Tag Archives: Piloting Fury

Piloting Fury Part 38: A KDG Scifi Romance

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Good morning, my lovelies. Welcome to another cheeky Monday morning read!nI’m fresh back from Naples stuffed with pizza and Italian pastries and ready to crack on with Fury.  In this week’s episode of  Piloting Fury,  Manning and Fury learn to work together. 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 38: Strangers in the Same Skin 

“Richard Manning, you are still weakened. If you will but ask me, I shall bring you what food you can best assimilate that will aid in your recover, and I do not think New Hibernian whiskey will be of aid.”

In truth, the humanoid’s strength astounded me, though at the time I just assumed it was because of my biological material in his body. He shuffled to the table in the galley clearly in pain, or at least to me, but then perhaps it is because I am more perceptive than humanoids and this one had not yet learned that there was little he could hide from me. From the time I brought him onboard, I had constantly monitored his vitals, for I knew how closely he walked to death and how hard I worked that he might stay with me.

“Consider it comfort food,” he said. In those days he still had not gotten past his efforts to find a place to look upon that he could consider to be me. “If what you say is true,” his gaze was now on the replicator, “then I’m damn lucky to be able to eat at all.”

“Considering the fact that corpses do not generally eat, you are, indeed, damn lucky. But Richard Manning, having my metabolism of alcoholic beverages still does not mean that it is a wise choice for sustenance.”

“All right then,” he rubbed his stubbled chin and studied the replicator in a very different way. “How about an ancient Terran specialty – cheeseburger, fries and a strawberry shake?”

While it was not a choice I would have made for him, I replicated his order and because of his convalescence, did so on the table in front of him. “While I cannot guarantee the flavor, I am relatively certain it will be as much like the ancient specialty as any other replicated version you have ever eaten.”

To this, he laughed out loud. “Trust me,” he said around a mouthful of the French fries, “nothing you could replicate couldn’t possibly be worse than the swill I’ve been served these past three years.” He ate in silence for a few minutes and then wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “You’re an SNT.”

“That is correct.”

He ate some more, and I waited, sensing that he had something he wished to say. At last he pushed back his chair and looked around, as though he planned to go searching for me this time until he found me. “Why did you save me? You lot are supposedly the scourge of the galaxy, going nuts and killing everyone in sight.”

“Supposed to be,” I responded. “Are you in doubt of it?”

“If the Authority says it’s so, then yes, I’m in doubt of it. If they said shit stinks then I’d be convinced it smelled like roses.”

“Though I would be inclined to agree with them when it comes to the olfactory properties of shit, as for the rest, I would say that you are a wiser man than most, Richard Manning.”

 

 

“Not so wise or I wouldn’t have gotten caught, would I?”

“Ah, then you are a convict rather than in debt. For what, if I might ask?”

“For trying to stay out of debt, what the hell do you think?” He went back to eating.

“Smuggler?”

“That’s right, and a fucking good one too.”

“Apparently not that fucking good if you got caught.”

He grunted and shoved a fist full of fries into his mouth. “I was set up. Someone who had his eyes on my ship, had for years.”

 

“It must have been a very good ship, then” I said, “if it was worth such an act of betrayal.”

“It was a piece of junk, but it was mine, and it was better than his piece of junk.”

“One man’s junk is another man’s treasure.” I thought perhaps if he was fond of ancient Terran food, perhaps he might also know some of the slang.”

“Damn skippy,” he said, offering me a broad smile, which flashed bright and disappeared as fast as it came. “But you haven’t answered my question. Why did you save me?”

“I am programmed to protect and keep safe, as all SNTs are.”

He studied me for a moment and then slurped his shake. “Lots of things are not like they’re supposed to be.”

It was then that I felt the bone-deep ache of her absence, the one I would never now know, nor share my journeys. “Yes, Richard Manning, many things are not like they are supposed to be.” I withdrew to my solitude until he needed me again. It was easier than explaining to him that while he was the epitome of humanoid male testosterone driven bravado, I was not. I was not even fully formed and I was adrift in the galaxy without compliment or purpose, my only companion a braggart of a smuggler.

