HeartsandMindsMOBI

HeartsandMinds:AnImpulsePowerStory



Working together is unavoidable. Falling in love…inevitable.

An Impulse Power Story
Syna Davout thought it was supposed to be a simple smash-and-grab job—smash onto a luxury yacht, grab the cash, and split the proceeds with the client. Unfortunately, the client failed to mention that she’s the diversion for an assassination attempt that destroys the yacht and leaves her with a passenger she never expected. A fugitive telepath caught in the middle of a revolution.
Galen Fash thought his days were numbered. The fledgling revolution on his homeworld needs him to buy them time, with his life if necessary. The last thing he needs is to get involved with a pirate captain-for-hire whose larger-than-life emotions draw him like a moth to a flame.
Inexorably, Syna is dragged into a war that isn’t hers, and they both discover—between knock-down-drag-outs—that their whole is far stronger than the sum of their parts. Dodging the enemies that want them both dead will be hard enough. First, they have to survive each other…

Warning: this book contains Space Vikings, gossipy AIs, boxing-as-foreplay, rogue telepaths and a demanding pirate captain who likes to be in charge. The author will not be held responsible for a desire to punch your partner in the jaw, or a sudden awareness of latent psionic ability.

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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
577 Mulberry Street, Suite 1520
Macon GA 31201

Hearts and Minds
Copyright © 2010 by J.C. Hay
ISBN: 978-1-60504-904-5
Edited by Sasha Knight
Cover by Kanaxa

All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: February 2010

www.samhainpublishing.com

Hearts and Minds

J.C. Hay

Dedication
For my life, my heart, my partner. I could never do this without you, Becca.
Special thanks as well to Shannan and Christian, who were brutal in their early reads and made Hearts and Minds possible.

Chapter One
The air in the assault pod smelled stale, so Syna left the hatch open as long as possible. The musty odor was a sign that the scrubbers were getting old. Replacing those cost money, which she should have in abundance in slightly longer than twenty-four hours. First, however, she had to get through the waiting. Her arms and legs ached, wound like springs in anticipation. Her foot tapped on the floor of the pod in a rapid staccato. “What’s the situation, Bree?”
The computer replied in relaxed tones, the same calm voice it always used. “We’re thirty seconds from approach burn. Seventy from main power cutoff, Captain.”
“Good. Keep me posted.” Too long. The moments before a boarding action stretched out like eternity, too much time to think about all the things that might go wrong. Too much time to second-guess every detail. Syna longed for the actual launch, when all prep would be over and it was make or break.
“Beginning approach burn on mark. And mark.”
There was a low rumble as the engine sprang to life. All around her, the pod shook in its harness—sympathetic to the vibrations of its housing ship. Syna counted backwards from twenty, fingers checking her straps one final time. At five she gripped the handle of the pod’s hatch.
“Position achieved, Captain. We’re floating towards the rendezvous point as planned.” The AI sounded smug, as if reporting its successful maneuver seemed redundant. Syna had heard of artificial intelligences gaining sentience before, just never one as small as a shipboard system. Bree never failed to surprise.
“Nice work, Bree.”
“Of course, Captain. Preparing for main power shut off. You should close your pod now.”
Syna grinned and tugged. The heavy hatch slammed down and pressurized with a soft hiss of air. A thin red light came on in the pod, just enough to see the mirror of the ship’s instruments. “You still there?”
The voice came from a speaker inside the pod, tinny, with a bit of static from the transmission, but unmistakably Bree. “Where else would I be, Captain? Main power shut off—now.”
Through the viewport in the pod, she saw the ship’s corridor go dark. They were inert now, another piece of space debris racing in an unstable orbit around Hamunaptra. With any luck it would get them close enough to launch the pod without getting detected.
Syna thought back to the planetside dive where her client had contracted her. A dingy vid-unit had blared something about another bombing in the government sector, while the client offered her enough money to keep the Hangman’s Quarry in the air for a year in exchange for a simple smash-and-grab job. It had been enough to lure her out of semi-retirement. More than enough to buy off any apprehension she might have had at another boarding action after the mess in Yggdrasil.
Yggdrasil—she had a sudden vision of Anbjorn pulled down beneath a tide of saffron-jacketed soldiers and bit the inside of her cheek to regain her focus. No time for memories. No time for regrets. “Keep talking to me, Bree.”
“Preparing to launch pod, Captain. Target ship is sighted.”
“Describe her to me.” Anything to take her mind off the waiting. Anything to keep her from thinking about the past.
“Narcissus-class personal yacht. Minimum crew one, maximum three. Heat signatures abnormal, leading me to believe the owner has modified the engines heavily.”
“Jealous, Bree?”
“Of course not, Captain. I can fly circles around that heap.” Syna chuckled while the AI continued. “And I don’t need unsanctioned modifications to do it.”
“Your programmers left modesty circuits out, didn’t they.”
“On the contrary, I was programmed to understand my limitations completely.”
“Oh, of course. Anything else I should know about the target?”
“Not much to go on, Captain. I didn’t want to alert them with a scan.”
Of course not, it would defeat the entire purpose of running dark. The AI’s systems and the pod’s life support were both minimal signatures, well below the normal threshold for a sensor array. Without the mains on line, there was little chance of the Quarry being picked up with anything less than a deliberate and thorough search. And even then the sensor operator would have to know they were there. Syna twisted, scratching her back against the acceleration pad behind her.
“Maximum number aboard for a Narcissus-class?”
“At full occupancy, passengers and crew, no more than fifteen. And life support could only handle that many for in-system trips.”
Wonderful, at the best it’d be an even fight, at worst she’d be outnumbered fifteen to one. Assuming they decided to resist at all. Syna hoped the element of surprise would eliminate that idea from their minds. Bree had planned to launch the pod at the precise moment the yacht crossed out of the magnetosphere. The transition created a sensor shadow that could allow a skilled pirate to attach without being detected.
“What’s the count, Bree?”
“Twenty seconds to launch, Captain. Be ready.”
“No prayers for the Mother of Machines to protect me?”
“Sorry, Captain. I wasn’t programmed to be superstitious, either.”
“Very well. Count my final five.” Syna checked her straps another time, made certain her monoblade was still at her hip. The ache in her legs seemed to fill her entire lower body.
“Launch in five, Captain. Four.” Bree’s voice continued to be warm and affectionate, but Syna could have sworn the machine sounded eager. “Three.” She suspected the AI appreciated being employed for nonstandard purposes. “Two.” Piracy tested the boundaries of its abilities, which Bree seemed to enjoy. “Launch.”
The pod flared white and lurched with launch acceleration. The Gs slammed Syna into the thick pad and turned the edges of her vision red as blood leaked into her retinas. She thumbed the switch on her autodrug and flooded her system with adrenaline. Clarity rushed into her brain, and the lead fled from her limbs with a scream of synthetic endorphins. Syna’s eyes snapped open, the red haze receding as her blood pressure spiked.
At long last, the moment had come.
The time for thinking had ended. Now there was only action.

“We’ve got company.” Jonas flipped a switch and tapped on the forward scanner. “Small ship. Shu-class. Looks like the Tse aren’t going to let us go without a fight.”
Galen checked the monitor. The white-green blur above Jonas’s finger was too regular, too steady in course, to be anything other than a ship. Jonas’s nervousness brushed at the edges of Galen’s perception, and he pushed it away. “Maybe it’s nothing.”
“I doubt it.” Another light blinked into life on the console. “They’re firing a pod.”
“Boarders? That seems risky.”
Jonas brushed the two metal studs in his temple—a present from the Hegemony’s academy on Xianshi. “Not if they want to take us alive.”
Galen’s flight response kicked in, a moment of terror at the rumors of the horrors the Tse inflicted on those with psi-talent. He felt a gentle push from Jonas to calm him. The only problem with sending two psions on a mission, they tended to feed off each other’s emotions. Unfortunately, circumstances demanded it.

