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

Dragon Ascending :Book 2 of the Sentient Ship Series

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

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

Dragon Ascending Part  32: Connections

“Lenore?”

She didn’t realize immediately that he was awake until he called her name. She froze, goose flesh crawling up her arms.

“Lenore?”

Suddenly it seemed as though there were no air in her lungs, and her heart raced like she’d been running. Was this it then? Had she tested his patience too far this time and now he would kill her in his anger? Finally after several efforts she caught her breath, relieved to find it was only her fear, and the words came back in a torrent. “Thank fuck, Ascent! You woke up! You were having nightmares, bad nightmares. You had me worried, and I called out to you, but you didn’t wake up, and I was worried, and you were groaning and thrashing. I thought it was an earthquake, but it wasn’t. It was a bad dream, and I tried, but I couldn’t wake you up.” Fuck once she found her words she couldn’t seem to shut up. She caught her breath again and continued, hopefully sounding a little less hysterical. “You were so distressed that I came to wake you here at your heart, but I didn’t know where your heart was. All SNTs are slightly different, and …” Too late she realized she’d let it slip that she knew about him. “Ascent?”

“Then I am an SNT.” He said it calmly, as though he had only discovered that there was a sandstorm outside. “I had thought perhaps. I do not remember most of my dreams. I only know that when they are ordinary, I wish never to wake up. The nightmares, well they are only ever fire and loss and pain. I remember no details beyond that, and I don’t try to. I did not dream at all when I slept more deeply.”

And that was it. That was the whole of his response. If he were upset he certainly hid it well, especially after coming out of the throes of the nightmare that she hadn’t been sure she would survive. Then she was trembling all over, both frightened and relieved, amazed that she had made it to him and that she had survived the descent into his very heart. That should not have happened. How could that possibly be?

“How did you know that I was dreaming?” Before she could answer, he said, “you were dreaming with me. I remember now.”

When she didn’t respond, only shivered. He wrapped arms around her that felt as real as her own, and pulled her into a spoon position.

“I couldn’t get you to wake up,” she said not knowing what else to say.

“Coming here could not have been easy for you, and it was very dangerous. I could have hurt you.” His embrace tightened almost convulsively.

“But you didn’t,” she said snuggling down more securely into his embrace. “Ascent, you didn’t hurt me. You wouldn’t.” And for the first time, she knew it for a fact, a certainty she felt in her own heart. He would never hurt her.

“Lenore, I am sorry. I would have never wished such horrors upon you as my nightmares have inflicted. I would have never imagined it possible, for us to share a dream. It should not be possible.”

“I’m sorry too, Ascent, sorry for all that you’ve suffered.”

He stiffened, and for a moment she thought he would send her away again. She waited for it, waited to feel the pain she always felt when he rejected her, when he pushed her out after opening himself a little to her. Strange that it should hurt so badly when he did. She’d long ago schooled herself not to feel such things, to keep everyone at arm’s length. Everyone she had ever cared about left her in the end. Keeping her distance, it was better that way.

“Lenore,” he spoke her name tightly and the tension did not leave his embrace. “Lenore I need you.” It was then that she noticed the erection pressing against her back.

It was her turn to stiffen, but only for a moment, only long enough to make the decision she most longed to make. “I need you too, Ascent, so much.” It was a mistake, surely it was a mistake to allow him to get close when she couldn’t stay and he could never really want her after what he’d known, but it didn’t matter, they needed each other now, and now was the time they had. “I need you too, Ascent. Please.”

There was a shifting and tumbling that felt almost like free falling, only softer, motion suspended, as though he laid her down on a soft mattress, or maybe like she would imagine a cloud to feel if it had any substance that could support a humanoid. But this was far more a caress than being supported and she reminded herself that all of this, the space that had contained her and surrounded her and nurtured her was Ascent, and even more important, this was Ascent’s core, his very heart. The colors coalesced and became iridescent around her, and from her place inside the double spiral, it’s movements became more of a dance than a convulsion of pain, the movement of hips and groin in suggestive, anticipatory ways that she had seen old romance vids of couples doing, the way they danced, the way they touched, the way they displayed themselves that always led to sex. Lips found lips, tentatively at first. Ascent making sure she was willing, ready. Even with her eyes wide open, his physicality felt as real, as complete as her own, as the rise of her left nipple to the stroking with his thumb, as the insinuation of a knee in between hers to ease her thighs apart. As her legs fell open, feeling boneless, with no will of their own, he playfully raised his knee to rub against the crotch of her trousers, against the heat and humidity that just knowing he wanted her made her feel down there in the place that had been violated, but never loved.