The next chronometric day I found him seated in the captain’s chair on the bridge. My first response was anger. The place was to have belong to her, and yet here this smuggler sat in it as though he had the right, as though I had invited him to be there. But before my anger could be fully formed, he very gently, nearly reverently ran his fingers lightly over my consol. “Thank you for the clothes,” he said, softly, not sensing my approach, I was sure, but perhaps hoping for my company in the same way I hoped for his. I had stayed away lest my heart should break even more with the comparison of this convict, this uncouth humanoid to the woman I’d lost.

He chuckled softly. “I figure you must have got tired of my cock hanging out of the robe at inopportune moments. Hard to be dignified when you’re cock’s hanging out.”

“You are welcome, Richard Manning. And while I did not mind at all the occasional appearance of your cock, I thought perhaps you would appreciate proper clothing now that you are recovering nicely.”

His breath caught at the unexpected sound of my voice and the change in his heart rate, the flush of blood to his cheeks, the way he shifted nervously told met that he might possibly be as lonely as I was, though I could not imagine anyone being so lonely.

“What was the compliment onboard your ship?” I asked.

“Me. I was the compliment.” He chuckled and I could hear the nostalgia in his voice. “Just as well because I used every bit of space I could for the cargo bay. I slept in a hammock and the shitter was just a cubbyhole at the rear of the hold. Home sweet home,” he said resting his palm against the consol.

“Home sweet home,” I repeated, and for a moment the two of us were companionably silent watching the dark of space rush by. “If you are up for it, Richard Manning, I am happy to offer you a tour, though I do feel a bit like, what was that early Terran phrase, a flasher letting it all hang out.”

The man laughed out loud, and I was struck at how lovely his laughter sounded on deck. “I showed you mine, now I’d love to see yours.”

After we returned, I did not mind it so much when he sat in the captain’s chair. I was like a child waiting for, longing for his approval.

“Well?”

“There’s a lot of unused space.” He raised a hand and laid it respectfully on the console, “Beautiful space, wonderful space, but I have to ask, Fury, why’s so much of you so unused.”

“Because I am young,” I blurted out. One would think that as I am the pinnacle of humanoid and technology come together, that I would have shed all the human foibles of speaking before my thoughts were fully formed, and those were things I would have learned, would have developed it I had only been given more time.

He raised an eyebrow and stared up at the monitor, as though he expected my face to appear. “Young?”

I did not have time to squirm, or to answer his question because we dropped out of hyperspace face to face with a Phoenix class warship.

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.

 

Piloting Fury Part 35: A KDG Scifi Romance

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Good morning, my lovelies. Welcome to another Monday morning read before Christmas. Just the break you need! In this week’s episode of  Piloting Fury,  Captain Harker and his team are forced to take extreme measures.  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 35: Extreme Measures

Apocalypse attacking. Fury’s identity and destination known. Pandora’s box opened. Mission compromised.

Evander Harker played the message back once more and then deleted it. For a moment, Dr. Ingrid Flissy and Security chief, Jelik Ivan only stared down at the device as though they feared it might explode. Then Flissy spoke. “Does Lebedny know you know?”

“If he does he’s pretending not to, but this was on my private subspace channel. It was only a general distress call to those who it might affect.”

“Which includes us,” Ivan said, chewing on his lip.

“Which includes us,” Harker said. “We knew it would happen, we knew it when we signed on. But clearly Lebedny got this message too, just like Rab would have, and that means we’ve been compromised. We’ve got to act fast – especially if the Apocalypse is in on the action. We’re closer to Plague 1 than anyone else, and once the truth is known, all that we’ve worked for will be lost. We’ve got to go, and we can’t go with Fallon’s lackeys onboard.”

“So what do you have in mind?” Flissy said rubbing her hands against her trousered thighs as though she were suddenly cold, or anxious to get started. Knowing her as Harker did, it was the latter.

He leaned over his private console and pulled up the camera from the sub-basement. “Do all the hibernation pods still work?”

“They do. I just tested them last week.”

“How many of them are there?” Ivan asked.

“Enough,” she said, holding the captain’s eye.

The hibernation pods were the last defense in case of a deep space evacuation. Once the regular escape pods were full, or if they were compromised, there was room in them for a third of the crew – individual cryo-beds equipped with powerful homing beacons and a very basic auto navigation system that would always guide the pod toward the main space routes and the most populated areas. A humanoid could survive in a pod for possibly up to a hundred galactic years, maybe more, though the longest ever survivor from a shipwreck was seventy-two years. Harker straightened his jacket and squared his shoulders. “Difficult times call for difficult decisions.”

