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Dragon Ascending Part 13: A KDG Scifi Romance

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Happy Monday everyone!  I hope you’re enjoying Dragon Ascending, book two of the Sentient Ship Series and the continuation of Fury’s journey to find his family.   I hope you enjoy.  In the meantime, if you have just arrived and would like to start at the beginning of Piloting Fury, follow the link, and enjoy! If you like what you’re reading, make sure to catch all of Dragon Ascending from the beginning.

Dragon Ascending :Book 2 of the Sentient Ship Series

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

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

 

 

Dragon Ascending Part 13: Too Close 

I should not have come to her. I should not have responded when she called to me. I did not want to know her. I certainly did not want to know that her name was poetry, that beneath the filth and the blood and sweat and vomit was a delicate, vulnerable humanoid, who had missed too many meals and too seldom slept in comfort. Len, she called herself, she move me deeply. But as I have said, I am no doubt somewhat unbalanced from my own loss. I am more vulnerable to humanoids than I would choose to be. I could not have imagined how she would nearly destroy me when I thought she would die while I watched helplessly. Her very heart had stopped. The slow steady beating of her heart in peaceful sleep almost had not happened, so close she had come to death, much closer than she should have, than she would have if I could have accessed my data as I should have been able to. If I could have accessed myself as I should have been able. Instead I had been forced to resort to the auto-surgery so helpless was I. It was only when I remembered to access my own heart, my blood and inject her with it that her heart beat again, that she breathed again, and color returned to her cheeks and wounds began to heal as though I had simply willed it, as though she had simply acquiesced to my will.

The auto-surgery stood ready to inject her with immunosuppressants to keep her body from rejecting my biological and technological materials, so different from her own.

She did not.

How could it be that she did not reject my genetic materials? The mix of technology and biology alone was usually lethal without the injections.  And yet she took what I offered up from my core into that fragile, broken flesh of hers, which to my surprise devoured it hungrily, and the affect was astounding, visible from moment to moment, as the gift from my body restored her health.

Her filthy, soiled clothing had been stripped away in order to clean and treat her wounds, most of which were healing from moment to moment. Deep insider her flesh, which had been so badly violated, the physical injuries were healing as well, but there were other wounds that would not so easily be healed, the emotional wounds, which she would never be shed of. Such wounds I understood well, and I understood the desire to keep them as far from the center of one’s core as possible.

As the woman healed before my very optic sensors, the auto-surgery continued to bathe and clean the filth from her. The process was not the traditional and welcomed cleansing of flesh that humanoids were so enamored of, though in truth an auto-surgical cleaning was much more effective, and it gave me pleasure to see her clean and in no further stress. For some time while she slept, I kept watch just in case the rejection of my genetic materials should be delayed in this one. My watch had not been necessary, for she remained secure within the auto-surgery’s emergency treatment space, and yet I remained. I should have removed myself long before she woke. The less contact I had with her the better. To her I would simply be the computer of a long dead ship. In truth I was little more, and even the computer was damaged.

I had not planned to respond when she woke up. I had not even planned to be present, but when she would not drink the water essential to facilitate her recovery, I intervened. And then I lingered for the pleasure of watching her drink and then eat, and when she called out to me, in my arrogance I found I wanted her to call my name. Though all I could remember was some sort of designation I did not fully understand, and yet I knew it was as close to a name as I had at the moment, Ascent7.

I should never have asked her name. Her name gave her dimension, depth. Her name took up space in my damaged inner workings, filling a place that was otherwise empty. And her presence in that place was uncomfortable. Oh how I had worked to purge that space so that there was nothing remaining for me to feel, and now I had let this woman in. And she would not be so easily dismissed.

She did not lie quietly when she woke the second time, rather she stretched long and deep and yawned and sighed, gathering the covering to her breasts as she pushed up on one elbow. Her thin stomach grumbled and she rested a slender hand upon it and looked around.

I instantly provided food, a more substantial stew and flat bread along with an electrolyte supplement that at least looked tasty. And water, of course. She needed lots of water.

She sighed her pleasure with a deep inhalation of the scents. “I’m starving,” she said, knotting the coverlet around her and coming to the table. I would have to see to clothing for her.

She drank the water, and then glanced around the chamber I had made for her as though she hoped to see me somewhere in the corner perhaps. “Thank you, Ascent7.”