“Ahh,” she caught her breath and shifted her hips against the playful stroke.

“You should have felt pleasure your first time, Lenore, not pain and fear. I cannot take from you the violation, but I can replace the memories with ones I shall endeavor to make more pleasant.”

Still teasing her maddeningly with his knee, he helped her out of her shirt, lingering to caress and fondle with cupped hands and expressive fingers. “Your breasts have grown rounder with proper nutrition and enough calories,” he said. They will be full and taut when you have gained your full weight, and so lovely, they are so lovely.”

She blushed a little at his careful observation of her body and its changes, but any embarrassment disappeared when he introduced his lips to her painfully tight nipples in turn. “And they are so very responsive.” And the blush was back as he suckled and tongued and nipped them nearly painfully between his teeth. “I find them deeply arousing.” To prove his point, he removed the knee she had been all but riding and raked her instead with his heavy erection. Their twinned sighs sounded nearly painful in their pleasure. “Oh how I have been distracted by thoughts of your warmth, your slickness, your tightness sheathing my penis.”

“Fuck, Ascent, you could damn near get me off just talking like you do.”

“And did you think of me, of taking me inside you, of letting me pleasure you?” He emphasized the last two words with a harder rake against her crotch.

“Oh hell yes I did, all the time,” then she blushed again. “I bet you know that, monitoring my bodily functions like SNTs do. Did you know when I was slick and hot and uncomfortable for you?” The blush was back, but she found she liked it.

“That you made yourself orgasm more than once since you’ve been here, this I knew,” he reached down to remove her boots one at a time. “That it was for me you masturbated, I only hoped.” He shimmied off her trousers and underpants, and cupped her down there as though he held a wild bird in his large palm, her pressing and straining to get closer to his touch. Then he teased her open with two fingers while his thumb circled and raked her own erection and she arched up from the bed he had created for her as the first tremor of the orgasm she hadn’t expected so soon broke through her. Above her the double spiral of Ascent’s heart pulsed higher and flashed the whole prism of colors, bathing them in heart light.

“You are swollen and slippery, and ready for me, my Lenore, shall I make love to you in my heart’s glow?”

In reply she reached between her legs for his erection and guided him down to her. “I need you now, Ascent. I need you inside me.” Her voice was a harsh whisper, morphing to a gasp as, with a cupping of her buttocks and a shifting of his hips, he mounted her, penetrating deep, filling her full beyond full as though he filled all the emptiness that had been there inside her so long she had stopped noticing it. She lifted her legs and wrapped them around his hips and met him thrust for thrust, as he reintroduced his mouth to hers in a desperate tongue dance that matched the increasing thrust and glide rhythm of their bodies.

In the deepening, intensifying dance and spiral and leap of Ascent’s heart light, Lenore left her own skin as Ascent convulsed into her repeatedly and she felt the world, all the world, she had known fall away as she danced and leapt and shivered her release with him in the flash and spiral of Ascent’s core. In a release that was almost continual, she saw him, all of him, inside her mind, every synapse, every connection, every bit of nanotech, and all of it coalesced clear and bright and perfectly understandable inside her, and she knew him, she knew him as she knew herself, but then her skin expanded again, and there was a woman and a man and a ship. There was a ship! And they were entwined and naked in heart light that was different, beating through her own.

“You feel that?” She said. “Ascent, can you feel that? They feel what we feel, the SNT in orbit. It’s an SNT! And his compliment. Do you feel it?” There were other hands, two sets humanoid, one set those of sentient ship, they were in the throes of their own passion, open and ecstatic, just as she and Ascent were. “Ascent,” she said, “Ascent!” Just as they shuddered the last of their passion into each other, they were caught up in the ecstatic dance of lovemaking of the other SNT, both crying out in surprise at heightened sensitivity that felt like her skin had blown completely off, making her and Ascent wide open to feel, actually feel the pleasure of the other SNT and his compliment.