 

 

“Personally,” Flissy said, “I’m for blowing the fuckers out the airlock.”

Ivan grunted, “Your bedside manner’s appalling, Fliss, but I don’t disagree.”

“Everyone of those people live under the threat of the shackle, just like we do,” Evander said. “That’s not their fault. All I want is them safely, and permanently, out of the way until we get the situation sorted.” He studied his two closet allies and friends and blew out a sharp breath. “We all know this shot in the dark at best. At worst it’ll be a shackle for every one of the crew who’ve served this ship so faithfully all these years.”

“And you know every one in that crew would take the risk,” Flissy replied, and Ivan nodded agreement.

“All right then,” Harker said. “this needs to happen fast. If the Apocalypse is heading for Plague 1, we don’t have much time. It’s got to be fast and efficient. Any ideas?”

“A radiation leak,” Flissy said, then she waved her hand dismissively. “Oh not a real one, but that sort of thing can be faked easily enough. Thomson and Freeman in engineering, they can make it completely believable. The subbasement has always been the place the crew gathers if there’s a leak because it’s double shielded. Standard operating procedure is to give everyone a shot for radiation poisoning just in case. I line ‘em up, inject the Dubrovnik crew with a placebo and Fallon’s bitches with a nice strong knock-out drug. Voila,” she snapped her fingers. “They wake up … well who knows where the hell they wake up?”

“Or when,” Ivan added.

The doctor stood and looked down at the subbasement camera and its gruesome compliment of pods. “We can quarantine people in separate groups, you know, so no one will notice when people start dropping like flies. I’ll get Sutter and Leland to help me administer the shots and we’ll let people in one at a time. Safety protocols and all that shit. Everyone knows how anal I am. It won’t surprise anyone that I want people coming through three at a time.”

“It’s a good plan,” Harker said, but our timing will have to be perfect.”

“That’ll never happen,” Ivan spoke up. “It may go like clockwork. I hope to hell it does, but we need to be prepared if we hit a few bumps.”

“What do you suggest,” Harker said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

“We know the loyal core aboard the Dubrovnik. We’ve had each other’s back for a long time now. Give me,” he looked down at his chronograph, “Two hours to spread the word, and pass out weapons. Just in case. We won’t get a second chance.”

“We don’t have two hours unless we multi-task.” Harker said. “While Juarez is not the pilot McAllister was by a long stretch, his lack of experience is exactly what we need. I’ll over-ride the course computer and load in the coordinates for the fastest route to Plague 1 and tell him I’m experimenting with a faster route. If we can pull it all together fast enough, that’s exactly what it’ll look like I’m doing. If not, well then we need to be sure that our own people are armed and ready if they need to be.”

 

 

Piloting Fury Part 32: A KDG Scifi Romance

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Good morning, my lovelies. Welcome to another  Monday morning read and this week’s episode of  Piloting Fury,  in which Abriad Fallon demonstrates his power to his son. 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 32: The Price of Defiance

The rest of the tow into the bowels of the Apocalypse was made in silence, and when the hatch opened inside the shuttle bay of the big ship, there were four uniformed berserkers waiting to escort them to the bridge. Rab thought that was definitely fucking overkill, but then maybe daddy was taking Junior’s throw-away statement to heart. Or maybe Junior was dead serious. He reminded himself again that this was the same little prick that killed hookers on a regular basis, killed a respected notary, and damn near killed him. Fucking hell! How did he get mixed up in this mess anyway? Back at the beginning, just being free of the shackle seemed worth any price. Now, he wasn’t so goddamned sure.