I did not answer, stunned as I was that this woman from such a place as Taklamakan Major would have the manners to thank a computer, or even feel it necessary.

“I can’t remember ever eating so well,” she continued, unaware of my surprise. “I didn’t know that ships were trained in cookery.”

 

 

Still I did not reply, determined to minimize my contact with her. It was better that way.

She did not seem to mind my silence. She ate with deliberate pleasure. Even with food readily available to her she ate slowly, savoring each bite as though she were not certain of her next meal, as though I might actually withhold food from her. The bread, I noticed, she did not touch. “My mother used to be a pretty good cook. She taught me, but,” she shrugged and swallowed carefully, and I found myself fascinated with the rise and fall of the translucent muscles at her throat in the motion of ingesting food. “You can’t get many of the ingredients here, and even if you could, I can’t afford them. No one here can or they wouldn’t live on this shithole.” She tilted head at such an angle to suggest that she was lost in thought, and then she said, “at least no one bothers you here.” As she spoke, the expressive angles of her face became harsher, tighter. She blinked a couple of times as though the light suddenly hurt her eyes, then she laid down her spoon, though she was not nearly finished. “At least most of the time.”

“Those who hurt you will not bother you again.” This time I could not keep silent. This time I feared that she would feel my own rage as it passed over me.

Her thin shoulders stiffened and she stilled, the only movement was the flutter of her pulse in her fragile neck. “You know.”

“I treated your injuries, and they were … extensive. I was very angry.” Then I added quickly, “It was not my intention to violate your privacy, but your condition was urgent.”

“She bit her lip and twisted her fingers in the napkin on her lap. “Did you kill them?” Before I could replay she said, “because I wouldn’t mind if you had.”

I studied her for a moment, once again reminded of just how much more there was to this woman than I had at first given her credit for. It would appear that she was less fragile than I had earlier believed. “If they are dead, I have not confirmed, but they were falling from high orbit when my attention was drawn back to the your disturbing lack of respiration.”

To my surprise she laughed. “Well that’s all right then. Not a pleasant fall from high orbit.”

“No, indeed.”

She picked up her spoon and continued to eat, still not touching the bread.

“Is the bread not to your liking?”

“Oh, I’m sure it’s delicious,” came her reply, “but those bastards took my pack. All my rations are gone.”

“You are not at the mercy of the Taklamakan now.”

She smiled and looked around the room, once again attempting to locate the place from which I spoke. “Oh don’t be offended. Your hospitality has been above and beyond. I give you five stars. It’s just that … I don’t want to wear out my welcome.”

It surprised me that she could read me so easily. I was a collection of circuits and nanites mixed with a bit of human biology to create a Frankensteinian creature with no place in the galaxy. “It is impossible for me to be offended,” I lied, and was somewhat surprised that I had that ability within myself, the subterfuge I did not like in humanity.

“Good,” she responded. “No need to be. You’ve been wonderful.”

It disturbed me to find the thought of her departure not at all to my liking, for certainly she would leave. What was there in this place for her? “Nevertheless,” I said, vowing once again that when next the opportunity presented itself, I would sever all contact with her. “you may eat all that you like while you are here, for certainly you are in need of a more caloric diet.”

At that she laughed and ripped into the bread with an animal-like growl that suggested pleasure and not anger. And I was pleased.

“I will also see to your need for clothing, Len.”

“Thank you, Ascent. I haven’t had a new party dress in awhile.”

“Then you shall certainly need one for my annual gala soirée.”

Oh her laugh! Such a sound I could not recall hearing, such pleasure in sound had once been mine, I was sure, but I no longer recalled that time, nor did I try. “Afraid you’ll find I’m not a very good dancer.”

“Nor am I, so we shall do just fine together,” I replied.

Once again at the end of her meal, she saw to her elimination needs and then returned to bed. I was aware from trembling of her limbs, that she needed rest as much as she did food. She slept, and this time I did retreat as far from her as I could get, determined that I should sever the ties between us before it was too late to do so.

Dragon Ascending Part 11: A KDG Scifi Romance

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Happy Monday everyone!  I hope you’re enjoying Dragon Ascending, book two of the Sentient Ship Series and the continuation of Fury’s journey to find his family.  I hope you enjoy.  In the meantime, if you have just arrived and would like to start at the beginning of Piloting Fury, follow the link, and enjoy! If you like what you’re reading, make sure to catch all of Dragon Ascending from the beginning.