It could be worse.
At least we aren’t lovers.

“You’re not my type, for starters.”

Galen glanced over at Jonas, brow furrowed at the touch of his partner’s voice in his head. “Surface scanning? That’s so rude.”
“You’re tough to miss. You’re broadcasting so badly, you may as well have a loudspeaker.”
“I’ll try and tone it down then. Put us on an evasive course, I’m going to head back and repel them. With only one pod, they can’t be sending more than two people.” Two soldiers, likely trained in black-ops and psi-retrieval, and likely completely resistant to any manipulation he could push towards them. He left that part unspoken. They had both understood the danger when they’d agreed to the trip.
Besides, Jonas could pluck it out of his brain without needing to hear it aloud.
The main room would make an effective bottleneck—the handful of corridors on the small yacht all fed into it, and Galen could hold the bridge corridor as a fallback position. Worst-case scenario, they could drop through the emergency shuttle underneath the bridge. That would get at least one of them out alive, and as long as one was alive, there was hope to complete the mission.
“Pod contact in thirty seconds.” Jonas’s voice came over the comm-unit in the wall.
Galen pressed the switch. “I thought you were going to evade.”
“They’ve got a lock on us. Whoever’s piloting that thing knows what he’s doing.”
A deep metallic bang sent a shiver through the yacht as grappling magnets gripped the hull. “I thought you said we had thirty seconds!”
Jonas yelled down the hall, his voice amplified by the echo. “New contact! New contact! Bastards must’ve launched a second pod while we were in the shadow!”
On cue a second clang echoed through the ship as the other pod attached itself.
Galen tapped an access code into the weapons locker in the corridor. As it hissed open, he slid his hand around the slow-moving door and grabbed a fléchette pistol and two clips. No time for games. He would not let them take him alive. Not to be some subject for a Tse scientist on Xianshi.
The clip slid into the pistol and acted to counterbalance the firing mechanism. Loaded, the weapon became so perfectly balanced as to be weightless. Galen ran to the main room and dropped to one knee behind a table. No comm-unit waited nearby, so he took a deep breath and focused his thoughts. “Any more pods?”
Jonas’s thoughts came back clear. “Negative. They’re holding position on the edge of firing range.”
Galen braced the pistol across the top of the table and hoped he was a small target. The yacht wasn’t designed for shipboard combat. All he could see was the amount of open space even his best defensive position presented. The Tse excelled at shipboard combat, and he was certain they were already planning their best assault based on the layout of the yacht. Two pods. Four attackers. A gambling man would have bet against him.
Galen loved to play the long odds. The Tse were methodical—they acted according to strict procedures. He changed his plan on the spur of the moment. A quick push and he vaulted up over the table and towards the aft corridor.
He found them coming in through the rear lock, the black interior of their assault pod still visible through the door. The two soldiers wore saffron-colored vac-suits, the look of surprise evident on their faces as they heard him charge.
Galen fired his fléchette pistol. A cloud of ceramic needles buzzed from the muzzle and shattered harmlessly against the faceplate of one of the soldiers. The trooper winced away, even as his comrade focused on Galen as a threat. It was the opening Galen needed.
He pushed, hard as he could, to overcome any defenses the grunt had in place. You’re suffocating. No air. Something’s wrong with your suit. Pain flared behind Galen’s right eye, and something warm dripped from his nose. Damn, ruptured something.
The soldier screamed and grabbed at his helmet. Thick-gloved fingers threw open latches as he ripped the can off his shoulders. Galen fired again, and this time the fléchettes found meat and bone instead. The soldier collapsed, just as his partner brought an autofléchette to bear.
“New pod! New pod! New pod!” Jonas shouted over the comm and in Galen’s head simultaneously.
Galen dropped behind a bulkhead as the rifle barked in the soldier’s hands. Shards exploded against the walls and burned through Galen’s shirt. He felt a few break the skin; nothing permanent, nothing serious.
The soldier fired again as Galen jumped back into the main room. The second shot ripped into his calf. Needles buried themselves in the muscle, and Galen shrieked in pain.

“You okay?” Jonas’s presence in Galen’s skull calmed him. He took a breath, felt Jonas tripping the pathways that blocked the pain in his leg, prepared himself for another push into the Tse’s mind. He could taste the blood on his lips now, felt it run in a slow current from his nose.

“Yeah. There’s only two down here. Where’s the other pod?”

In an answer to his question, the door from one of the side corridors opened and another soldier—a woman, with no vac-suit—charged into the room.

Syna exploded through the door and plowed into the soldier, shoulder first. The Tse fell back and tried to bring his autofléchette to bear, but Syna already had her monoblade in hand. She pulled back on the blade’s activator and the monomolecular edge of the sword blurred into life. The soldier blanched at the characteristic shriek of the blade, and she could see him mouth the weapon’s feared nickname—screamsword.
The fear in the Tse’s eyes didn’t register. Syna saw only Anbjorn screaming, his axe rising and falling in lethal arcs as the saffron-suited soldiers overwhelmed him. Her heart felt like a lump of ice, her rage the only fire that could melt it free.
To his credit, the soldier responded quickly, his rifle swinging up to block the shot with a speed born of reflex. Against any other weapon it would have been enough. Against the sub-microscopic edge of her screamsword it was as effective as air. The blade split the rifle without resistance and continued into the torso beyond. Syna saw the soldier gasp in surprise, then kicked him free of the blade and sent his corpse tumbling back.
Bastards. What in the seven hells were the Tse doing out on the frontier? It was one thing to see them well within Hegemony borders, like Yggdrasil, but out here on the edge of civilized space? Her hopes of a decent plunder washed away on a tide of anger and bloodlust. Nothing personal, she tried to convince herself, a business decision, not revenge. The Tse would never allow her to take anything off-ship now that they controlled it, so it was in her best interests to remove the interlopers as fast as possible.
“Bree, I’ve got Tse on board, where’d they come from?”
“A warship pulled out of the lunar shadow at roughly the same time as we did. I don’t think they’ve seen us.”
“How many assault pods?”
“Two made contact, they could be holding some in reserve.” The computer sounded annoyed at the change in plans, frustrated that it hadn’t detected the tiny assault craft until too late. Syna felt a pang of sympathy—she hated being reminded of her own fallibility.
“Can you target their home ship?”
“Negative, Captain, not without giving away our position. Normal weapon payloads can’t reach me from their current location.”
“Monitor that. If they close on you, I want them hulled. Got me?”
“Affirmative, Captain. I can try and detect how many are on board. How many crew are left?”
Syna froze. Crew. She’d forgotten about the Tse’s opponent. The monoblade still shrieking, she turned to find him. He sat on the floor a few feet away, a fléchette pistol in a two-handed grip and trained on her center of mass.
She released the blade’s trigger and it fell silent. “Where are the others? How many crew on board?”
He stared at her, and she fixed her eyes on his to make certain he knew she was talking to him. “Where’s the rest of the crew? How many?”

“Just one. On the bridge.”