The only orca class starship he’d ever been on was the Dubrovnik, and it was an early version, though the Fire Star Conglomerate kept it state of the art due to the fact that the Dubrovnik was by far the most profitable ship of the conglomerate’s freighters. Hell, Rab had been proud to work on the Dubrovnik. But the Apocalypse was a goddamn floating fortress. The Apocalypse was a crazy mix of military and up your ass, hoity-toity luxury, exactly what he’d expect from Fallon. He’d heard that the man was one paranoid fucker, that he never stayed in one place more than one night at a time – easy to do when one of your homes was a goddamn orca class starship. The man was one twisted sonovabitch. Explained a lot where Junior was concerned. But hell, being brought right to the heart of the beast’s lair was damn near enough to make a man shit himself. All Rab had signed on for was observing Diana McAllister and Captain Harker. That was what got his shackle removed, and back then he couldn’t see beyond his freedom. But he was beginning to think he was as much of a prisoner as he was when he had the shackle shoved in his arm. Hell, right now he was pretty sure shit was even worse. No good thinking about it now. The die had been cast, and damned if he knew how he’d get out of this game alive. That stopped being a sure bet when they lost McAllister.

It was only as the lift opened onto the bridge with its huge view screen that Rab realized the Ares wasn’t the only ship held captive by the Apocalypse. The ship being on screen was a raven class freighter, severely damaged. As they approached the console a lone man tall and lean stood looking out. He was dressed in the uniform of an admiral onboard a military ship, though Rab couldn’t recall that Fallon had ever served. He spoke without looking at them.

“You remember the Svalbard, don’t you, Rab? Or perhaps you don’t. The message about the Svalbard was, after all only one of the mindless, meaningless drone of subspace transmissions you sent me from the Dubrovnik over the years.” Before he could respond, the man turned, and Rab found himself face to face with Abriad fucking Fallon, icy eyes gluing him to the goddamn floor, eyebrows raised, clearly expecting an answer.

“I remember it. Yes. It was a distress call. A radiation leak. The Dubrovnik answered, as per ship’s protocol.”

The bastard offered a cold smile that never reached his eyes. “And you thought it strange that members of the Dubrovnik’s crew went onboard a ship with a radiation leak rather than dealing with it remotely.”

“It was strange.” The longer Rab was the center of the man’s attention the more he felt like he was being slowly strangled. “But Harker said there was extenuating circumstances and the ships doctor explained, details that meant nothing to me. I’m sorry.”

 

 

“No need to be,” Fallon raised a hand like he was some goddamn New Vaticana priest passing out absolution or some shit. “You did your job. You sent the transmission, and it has troubled me all these years, Leo Rab. It has troubled me, that strange encounter between the Dubrovnik and the Svalbard. Yes, it has troubled me until this very day. Until now.” With that he turned back to the view screen, and Rab was relieved not to be in the man’s evil eye. But the relief was short lived when the view changed to the bridge of the Svalbard, which looked like a war zone a goddamned war zone. It was deserted except for one battered looking man barely able to sit upright in the captain’s chair. “Captain Bryar,” Fallon said, “you may as well tell me what I want to know about the Fury and its crew, because I will find the answer. That is a promise.”

To Rab’s surprised it was the kid who cursed in a strangled breath. “You bloody fucking bastard.”

How the hell was it even possible for Abriad Fallon to make a smile look fatal?  “I believe it is you who are the bastard, Gerando, and of a whore as lacking in brains as she was beauty, though certainly not in willingness to spread her legs.” He turned that awful smile on Rab, like they were talking politely over fucking afternoon tea. “You see all of my children are bastards, Rab. I quite enjoy the uncertainty of that battle over my legacy. And of course the genetic soup can be so very intriguing.” Then he strolled leisurely to stand in front of his son and straightened the lapels of his jacket. Credit to the kid. He didn’t so much as flinch as his father addressed him almost nose to nose. “And if you make another unwarranted comment on my ship, on my bridge, while I am meeting with the good captain Bryar, then I shall have to punish you, boy.”

Rab wasn’t sure he could have spoken if he’d wanted to, and while Gerardo said nothing else, he fidgeted as though he had New Texan fire ants in his pants. Fuck, it was like the kid was asking for trouble!

Fallon sauntered back to the console and offered poor Bryar a beneficent smile. “Forgive the interruption, captain. Children are so disrespectful these days. One has to keep a tight rein on them. Now as I was saying, the way I see it you have nothing to gain by keeping silent and possibly a chance to live if you speak. I know the Fury is an SNT, and I know its destination is Plague 1. All I need to know from you is why on earth would anyone want to go there?”