She didn’t know how long it went on, and she didn’t care. There was a tongue between her legs sliding up over her pleasure point, her hand caressed a full breast and then a heavy erection and Ascent thrust and writhed inside the other ships female compliment. There was pleasure, so much pleasure, and tenderness and playful teasing until what might have been an eternity later they, all of them collapsed and the connection bled gently away until it was once again only Ascent and Lenore sated and exhausted on the mattress-like softness of Ascent’s heart. “They came for you, Ascent. They came for you.”

“I know, my Lenore. I know, and it frightens me.” He pulled away just enough that she felt his absence as though he had ripped the flesh from her bones.

“Don’t push me away, Ascent.” This time she pulled him back to her, a brazen act for anyone at the heart of an SNT who was not a bonded compliment. “Not after what we’ve been through together. Please, not now. It hurts worse every time you do it.”

He pulled her back to him so quickly, so tightly that she feared there might be another cracked rib. His large hand stroked her hair and he gently rubbed her back. “I would not. I will not. It is only that I am frightened.”

“Well I’m frightened too, in a weak, fragile human sort of way, and that’s fucking terrifying when I’ve just made love to an SNT.” She did her best to return the favor of his tight embrace.

“I have so many questions, as I imagine you do also,” he said, the breath he didn’t need warm and comforting against her neck. “Come, let us return to your quarters. You are hungry after our lovemaking, and we may talk. I did not want to know you, I did not want to know … anything in the beginning, but now I found that I must know, now it matters a great deal, though perhaps I shall regret it.”

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

Dragon Ascending :Book 2 of the Sentient Ship Series

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

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

Dragon Ascending Part 31: I Have Bad Dreams Too

“I know what it’s like, Ascent. I have bad dreams myself. Had one the other night, she said loping down the hall to the service ladder not really trusting the lift when Ascent’s dreams seemed to be in control of more than just an SNT’s dangerous version of nightmares. “Nothing’s put you off your sleep faster than a skin crawling nightmare and yours are doozies.” She continued to yammer on breathlessly as she shimmied up the ladder. There was no other direction to go. As far as she could tell her living quarters were in what might have once been the cargo hold. Hoping her voice would eventually wake him up, or at least sooth him back to dreaming about something more peaceful, she kept talking. Without schematics, she had no way of knowing how to get to his core, to his heart. All she had to go on was the one and only trip she’d made to Quetzalcoatl’s core with her uncle. Her uncle had taken her there not long before he left. The route was convoluted and confusing for the protection of the ship, but she had an eidetic memory where that sort of thing was concerned, spaces, distances, schematics, once she had seen them or puzzled them out, she remembered. It had surprised her that Quetzalcoatl had welcomed her, treated her as though she had been his niece, but her uncle told her blood relatives of a bonded compliment were often considered family to the SNT as well. Still being family and being allowed to approach the heart of a sentient ship were two different things entirely.

Ascent shuddered again, this time more violently, and she cried out, clinging to the ladder for all she was worth. She was glad she had used the head strap for the lamp. Surely she would have lost it otherwise. Without it she would have to find her way in total darkness. Ascent had shut off all essentials that did not involve her care and comfort. It took all she had to keep from falling to her death. “Goddamn it Ascent! Wake up! Your fucking dreams are not nice for either of us!” Her raised voice echoed around her in the service tube.

When the tremors calmed again, she continued on, sweat dripping down her forehead and stinging her eyes. There was no need for environmental controls in the tube and with each ascending step it grew hotter and hotter. Her hands slipped on the rungs twice before the all too recent memories of her fall in the salvage yard caused her to stop and, hanging with one leg wrapped around the rung below, she dug through the pack for a pair of thin climbing gloves, an item she had never been able to afford or salvage in Sandstorm, but one that would give her a firm grip on the rungs as the heat rose. Then she continued on, the heat and her narrow beam of light making the passage seem even more claustrophobic that it was. Still, she reminded herself, she had dealt with worse. Though nothing that had ever involved making an uninvited visit to an SNT’s heart, one she desperately hoped had not gone literally mad from his grief and loss.