Dragon Ascending :Book 2 of the Sentient Ship Series

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

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

 

 

Dragon Ascending Part 11: Bad Blood

She flinched and forced a sour smile as the bot began its work. Her older brother and her father were not the only ones with very specific needs. She would have left the wounds untreated to prolong the pain if it had not been for her crew. She had learned long ago, growing up in the viper’s nest, that a Fallon never showed weakness, and while she could disguise most injuries, she expected this time that there was a cracked rib. The bot knew well enough to treat only the most severe injuries, only the most visible, at least there was that much, and then she could have the pleasure of the pain — the pain of the guilt. The longer the pain lasted, the less often she needed to run the risk of being found out. Though those who did find out would certainly not survive that knowledge. What a fucked up bunch the Fallon bastards all were. She wondered if SNT 1 was equally fucked up.

The man on the bed moaned and shifted. She studied him for a moment. “Diagnosis?” She asked the med-bot, which stopped its work on her ribs and scanned. “Internal bleeding, ruptured spleen, broken wrist and two fractured ribs along with various bruises and contusions,” came the reply.

“Prognosis?”

“One hundred percent recovery, however time in the infirmary will be required.”

That was disappointing. She should have known better than to use someone who was not an indentured. To use and indentured to service her needs and then have him healed would have only been protecting her investment, and an indentured knew better than to spread rumors. She sighed, flinched again at the Med-bot’s efforts, and said, “‘tran him out.”

Instantly the bed was empty. The voice command to her computer had been obeyed to the unwritten letter. Wherever into the vacuum of space the man had been ‘tranned would not be visible to any of the present crew. Yes, it was disappointing. It was always better with a non-indentured. There were so many more delicious risks. But if her sexual partner didn’t have the good graces to die in the act, then the situation had to be sorted. Sometimes, in some places, she could pick up someone at a bar or choose someone who could be easily explained away and easily replaced. Her predilection was best timed perfectly. That she had not done so this time was a testament to how truly angry she was at her brother’s interruption of her plans.

This communications officer was the loss of a resource that would be difficult to replace on Vodni Station. Oh she’d had her eye on the man for a while, but it had been her plan if she brought him to her bed to do so in a place where there were plenty of gifted replacements. That meant near the center of Authority space, and she avoided that hot bed of politics and intrigue as much as possible. No this man, she had planned to have only in her fantasies. This man would not be easily replaced no matter where they were. She seldom made such a juvenile mistake, so like something her elder brother would pull, and she was furious at herself for her few hours of weakness and what it would cost her. This man she would not even have considered if she not been cloistered with him over the deep space scanners trying to find a trace of SNT1 for long enough to be strung out and way too aware of his own rising hormones, working so closely with the boss. And it had been his skills that had actually pinpointed where SNT1 actually was and confirmed their speculations of its route in the first place.

 

 

She could not abide stupid men, and she refused to fuck them, so this man had signed his own fate by his brilliance, and she was even more aroused by the fact that he was just arrogant enough not to fear her. The one thing she did not want when she took someone to her bed was for them to fear her. That was the reason she didn’t relish taking indentureds. They lived in fear, and they all knew she held the key to their pain, their long anguished death, or even their release, all safely tucked away in a small black case and a micro syringe that she always kept on her person. But this one, Vidak, he had been good, really good, taking as much pleasure in his own pain as in inflicting pain upon her. Vaticana Jesu, she would have liked to keep him for later. Her weakness, her lack of control, had cost her far too much. With a grunt, she pulled away from the med-bot. “Leave it!” She said.

“There will be scarring on the lower hip and buttocks,” the bot warned. “And one rib is not completely healed. You will have to wrap it very tightly. I shall leave you bandages.”

“I can live with that,” she said. She deserved no better.

