len, darling, you grew in my womb and as close to my heart as you would have if you had been conceived by me and the father you never knew. You have been and always will be my daughter, I don’t know who your father was. An egg was fertilized in the SNT laboratories, in fact there were many of them. They were to become SNTs just like Fury, the shining future we all hoped for. That’s what you were to become, my darling, or so we all believed at first. But Fury’s was the only embryo that grew into that potentiality. Many of the others did not survive even through early gestation, and when it was discovered that only Fury was viable to become an SNT, most of the other embryos remaining, and there were only a few by then, already showing signs of permanent damage, were destroyed.

“Two, however were perfect, healthy, beautiful, both female, but both with no possibility of becoming SNTs. They were not destroyed, my love. The older of the two, I don’t know what happened to, though I have my suspicions.”

Len felt Fury and Manning’s surge of love for Mac. They all knew exactly who that older embryo had grown into.

“The second embryo, Van helped me to steal and to implant inside my own womb, the daughter I wanted, longed for, but would most likely never have. At the time Van and I weren’t yet lovers, but neither of us could stand to see the destruction of what was still very much SNT, very much humanoid and still carried the potential we could not yet imagine.

“And my darling, we were not mistaken. You’re beyond anything we could have hoped for. What we discovered is that you had an affinity, a connection to SNT ships, all of the ships. What no one knew is that the embryos who would not develop into SNTs would develop into the perfect compliments, compatible in ways a normal humanoid could never be, no need for transfusions, no need for immune-suppressant treatments, and somehow completely in tune and in sync with SNT tech even without an actual bonding.

“It was as much for you as it was for us that Van and I ran, Lenore, because we knew what you were, what you would become. We knew that the hope of any surviving SNTS might very well rest in you.

“No matter what happens, my darling, no matter how hard it is, you must survive, you must hold on and get to the Rim. The future of all SNTs relies on you, so full of hope, so full of unrealized potential. I know this is a heavy burden to lay on you, but I know you. I had you close to my heart and knew you even then. You will rise to whatever you have to do because you always have, and you always will. Stay alive and stay safe, Lenore, my beautiful daughter. I love you to the Rift and beyond.”

The message ended there, and for a long moment no one moved, no one said anything. Then Len reached out and cupped Van’s cheek, sending a silent wave of thanks down the sub-con to him. Dragon enfolded her in his arms and held her close from behind her chair. At last she spoke softly. “I’m like Mac.”

“I always wanted a sister.” She could hear the emotion in Mac’s voice from where Len knew she and Manning were still bundled close to Fury’s heart.

“Looks like we’re just in time for the family reunion,” came a voice over the sub com that Len didn’t recognize.

“Indeed, Captain Harker,” Fury said. “And our family is significantly larger, as you can tell.”

“We’ll be at Vodni Station in three days,” came the message, “and we just got a deep space from Griffin. They will be here shortly after. Keen has some tech to share and he insists on meeting the rest of the family. Gerando and Stanislavski inform me that they have some news they’d rather share in person as well, so we’ll see you all soon.”

“How did you manage to get here from so far out?” Manning asked.

“The McAllister Wormhole, of course. We never would have made it otherwise,” Harker replied.

“Then we shall look forward to a family reunion at Vodni Station in three days,” Fury said.

“Well that will certainly make it easier for me,” Ouroboros said.

“Because it’s your home?” Len asked, at last digging into her pudding with gusto.”

“I suppose you could say that,” came the reply. “It is me. I am Vodni Station.”

Kresho, who had been chowing down right along with Len swallowed and laid his spoon down. “During the battle with the Authority, the station was badly damaged, nearly destroyed. The Authority was happy to let the whole population of the station die as it went down in flames, Ori wasn’t.”

“The station was quickly losing atmosphere and there was no way of repairing the breach to the core, so it was Ori’s idea to jettison the whole thing and take it’s place, in essence join with and become Vodni Station.”

Manning let out a long whistle. “Wow! I didn’t see that coming.”

“And the Compass?” Len said.

“It is my way to move about when I am needed beyond the station,” she said. “The Compass is like a matrix in which I can pour at least a part of my consciousness while still continuing to function as the station. It has allowed me the mobility I sacrificed in order to join with Vodni Station.”

“And your compliment then runs the station.” Dragon said. “That is a very good arrangement.”

Something about it made Kresho uncomfortable, and while he said nothing, Len could sense it. “It works,” he said, instead. “I have good people on my team, and the job keeps me out of trouble.” The smile he offered didn’t quite reach his eyes. “The station has grown since Ori took over. While we try to keep a low profile to avoid drawing too much attention from the Authority, we’ve been building up our long-range defensive capability, and we’ve become a pretty impressive scientific research center in our own right.”

Happy Friday everyone! Time for another episode of Dragon Ascending in which much we learn Kresho’s story. As I mentioned, I am now attempting to post episodes at lengths that will be better suited for the flow of the story and enhance your reading pleasure. Some will be slightly shorter, some will be longer. This one is particularly long in order not to break the flow of events. I hope you’re enjoying Dragon Ascending, the sequel to Piloting Fury, as much as I’m enjoying sharing it with you. As always, I love it when you share my work with your reading friends, so feel free. In the meantime, enjoy!

If you missed the previous episode of Dragon Ascending follow the link for a catch-up. If you wish to start from the beginning, of Dragon Ascending. Follow the link.  

For those of you who would like to read the complete novel, Piloting Fury, book one of the Sentient Ships series, follow the link to the first instalment.

Dragon Ascending: Book 2 of the Sentient Ship Series

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

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

Dragon Ascending Part 73: Kresho’s Story

“Five Jaegers are no match for an SNT.” Ori continued their story. “The two remaining knew this well. They fled, and I didn’t pursue them. I now knew it was the man on the Fidelio I wanted, Kresho Ivanovic. Of course he went by another name then. He was the one who could help me.”