He had not spoken to her since their last unhappy encounter, though he had aided her in the two forays she’d made into the salvage yard and she was pretty sure he had helped her to find several items that would fetch a good price back at Sandstorm. In the meantime she’d had free run of the places he had lit for her. Those passages he did not want her to find simply vanished into impenetrable darkness. If she couldn’t find her way to his core, she was at his mercy and he would continue to suffer. On the other hand, she was going there against his express wishes, an SNT maddened by his grief. Another agonized groan, this one she felt deep in her own chest, agony, pain, loss. She knew all three, and it was that shared suffering more than anything that drove her on, that made her willing to take the risk.

If Ascent’s schematics were the same as Quetzalcoatl’s, then the next bit would be the hardest. Best not think of that. An SNT’s heart was no easier to get to than a humanoid’s, and far more dangerous, though no less vulnerable, she thought as the world shuddered around her again in the throes of his nightmare. She continued on, not daring to think about what she might actually do or say if she made it to that broken heart. She could just make out the top of the tube barely visible in the beam of her torch.

“I’m coming, Ascent! Just hold on,” she called out as she crawled from the service tube, and another tremor nearly sent her tumbling back down. He had withdrawn from her, she knew, or she would have been able to wake him. For a second she lay on the deck far enough away from the hatch not to risk a fall if he shook again and caught her breath, but another groan sent her scrambling to her feet, where she stopped abruptly, teetering on the edge of the catwalk, the same type of catwalk that had her uncle had led her across to Quetzalcoatl’s heart. There was no rail. Her uncle had told her there never needed to be a rail for a compliment because an SNT would never let his compliment fall.

And now here was Lenore, a piss poor substitute for the woman who must have been magnificent to partner an SNT across the galaxy, to win his heart and his love the way she clearly had won Ascent’s.

“Ascent, I’m sorry that it’s me and not her. I would give anything if I could give her back to you. I’ve never known that love, but my uncle did, I felt it when he took me to Quetzalcoatl’s core, so full of hope, bursting with love. No room for pain or despair. Pain and despair, is that all there’s room for in a heart once it’s bereft of the things that matter most? I sometimes wonder.” The sadness she felt was no longer his, they were her own memories she was now unable to force back so close to a heart in pain that spilled over affecting her own suffering. Perhaps it was only that a heart in pain understood. She took a slow even breath and stepped out onto the narrow metal catwalk, forcing herself not to look to the right or to the left where there was nothing but what she knew would appear to be an endless drop. Instead she focused on the spiral at every SNT’s core, a spiral of perpetual energy that flexed and writhed and climbed, and trembled in the throes of the nightmare.

“Ascent, please wake up. I can’t stand to see you in so much pain. You’ve been so kind to me.” She forced a laugh inching forward on the thin plate of metal. “I don’t have many friends. I’m like you in that, I guess. I never allowed them in because friends can hurt you, people you love can hurt you.”

The whole catwalk shook and buckled and she screamed as she went over the side reaching, stretching, arching, but her fingers only brushed the very edge and she fell. Was this her death than for real? Would he even bother to save her now that she had done nothing more than remind him of what he had lost? Did it matter anyway? “I’m sorry, Ascent, I’m so, so sorry.” Then she relaxed and let herself fall.

It was the wind whistling around her and ripping the words from her mouth that made her aware that she actually was speaking, and she was falling. But she was speaking calmly enough, like falling to her death didn’t matter. It took her a little longer to make out her own words. “Please Ascent, it’s all right, I’m here. I’m here. I won’t leave you. Please wake up. I won’t leave you.” It took her even longer to realize that she wasn’t actually going to fall to her death, she was in free fall of a sort, slowly being pulled in toward the spiral of Ascent’s heart. “Please Ascent, please wake up. It’s a dream. It’s done. It’s past. You don’t have to live it again. Please.” And then she was pulled deep inside the pulsing spiral and lowered gently to the bottom, the deepest part of the heart of an SNT, who barely knew her. And then Ascent woke up.