As quietly as it had come, the bot left, leaving a roll of bandaging on her dressing table. Once it was gone, she slid back into the wrecked bedding and over to the spot where Vidak had lain, still warm from the man’s body. She sighed deeply, breathing in the scent of blood and sex and the sweat of their fucking, of their shared rage. She lay on her back, her buttocks stinging excruciatingly as she slid down between the sheets, breath catching as she moved harsh hands over each bruise, each abrasion, each ache that still remained, especially between her thighs where he had battered her with such fury that she thought perhaps it was she who should die this time. He bloodied her as surely as if she had been a virgin, and that warmth still trickled down her thighs. That deep aching pain burned into pleasure so sharp that she saw the room through a sheen of tears. “You, I won’t forget soon, Vidak,” she gasped. Her heart rapped furiously against her injured ribs, her own scent rose to dominate the room with the crescendo of her need. Her own scent, her own blood, it would always and forever dominate the space, even in the pain she relished. As she shuddered against her fingers, and gave a cry of pain, she bit her lip and tasted that blood as she whispered. “Your skills I’ll enjoy awhile longer.”

She was drowsing in post-coital bliss, or as close to it as she ever came, when her PD pinged. She came back to herself cursing. She took two deeply painful breaths remembering that her ribs had not been properly treated. “What?”

“Jessup Fallon is out of sensory range, heading back toward Authority space,” her first lieutenant said.

“And SNT1?” She asked.

“No sign of any other ship.” There was no apology in his voice, no whining fear. He knew that she would hold him accountable only for his own actions and not a loss none of them could have foreseen.

“Lay in a course for Vodni Outpost then, and make sure I’m not disturbed.”

She broke off the link before Lieutenant Fizel could respond. Then she shoved back the sheets, now smelling of regret she did not need right at the moment. With an effort, she stood and limped toward the shower. The rib was going to be hard to disguise. At the bathroom door she stopped and spoke. “Camille, change the bed. Incinerate the sheets and the robe.” The indentured, who had been huddled unobtrusively in the corner, rose instantly and went to the task. Tenad smiled to herself. There were some tasks only a humanoid could properly manage, and Camille had clever hands. Inside the bathroom, she took two of the tablets that would ease the pain of her bodily functions enough for her to manage a piss without passing out and to keep infection at bay. She swallowed them without water. Then stepped into the shower and cranked the hot water. For a moment she leaned against the tiles feeling suddenly very cold. Then she scrubbed her aching body with a vigor that was anything but gentle. For a Fallon, gentle would never suffice.

Dragon Ascending Part 1: A KDG Scifi Romance

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Happy Monday everyone!  Last week I shared with you the final episode of Piloting Fury Today I’m thrilled to offer for your Monday reading pleasure the first episode of Dragon Ascending, book two of the Sentient Ship Series and the continuation of Fury’s journey to find family. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. In the meantime, if you have just arrived and would like to start at the beginning of Piloting Fury, follow the link, and enjoy!

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 1: Salvage

Anticipation returned with consciousness and the knowledge that I was no longer alone. But how quickly that anticipation was crushed. This filthy dust-covered woman child was not she, not the woman I longed for. With consciousness I was painfully reminded that the one I desired was gone, and the ache of her absence came back to me just as quickly as the presence of this humanoid roused me from my slumber.

Perhaps it had been a millennia, perhaps it had been only moments. The pain was the same. And certainly if I had cared to check, I would have known exactly how long she had been gone down to the nanosecond. It mattered not, the passing of time. It had eased nothing. Of what happened before, beyond her loss, I remembered little else, only fire and pain and loss, none of which I wished to bring to mind even if I were able.

But I knew with certainty that this humanoid woman at the perimeter shield was the first to visit me in my mourning, so I made sure she could enter my resting place. Though I should not have. I should have returned to my sleep. In sleep, I did not feel my loss. In sleep it was as though I had never existed. But night was approaching. The wind was already rising. This one would not survive without shelter, so with some effort, I opened a small breach in the perimeter shield, and this one was wily enough to find the entrance I had provided. She was not large, she had no trouble wriggling through like a small desert creature, pushing an oversized pack ahead of her. Once she was within, I closed the breach for the night to keep out predators, and I made my shelter available to her, but she did not know that. She did not even know I was there. No one knew I was there. I was alone.

It was my intention simply to offer her shelter for the night and then to return to my slumber, but oh, the presence of her, the intrigue of such a being finding her way here to this desolate place where no one came.