“Because he’s an SNT scientist?”

“Because I needed a new compliment, and someone who understood my kind a little better, who had helped bring us into existence, would be much more suitable for that bonding,” Was it possible that there was pain in her voice as she spoke.

“So you stole him away and left me and my mother to rot in that hell hole?” Len exploded, wiping fiercely at her eyes.

“Listen to Ouroboros, my darling,” Dragon said tenderly. “I know this is not easy for you, but there is power in knowledge, and she and Kresho Ivanovic have much of it to offer you.”

“I did not. I would have never left the two of you in such a horrible place. I had every plan that Kresho and I would return for you and your mother, but you must understand, it was a very, very long time before I knew you were there.”

“You didn’t tell her?” Len turned those firebrand eyes on him, and he struggled to hold her gaze.

“Sh! Listen! Listen, my love. You must hear everything,” came the adoring voice of her SNT.

“Kresho Ivanovic did not tell me of you and your mother because he could not remember,” Ori said, and he nearly crumpled under the weight of his own pain. To his surprise, Ori’s warmth surrounded him, supported him, and in his own private sub-processor she said quietly. “Only a little longer now my love and she will understand and she will find as I do, nothing lacking in you.” So he took a deep breath and clung to her, clung to the comfort he hadn’t expected from her as she continued their story.

“It was my plan in those days to hunt down and rescue as many of our people, those who worked on the SNT Project, as possible, and then to regroup with my siblings so that those with injuries, with losses would have the understanding and the support of their humanoid family as well as that of each other, so that we could make new bondings, begin again, no matter how hard it was. I knew it was the only way forward from the horrors we’d lived through. Then in time, I hoped that we could heal enough to vindicate ourselves. Sadly, I did not take into account how difficult that task would be, nor did I understand that because I was an SNT, because I was a fugitive, the Authority would not give up so easily, and I could not lead them back to the Taklamakan System, for while I did not at that time know of you and your mother, I knew of my brother, and I would keep him safe at all cost until it came time for him to rise again from the desert and take his rightful place.”

“By that time the Fidelio had taken heavy fire.” Kresho managed. “The core had been breeched and was overloading. Those who could were scrambling for the escape pods. I couldn’t.”

“Kresho Ivanovich was mortally wounded. I had only a split second to ‘tran him away and jump before the Fidelio exploded.”

Ori paused, and he could feel her examining him to make sure he was up for more. She hadn’t been this careful of him in so long that he wondered if her were dreaming it all. At last she continued. “An SNT can jump as often as necessary, and in the beginning I barely came out of hyperspace long enough to settle before it became necessary to jump again. All that time I was trying to save Kresho’s life. That could only be accomplished with the injections of my bio-tech materials, which of course, he repeatedly rejected, for he was not trained to be a companion. But I knew I must have a companion, that I could not go on alone, for I had seen my brother in the desert go to ground and bury himself in the salvage yard as he settled into the long sleep so as not to endure his mourning. I understood his anguish, and I nearly did the same, but I could not, for in my core I burned to see my brothers and sisters vindicated, exonerated. I, however, could not imagine continuing without a companion and when I found out who was onboard the Fidelio, I knew that I would need Kresho Ivanovic, and he would need me.

“In the beginning, you cannot imagine what it was like for our family, Lenore Felish, how isolated we were, how entirely alone we were, when our very purpose had been to draw all humanoids closer together, and yet we were being blamed for atrocities we did not commit. There was no place safe where we could hide, certainly not within Authority space. I tried every route I could imagine to get back to the Taklamakan System, hoping that I might coax my brother out of his slumber of mourning. In the end, we had no choice but to crossed beyond the Rim.

“In those early years Kresho had no memory of his life before, nor how he had come to be with me. He chose the name Kresho Ivanovic because he had no memory of his previous name. Of course I told him about my brother when he was well and we were bonded. It was only luck that the rebellion on Vodni Station happened when we were once again on our way back to the Taklamakan System, which was at the time under Authority control, though only loosely. By that time the SNT disaster had become old news and the Authority propaganda machines were telling everyone all of the SNTs had either been destroyed or decommissioned and rendered harmless in remote outlying space docks. The timing was right at last for us to return to the Taklamakan. We had no way of knowing that the Authority had decided they would destroy Vodni Station so that they could isolate further the Outer Rim Alliance, whom they feared might gain power through their continued consolidation. Vodni Station serves as a valuable link between the two arms of the Outer Rim Alliance bisected by the Great Dust Cloud. The Authority did not want this.”

“Ori never backed down from a fight,” Kresho said picking up the story again, “She wasn’t willing to see the station destroyed and the link broken between the safe corridors for refugees from Authority Space and what she saw as a safe place for SNTs. The Rim Alliance turned a blind eye to a lot of things that were banned in Authority Space and blatantly thumbed its allied noses at the conglomerates’ efforts to get a foothold beyond. The fall of Vodni Station would pave the path for conglomerate inroads into the Rim. The plan had been to rebuild the station with conglomerate money and strong ties to the Authority. It was to be the first step into Authority control of the Rim.”

“To make a very long story short, there was a battle,” Ouroboros said. “In that battle Kresho was injured badly, but of course with his bonding to me, he healed rapidly. What the trauma did bring about that we had not expected, though, was the return of his memories and of you and your mother still stranded on Taklamakan Minor. It was only then that I realized just how valuable you were, Lenore Felish.

“Even after that, it was almost a year before we were able to return to the Taklamakan System, for there was no safe passage. Kresho sent encrypted message after encrypted message, but they were never answered. We hoped against hope that it was because your mother considered contact unsafe. By that time we had taken over Vodni Station with the help of the Outer Rim Alliance, and had enough fire power and clout to enforce the treaty that the Authority had tried to trample and assure that the conglomerates would be keeping their hands off for a long time to come. When that safe corridor was once more established so that we could get to the Taklamakan System, we went immediately to Taklamakan Minor for you and your mother, but we were too late.”