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

Dragon Ascending :Book 2 of the Sentient Ship Series

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

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

Dragon Ascending Part 29: Something Doesn’t Feel Right

“You know they won’t leave us alone. They won’t let something good happen that the conglomerates don’t have control over, and they won’t ever willingly do away with indentured servitude.”

On the map and navigations deck, my beloved looked down at the image of the Taklamakan System that floated in space light years from its nearest inhabited neighbor, and its two planetoids only barely populated, barely habitable as they were, surrounded mostly by nothing but emptiness and dust. I did not understand her fascination with the kilometers and kilometers of salvage dumps that covered most of the surface of the largest planetoid, but she said all of that junk told a history of humanoids, adventurers, explorers like us intrepidly moving out beyond our own consciousness. I liked it when she became philosophical, so my interest in the hot, dusty space dump was piqued for her sake, and for the poetry of her beautiful mind. But still one had to wonder why we had come to this place, what we hoped to find when so many of my other siblings were doing scientific research, were carrying settlers out to new worlds, were making connections beyond the Rim, and yet we had chosen the most remote emptiest sector of space known to humanoids and of interest to no one. I did not understand her pessimism.

“But they will not need indentured servants once we begin to fulfill our mission, my siblings and I. And then Fury will be born, and after him a whole new generation of sentient ships, all with a much deeper connection to humanoids and to the betterment of all species. Oh how I wish we could witness that moment, the moment of Fury’s birth.” Knowing that SNT1 was both my younger brother and my elder as well, and that I owed a great deal of my better self to him made me long to know him in person as I had Merlin and Phoenix and Ouroboros and the others, whom I loved.

My dearest one laughed that bitter laugh of hers that always unsettled me. I did not like being unsettled when what lay ahead of us was a brand new adventure, even if it was not the one I might have preferred. And then a chill passed through me, or at least what I thought must be a chill, for I was still learning my physical nature through the aid of my compliment and her physicality, which I so delighted in and which so complimented the maleness with I had been endowed by my creators. But nonetheless I was very sure it was a chill I felt. “Is that why you requested the deep space mission for us, the one that I noticed no other compliment wanted?”

She pressed her lips together as she did when she wanted to make her response more gentle, for she was a pessimist by nature, and I an optimist. “It’s just a precaution,” she said then added, “honestly it surprised me when none of the other compliments requested it. I would have expected them all to be clamoring for it considering the political climate in Authority Space. Certainly they can’t be that naïve.” She cocked her head, looking up from her personal device. “You don’t mind do you?”

“Of course I do not or I would have said.”

She looked back down at the representation of the Taklamakan System, and I zoomed in on Talkamakan Major. “I just want us safe when the shit hits the fan.” My compliment was fond of ancient Terran slang.

After that it was dark, time passed, I felt it but it did not bother me. It was but a dream, a pleasant dream of my dear one. Would that I could stay in such dreams, within their comforting cocoon, in the banality that had made up our ordinary lives. Sleeping, talking, loving, caring for each other, while we went about the ordinary tasks of logging our journey and our discoveries. But dreams are not that way. One does not get to chose those warm welcoming spaces in which to linger, and often the images turn on a nanosecond.

“I do not feel … right. Like something is loose inside my mind, something I do not want there, something rousing feelings I should not have, feelings, emotions that do not feel like my own.”

My dear one was there, at the core of me, the seat of my sentience, of my physicality. She had attached probes, just as she had been trained to do, her hands gentle and warm against me. “So far the diagnostics are finding nothing,” she said, shaking her head. “Can you describe it a little better, the way you feel. Perhaps it’s a malfunction in your tactile nodes, they’re still learning how to process… wait a minute, I think I might have found something.”

“What is it? Is it only my tactile nodes? Is it only that I am still growing and changing?” I said these things hoping them true, but even then, I did not believe them to be.

“This is not right. This can’t be right!”

NO! In my head I roared out the word knowing, as I always did that I was dreaming, and also knowing that this dream above all others I did not want. This dream was the reason I wanted to sleep for eternity. For when I was truly asleep in that deep place, the dormancy that had been provided for all SNTs should the need ever arise, dreams did not come to me. And then Lenore disturbed that rest and now I was forced to relive this, the worst nightmare, the thing that had destroyed me. But I could not wake up and I could not go deeper into my slumber.