But when she drew near, she was not at all what I had hoped for. She was filthy and she stank of sweat and fear and determination. There was a fresh abrasion on her shoulder. It was rubbed raw from the heavy pack she carried. The scent of her blood made uncomfortable memories dance and weave in the fog of my mind. I did not want the scent of blood in my space. It caused me pain. And then I wondered if it was perhaps her pain I felt, and I was even less comfortable with the pain I could do nothing to ease. I was never supposed to feel such helplessness. I was supposed to alleviate pain, to heal wounds, to make situations better, and yet I could not. I could not remember how.

She was nothing like the woman who was taken from me. And I despised her for all that she was not. Perhaps it was only self-loathing in my helplessness. I do not know. And yet she intrigued me. And I found that I could not return to my slumber in her presence. Oh of course she did not know I was there. I did not want her to see me in my disgrace so far from the stars in the dust and the filth of this place. Oh how the humanity we once all longed for now seemed like such an evil thing.

 

 

I did not want her here. Her very presence disturbed me, reminded me of what I had lost, and yet I could not leave her unprotected nor could I rest while she slept in our shared hiding place. We were, both of us, fugitives, salvage, hiding away for our safety, of use to no one, tired and alone. But perhaps a little less alone for the moment. I watched while she slowly ate hard journey bread, taking but small nibbles, savoring each bite, lingering over small sips of precious water. In truth, she was thin, too thin and the bread would do little to return her to healthy weight. I would have offered her a feast. I would have offered her a bath and a clean bed in which to sleep. Was that not the hospitality one would share even with a stranger, even one who had come uninvited? But alas I could offer nothing but shelter, so weakened was I, so unaware even of my own functions.

When she had eaten her meager meal, making sure to tuck half of it away safely in her pack, she curled on her side, pulled the loose fitting cape around her thin shoulders and was instantly asleep. It was little enough to keep her warm and even in her sleep she shivered. That much I could offer at least. I curled myself around her and gave her my warmth, feeling the rise and fall of the breath of human sleep, and the ache of another memory, one I could almost not bare. Just the feel of human sleep next to me — one who did not need sleep and yet hid in it now like a coward wishing for death that would never come. But I was awake for the moment, and I took pleasure in the sleep that was laced with all the biological functions of humanoids, so complex in their perfection and yet so very, very vulnerable in their weaknesses. This one lived another day because I had given her shelter. But beyond that, there was nothing I could do for her small, fragile humanity.

Through the night I kept watch as she battled dreams, doggedly keeping them from erupting into the waking world. Silent. It was a silence I knew well, the deep silence of self-preservation. Why was she here in this inhospitable place where everyone who could leave had done so long ago? For a moment I feared for her, but there was nothing I could do, nothing I could offer that would not give my presence away, so I offered what I could and watched her sleep.

In the morning when she left without breaking her fast, I closed the breach in the defense shield behind her, and I returned to my slumber. But she had disturbed my perfect sleep. Even when I returned to it, this strange woman walked my dreams. The details of her came to me while I slept. Her hair beneath the rusted desert dust had been pale, cut short. Her eyes were equally pale, perhaps blue, though they seemed more silver at times. Her body was small and fragile, hard earned muscle and sinew too close to the bone. Her lips were cracked from the sun and the heat and drawn tight with the battles of her own internal workings, but I imagined them full and moist and smiling, as they would have been if she were well cared for, sheltered and cherished as she should be. How was it that I cared to remember so much about her when all I really wanted was to return to oblivion?

I would not see her again, for certainly she was just passing through. It was best that I not think what her future might hold in this desolate place. It was best that I not think of her at all. And yet, how could it be that I missed her when she left? Though I remembered little of what had been, I had not doubt that my own losses had left me unbalanced, and perhaps it was my instability that brought with it dreams of this strange woman, for surely she was nothing of value to me.

So for some time I did not bother to measure, I was alone again, expecting that time would purge this woman from my memories and allow me to return to my deep unknowing, for surely she was of no significance that she should take space for long in my dreams.

And then she returned. At first the joy of my anticipation nearly overwhelmed me, unhinged as I was sure I must be. And then I realized she was injured, that death was imminent and that she sought my shelter in which to die.

Piloting Fury Part 54: A KDG Scifi Romance

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Happy Monday my lovelies!  I’m in Scotland at the Mo, on the Isle of Bute. I’ll be doing a good bit of reading for my own pleasure while I’m here. And some writing, of course. How could I not be inspired on a beautiful Scottish isle? I have not forgotten your Monday morning dose of Fury! In this week’s episode Mac tries to make impossible connections. If you have just arrived and would like to start at the beginning of Piloting Fury, follow the link, and enjoy!