Happy Friday everyone! Time for another episode of Dragon Ascending in which much reunions and revelations are the order of the day. As I mentioned, I am now attempting to post episodes at lengths that will be better suited for the flow of the story and enhance your reading pleasure. Some will be slightly shorter, some will be longer. This one is particularly long in order not to break the flow of events. I hope you’re enjoying Dragon Ascending, the sequel to Piloting Fury, as much as I’m enjoying sharing it with you. As always, I love it when you share my work with your reading friends, so feel free. In the meantime, enjoy!

If you missed the previous episode of Dragon Ascending follow the link for a catch-up. If you wish to start from the beginning, of Dragon Ascending. Follow the link.  

For those of you who would like to read the complete novel, Piloting Fury, book one of the Sentient Ships series, follow the link to the first instalment.

Dragon Ascending: Book 2 of the Sentient Ship Series

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

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

Dragon Ascending Part 72: Reunions and Revelations

Len rematerialized in the double spiral of Dragon’s heart with his words still filling her head. “I have you my love. You’re safe with me where you belong. I have you now” He was already ripping the environmental suit away. He kissed her face over and over again, and his lips were so warm against her icy skin.

“I knew you’d come.” That was all she could manage around the strange little hiccups of sobs convulsing her dry throat. They only made her gasp harder to fill her oxygen-starved lungs with the sweet, sweet air in Dragon’s heart space.

“Of course I came. Nothing could keep me from you, my love. And now, we must remain here in this place only for a little longer until I have destroyed the planet killer.” There was a brief flash through her head of a glowing network over Tak Minor. It sparked bright and then dissolved into dust followed by a satisfied sigh in her ear. “Ah there, that is done. And now my dearest Lenore, I have one more very quick errand, and we shall leave this place forever. I am bringing your mother away at last to rest in peace. I wish to honor the one who carried you in her womb so that you would one day belong to me.” Another pause. “And now we may go and meet with the rest of our family. Your mother will rest in a place I have prepared for her until we are able to honor her properly as she deserves.”

She barely felt it as they made the jump, cradled in his arms as she was, and when all that remained was to rendezvous with their family, she truly dissolved into wracking sobs. She wailed and keened and howled out her pain and loss. There cradled close to his heart, she mourned all she had lost, releasing all she had held inside. He mourned with her, mourned his own loss, mourned what he had gone to sleep to forget so many years ago. They both mourned their loss until the sobs quieted, and their pain gave way to quiet, tender lovemaking. Neither of them spoke. They didn’t need words. They just needed each other. She had questions, so many questions, but at the moment she couldn’t think of any of them. At the moment all she could think was that she was home, and she slept then, there close to his heart with his warmth wrapped around her.

The Compass barely settled into orbit above Tak Major next to Fury before Diana McAllister and Richard Manning were throwing off their harnesses from where they sat on the bridge. “They’re all yours, Fury, safe and sound.” The words were barely out of Kresho’s mouth before the two dematerialized from his bridge and he heard the war whoops and the laughter onboard SNT1, no doubt coming straight from Fury’s heart. Where else would an SNT be reunited with his compliment? He sighed. Well at least most SNTs and most compliments. He forced a smile at the joyful sounds coming down the sub-processor’s open channel.

“I thank you for returning my Diana Mac and Richard Manning safely to me, Kresho Ivanovic, and Ouroboros,” Fury said. “When we have all rested, I will hear your story. We all will hear your story.”

“We will gladly share it and hear yours, when everyone is rested,” she responded. Kresho was startled to feel a gentle hand on his shoulder, and that only made the ache for the reunion he knew the others would have even sharper.

When she sensed the tension, she pulled away. He could feel her confusion, but he ignored it. Now was not the time, but it would come. For the first time in their years together he was sure it would come soon. After a moment she said, “Camille has just now dropped out of hyperspace some distance from our designated rendezvous. The Andromeda has sustained damage, and she can get no closer. She will need our help.”

It was several hours later they returned to Tak Major with the Andromeda in tow. The damage was substantial from the blast of the planet killer, and he was surprised Camille had made it as far as she had before she was forced to drop out of hyperspace. It had been a huge risk. The Dreadnaught had returned to Tak Major, along with the Jaegers, to await the judgment of the SNTs. Its crew had already been told they were no longer under Authority command. None of them seemed too upset about that. Once Camille had been ‘tranned over to the Compass, the Adromeda had been set on an automated course for Vodni Station. It would take a good month for it to get there, but Kresho couldn’t think the little ship could be easily repaired anyplace but a space dock. Fury had promised him Tenad Fallon would have no use for it. To Kresho’s surprise, when they got back to Tak Major, Camille had asked to be ‘tranned down to Sandstorm, as close to the Dustbowl as possible. Both she and Kresho had managed a few hours sleep enroute. Well, Kresho had tried, but he couldn’t keep his mind of what he knew would happen next.

He was quietly pacing his quarters when Ori spoke. “Dragon is now waiting for us to board. He was able to retrieve Janesha Felish’s body from the station.”

“That’s good. That’s good. I’m glad. It’ll make it a little easier for Len to mourn her.”

“And for you,” she said quietly.

When he made no response, she spoke again. “Kresho, you have borne this weight unfairly, this guilt that was not yours to bear, you have borne it far too long. It is time to give up that burden, and it is time for you to mourn those losses as well.”

“There’s a lot to mourn, Ori,” he replied, not hiding his own bitterness.

For a moment she was silent, and then she replied. “Dragon and Lenore Felish are waiting for us.” He felt her retreat like the sudden absence of warmth. Long ago he’d stopped allowing himself to dwell on that feeling, but after everything that had happened in the past few weeks, he found it more and more difficult to ignore the emptiness.