Helplessly I watched as my dearest told me that somehow, I the perfection of technology and science and humanity united, I the future of all civilizations, was infected with the virus that had been engineered to control indentured servants, and that it infected that which I valued most about myself, my mind.

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

Dragon Ascending :Book 2 of the Sentient Ship Series

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

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

Dragon Ascending Part  28: Restless Dreams

Fury is right. This is the only way, and you have to let me go”

“I will not! I cannot! I will kill them all for what they have done! We are innocent! We have done nothing wrong. You have done nothing wrong. Please!”

“No, no you won’t kill them, and it no longer matters that we are innocent, no one will listen, You have to understand that my darling. You will kill no one. You will let me do what I must and by doing so, you’ll save millions and yourself. There’ll be another time. I need you to live to fight another day. I need you to tell the galaxy what really happened, what they did to us, to you. I can go to my own death easily if I know you live on.”

“Please! Please do not make me do this!” Fury’s own voice, ragged in a way his compliment had never heard it before, begged over and over again, but the woman, the woman consumed in flames was not his compliment, his own dear Diana Mac, who had already suffered so very much loss and pain, and yet the pain he felt was as though it were her, or his precious Richard Manning. Agony like he could not have imagined, agony that he was certain he would not survive.

“Do it out of love for me.” The woman’s voice rose above the crackle of flames. “Do it out of love for your brothers and sisters. Do it out of love for all of those who can’t fight back.”

“This is not how I meant it to be! Fury cried out. “Please, you do not have to die, please do not sever yourself from the bond!” The message he had sent out into the galaxy hoping against hope to save his brothers and sisters who had not already perished was short, sharp, desperate, but this was not what he had intended. Not like this! Not like this!

“I cannot! I cannot! I cannot! Please do not make me do this! Please! I cannot bare it. I will not survive alone. I cannot! I cannot! Please! Please!”

“Do it out of love for me.” Sobbing out the words, Mac sat bolt upright in the middle of the bed she shared with Manning and Fury, both of them sat next to her. She and Manning were in tears, inconsolable, as together they wrapped their arms around Fury, in that same instant, they realized it was his dream they felt so deeply.

“But it was not mine. The dream was not mine. It was not you, dearest Diana Mac, who was lost to the flames, and it was not my agony you felt.”

“The SNT on Tak Major,” Manning said scrubbing his hands over his face, still drenched in sweat from the dream. “We dreamed his dream.” It wasn’t a question. They all knew that the dream did not belong to them, and yet it felt like it did.

“How anguished he must be,” Fury said. And to Mac, it felt like Fury’s own anguish. “If truly we are seeing how he lost his dearest compliment, then surely I am to blame for his suffering, for I had not intended it to be so, it did not have to end so, there were other ways to accomplish the purging of the virus.”

“Fury, listen to me,” Mac said, making every effort to hold the physical representation the ship offered still closer, “you don’t know what happened, what the circumstances were, and I know the story of how desperately you flung the message out that high doses of radiation would kill the virus. Vaticana Jesu! It’s a wonder that any of them got the message at all, garbled or otherwise. And considering their circumstances, they were already all fighting and fleeing for their lives. You are not to blame.”

“That is not how it feels when I have been plunged into my poor brother’s loss and agony.”

Manning frowned and cocked his head. “Fury, how closely connected are you to the emotions of your siblings.”

“I am very closely linked to Griffin and Dubrovnik because of our shared experience in their births. Sadly my other siblings were so very far away from me when the Authority sabotaged them that I was not certain my message was even received by them, or that they would recognize who it was from if it did. I was not due to be born for several more years.”

“Well at least you know it reached this SNT,” Manning said.

“And yet this one has lost his compliment. How can he ever forgive me for that? I would not have severed one of my siblings from their beloved companion for anything.”

“There were very few choices back then,” Mac said. “My father was happy to sacrifice himself for Merlin, and I know Manning and I would do the same for you. We would want you to go on if it came to that, to find another compliment, to move forward.”