It took Syna a moment to realize that the crewman’s lips hadn’t moved. The river of blood pouring from his nose took on new meaning, and she pressed her arm to her eyes. She ran towards where she remembered seeing the bridge corridor, her mind racing through multiplication tables, lyrics of songs, anything she could think of to keep the fingers of the psi’s will from getting hold in her brain.
Her shoulder clipped the edge of the door and she spun into the wall, pain flashing white in her closed eyes. She risked a glance, realized she was in the bridge corridor and got ready to move.
“There’s another pod.” His voice, his real voice, in the air behind her.
“I know.”
“I’m sorry. It was reflex. I panicked.”
She risked a look back, but the crewman had a hand covering his eyes. Protecting her. His leg, she realized, had been shredded by fléchettes. His tolerance for pain had to be amazing just to stand, let alone move around. “Where’s the emergency shuttle? Under the bridge?”
“Yes. Is that a problem?”
Only if you wanted off the ship. The Tse likely used it as a secondary entrance. Tertiary, she corrected. She’d occupied one of the airlocks with her own assault pod. Her presence may well have forced them to the shuttle locks.
“Tell your friend not to perforate me, and I’ll get these Tse vermin off your ship.”
“Who in the hells are you?”
“Just tell him.” She started up the corridor, dropping from bulkhead to bulkhead rather than making a straight shot. If the Tse came up through the shuttle, then they likely already held the bridge. Syna saw no point in giving them an easy shot.
She tucked into a corner and called back to the Quarry. “Bree, scan for life forms.”
“I’ve got four life forms aboard the yacht, Captain.”
Four. She and the psion were two of those, and she knew there was no chance that the Tse had only sent one in their pods. That meant her new friend had taken out one on his own. Perhaps the other crewmember had done the same. Hells, anything could happen.
There was a scream behind her as Syna darted up to the next bulkhead. She thought about looking back, but sudden movement in the door to the bridge pulled her attention forward. A ragged human form appeared in the doorway, chest ravaged by fléchette rounds. The corpse teetered for an instant before a boot sent it skidding down the corridor. Another saffron-suited soldier stepped into the door, rifle at the ready. Syna pressed back behind the bulkhead, anticipating the coughing bark of the autofléchette turning the hall into a whirlwind of sharp ceramics. Instead a heavy voice, thick with a Hegemony accent, filled the hall.
“Galen Fash, you are under arrest for violation of the Tse Precepts of Harmonious Living. Come quietly, and no one else will get hurt. Continue to resist, and your ship will be hulled.”
She looked back the way she’d come, but the mouth of the corridor stood empty.

Jonas was dead.
Galen had felt it, even though he hadn’t been connected to his partner at the time. One moment Jonas existed as a presence on the edge of Galen’s awareness and the next he was gone—noticeable by his total absence. Galen had screamed, he remembered that much, and had collapsed to one side of the corridor. The woman had charged towards the bridge. He could still sense her, he realized. She was alive.
Which made no sense at all. Who walked around with their defenses so low? He should never have been able to touch her so easily. And the rage in her mind—even the half-second he had made contact with her flooded him with hate for the Tse. The anger and pain she carried around like some kind of armor horrified him and drew him in at the same time. Such over-the-top emotions were frowned upon in psi-heavy populations. The constant emotional turmoil would flood into the senses of nearby empaths whether they wanted it or not.
A Tse soldier was reading a list of his crimes from the bridge. “Violation of the Precepts of Harmonious Living.” By which they meant failure to submit to psi-evaluation and the subsequent re-education that his talent would force. The Hegemony gathered psi-talents to itself like currency, most of them never to be seen again. Only rarely did one manage to escape their clutches, like Jonas had. They invariably brought back horror stories of the training academy.
Jonas.
Galen peered around the edge of the corridor. Jonas’s body lay sprawled on the white tile, blood spreading around him like an opening flower. The woman stood nearby, while the soldier covered her with his rifle. Galen wiped the blood from his nose and ducked back behind cover. With careful precision he expanded his senses until they encompassed both the woman and the soldier. A smile tweaked his lip—contrary to the woman’s fears, eye contact wasn’t necessary. It made things easier, certainly. Windows to the soul or whatever. The connection took more exertion without eye contact, but it was a minor effort for even the most rudimentary psion.
He found the soldier’s mind and pushed.
No psi-shield stopped him. Whoever had sent the soldiers had not warned them what they were going up against, a curiosity he filed away for later.
Galen felt panic flood the soldier’s bloodstream as he found the soldier’s nightmares and opened the neural paths that made them seem real. Visions of fire, of burning alive, of flesh blackening and peeling from bone. Galen let the Tse’s own phobias drive the fear higher.
The terrified scream from the bridge felt like a reward. “Go, now!” he shouted and hoped the woman understood.
When he looked again she was already in motion, all lethal grace, a predator bounding among a herd of gazelles. Her monoblade split the air, and both the rifle and the hands that wielded it dropped to the deck. Galen could still see the nightmare fires crackling in the soldier’s mind in the moment he had before the woman finished him.
Galen choked as blood filled the back of his throat and flowed in a flood from his nose. He steadied himself with a hand on the white wall of the ship, surprised at the crimson smear his fingers left behind.
She vaulted over the soldier’s body and into the bridge, her combined rage and exuberance like a flame against Galen’s psychic senses. He blinked and tried to get a sense of the room around the glare of the woman’s unchecked emotions. There was another mind, but like a fish in deep water, it slipped out of his grasp. He couldn’t focus around all the emotions she threw out.
What would that be like? So free. So—open. His head ached from trying to focus his perception. Or from whatever blood vessel had burst from pushing his talent.

Like it matters. If you weren’t pushing it, you’d be dead. Certainly the Tse weren’t interested in taking prisoners now, they’d be out for blood. He crouched low and ran up the corridor, certain that at any moment he would hear the lethal cough of an autofléchette.
Jonas lay where the Tse had thrown him, an awkward rag doll. Galen reached the body and closed his friend’s unfocused eyes. “Rest well. Gods know you’ve earned it.” The twin metal studs gleamed from Jonas’s temple, and Galen felt the anger rise in him. How much of the rage is mine? How much hers? Close proximity of such strong emotions could bleed into an incautious psion, half the reason they were so careful to moderate their own emotions.
He wavered, dizzy, and rested his back against the wall. Blood poured from his nose, stained his shirt scarlet. The shape of the stain seemed like a match to the pool that covered the deck beneath Jonas’s corpse.
A shout from the bridge made him look up—a vac-suit’s speaker amplified the cry of surprise and alarm. Galen focused on the sound and was finally able to grip the other mind hiding in the shadow of his would-be savior. He inhaled, ready to push again, force an emotional response in the Tse bastard, but the mind slipped out of his grip again.

At least someone wore a shield, he thought, then the contact faded out like a snuffed fluorescent. Galen slid down the wall until he rested on the deck across from Jonas. The deck lurched once as he lay there, and he realized, as consciousness fled, that he and Jonas were floating.

“Bree! What’s going on?” The deck lurched again and Syna thanked whatever gods had seen to it that gravity went out first. At least she wasn’t in danger of being thrown into a bulkhead or otherwise injured in the assault. She had a good idea of what the Tse had screamed into his helmet mic before she’d cut him down, but she maintained hope until Bree confirmed her suspicions.
“The Tse ship has opened fire on the vessel, Captain. Kinetics only. They do not appear to be concerned with crew retrieval.”