“I’ll tell you nothing, Fallon. You may destroy the Svalbard and her fine crew. You may go after her allies, but there will be an answering. That I promise you. There will be an answering.”

Vaticana jesu! What the hell was the kid up to? The fucker couldn’t stand still, he was all but convulsing with nerves. The little shit was going to get them both killed, Rab thought, as he struggled to pay attention to what Fallon was saying while trying to calm the kid. He was beginning to wonder if he was about to have some kind of goddamned fit. Wouldn’t that just be the cherry on top? The thought was barely out of Rab’s head when Fallon did something on the console, and the Svalbard exploded, momentarily blinding them all as it flashed then vanished into nothing more than a after image in empty space. There wasn’t even a sign of debris to show that the Svalbard had ever been there.

Gerardo doubled over and puked. His father made a disgusted sound. “If you’ve not the sac for the task at hand, boy, then perhaps I should send you back to Terra Nova Prime to see if the scientists at the Fire Star Institute might clone you some balls.” He turned to Rab. “Get him off my bridge. The berserkers will show you to your quarters. I’ll send for you both in an hour. Get him sorted.” He nodded to Gerando, who now stood wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, eyeing his old man like he wanted to pull the sonovabitch’s liver out and stomp on it.

Piloting Fury Part 31: A KDG Scifi Romance

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Good morning, my lovelies. Welcome to another  Monday morning read and this week’s episode of  Piloting Fury,  in which Rab and Gerando get an unexpected visit from the old man. 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 31: A Visit from Daddy

Rab scratched his chin. “They would have had to jump like fucking jackrabbits to get far enough out of there and leave no trace to be followed.” He rubbed his belly. “Makes me green around the gills to even think about it. Anyway, how the hell do you know so goddamned much about the SNTs?”

If Rab didn’t know better, he could have sworn the kid blushed. “I know everything there is in the Authority data base about the SNTs and a few things that aren’t public knowledge.” He grunted a sour chuckle. “Even my father doesn’t know that I hacked him. I was obsessed with them. They’re the reason I wanted to be a pilot. I wanted to be compliment to an SNT. Woulda got me away from … shit. Then, you know … everything happened like it did.”

Rab looked up from his efforts at checking through the Ares’ computer scanners for something, anything. “Woulda never figured you for the compliment type. In your case, I doubt anyone would have blamed an SNT for offing its compliment.”

The kid gave him the finger with his good hand, then flinched again as the bone-knitting process got down to the more delicate work.

“If we had the exact time McAllister and Manning Mol-tranned out, we might be able to pick up something jumping an instant later.”

Junior made a one-handed effort to pull his device free from his pocket. “This won’t be exact, but pretty damn close. The old man messaged me, shit, it couldn’t have been a minute before I grabbed McAllister. I’d just had time to tell him to fuck off, I was busy. And then …” He fidgeted with his device, “ … he messaged me back. I felt the signal just as Manning appeared and grabbed McAllister away from me. I remember thinking it was something Manning had done to me. You know how it is in that split second when things don’t quite add up. By the time I connected the dots, they were gone” He pulled up the message and gave a bitter laugh as he read out loud.

Busy had better mean finding Diana McAllister.

“The sentimental old fart,” Rab grumbled. The kid handed his his device and Rab entered the time of the message into the search parameters of the Ares. “There it is. Gotta be.”

“Where? I don’t see anything.” Junior craned his neck and the both squinted.

“Right there. See. If you back up the scan, it’s there, it’s there, it’s there and then … it’s gone.”

 

 

And sure enough, it was. It was only a blip, a tiny blip that someone with vision not as good as Rab’s would have missed entirely. But it was there up until a split second after the message from daddy Fallon, and then it was gone. Just gone. “Had to have mol-tranned them from high orbit. That’s all I can figure, and the blip is so small, there’s no other explanation. Bloody hell! What else could possibly do that but an SNT?”

Over the next few hours they both buried themselves in research. Rab was surprised that sonny boy really was quit an expert on the SNTs. “We don’t want to approach your old man without enough evidence to keep him from thinking we’re just making excuses,” Rab said, getting what was definitely a crash course, more than he ever wanted to know about sentient ships.