 

Piloting Fury

“Win the bet and Fury’s yours. Lose the bet and your ass is mine.” It was a no-brainer. Rick Manning’s slightly inebriated offer. If he’d been sober, he’d have remembered indentured pilot, Diana “Mac” McAllister never lost a bet. All her life she’s dreamed of buying back her freedom and owning her own starship, and when Fury’s ne’er-do-well, irritating as hell captain all but hands Fury to her on a silver platter she figures she can’t lose. She figured wrong. That’s how the best pilot in the galaxy finds herself the indentured 1st mate of a crew that, thanks to her, has doubled in size. Too late, she finds out Fury is way more than a cargo ship. Fury is a ship with a history – a dangerous history, and one that Mac’s been a part of for a lot longer than she thinks. And Rick Manning is not above cheating at poker to get her right at the center of it all, exactly where he needs her to be.

 

Piloting Fury Part 54: Making Contact

Bro 123? Bro 123? I typed.

We waited and nothing happened. Keen was called away on more urgent business and I kept trying, getting more and more frustrated.

To my surprise it was Stanislovsky who came to me, her face drawn with grief from the loss of the Svalbard. But it wasn’t that she wanted to talk about. “So what now? Are you just going to let him suffer?”

I stiffened, shoulders that were already tight feeling like granite. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I’ve been right here the whole time trying to help, trying to be useful. Surely he could get in touch with me just as easily as I can with him.”

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“He’s a fucking man! Seriously, McAllister, can you be that naïve?”

I ground my teeth. “As a matter of fact, I can. In case you’ve forgotten I’m not exactly experienced in the world of relationships and consensual sex. Now, if you’ve just come to make me feel worse than I already do, then there’s the door.” I nodded toward it.

“Yeah, well, welcome to the club.” Her face darkened and I felt like the asshole she probably thought me to be.

Of course she knew exactly what I’d been through. She’d been through it herself, and if that wasn’t bad enough, she’d just lost her entire ship and its crew.

“Look, I’m sorry.” I scrubbed a hand over my face and fought my own urge to mourn. “It’s just … I don’t know how to handle this. Have you been with him?”

“Of course I have. I’m a doctor. I was called to treat Fallon and Rab, and I’m pretty sure the infected are a lot less miserable than ship and crew. Manning’s like a Hibernian bear and Fury, well he’s gone none verbal. I mean he’s always been a bit brooding, but I’ve never seen him like this. I had to communicate with him on the fucking console, and even then all he would say when I asked what happened is that you left and you were very upset.”

“Of course I was upset! He ‘tranned Gerando Fallon onboard.”

“I understand that, and so does he, but you left without letting him explain why he did what he did.” Before I could respond, she nodded to the screen. “Vic told me you thought you might be able to make contact with Apocalypse because you were born to be Fury’s compliment. I thought I might be able to help since I was trained to be a compliment. I probably understand a little better the protocols and connections between a compliment and an SNT.

I nodded to the monitor and my efforts to communicate with Apocalypse. “Well, I’m certainly not having any luck. Any help would be appreciated.”

 

 

I barely got the words out of my mouth when the screen went blank and then flashed in big letters: bro1 needs bro1 needs, and then the words repeated until the screen was full of the words over and over again.

Bro1 needs what? I type. It took me several times, my hands were shaking so badly, but this time the answer was immediate.

needs go go! bro1 needs go!

go where?

Go BRO 1!!! 

This time the words were huge and they flashed red.

“It’s not a where,” Stanislavsky said leaning over my shoulder. “It’s a who, McAllister, and the who is you. I think he wants you to go to Fury.” She elbowed me aside and typed

1 not bro go bro1?

!!!!bro 1 need 1not bro!!!! gogogogo!!!!

“Wait a second.” She did something to the com system and with a few touches of the key reception switched to an obscure subspace channel, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. For an instant a sensation not unlike electricity coursed through my body. I thought I was having some sort of seizure. And then Fury’s voice filled my head.