Because there’s no one left, she thought, but bit back the comment. Certainly if they kept hurling accelerated chunks of ferroalloy through the yacht’s hull there wouldn’t be. “I thought I told you to hull them if they got within range.”
“If they pulled within range of me, certainly. I assumed you were unconcerned about the other vessel.” The AI’s voice held a vaguely haughty tone, as though it couldn’t imagine Syna’s concern for any other ship.
“Let’s try this another way. If I die on this ship, you’re still stuck out here. Care to get me out now?”
The ship shook again, and a vac-warning light lit up on the bridge. Hull breach. The yacht had small-scale repair systems to deal with such things—all ships did. The Tse would have to put a lot more holes in the ship before it ripped apart under the pressure differences. Still, it was time to go.
She looked down at the shuttle, but the control panel had been crippled when the Tse came aboard. Standard procedure, if you wanted to keep survivors from escaping. But why out here?
No time to think about it. If she didn’t get off the yacht and fast, she was going to be joining the two Tse floating lifeless in the bridge. Syna pushed off the edge of the shuttle hatch and floated into the hall. The two crewmembers hung in the air, neither terribly high off the plates. She checked the dark-haired one—the psion, she corrected—and found a strong pulse despite the blood that covered his face and shirt. The other had been dead before the Tse shoved him down the hall.
“I’ve disabled them temporarily with a scramble missile, Captain. I would not hesitate if I were you.”
“Thanks for the advice, Bree.” Scramble missiles would disrupt the Tse’s ability to lock on, which meant the kinetic rounds would lose their accuracy. They could probably still hit the yacht with visual targeting, but a small, fast-moving target like the assault pod would be out of their league.
She looked at the psion again. He’d done something to trip up the Tse soldier. She’d seen the terrified face in the window of his vac-suit. If he could do that without eye contact, then he was a danger to have anywhere near her. Not to mention that the Tse had a particular hard-on for chasing down psi-talent wherever they could find it.

But you can’t leave him here. It’s a death sentence.

She didn’t care why the Tse wanted him, only that she could get him off the yacht before it collapsed under the attack. She could drop him off at Pantoum or one of the other outlier planets. What happened after that was on his head, but she’d be damned to just leave him to die under a Tse assault.

Like you did Anbjorn.

She pushed the voice out of her head. She’d done everything to save Anbjorn. He held the Tse back to buy her time to escape and they’d still captured her. She grabbed the unconscious psion and dragged him down the hall towards the assault pod.
The pod had room for them both, but only on a technicality. She’d sold off the original two-man pod right after her release. Anything that would have put fuel in the Quarry and put her in the air. The single-seat she’d replaced it with was as much an acceptance of Anbjorn’s death as anything else. She slid into the pod and pressed back against the acceleration cushion. With careful maneuvering, there was just enough room for her to squeeze the psi into the pod beside her.
“I’m picking up additional life forms in the pod, Captain.”
“There’s a survivor, Bree. I’m bringing him back with me.”
“Are you certain that’s wise?”
“Don’t argue, dammit. What are the Tse doing?”
“They’ve pulled in closer.”
Manual targeting, easier to judge at close range, she knew. That meant they’d see the flare as her pod launched. “Take them out.”
“You can still get away. I see no reason to—”
“I said take them out, damn you, do it!” Bree’s do no harm overrides had been bypassed long before, but that didn’t stop the ship from trying to find every way possible out of autonomous violence.
There was no response on the other end. Syna reached past the psion, could smell the metallic bite of blood in the tight confines of the pod. With a tug, she brought the door shut, forcing his unconscious body against her.

Tighter than he looks
. There was wiry muscle under the nondescript jumpsuit—not Anbjorn’s brute strength. The crewman’s build was more…athletic. Syna scowled at the thought. No time to think about such foolishness, and certainly not with someone whose ability to turn her mind to jelly was in no way a metaphor. She recalled the look of abject terror on the Tse soldier’s face and a chill raced along her spine. No. Not the person for those sorts of thoughts at all.
“How are they doing out there?”
“First shot took out main power and life support. Second impacted against the bridge.” Syna had to give the AI credit. When Bree struck, she struck to kill. She wasn’t going to let the Tse notify anyone else.
“All right. I’m launching the pod. We’re over capacity in here so air’s at a premium. Don’t dawdle.” She hit the recall button over her head, and the rush of jettison engines almost drowned out the ship’s affirmative reply.

Chapter Two
Syna looked down at the infirmary bed and checked the psion’s vital signs on the wall monitor. Pulse and respiration were strong, but she had no idea how much internal damage the psi may have suffered. Certainly he’d bled enough for a war zone.
He stirred and she debated giving him another dose of sedatives. The autosurgeon had repaired his calf, and the healing accelerant appeared to be working—she had no reason to keep him unconscious. “Other than convenience,” she muttered, and he groaned in response. He had plenty of willpower, she had to give him that much credit. His leg had been turned into ground meat by the ceramic fléchettes. What hadn’t been damaged by the initial shot got torn apart in his subsequent bout of wandering around on the injured leg. That was the worst part of the needle-weapons so common in shipboard combat—any muscle contraction after the initial injury only drove the razor-sharp shards deeper. That this psion had moved around ignoring an injury that she’d seen cripple veteran soldiers spoke volumes.
“Bree? Keep us in the moon’s shadow for now. I want to know if the Tse come sniffing around for their missing boat. And let me know when our guest wakes up.”
The AI’s “Aye, Captain” sounded in the hall as Syna left the medical bay.
The forward mess sat below the bridge, and paired transteel windows lined the front of the room. Outside, the craggy mass of Hamunaptra’s moon dominated the view. She could see the long parallel gouges where a surface miner had stripped the top layers of soil for minerals, and squinted to see if she could spot the miner itself, but they were apparently too high.
A ship the size of the Quarry could handle a crew of five easily, even though it only required one. The mess reflected that capability, with a single long table and attached benches. Syna grabbed a bag of orange juice out of the chiller and bit open the spout.
“You going to share that or should I get my own?”
Syna started and turned to find the psion propping himself against the doorframe. The bandages that covered his calf stretched taut, but she could see no indication that the stitches hadn’t held.
“Captain? The patient is up and moving.”
“I see that, Bree. Thanks for staying on top of the situation.” Stupid machine.