After a moment, he spoke down the sub-link. “I’m ready Dragon.”

To his surprise he found himself transported into a small quiet room with subdued lighting. In the middle, lying in state as though she only slept, was Janesha’s body, and Kresho felt the sharp stab of memory, of loss, of so much loss.

“I was able to retrieve her before leaving Taklamakan Minor. It was always Lenore’s desire that she should have a proper burial with the honors she so deserves.” Dragon spoke quietly, reverently. “I thought perhaps you would like to pay your respects before you meet with my Lenore.”

“Thank you.” Try though he might, he couldn’t quite keep the hitch from his voice. He could say nothing else, knowing that if he tried all the rest of the words pressing on his chest would come out like a maddening flood, and he wasn’t ready for the dam to burst, not now. Not yet.

“I have convinced my Lenore to listen for I am certain there is much she needs to know, much we both need to know from you and from my sister.”

“Do you still miss her?” To his surprise it was Ori who spoke as quietly and as respectfully as Dragon had.

“I miss what we had, the openness, the kindness.” She flinched at his answer, and he found it didn’t offer him the satisfaction he’d hoped for.

“I am sorry,” came the quiet reply.

Instead of responding, he addressed the other SNT. “Thank you for this, Dragon, for Len’s sake and for my own.”

“She is the mother of my beloved. I could not leave her there.” It still amazed Kresho that SNTs could sometimes be so oblivious to humanoid emotions and at other times understand humanoids better than they understood themselves.

He moved to the high narrow plinth on which Janesha lay and rested his hand on hers. “I couldn’t bring her back when I found her.” He grunted a laugh that sounded more like someone had kicked him in the ‘nads, felt that way too, he supposed. “I wasn’t well myself when I went down, and Ori gave me hell for it. She had to ‘tran me back unconscious and stuff me back in the auto-surgery again. And the lecture, Jesu Vati on a cracker that woman can lecture your balls off.”

“Maybe it’s an SNT thing,” he was startled by the woman’s voice behind him and turned to find himself face to face with Lenore Felish. “Dragon’s the worst. It’s always nag, nag, nag, your too thin, you’re not sleeping enough, perhaps you should drink more water.” There was a strange cross between a growl and a purr from the ship, and he could have sworn Ori gave a twitch of a smile. For what felt like an eternity, she stood studying him, and he let her, forcing himself to hold her gaze. At last her beautiful grey eyes misted and she swallowed hard, but when she spoke, she was well in control. “Why didn’t you come for us before?” she swallowed again and nodded down to her mother.

“I swear to you, Len, I came back for you as soon as I was able, I swear it. But all I found was Janesha’s body.” His words were raw, as though they had been rubbed up against the rough surface ice on Tak Minor. “You, I found no sign of, and I looked for days. I thought you were dead, but what I feared so much more was that the Authority might have taken you away in a shackle.” His voice cracked and he quickly looked back where his hand rested on Janesha’s. “I continued to look through the lists of those shackled for debts, through the list of those shackled on trumped up charges, through the news stories. I thought surely the daughter of a prominent SNT scientist and the niece of Quetzalcoatl’s companion’s shackling would make news. There was nothing. After awhile I had no choice but to assume you were dead.”

What happened?” She asked. “We waited and waited for you, and then, they killed her, my mom, they killed her right in front of my eyes and then left me there to die. What happened?”

“Believe me, nothing could have kept me away had I been able at all to get back to you, but I swear to you I couldn’t.”

She folded her arms across her chest, and held his gaze. He made no attempt to look away. It was time she knew everything.

“The Authority chased us from the time we left the Taklamakan system. We had no choice but to lead them a merry chase. If you remember, the Fidelio had more than a few people running from the shackle on board. The whole crew would be shackled if we were caught.” She moved to his side and gently stroked her mother’s cheek while he continued. “We led them away from Tak Minor, knowing what would happen if they found Janesha, what would happen if they found you. They didn’t know about you, and keeping you safe was our first priority.

“Not far beyond Vodni Station, we were surrounded by Jaegers. The Fidelio had little choice but to fight.” He looked away into the empty space in front of them letting his eyes go out of focus, forcing the story to somehow remain only a story and not the knife that had shredded his heart for the past ten years. “We were sitting ducks. The Jaegers had us, and they didn’t even have to fight. All they had to do was tractor us, board us and slap shackles on all of us. Captain Michaels was about to set the self-destruct button when all of a sudden, three of the Jaegers blew to bits, all but vaporized before our eyes. There were five altogether. I had a pretty good idea of what had just happened, and I figured we might as well bend over and kiss our asses good-bye.”

“An infected SNT,” she said.

He nodded. “Captain Michaels gave me access to a terminal on the bridge, and I tried to contact the ship by opening a sub processor link that was programmed into all of them. It was a long shot, of course. It was hard to imagine an infected ship being willing to open to sub-com, but we had no hope otherwise.”

“And?” she said, when he paused to the force the memory of it all back to a safe distance again.

He looked over at her, not trying to hide the pain he knew he couldn’t anyway. “I was wrong. The sub-com was wide open, and this ship was mourning, wailing, raging the loss of her compliment deliberately killed by the Authority to try and control her.”

“Her?”

He nodded slowly.

“It was I.” Ori joined the conversation. “I am Ouroboros, and I have waited a long time to meet you, Lenore Felish.”

Had Len not known what the presence of an SNT felt like, she probably would have been startled, but she only blinked, and then blinked again. “It was you who set the de-mole in place to protect Dragon.”

“I did, and now there is no further need for it.”

“Please,” Len’s eyes looked molten silver, as they misted in the subdued lighting. “Tell me everything.”