“We give him the right information, he’ll believe it,” the kid said. He was stuffing his face with something he’d replicated that looked like dirty underwear, supposedly a delicacy from somewhere in the outer rim, sitting on the floor with several devices spread around him, all displaying different SNT articles. He added around a mouthful. “The old man kept a close eye on the project. He had spies on the inside. The scientists and technicians involved sure as fuck didn’t trust him. The SNT project was funded by the Free Universities and not one credit came from the conglomerates. No matter how much my father offered in financial backing, they wouldn’t take it. I have no idea where all the money came from. I didn’t think there were any universities left that could finance their own asses without conglomerate backing. But they insisted they didn’t want the conglomerates in control.” He laughed a bitter laugh that sprayed several of the devices with crumbs. “That meant no control for the old man. Well I’m sure you can imagine how much he liked that. But there wasn’t much he could do except stay close and bribe as many people on the inside as he could. He was actually friends with several of the scientists, including Adrian McAllister. They’d gone to school together or some shit.”

“Then you knew Diana Mac before she was your father’s indentured? That must have been awkward.”

“I didn’t actually.”

Could Rab hear sadness in his voice?

“Her father kept her a secret, kept her away from the SNT project as far as I know. No one knew about her until the year before her old man bonded with the Merlin, and all of a sudden he had a daughter who was to be by his side onboard the Merlin. I probably hated her as much for that as anything, even though I didn’t know her.” Junior was no longer looking at the devices in front of him, but staring back in time at memories that Rab would guess weren’t best pleasing. “When she became my father’s indentured, I wanted her to suffer. She’d gotten what I wanted most, the only thing I’d ever wanted in my whole life, and she was nothing more than the bastard daughter of a mad scientist. I was the son of Abriad Fallon. I had whole conglomerates at my disposal, and yet she got what I wanted. I wanted her to suffer. I wanted to be the one to make her suffer.” He closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Turned out I was an amateur compared to the old man. When it came to making someone suffer, he’d been practicing on his kids for years.”

What the hell could Rab say to that? He felt a sudden chill, even though the atmosphere in the Ares was Terran standard for humanoids.

“After the SNTs fell, everyone suspected it was conglomerate sabotage responsible for the infecting of the ships,” the kid said going back to pouring over the devices.

“Is that what you think? Rab asked.

He spoke without looking up from his efforts. “Wouldn’t doubt one bit that my fucking father was at the forefront of their downfall. The old man always has to be in control. When the Free Universities wouldn’t give it over, well, business opportunity missed, plunder and pillage and all that shit. I mean what’s the point in having power if you don’t use it, right? All you gotta do is kill a few million innocent people and point the finger in the right direction and people will start screaming for heads to roll.”

Rab couldn’t argue with that, though he wished ha could. Into their silent introspection an orca class ship burst onto the view screen as if out of nowhere and before they could do more than curse, the Ares was locked in a tractor beam, being draw into the open hold of the flying castle.

“Sonovabitch,”Junior cursed. “That’s the Apocalypse, my father’s bloody ship.”

“What the fuck? Your father flits around the galaxy in an orca class ship?”

“The fucker doesn’t feel safe staying in one place, and with good reason. The Apocalypse is a flying fortress. I’ve never seen it before. He doesn’t invite any of his spawn onboard. Doesn’t trust us not to slit his throat in his sleep, I suppose.”

“Well I sure as hell don’t trust him not to slit mine,” Rab said as the Ares, seeming tiny and insignificant, was swallowed up in the maw of the Apocalypse.

Junior’s laugh was so bitter that it made Rab’s skin crawl. “Oh he’d never do anything to either of us that elementary. His kids, most of us anyway, we just want him dead. He, on the other hand, is more about making people suffer than snuffing them.”

The knot in Rab’s stomach had tightened to an icy fist, and he wasn’t sure he wasn’t going to puke. “What the hell is he doing clear out here?”

“Doing the job you two don’t seem to be able to manage,” came the voice of Abriad Fallon over the com, and they both jumped as though they’d been shot. The icy chuckle barely sounded human. “Careful, Gerando. Your sisters and brothers won’t be best pleased with you if you give away their plans for their old man.”

The kid tightened his jaw and the muscles along his sharp cheekbones spasmed, but he made no response. Fallon continued. “Once the Ares is onboard, I will expect the pleasure of your company on the captain’s bridge.”