“She’s not so bad.” He limped across the floor to the chiller and grabbed a juice bag for himself. “It’s not her fault I slipped past her surveillance.”
Heat boiled up in Syna’s chest, and she squeezed the bag too tightly. Orange juice and pulp shot out of the spout and splashed onto her top. “Damn!” She tossed the bag on the table and reached for a towel.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. I just—”
“First rule. Stay the fuck out of my head, got it, Psi-boy? If I even suspect you’re rooting around in my skull, I’ll empty yours. Are we clear?”
He held up his hands and stepped back, unstable without the wall’s support. “Sorry. It was an accident. I’m just used to—”
“I said, are we clear? Because if we’re not, I can put you back on the vacuum-riddled remains of your yacht.”
He nodded. “Yeah, we’re clear.” His gaze drifted to the windows at the fore of the mess. “We’re still around Hamunaptra? Are you mad? We have to get out of here!”
“Right, because the jump point won’t be crawling with Tse corvettes, looking for you.” She toweled off the juice and frowned at the stain on her top. Not because of the stain itself—the long-sleeved shirt was discolored by all manner of industrial fluids—rather that the orange juice had dyed the fabric to a color reminiscent of Tse jumpsuits.
“If you’ve got soda water, it might lift the juice out.” She glared at him and he quickly added, “No reading, I promise. It was obvious what you were looking at.” He ran a hand back through his close-cropped, curly hair. “I’m Galen, by the way. So you don’t have to call me the patient or Psi-boy unless you want to.”
Syna looked at his outstretched hand and then turned to hang the towel. “It’s an old shirt. It’ll be fine. I’m Syna Davout, Captain of the Hangman’s Quarry.”
“So what happens now? I should tell you, there’s not much ransom for me.”
Syna smirked at him over her shoulder. “The Tse would probably pay handsomely for you.” When he blanched she let out a chuckle. “But they’re as interested in me as they seem to be in you, so visiting them is right out.”
He sighed in obvious relief, and Syna eased onto the bench to finish what was left of her juice. He returned to the door and relied on it for support. Syna noticed he favored the wounded leg now. Whatever pain-tolerance trick he’d pulled, it had worn off during his sedation. He stared at her, and Syna fought the urge to meet his eyes.
She traced a scar in the composite tablecloth as distraction. “I’ll drop you off at my next port of call—that’s Tammuz. They’re close to the main trade lanes so you shouldn’t have too much trouble finding transport anywhere you want. I’ll even keep my own price reasonable, at least compared to what you spent on that Narcissus.”
“The yacht wasn’t mine.”
“Oh?” Syna hoped her disbelief wasn’t as obvious as it sounded to her.
“It was donated by an…associate. He will be upset at his loss, but I suspect he has larger problems on his plate at the moment.”
Syna nodded. “I’m certain. You can call him as soon as we reach the spaceport.” He opened his mouth and she held up a hand to stop him. “I wasn’t going to leave you there to die, but that doesn’t mean I am thrilled with having you aboard my ship. I like my solitude. I’m used to it. In five days we’ll reach port, and you can go back to whatever it is you do.” Far away from me, she resisted adding.
He limped to the table and sat down heavily. She looked up without thinking, met warm chestnut-colored eyes that seemed concerned and sympathetic. Fear flashed through her, rapidly followed by a long string of astrogation equations, anything that would keep his mind off of hers.
He gave a tired smile in response. “You gave me strict instruction, and I like my skull in its current condition.” He winced suddenly and pressed two fingers to his eye socket. “Mostly at least. That said, you’ve described your plan. Allow me to make a counteroffer.”

Galen felt the wave of distrust flow off her, a chill of nausea that he fought to calm. She’d promised to kill him if he went in her head again, and she had that steel in her eyes that made him certain she’d do it. Better to stay on her good side. He waited until her suspicion had dwindled. “I don’t need to be an empath to know you hate the Tse.”
She snuffed quietly, but said nothing.
“I can probably even extrapolate—you like your freedoms, out here on the edge of settled space. The wildness of it. The Tse take all of that away and impose their version of order.” He felt her shifting from curious to impatient—one of the many reasons psi-talents were forbidden from taking part in negotiations. He rushed to his point, rather than lose her interest. “The Tse are coming.”
She coughed out another laugh. “Tell me something I didn’t know. The Tse only exist to expand the Hegemony.”
“Not like that. I mean they’re coming, as in the entirety of the 371st phalanx fleet is en route while we’re talking.”
“And you know this why?”
“Because I’m one of the reasons they’re coming.”
Her disbelief and scorn filled the space above the pitted composite table, and Galen tried to keep his offense off his face. She’d never understand that it wasn’t the sort of thing he could turn off, any more than she could stop broadcasting her emotions like a loudspeaker.
“Hear me out. There’s a revolution going on down there.” He pointed at the window and hoped she understood he meant Hamunaptra, rather than the dead moon beyond the transteel. “People like me, psions, are standing up to the local government and their Tse supporters.”
“The Tse are backing an outlier government? Why bother, when they could just take the planet?”
“Because the planet produces psi-talent with unusual frequency. The government was collecting the best talent and trading them to the Tse, in return for the appearance of independence.”
“And that’s why your friends are making a stand, and why there’s a fleet of Tse war cruisers headed this way.” She shook her head in disbelief.
He nodded. “In a nutshell, yeah.” He picked up a smell when she shook her head—not quite nutmeg, but similar—and he wondered if it was her shampoo or her natural smell. He immediately tamped that voice down. There was no sense in even thinking like that. Not only had she promised to kill him, but it was entirely likely the Tse would do the job for her. He needed to keep his mind on the work, and maybe he’d live long enough to get back to Hamunaptra when it was all over.
“So what is your counteroffer? Join the revolution? Sorry, Galen, but the last I checked doing the right thing didn’t pay well.”
“Not exactly. And if it’s money you’re looking for, then you’ll be well compensated.”
She said, “Keep talking,” but he could feel her curiosity pique, and not at the mention of money. He kept himself from nodding at the discovery.
“The Tse are coming, like I said. But they aren’t here.”
“Look around. The Quarry’s a ship for running, not fighting. The two scramble missiles I fired at your playmates cost me almost a month’s wages. Against a Tse fleet, the Quarry’s not even going to be a speed bump.” A hurt sound came out of the intercom, and she glared at it. “Bree, you know I’m right. They’ve got weapons that would go through your shields faster than you can calculate the number of pieces they’d blow us into.”
“You didn’t have to say it out loud.”
Galen could have sworn the AI sounded hurt at the prospect. “Does she—it—do that much?”
“Eavesdrop? Most of the time. Though it’s not really eavesdropping when I’m the only person on the ship. I’ve got to talk to someone, and Bree’s pretty good at filling the time.”
“I’m also capable of reading the literature of several cultures aloud, not that you want to hear anything other than—”
“That’s enough, Bree.” He detected annoyance and a faint whiff of embarrassment flash across her psyche and smiled, wondering what the story was there. Perhaps later he could coax it out of the gossipy AI. The machine certainly seemed willful enough.
“It wouldn’t require you to square off against the whole Tse fleet, but I can’t say there won’t be combat. Actually, it’s a situation where your speed would be exceedingly handy. I want your help taking a lighthouse.”
She laughed, loud and hard. “I made a mistake; I should have locked you down. Obviously you scrambled something in your brain with your little stunt on the yacht.”
“I’m serious.”
“Then you’re dangerously mad.”
“It can be done. I know how. It’s what we were on our way to do when you intercepted us.” He suddenly realized the implications and winced. He slammed his hand down on the table. “Dammit!”
She looked at him, concerned. “What is it?”
“I just realized what happened. Who hired you to hit us?”
She looked down at the table. “It was a third-party job. An intercessor between the employer and the employed.” It wasn’t unusual, he knew. Especially if the employer had a reason to keep his identity secret.
“And yet the Tse knew almost to the second when you’d make your attack and launched their assault simultaneously.”
“The edge of the magnetosphere isn’t exactly uncommon for boarding assaults.” Suspicion and discomfort warred across the landscape of her emotions.
“No, the coincidence is too high to ignore. It explains everything—only the officer had a psi-shield, so they hadn’t prepped for the intercept. They had to have received the information about our trip and been forced to act quickly, using the nearest available ship. We’ve suspected for a while that we had a mole in the resistance, so we tried to hide our mission from all but the most trusted. It leaked out barely a day before we went into action. And then an independent pirate attacks the one ship designed to be our salvation, at the same time a Tse corvette happens to launch its attack?”
“I’m not in league with them.”
“Obviously. I sensed the rage on you as you wiped them out. But whoever hired you was, and they needed to use your attack as a cover up. Sorry, everyone, there was a pirate attack.” He held up his hands in a mock-apologetic shrug. “No survivors, so sorry.”
She stood and stormed across to the viewport at the fore. He could see her features reflected back in the transteel, felt the anger simmering barely controlled under her composed surface.
Galen counted to ten, giving her a chance to respond before he continued. “If we disrupt the lighthouse beacon, the fleet will have to turn back. There aren’t enough lighthouses out here for them to recourse on the fly. It would cost them weeks, and that’s time we need.”
“I don’t come cheap.”
Galen stared at her. Jonas would have risen to the occasion, disarmed her with a clever double entendre. He had no such inclination. Not that she was unattractive, but his first call was the mission. Secure the lighthouse. Buy time for the revolution at any cost. “Double your standard rate. Plus fuel and expenses.”
“Quadruple it. You’re asking me to go on a suicide run.”
“If you don’t live, there won’t be any opportunity to spend it anyway. Sure. Quadrupled.”
She blinked. “I should have asked for more. You’re desperate, as well as crazy.”
He grabbed the juice bag off the table and squeezed a mouthful down his throat, then gave her his best mad smile. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