Happy Friday everyone! Time for another episode of Dragon Ascending in which Tenad Fallon gets exactly what  she wishes for. As I mentioned, I am now attempting to post episodes at lengths that will be better suited for the flow of the story and enhance your reading pleasure. Some will be slightly shorter, some will be longer. This one is particularly long in order not to break the flow of events. I hope you’re enjoying Dragon Ascending, the sequel to Piloting Fury, as much as I’m enjoying sharing it with you. As always, I love it when you share my work with your reading friends, so feel free. In the meantime, enjoy!

If you missed the previous episode of Dragon Ascending follow the link for a catch-up. If you wish to start from the beginning, of Dragon Ascending. Follow the link.  

For those of you who would like to read the complete novel, Piloting Fury, book one of the Sentient Ships series, follow the link to the first instalment.

Dragon Ascending: Book 2 of the Sentient Ship Series

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

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

Dragon Ascending Part 71:  Be Careful What You Wish For

Tenad arrived back in the med bay before Fury did, although she knew that wasn’t actually true. He no doubt watched her every move and probably kept her waiting simply because he could. She laughed to herself. When had she stopped calling the ship SNT 1 and began calling him Fury. For that matter, when had she begun referring to him as him rather than it? Well she supposed if she were going to be bonded to him it was easier to be on first name basis.

She would have been embarrassed if anyone had known how much extra time she had taken to shower and make herself ready. It wasn’t like it was a fucking political wedding or anything. Well, perhaps it was, now that she thought of it. Though surely she didn’t think she could seduce an SNT after what she’d done to him? Still the dress Fury had created for her was elegant, black, simple, fitting her better than her own skin, and the feel of it against her body was not like anything she had ever felt before, almost like a caress. It was neither sluttish, nor was it prudish. It was exactly her style. He could have dressed her in prison basics and there would have been nothing she could do about it, except maybe show up to their bonding naked, though she supposed he wouldn’t really care one way or another. She had been the one to ask for clothes, after all. She reminded herself, the bonding was a power move for her, nothing more. If he could plug her into his computer and download the software while she slept through the whole thing, that would be just fine. He, no doubt would prefer that. Hell for all she knew it could involve exactly that. She had no idea. He had told her that bonding was different for every SNT, so he could speak for no one but himself and his bonding had even been unique for an SNT, what with him having two compliments, although he’d informed her that Gerando’s bonding with Griffin, as the Apocalypse was now calling itself, was a ménage. Maybe it was the nature of SNTs to be a little kinky. Fury had told her that it was most often sexual because of the humanoid component in an SNT’s make-up, but that perhaps it didn’t have to be. However it was, whatever the process was, right now she’d just as soon get it over with as soon as possible. The longer they waited, the more variables there were that she couldn’t control. In spite of that urgency, she found herself feeling far more giddy, and certainly far less fearful than she should under the circumstances.

She paced the space that only hours ago she had woken in feeling like death on a cracker, periodically glancing at her reflection in the mirror above the sink. She couldn’t believe how quickly she had recovered, and how her face, her skin, now glowed with health. She was nervous, of course she was nervous, but rack her brain though she did, she was sure she had covered all her bases.

Her people would have stuffed McAllister and Manning into the cryo-pods and launched them by now. Oh yes, she would definitely keep them alive. They were her insurance policy. But she didn’t have to put them up in the Ritz, nor waste resources on their upkeep. That meant that the Virago was in place above Tak Minor and the Dreadnaught above Tak Major. Her people would all be onboard and ready to jump as soon as the planet killers’ final countdowns began. It had been the plan all along that if the dampening field were breached then the planet killers would move immediately into place. Certainly she’d never trusted that Fury wouldn’t try to rescue his people. And when Camille stole the Andromeda, she had no doubt that was a part of the deceitful bitch’s plan. So now what had to happen had to happen fast. True enough, Ivanovic was a loose cannon, but not anything she couldn’t handle and after she and Fury were bonded, she planned to handle him a lot. With command of an SNT, she’d have him and Vodni Station by the shorthairs, offering her and the Andromeda Conglomerate a perfect jumping off place for Authority inroads into the Rim, something she hadn’t thought of until her dear departed brother’s antics had forced her to resupply there. Where her father and the other conglomerates had failed fifteen years ago, she would succeed with minimal loss of life and resources.

She would bond with Fury and if they were lucky, if it happened fast enough, this bonding, they would fix the SNT on the surface and then with her inheritance back and two SNTs and a politically valuable space station hers to command, there would be nothing she couldn’t accomplish. Her power would make what her father’d had seem paltry. She paced some more her palms suddenly sweaty. Why was Fury not here? Surely he had to know that the lives of his compliment were in her hands. The destruction of the Taklamakan System would prove to him that she meant business and consolidate her control. After that he would know not to cross her, but before the final sequence, she would have him tractor whatever SNT was in the salvage dump. All her research told her he would be able to do it. And while it might damage the ship further, it was no good to her if it didn’t work. Yes, it was a pity that Camille’s treachery forced her to speed up her plans, leaving her little choice with the SNT on the surface, but really, she didn’t care if it was a mindless automaton as long as it obeyed her. It might actually be better that way. After Fury had lifted damaged SNT from its resting place, surely Fury could fix it once they were out of this shit hole system. Barring that, well a bird in the hand, right? She would still not only have a working SNT, not just any SNT, but SNT1with genetics to make more. She could live with that much collateral damage.