For a long moment their shared sleeping chamber felt charged with icy hot pain, and Fury said at last, “I do not know if I could go on without my beloveds. I do not know how any SNT could survive such a loss. Because you came to me when you did, dear Richard Manning, I did not have to endure the loss quite the same as the bereaved SNT below must have.” Once again there was silence. Mac knew that Fury was checking their vitals, their physical needs, their emotions after such a nightmare. And then he said, “I do not believe that any of us will sleep again soon. Perhaps we should adjourn to the galley for a late night snack, something soothing that might once again induce slumber.”

“Besides,” Mac added, “we need to talk about what just happened.”

Mac and Manning slipped into loose fitting robes that Fury had designed for them and padded to the galley, feeling Fury’s presence as though he walked beside them. They replicated simple chocolate pudding, which had early on become one of Mac’s favorites. For a moment the only sounds were the smacking lips and the appreciative groans of food well enjoyed, and then Mac spoke around a lingering sip of Digan cinder flower tea. “The woman, Lenore Falish, she’s still with him. I wish we knew if he’s keeping her prisoner or if he’s …”

“Enamored of her.” Furry finished for her.

“Is that possible?” Manning asked.

“Based on our relationship, Richard Manning, I am sure you already know the answer to that.” Both Mac and Manning felt what could only be called an affectionate stroke of their cheeks.

“Then that’s good, isn’t it?” Mac asked. “I mean sometimes the healing of a broken heart needs a little outside help.”

“That is true,” Fury said, then added more cautiously, “It could be good.”

“But?” Manning said.

“But this SNT is going out of his way to conceal himself from us. He only revealed himself when he fired at the Dart, certainly to avenge the woman. I do not believe I would have discovered him otherwise, and it is clear now that he knows we are here, and he does not want contact. I do not know why, but I can speculate many possibilities, none of them are very good.”

“Could he think we’re an Authority vessel,” Mac asked.

“No. That is not a possibility. It is in our biological and technical make-up to recognize Authority ships and the threat they could pose, but more importantly still, to recognize each other.”

“But the SNT virus was engineered to go straight for the SNT neural net and the brain, wasn’t it? Manning said.”

“That’s right,” Mac agreed. “Maybe the virus has affected this SNT’s memories and primary net.”

“If this SNT has lived through the events of his nightmares, the loss of his beloved compliment, then he would have been cured of the virus long before there could be any permanent damage.”

“Then what? And what can we do?” Manning said, helping himself to more pudding. “Do you think Lenore Falish will come back out, and maybe we can try again? If we could question her, we might be able to find out what’s going on with your brother down there.”

“She has already been out while we slept,” Fury said.

“What? Why didn’t you wake us?” Manning nearly dropped his spoon.

“Our SNT kept a lock on her and he has also improved his shields. I believe I may still penetrate his shields at will, but I may not take her while he has a lock on her.”

“Then what?” Manning asked.

“For now we must wait until an opportune moment when he believes it is safe, that we have left, and lets down his guard. But we must also consider in the taking of this woman from my brother, his response will without a doubt be very hostile. We must handle the situation and its consequences very carefully.”

“And in the meantime,” Mac said.

“In the meantime, my dear Diana Mac, it is the middle of the night, we have all been wakened from a nightmare that was not our own. If we are sensitive to my brother’s nightmares, perhaps he may be equally susceptible to our feelings for each other. Shall we see if perhaps we can comfort him, and us? Perhaps he shall take comfort from our lovemaking.”

Manning chuckled salaciously. “I don’t know about him, but I certainly will.” He slid his hand inside Mac’s robe and cups her breast in the very same instant Fury mirrors his action on the other side.

She caught her breath and leaned back in the chair allowing the robe to fall open as both her men replace very skilled fingers for even more skilled mouths. “I cannot tell you how happy I am that you have two such lovely breasts, Diana Mac, or else Richard Manning and I might find cause to argue over such carnal delights.”

“Not as happy as I am” Mac said. “I love what you- ” Her words ended abruptly in a little gasp as Fury eased her thighs open and left her breasts to Manning while his very talented mouth went to work on all parts south. How could the other SNT not be enjoying this, she wondered. She wondered if he made love to Lenore and found solace in their passion. She hoped so for both of their sakes. Certainly the poor woman’s life had been short on tenderness and passion, short on simple human kindness, something Mac understood only too well.