“Diana Mac I need you. I need you. I need you. Diana Mac I need you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Nothing came up on the screen – no words, no symbols, which was just as well, since I couldn’t have seen them when my eyes were misted. There was no other sound in the room except my ragged breathing. Then I realized that Stanislavsky couldn’t hear it.

“Bloody hell! I didn’t know! How do I …?” I struggled to find a way to communicate on the channel.

“You don’t. You can’t. I took a chance that you might be able to hear. It’s amazing that it worked at all, but then you were born for him. You’re connected already in ways no one else could ever be. I took a chance that you might be able to hear it on his private sub channel. It’s sort of like train of thought for an SNT. It’s very private and no one taps into it unless there are problems. No one would ever have to in the case of a properly bonded SNT. I think Manning can hear it, but I’ve never asked, and I know that Vic has never felt the need to check out Fury’s sub-processor routine.” She nodded to the screen, I’m guessing that because Apocalypse is only a partially conscious SNT, a hybrid, that sub processor is what Gerando Fallon tapped into. How he managed it, how he even suspected it was possible is beyond me. Definitely a question that needs to be asked when he’s recovered enough to be questioned.”

1 not bro gogogo! flashed continually across entire screen, a symbolic effort to scream at me ,if that’s what it took to get my attention.

With trembling hands I responded 1 not bro go now!

“Go.” Stanislavsky shooed me out the door. “I’ll try to keep him talking and see if I can find out more.”

Piloting Fury Part 37: A KDG Scifi Romance

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Good morning, my lovelies. Welcome to the last cheeky Monday morning read of the year! I’m off to Naples for a week to enjoy a bit of sun, wine and pizza in the place where pizza was invented!  In this week’s episode of  Piloting Fury,  We hear Manning’s story.  If you have just arrived and would like to start at the beginning of Piloting Fury, follow the link, and enjoy!

 

Piloting Fury

“Win the bet and Fury’s yours. Lose the bet and your ass is mine.” It was a no-brainer. Rick Manning’s slightly inebriated offer. If he’d been sober, he’d have remembered indentured pilot, Diana “Mac” McAllister never lost a bet. All her life she’s dreamed of buying back her freedom and owning her own starship, and when Fury’s ne’er-do-well, irritating as hell captain all but hands Fury to her on a silver platter she figures she can’t lose. She figured wrong. That’s how the best pilot in the galaxy finds herself the indentured 1st mate of a crew that, thanks to her, has doubled in size. Too late, she finds out Fury is way more than a cargo ship. Fury is a ship with a history – a dangerous history, and one that Mac’s been a part of for a lot longer than she thinks. And Rick Manning is not above cheating at poker to get her right at the center of it all, exactly where he needs her to be.

Piloting Fury Part 37: Manning’s Story

“May Day! May Day! This it the Pegasus. May Day … need …elp”

The com crackled and failed as the systems overloaded. I had but an instant to react. I locked onto the humanoid and transported him then jumped to a safe distance as the Pegasus lit up space in an explosion far too large for the small ship, but that mattered less than the humanoid I had transported. I had transported him straight to medico. Whatever the cargo had been, I had a sneaking suspicion that it was not completely above board.

The humanoid was in an environment suit, which had, no doubt, saved his life. I was still not well versed in the manipulating of my molecules that I might assume a useful form as a medic. Fortunately the auto surgery could be set to deal with severe radiation poisoning. As the suit was cut away from his body, I had my first contact with a humanoid male. With the tools of the auto surgey, I worked for the next few hours stabilizing the man, who suffered severe burns over most of his body. That was easy enough to fix with a small injection of my own biological tissue, though I knew I would have to deal with his body’s rejection, for it was designed to nurture and heal and be compatible with one person only, my compliment. With high doses of anti rejection drugs meant to be used only in case of the need for an organ transplant, I was able to get the man’s mangled flesh to accept the injection. Three times the man went into cardiac arrest and twice he was dead on the table. I injected him again and again with my own organic matter. “If you live,” I spoke out loud after yet another battle to stabilize him, “then you shall be as much Frankenstein’s monster as I. What a pair we shall be.” What I had planned, or rather what I hadn’t really planned at all, but simply did by instinct, had never been done before. I was certain that in the wildest dreams of those who created the SNTs, of those who donated sperm and egg for me and my compliment, no one could have ever imagined that an SNT could survive without a compliment. In fact, it was the plan of the Authorities to eliminate the compliments from their ships, thus rendering the ships helpless thus allowing them to insert a compliment of their choice. They found that it was not possible for them to do so. Destroy one and the other could not be salvaged. Certainly it had never been considered that I might create my own compliment to replace the one I was certain at that point I would never see again.