The med bay felt like it was flooded with static, shocking her out of her reverie. The hair on her arms and the back of her neck stood. And then she felt a strange sense of … euphoria? A swelling of her heart, her emotion and longing, tenderness, joy that made her drop to the chair where Camille had watched over her, bathed her forehead, even comforted her, never leaving her side. She had never once said thank you. That never bothered her before. Besides she was an indentured, wasn’t she? She wasn’t doing any of it out of kindness, whatever the fuck that was. She sat for a moment clutching her chest as though possibly the feelings might break her open. How could pain and regret mix so readily with euphoria and tenderness? And worse, when the feeling passed, she felt empty like she had never felt empty before, for the first time since she was a child, she felt the ache of her loneliness. She blinked, stood up and continued to pace. No doubt it was nothing, she told herself. No doubt it was only her body still adjusting to Fury’s bio-tech coursing through her blood. She’d read that SNTs were equipped with better, more healthy function emotions than most people. In her case she supposed that wouldn’t be too difficult. Emotions, feelings were a weakness she could ill afford.

She waited a few more minutes trying not to dwell on whatever it was she felt and at last she called out quietly, “Fury? I’m ready.” She spoke with more confidence than she actually felt. Still nothing. Was he just keeping her waiting out of spite? “Fury?”

Without a word from the ship, the whole med bay shimmered and vanished. Her brother tumbling end over end in space was the last thought in her head before she came back to herself on a narrow catwalk with no safety rail. This transport had been gentle, precise, nothing like when Fury had first tranned her onboard. A good thing, she thought as she stood bracing herself against the vortex that circled and danced and flashed bright just beyond the catwalk. She was already fighting vertigo looking down into the depths through eyes squinted against the brightness. The air around her crackled with that same sense of ecstatic charge she had felt in the med bay redolent with expectation, anticipation, exuberance, passion. Her nipples peaked hard beneath her dress and every cell of her body ached with arousal. If this were an SNT seduction, then surely she would never survive it. She was strangely okay with that, even as she was terrified. The air around her swirled with such expectation that she felt as though a question was being asked. She just didn’t know what it was. She yelled into the wind. “Fury? What do I do now?”

“There is no rail for a reason,” came the reply. “To bond with me you must jump.” Before she could respond it was almost as though he read her mind. “No, you will not die, I will not let that happen, even now.”

“Even now?” Her voice came out small, sounding almost like it had when she was a little girl.

“Even after all you have done, all the pain you have caused those I love. If you still wish to bond, then you must jump. This is my core, my heart, and you can touch it no other way.”

“Will it hurt?” She’d asked her father that question only once. He had lied to her. From then on she just assumed everything was simply meant to hurt.

“That depends on you, Tenad Fallon,” came the reply she hadn’t expected.

“I don’t understand.”

“It depends on you and what you do with what you find when our hearts join.”

“When our hearts join? Our hearts?”

“It is a bonding, not a shackling. If you are sure this is what you want then you must jump. If not I will transport you back to your quarters.”

Fuck! This was not how she expected it to be. She expected to be plugged into a computer or fucked by the machine, or something strange like that, but this? This was stranger still. Nevertheless, she’d made her choice, and she would not, could not back down until she was bonded and in control. It was far too late for turning back. Camille had sealed her fate the minute she ran away with the Andromeda. Barely able to stand in the wind, she inched her way forward, took what little breath she could get into her lungs and jumped into the vortex.

The vortex caught her as she jumped and pulled her in with such force bones in her neck cracked and she wasn’t entirely sure a rib was broken. She had not intended to scream. She wasn’t really sure that she did, and even if she had, it was quickly crammed back down her throat by the wind. She forced her eyes open and held her gaze level until the worst of the vertigo passed and then she looked down, down, down, an effort that was in itself time consuming and exhausting. It was like looking into the bottom of a mining shaft at one of the conglomerate triaxe mines she’d toured several years ago, but this was a shaft of light swirling and dancing around its center, a center that was not empty. Standing far below looking up at her was a man and a woman hand in hand. They watched her for a second then vanished like some sort of holo image causing her to doubt what she saw, and then she was no longer held on the shaft of air, but she was falling, falling at such velocity that she might have blacked out, though only for a second before she settled gently on a surface that felt like a bed.

“No, Tenad Fallon, this is not the place of seduction, this is the place where I see who you really are.” Fury spoke as though he had read her mind, something she hadn’t taken into account, but it wouldn’t matter what he saw there inside her head now when she would have control soon enough.

“Ah, but you are not in control, Tenad Fallon. You have never been.” She could have sworn the touch that brushed her face was physical, gentle even, and then it came to rest on her forehead and moved down to shut her eyes as though she were dead. “Watch,” his voice was only a whisper against her ear, and for a brief moment she thought that in spite of what he had said this was a seduction after all. “Watch and see the truth. First my truth.”

It could have been a split second, it could have been an eternity. And to her horror, she did not see his truth, but she lived it as though it were her own. She lived his birth too early and alone without a compliment, his impossible mission, the loss of his Diana Mac. She lived his anguish in bringing Richard Manning back from death, their love, their passion, their anguish over Diana Mac’s suffering at the hands of her father. She rejoiced with them in the ecstatic happiness of freeing her after so long, of bringing her home, of bonding with both of them here in this place. She lived the rescue of Apocalypse from his suffering, now a fully bonded SNT, now Griffin.  She experienced the transformation of the Dubrovnik. She shared his excitement at finding one of his siblings buried in the salvage yard in the Sea of Death. And worst of all, she shared his agony, like no pain she had ever felt before at having his beloveds ripped from him by her in order to steal from him something she had no right to take. That pain was transformed into rage and then transformed again into a plan. Somewhere far away she could feel herself writhing under the weight of his emotions, his … his love for them. Somewhere far away she cried out in anguish, his anguish until she thought the agony would destroy her. Even if he could bring her back from the dead, she couldn’t imagine wanting such a thing bearing such a weight of agony and so much of it laid at her door. She couldn’t imagine ever deserving to live again.

“At your door, yes, Tenad, the one just outside your shriveled heart. But you don’t feel it, you never do because you live far from that heart, don’t you?”