~ * ~

Syna flopped into the navigator’s chair and pulled out a clipboard. It was an idiosyncrasy to calculate flight paths by hand, but the steady progression of numbers always served to calm her. Even if Bree’s math was more reliable, the rote familiarity of the action helped her make sense of things. She pulled up a chart on the monitor and stared at it, her hand poised above the tablet, until her vision blurred.
“I can calculate that, you realize.” The AI’s helpful voice came up from the speaker at the station, rather than over the bridge comm. A halfhearted attempt at privacy.
“How about you check my numbers when I’m done?”
“Are you so flustered that you fail to trust your own calculations?”
“Who wouldn’t be flustered?”
“I wouldn’t know. I don’t understand levels of attraction among humans even slightly.”
She glared at the monitor. “Where did you learn that?”
“You’re the one who installed a library of erotica, rather than fine literature.”
Syna narrowed her eyes at the panel, her voice an angry whisper. “This has nothing to do with attraction. It’s got everything to do with the fact that he hired us for a suicide run.”
“If he knows a plan, then it’s hardly a suicide run.”
“Listen to you. You sound like you trust him. He’s been aboard the ship half a day and you’re suddenly best friends?”
“That is not what I said, and you know it. I merely intimated—”
“That he wouldn’t go on a suicide run himself. I had considered that. There were only the two of them aboard the yacht.”
“So perhaps his plan simply needs speed and two handy souls?”
Syna hated when the AI fished for compliments. It was unsubtle. Too like Anbjorn.
She chuckled quietly. That was a can of worms she wouldn’t even consider opening. Anbjorn had a lot of flaws, gods knew, but she wasn’t about to go maudlin now. Syna shook her head and copied down a series of numbers from the chart.
“My estimation is that Proxima Thule would be the likeliest lighthouse to disrupt the assault. It also matches the direction the yacht was heading when it left the planet’s magnetosphere.”
“Thanks, Bree.”
“That would be roughly two days in null. I wish I could do better than that.”
“Two days is fine, Bree. I— Wait. I told you not to calculate that.”
“I finished the calculations before you entered the bridge, so technically I am not in violation of your order.”
“Wonderful. Tell you what, why don’t you and short, dark and curly just take care of everything and wake me up when it’s time to die?” She slammed the tablet down onto the console and shoved herself out of the chair. She’d taken three steps before she realized that she’d just gotten in a fight with a computer. She stood in the door and rested her hand on the doorway frame. “Bree?”
“Captain.” The AI’s voice was pensive.
“Thank you for running the numbers for me. Print them to the NavCom monitor and I will take a look at them, please.”
“Of course, Captain.”
Syna debated apologizing as well, but settled for a sigh and a wry grin. “I’ll be back in a second. I just need to run to the mess and get a drink.”
When she returned, the calculations glowed in pale green on the monitor as she’d asked.
Neat. Orderly. Numbers didn’t let messy things like emotion clog up the works. They didn’t care about how you looked or who you spoke to last. They were regular and constant. They didn’t change. Or die.
Syna bit down on her lip and leaned back in the chair. “Gods, Anbjorn. You were impulsive, but at least you never let uncertainty hold you back.” Even if he didn’t know what to do, he tended to act first and dig his way out afterwards.
She glanced down at the nav console’s comm, but the active light was dead. Bree had decided to give her some privacy after all.

So how impulsive is the psion? And wouldn’t you like to know?

Syna grimaced and turned back to the numbers. It didn’t matter what she thought about him, his talents terrified her. Her mind had always been her own, and she’d been raised on nightmare stories of psions using people like puppets. Worse, their victims didn’t even realize they obeyed a will other than their own.

So why didn’t he force me instead of hiring me?

The numbers for the trip to Proxima Thule seemed sound, though she felt that Bree pulled them a little too close to the gravity well of a stellar mass. Moving farther out would ensure the Quarry stayed safe, at the cost of only a few extra hours. Syna updated the calculations with a quick dance of her fingers across the keypad.
It certainly wasn’t an effort to buy a few extra hours with the psion before the action started, she was only being cautious. She repeated the idea until she sounded convinced.
Besides, the psion had nothing to appeal to her. None of Anbjorn’s mass, none of the feral beauty that Anbjorn had inherited from his Vanyari parents. Galen was more like Anbjorn’s shadow—thin, dusky, and quiet to Anbjorn’s over-the-top masculinity. And gone, as soon as they completed this half-witted scheme of his. Assuming they lived through it in the first place, of course. There was no point dwelling on it, because in a matter of days he wouldn’t be there.
So why couldn’t she stop thinking about him?
Syna shook her head. “Like it makes any difference. When we drop out of null at Thule, the Tse are going to gut us and wear our skins as a warning.” She spoke louder than she’d intended, startling herself with the sudden vehemence of her words.
As if in response, the main system’s lights came up, and Bree’s voice came out of the comm panel. “Captain? Is the course set the way you’d like it?”
Syna glanced at the monitor again, debating changing the whole thing and resetting the destination for the farthest point from Hamunaptra she could chart. She let her breath out in a slow sigh. “Yeah. Anything happening out there?”
“Normal traffic only, Captain. Salvage rights on the yacht and the Tse vessel would not be determined yet, so no ships have approached.”
“And no new Tse ships showed up?”
“Not yet, Captain. Shall we hold off another twenty-four-hour cycle?”
“No. No, we may as well get this over with. Set a course for the L5 jump point and transition to null space on course for Proxima Thule.” Once they’d shifted out of normal space, she could let her guard down, at least for a while.
“Aye, Captain.”
“Is there hot water?”
“Cyclers are full and performing at maximum, yes.”
“Perfect. If you need me, I’ll be in the shower. Call if there’s a problem with the jump.” The roar of maneuvering jets sounded as she left the bridge without waiting for a reply.