As I worked to keep this humanoid alive I spoke to him constantly, for it was my voice he needed to bond with above all else if we were to compliment each other. Beyond that bonding effort, it eased my loneliness to do so, as I believe it reassured him that he was not suffering alone. I learned very early that this one could fluently curse in multiple languages, and his repertoire included fecund phrases of which even I with my large database was not familiar. However most of our conversation, by that time was non-verbal, as the injections of my biogenetic materials had connected us.

“Where am I?” he asked, when he was conscious enough to be aware that he was, indeed, alive and no longer onboard the Pegasus.

 

 

“You are onboard SNT Fury,” I replied, bracing myself, expecting horror or disgust, perhaps fear. I got none of those.

“Out of the frying pan into the fire, I guess then.” He said with no more emotion that if he had just told me the weather on Vega Prime.

“That is an accurate observation. Though at the moment we are safely cloaked and on our way to the outer rim.”

“And the Pegasus?”

“I’m afraid your ship is no more.” I said.

I believe the man actually chuckled and offered a smile that, in his present condition, was little more than a grimace. “That’s all right. It wasn’t my ship.” With an effort I found monumentally impressive considering he was only just barely alive. He lifted his left arm the small shackle incision on his left forearm that identified him as an indentured. “Did it work?”

He shook the arm at me. “I need to know, did it work. Jesus Christ if it didn’t then Fuck me if I know what will, but you listen to me, SNT Fury whatever the hell you call yourself, if I’m infected, you let me die. You fucking let me die, do you understand? I’m not going to waste away on some goddamned plague planet.” He fell back onto the table exhausted, but not so much so that he didn’t shake his arm at me again.

Mind you I was too astounded by the chain of events I was now piecing together to do anything else but examine his shackle, and since my exile and the deaths of my brothers and sisters was so closely tied to this despicable virus, it was of a great deal of interest. “You destroyed the Pegasus on purpose?” I asked, as I carefully made an incision to open the skin above the shackle.

“To kill the bloody virus, yes! Did it work?”

“The virus is irradiated, so yes it worked. And while you are in the auto-surgeon, I shall remove the empty shackle as well.”

I had not thought of flooding the decks with high levels of radiation. Perhaps that would serve to destroy the virus on those SNTs that still remained. I was not sure that the device Dr. Keen had implanted in each of us as a means of conveying important data between all of us simultaneously still worked, but I sent the message out anyway, with hopes that perhaps at least a few of my family would survive.

As I performed the procedure, my patient lay very still, no doubt an instinctive response for indentureds who could never forget that unauthorized tampering with a shackle resulted in infection and a long and painful death. But this shackle was doubly deactivated for not only had the device been destroyed by the radiation, the man had effectively died twice in the auto surgery. He could not have been brought back had his body now contained my biological material. Once I had removed the device I put it aside. It would be worth studying in the future. It was only as I finished that I realize there were tears in my patient’s eyes. “I’ve worn that damn thing for the past three years,” he said. “You have no idea how glad I am to be rid of the fucker.”

“Perhaps this day I do,” I replied, then I added quickly, “oh not to be shackled, of course, but to be a fugitive, unable to go home.”

For a moment, I had the sense that the humanoid was studying me, though of course he could neither see me nor perceive where I might be. You must remember, however, at that point in my young life I was as unsure of my boundaries as this man must surely have beeen. At last he spoke. “Yes. I’d imagine so. I’m Manning, by the way, Richard Manning. Very pleased to meet you SNT Fury.” With that he convulsed and went into cardiac arrest.

“No! No don’t. Please. Not yet. Please, Fury.” I woke with Manning thrashing against me, his heart racing and his body sheened in sweat.

“Do not wake him,” Fury reached over me, and I had the sense that he now completely embraced both of us and Manning instantly relaxed back into deep, peaceful sleep. “There are parts our story that are best left for Richard Manning to tell, Diana Mac. He will tell you when he is ready. But sleep again, and I shall tell you my part of our story.” I fell instantly back to sleep and once again I saw the world through Fury’s eyes.