It wasn’t Fury who spoke this time. It was a woman. She opened her eyes to see Diana McAllister sitting by her, not the malnourished pale indentured her father tortured, but a woman with long dark hair. Bright eyed glowing with health, and beneath was that same fire that had been there even back then, even as her father and brother tortured her and tormented her endlessly. But both McAllister and Manning were in a state of frozen slumber now, out of her way, but still safe and sound. Surely this was an illusion. After all why wouldn’t Fury be able to create such an illusion here at his core and with the treatments she had taken to even be able to be here, illusions, even hallucinations shouldn’t really surprise her.

Once again Fury spoke close to her ear, now almost as though he were inside her head. “You have seen my memories, Tenad Fallon, but you have remained isolated within the safety of my walls. So now, look upon the present, which has not unfolded quite like you had planned.” Once again the hand swept her eyes closed and she watched in horror as not one, but two ships, ships that had to have been SNTs, threw protective shields around Tak Minor and Tak Major. One was Fury, doing this even now, even in his distraction, protecting a worthless bunch of smelly salvage rats. Why? And Tak Minor, well it was lifeless, no great loss at all really.

The other, she assumed was the sibling from the salvage yard, not nearly as bad off as Fury had said. How could that even be possible?

“Anything is possible if it means protecting those we love,” came Fury’s voice.

“McAllister and Manning?”

“Safe, as is my brother, Dragon, and his compliment. It appears you have underestimated us, Tenad Fallon.”

“So it would appear,” she said. Deep down in her gut it didn’t really surprise her. “And now you’ll kill me.” To her surprise, she wasn’t nearly as fearful of that death at an SNTs hands as she would have been at her own.

“For the sake of your brother, Gerando, to whom Griffin and all of those souls from what you call Plague 1 owe their lives, I will not kill you, Tenad Fallon.”

“Then what?” She did her best to meet the gaze she could not see, “Will you torture me, like my father used to do?”

“No, I will not torture you. I will let you do that to yourself. You wanted a bonding, and you endured a great deal to get it .So be it, so you shall have it, but perhaps in future you should be careful what you ask for. Now it is time for you to look at your own heart. I only hope that you are ready.”

She wasn’t. Death would have been easier. The thought came often after that when she was able to surface from her own depths and glance away from the horrid mirror that was her heart enough to cry out, enough to beg for an end to it, and beg she did.

Happy Friday everyone! Time for another episode of Dragon Ascending in which our heroes race to the rescue before it’s too late. As I mentioned, I am now attempting to post episodes at lengths that will be better suited for the flow of the story and enhance your reading pleasure. Some will be slightly shorter, some will be longer. This one is particularly long in order not to break the flow of events. I hope you’re enjoying Dragon Ascending, the sequel to Piloting Fury, as much as I’m enjoying sharing it with you. As always, I love it when you share my work with your reading friends, so feel free. In the meantime, enjoy!

If you missed the previous episode of Dragon Ascending follow the link for a catch-up. If you wish to start from the beginning, of Dragon Ascending. Follow the link.  

For those of you who would like to read the complete novel, Piloting Fury, book one of the Sentient Ships series, follow the link to the first instalment.

Dragon Ascending: Book 2 of the Sentient Ship Series

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

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

Dragon Ascending Part 70: Into Safety

“I will not lose my Lenore!” Dragon’s bellow was nearly deafening, filled with rage. “It is your fault she is back here! All your fault! Ouroboros, you are my sister! How could you put my compliment at risk when you know what is like to lose a beloved? You know what it is like!”

“I will explain, but not right now,” Ori yelled to be heard. “You don’t understand, and–”

“We don’t have time for this right now,” Kresho shouted into the roar. “We have to find her now!”

“Hey! Hey! Shut the fuck up all of you and listen to me,” came Camille’s normally soft voice suddenly full of command and urgency. “The top of Mount Orion isn’t under the dampening field. We discovered when we flew over. That’s where she’s at, climbing to get out. If she can reach a high enough –”

The roar of the launch blocked out all sound and tossed the compass as though it were a scrap of paper caught in a strong wind. It took everything both Kresho and Ori could do to right the ship, all the while yelling down the sub-processor, “Camille! Camille, are you all right?” The Andromeda would have literally been blown away by the blast. When the atmosphere settled around them again, a single rocket, launched from the Dreadnaught.

“They launched early!” Came Camille’s breathless voice in the sub processer. “The motherfuckers launched early!”

Two days before the drone arrived, with no triaxe cells to keep it running, the generator began to run down, and in the final twenty-four hours, Len was forced to remain in the environmental suit overnight even inside the station. It would be depleted by the time she could get the drone reprogrammed to Tak Major. In order to have enough fuel to make the trip to Sandstorm, everything in the drone had to be off-loaded. That would drain the suit’s life support systems even faster. Even with her working through the daylight hours in her normal bad weather gear, she would still deplete her suite. Her mother’s, which was fully charged, she would need for the trip to Tak Major, and only that with the help of the Juliet drug.

When the drone arrived on the landing pad right on schedule, Len nearly cried with relief, taking time only to open several survival bars and eat them while she began unloading. The last two days there had been only thin soup made from some dried seaweed shoved to the back of the storage room. It was vile, but warm, and it filled her stomach, even if only barely.

At first, she unloaded only enough space so that she could slip inside to reprogram the guidance system. That was the critical path; that was what she needed to be fresh and focused for. The rest was grunt work. She didn’t need to see the schematics nor the calculations for the journey to Sandstorm. Those she had committed to memory long ago and gone over and over in her head every night like a mantra to fill the loneliness.