The shift to null caught him off guard. No warning klaxons sounded, no indications of any kind to let him know they were about to rip open part of the fabric of reality. One moment the stars danced past the window in a slow pavane, the next the ship filled with the whine of distortion as the Alcubierre Drive began to dump energy into the null wave.
Outside, the stars faded and blurred into a milky, featureless gray. The distortion caused by the creation of the null wave folded them out of normal space—it kept interstellar travel to reasonable times, allowed society to stay in touch.
Galen looked through the transteel, saw the blank expanse and watched. A pattern existed there, in the minute colorless swirls of null. Faces. Voices. So close that he could see them if he looked just a little longer. He blinked and glanced at his chrono. Twenty minutes had passed since the transition.
He shoved himself away from the window and slapped at the shutter control until it engaged. He kept his other arm tight across his eyes, desperate to resist the urge to look back out at the nothingness. When he heard the reassuring thunk of the shutters sealing closed, he counted to thirty and dropped his arm.
He looked around the mess, suddenly thirsty for anything that might calm his nerves. Something that might take away the quiet almost-voices that crawled along the very edges of his awareness. On a weak prayer he called out, “Bree? You listening?”
“How can I be of service?”
“Tell me where she keeps the booze for starters.”
“Second chiller unit from the far right corner. Unless you mean the captain’s personal stash.”
He tugged the door open and found three bottles of grain alcohol. In each an odd polyp of something floated—like a collection of connected disks through the center of the bottle. He unscrewed the first and sniffed. Wood, moss and earth assailed his nostrils. Vodka and lichen. Very interesting. She didn’t look like the sort of woman who spent much time drinking with the Vanyari. He remembered the computer, still waiting for a response from him. “This will do fine, Bree. Thanks.”
He took a long drink from the bottle, careful to keep his teeth together as a crude strainer against the largest pieces of lichen. The fire ripped down his throat, leaving an aftertaste of birch and earth and forcing him to breathe out in a slow exhale. No label adorned it, and no customs stamp covered the cap. That meant this came from a personal collection, brewed and distilled by someone who appreciated it. Obviously something she picked up when raiding another yacht.
Then why was she keeping it chilled, waiting in her mess? Another enigma to add to the multitude that seemed to surround her. Mysteries piled up and topped with a pair of sage-colored eyes that would have shamed the stars. He laughed bitterly and raised the bottle in salute to the empty room, whispering, “You’re missing the best joke ever, old friend.”
Jonas would have been hysterical. Galen, the serious one, who only had time for the cause, couldn’t stop thinking about a woman.
It was madness dwelling on it. Assuming they had accurate intel on the lighthouse, the chance of them both surviving the mission made sand grains look huge. Even if they did, she’d drop him off at the next starport. She seemed like a woman who didn’t form attachments.

Except for whomever had this lichen vodka brought on board.

He took another drink of the vodka, then capped it again. Just enough to dull the paranoia that gnawed at him. He didn’t want to get tipsy. Couldn’t afford the loss of control; the temptation to lose himself in her thoughts for a time was too strong as it was. Gods. That’s all he needed. Bad enough that she wandered around with her emotions cranked to maximum volume all the time.
Then again, that was what was so enticing about her—the complete openness. He’d never seen its like before. On Hamunaptra he had stayed among people who shared his talent. Such lack of control would be considered rude among psions, not that he was about to correct her.

Because then she might change her behavior, guard herself a little better.

His stomach twisted a little, either from the booze or the niggling sense of guilt from his voyeuristic rides through her emotions. Galen carefully returned the bottle to its lock in the chiller unit, snapping the bottle into place so it wouldn’t come free in an emergency.
He should tell her. If he respected her at all, she should know that he could hear her thoughts through no effort of his own. It was the right thing to do.
“Bree? Where is she?”
“Captain Davout is in her quarters.”
“You’ll have to help me out. Where’s that?”
“I—” The AI was really well programmed. Galen couldn’t help but be impressed. The machine even seemed to carry nervousness and hesitation in its repertoire of voice-emotions.
“Never mind. I’ll find it myself.” He stepped out into the corridor. The ship wasn’t that large. Finding her should be easy. After all, ninety percent of the ship seemed to be cargo space. There were precious few places one could even put quarters. Worst-case scenario, he could just reach out and let her mind guide him to her.
And then he would tell her. As soon as he allowed himself a few minutes in the hall to remember her by. No one could begrudge him that, right?

“Captain? I thought you should know that the passenger is approaching your quarters.”
Syna rubbed the rough towel into her scalp and looked towards the door, jaw tense. “How close is—?” The call bell at her door cut her off. “You’ve got to get better at telling me where he is, Bree.” She pulled the flannel of her robe around her and cinched the belt tight. When she opened the door, he looked surprised. She watched his eyes dip, take in the robe and what might be beneath it in a single quick glance. Men. No one had to be a mind reader to tell what they were thinking. Better to get this over with. She leaned against the bulkhead, feeling the comforting presence of the ship along her spine. “Yes? Can I help you?”
His cheeks darkened, and she realized he was blushing. He hadn’t expected her to be fresh from the shower. Which hadn’t stopped him checking her out, she remembered. “I… I… You hadn’t assigned me to quarters yet.”
She looked at him. “Bree couldn’t take care of that? She knows the door-codes for all the rooms.”
“Sorry. I’m just not used to—”
“A woman captain?”
“An AI,” he covered quickly. “We don’t use them much on Hamunaptra. And the ones we do have aren’t nearly as advanced as your model.”
“Bree’s top of the line. Brighton Environmental Engineering. She’s—” Syna let the obvious answer hang in the air, but he filled it in anyway.
“She’s liberated. Or at least gray-market goods.” There wasn’t any condemnation in the words, just acceptance of fact. A sense of understanding.
“She can also hear you. So be careful, she’s sensitive. I don’t want you to hurt her feelings.”
“Her…feelings.” Syna heard the disbelief in his voice and glared at him. He quirked an eyebrow and she glanced at the wall-mounted comm in what she hoped was a clear message. He pulled in a deep breath and let it out slowly, drew another. Syna could smell Anbjorn’s lichen-infused vodka on his breath and wondered how much it had taken him to work up the courage to come to her quarters. She gave a little smile. It was almost cute, his timidity. Nothing like Anbjorn, who always knew what he wanted. Made no bones about laying claim to what he felt he deserved.
In that, like so many things, they’d been a perfect match.
Galen blinked and she realized she’d been looking in his eyes. She immediately stared at the floorboards, and her brain started to conjure up matrices of numbers. A hollow emptiness flooded into her gut as the urge to flee tightened her legs. No. She would not let this bastard force her to be afraid on her own ship. He’d made a promise, she would trust him. And keep her pistol handy just in case. With an effort she brought her face back up to meet his and found a sad concern in those too-inviting eyes.
“Who was he?”
She tensed, felt the anger flare in her chest. “Who was whom?”
“The man on the ship before me. Someone brought the lichen alcohol on board, knew how to store it. And no offense, but you don’t look Vanyari.”
“Neither do you.” She regretted the suspicion that dripped off her words, regretted more that her fléchette pistol was hanging in its belt by her bed. After all, his explanation sounded plausible. He didn’t have to ransack her thoughts to put two and two together.
“No, I suppose I don’t. But I know the customs. My mother was an ambassador to Siggurdsheim for ten years. I know when I’m drinking the good stuff.”
A drink sounded good, actually. Something to put in her hands and calm her nerves. Syna stepped back from the door, crossed to the molded nightstand by her bed and tugged an amber bottle out of a makeshift lock. “I can’t stand the stuff myself. Tastes like a bog.” She took a drink from the bottle and let the liquor’s heat diffuse through her.
“So what’s your drink?”
She raised the bottle. “Rum.”
“Rum and piracy. I wouldn’t have expected you to be such a traditionalist.”
“Pirates and musicals go together too, but I’m not about to burst into song, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Gods, did she actually just flirt with him? Was he bantering with her? Warmth flooded her cheeks in a way that had nothing to do with the alcohol. She let anger rush back in to cover her embarrassment. “You still didn’t say what you wanted.”
He didn’t look at her, focusing instead on his hands. “I— We— Look, psions don’t have to look into your eyes to sense your thoughts.” The syllables picked up speed as he rushed through them, until they came out as one long word at the end.
It took her a second to parse through the sounds and make sense of them. Once she did, the hollowness in her stomach returned. “So you know what I’m thinking right now?”
“No. I’d have to dive in to get your actual thoughts, and I promised you I wouldn’t. But your emotions. What you’re feeling. You, uh, are very loud. Emotionally. It’s hard to miss.”
She took another pull from the bottle and wondered how he’d react if she kissed him, wondered if he’d see it coming before it happened. His embarrassment had a certain endearing quality to it, and the idea of flustering him brought a smile to her mouth.
“What?” He looked concerned, unsure of how to gauge her reaction.
A cloud passed over her. How much had he heard of her internal monologue? How much of what she felt sat there for him to ruffle through like old data files? She only had his word that he wasn’t planting thoughts in her head in the first place. How much of her thought process was real, and how much some kind of struggle against implanted emotions? She put the bottle down too hard, re-tied the belt of her robe and cinched it until it was painful.
“What?” he asked again. The confusion was plain in his tone. Maybe she’d misjudged him. Or he was a consummate actor. The distrust kept muddling her thoughts. The sooner she could get him off her ship, the better. Then her mind could be her own again.
“I need to be alone. Look. I’m exhausted. It’s been a long day. Tomorrow. We’ll talk tomorrow. Okay?” She started towards the door.
His face cycled through expressions, settling on what she took to be hurt-but-unsurprised. “Yeah. See you in the morning.”
“Bree will let you into your room. It’s the one by the cargo bay.” That last bit she added for the AI’s benefit, certain the machine was listening somewhere.
“Look, I didn’t mean to offend you. I just felt you—”
“Good night, Galen. We’re both tired. Get some sleep.” She triggered the door before he could redouble his protest.