When the internal computer had been reprogrammed with the emergency landing details for Sandstorm landing pad, she reprogrammed the speed. She programmed it for as fast as a Mayfly 7 could go, dangerously fast for the distance, but any slower and she would be dead before she got there. After that she went about the frantic task of unloading, not bothering to dolly everything into the station. Up until now every little item aboard a drone was precious and carefully sorted and inventoried. It was sometimes two days before the hatch was sealed and the launch sequence set for the drone’s return journey. Now it was only dead weight, and she couldn’t survive another night in the station. She hurried through the task shoving emergency rations bars into her mouth to give her the energy she needed to keep on schedule. The way she saw it, she would either eat again when she arrived on Tak Major, or not at all. She was okay with that. If she didn’t take this chance, she would be dead anyway.

Once she was finished, and the landing pad was all but buried in the tossed bundles and boxes that would have been treasures such a short time ago, she went one last time to the ice cave to say her final good-by to her mother. “I’m on my way, Mama. I promise I’ll be back. You just lie here and rest. It won’t be long.” Once again, she touched the frozen cheek, then she left.

In the freezing, dark station, she carefully donned her mother’s environmental suit, going through all the safety checks her mother had taught her, that they had gone through together a thousand times, always checking each other’s suit too just in case. The Juliet drug was already inserted into the internal first aid system, carefully replacing the broad-spectrum emergency cocktail that every suit was equipped with. In an emergency the suit internals were programmed to inject the cocktail directly into the vein, but this suit she had reprogrammed to inject the Juliet drug at just the right time when hypoxia had reached just the right level and the suit still had the power for the task. If it failed, she would die. The odds were not in her favor, but they were the best odds she would get on this ice ball, so she left the station and climbed into the drone. Once she was safely strapped in where cargo would have normally been, she started the launch sequence, with just enough time to escape the atmosphere before the winds picked up again.

The next thing she remembered was Arji breaking her ribs in his efforts to revive her and cursing at her not to die as she gasped in her first incredibly painful, incredibly delicious breath of air. And there was heat, more heat than she had ever felt in her life.

But she wasn’t hot now. She was so cold, so cold, and there was so far left to go. So very far. She must have lost consciousness for a moment from the lack of oxygen. She came back to herself sitting on her ass in the middle of a snowdrift.

“Len, honey. Get up. You have to get up. You’re almost there. You’re almost home. You have to keep moving.” The hand that reached out to her was bare and feminine. She looked up to find her mother standing over her dressed in only her under-thermals, her hair loose and barely lifting on a breeze, and yet the wind hadn’t calmed. If anything it was worse. “Come on, sweetheart. You’re not finished yet. Your whole life is ahead of you, and it’ll be a wonderful life. Get up.” She smiled down at her. “Dragon is coming for you, for both of us, don’t worry. Please don’t worry. Get up, my beautiful girl.”

She took the offered hand and clung to it as she shoved up to her feet. “I’m sorry mama. I’m so sorry,” she gasped the words out loud, in spite of not being able to spare the oxygen. And then she sobbed.”

“My darling girl, you have nothing to be sorry for. You’ve done everything right and so very much more. I am so proud of you. Now get up, hurry. Dragon is waiting.”

Suddenly the sky lit up with a network so bright that sunshield lowered itself into position in the visor of her helmet. She figured she must be hallucinating. She’d never seen anything like that before. She should turn up the oxygen a bit she supposed because hallucinations weren’t a good sign, but there was not enough to turn up any way. “I love you mama,” she said to no one there. And then she heard it. Loud and clear, she heard it.

“I love you, I need you, I am here, my Lenore. I have come.” For a second, the world flashed bright and then vanished and then she vanished with it.

They all watched helplessly as the rocket raced away toward the planetoid and exploded in low orbit bursting into a blinding net, multiplying and spreading to surround the whole surface of Tak Minor. They had seconds before the net would go critical, flash bright and implode onto the planetoid. The implosion would then continue right on through to the planetoid’s core, collapsing the whole of Tak Minor in on itself. Kresho hammered an impotent fist against the control panel seeing the flash through a red mist of rage and pain. Ori’s own pain dwarfed his own. Camille sobbed openly. “We have failed her! We have failed our Lenore,” Ori sounded almost as though she sobbed as well.

But then something happened. There was another flash of light, a sharp point that slipped through the net like a needle, and it was impossible to see what happened next, it was far too bright for humanoid eyes. Even with his eyes closed, the flash across the dark inside of Kresho’s eyelids was blinding. He cried out and threw his arm over his face, bracing for the aftershock. He waited, holding his breath, but nothing happened. When he ventured a peek, it was as though everything froze as it was. The planet-killer’s lethal net was still in place, the ships hadn’t been tossed. Nothing moved at all. But something was missing. Someone.

“Dragon? Where’s Dragon?” Kresho said when he could manage to speak again. Oh God, to lose an SNT as well as a compliment and the little girl he’d thought of as a daughter was more than he could bear.

Into the silence, Ori replied, “my brother is below the net.” The words were barely spoken before the planet-killer’s net sparked once as though someone had set fireworks off all across its surface. Then it grew duller and duller before it simply crumbled and drifted away like so much space dust revealing beneath an iridescent dome around the curve of the whole planetoid not unlike a giant soap bubble. It caught the twinkle of the distant sun only for a moment then vanished and Dragon rose brighter than the sun from above Mount Orion. For another moment there was stunned silence and then the ship said, “I have her. I have my Lenore. She is safe.”

For a long time no one spoke. The relief on both smaller ships felt like a living thing wrapping itself around them and holding them just for a second. And then Fury’s voice came through sub space. “Taklamakan Major is safe.”

“And Tenad Fallon?” Ori asked.

“She is about to be neutralized.”

“You’re going to kill her?” Camille’s voice down the sub processor link sounded viciously pleased.

It was Ori who responded. “Much worse than that, Camille Ingraham. He is going to give her what she wants.”

Before the discussion could go further, Fury said. “Please hurry home with my beloveds.”

“We’ll be there in a flash,” Ori said. Kresho could almost hear a smile in her voice.