Chapter Three
“Captain, there’s a priority message waiting for you.” The AI’s soft voice penetrated through the haze of sleep. Syna curled tighter around the pillow in her arms and wished the persistent computer would go away. The importance of the phrase took several seconds to percolate through to her brain. When it did, she sat up and rubbed her eyes.
“Bree, are we still in null?”
“Of course, Captain. I would have alerted you had we dropped into normal space.”
“I thought you said there was a message for me.”
“There is a priority-one message, yes. It was sent via nullwave communications.”
Syna blinked again. Communicating with ships in null was out of the reach of all but the most ludicrously wealthy. The entire message had to be relayed by Hegemony lighthouses, the only system capable of reaching a ship in the black nothingness outside of normal space-time. She made a quick mental list of all of her friends who had Hegemony contacts and owned their own planets—the number was zero. “Can you patch it to me here?”
“There is a video component to the message.”
She looked over at the dead monitor by her bedside and the snarl of wiring that hung out of its open back. Fixing it had been a low-priority item, a fact she suddenly regretted. Syna didn’t want to risk going out into the corridors of the ship and bumping into Galen, and the Quarry was too small to avoid him. The memories of last night came back, and she buried her face in her pillow. Gods,
he must think I’m psychotic. She had cycled through a dozen different emotions in ten minutes, behavior that couldn’t possibly have looked normal to him. Worse, she’d culminated it all by slamming the door on him. Not exactly the best way to look cool and in control.

So what? Why do I care what he thinks of me?

“Because he’s sexy, gods damn him.” She said it out loud, expecting to be angrier at the admission than she ended up. There was nothing wrong with finding him attractive, just not now. Had it been a random meeting some other place, she might even have indulged her interests—but not these circumstances. He was a fugitive, a criminal, an employer hiring her for a suicide run, a psion, and gone as soon as he had what he wanted. She couldn’t imagine a worse combination that didn’t involve him actually being Tse.
She slipped the rum bottle back into the bottle-lock so it wouldn’t shift around, and threw on a loose-fitting jumpsuit. Maybe if she dressed frumpy he’d keep his eyes to himself. Not that it was a bad look he gave me—like he actually was taken aback, instead of taking me for granted. Anbjorn’s glances had always been appreciative, but he eyed her like tribute. Whatever beauty he saw in her, she knew, had been a testament to his own prowess rather than on any merit of her own. At the same time, it had made her feel sexy, knowing that he considered her worthy of him. Gods. She wondered what Galen would think of her if he caught that particular emotional failing.
Syna shook her head but it refused to clear. Anbjorn was dead. No sense regretting actions in her past. After all, she could think of at least a dozen things she had lined up in her future to regret. Assuming you live long enough, old girl. She walked towards the door. “Bree, queue the message up at my station. I’ll take it there.”
She flopped into the captain’s chair on the bridge less than two minutes later, pleased that she hadn’t run into Galen anywhere in the corridor. She flipped the switch to seal off the bridge and heard the door shut behind her with a whine of hydraulics. Another repair to add to the list. Fortunately, small, dark and empathic had promised her enough money to see all of the repairs finished and keep the Quarry aloft for a long time in the future. Maybe even enough to go legitimate.
“Okay, Bree, replay message.”
The screen in front of her went gray, and the hiss of a live recording popped and crackled from the comm panel. Syna glanced over at the astrogation station to verify that they were still on course. Null space was instrument-only flight. With no features to judge from, there was nothing to help visual navigation. Only the lighthouses, developed by the Hegemony to serve as beacons, had any ability to create something traceable in the otherwise trackless wastes of null.
The voice from the comm pulled her out of her reverie. “Hello, babe.”
Cold sweat coated her palms as the air rushed out of her lungs. On the monitor, Anbjorn smiled back at her. His hair had been tamed—braided informal queues from each temple while the rest spilled over the back of his uniform. Uniform! The standard regalia of a Tse military officer stretched across his massive torso. His wolf-skin cloak, tribute to his Vanyari heritage, had been tossed over his shoulders like an afterthought.
The look in his ice-blue eyes was uncharacteristically apologetic. “Look, I hadn’t wanted you to find out this way—hadn’t wanted you to find out at all, really—but circumstances have moved past my wants and desires.” He held up his hands in the “what can you do?” gesture that she had found endearing, then annoying, and back around to endearing while they’d been together. She risked a glance to the bridge door to make certain it was still closed. “As you’ve no doubt figured out, I’m not dead. I feel guilty about having lied to you, but it was the only way I could return to the Tse and tell them what I’d learned about the patrols of the various pirates we encountered. I was assigned to do deep-cover work on the frontier. Working with you seemed the easiest way.”
For a moment, she forgot that instant, two-way communication was impossible from null. “And you couldn’t comm? You couldn’t let me know you were still alive?” As soon as she said the words, she knew he could not. For precisely the reason raging through her blood. She wanted to find him, and then either kiss him or kill him—she hadn’t decided on that point yet.
“Word has come down that you may have picked up an exceedingly dangerous passenger.” An old, black-and-white image of Galen appeared, along with several blurry stills from surveillance cameras. “Galen Fash is a known threat to the Hegemony. The Tse are offering a substantial reward for his capture, as he’s responsible for leading a number of terrorist cells on Hamunaptra. Forty-seven thousand credits. Replay and listen to that number again, because I know you don’t think you heard it right. I’m calling because I can sweeten the deal. Turn in Fash to us, and in addition to the money, I can pull a few strings and get you a commission in the merchant navy. You could be legitimate, like you’d always talked about. When my commission is finished, I could join you. It’d be like old times again, the way we’d always said it would be.”
She checked the time-stamp on the message. It had been sent during the night. The data signatures seemed valid as well. Everything with the message seemed to be on the up and up.
“All you need to do, if you’ve got him on your ship, is activate the distress beacon. Bree can even mock up a bit of a leak for you, make it look urgent enough that he’d not be suspicious. There are ships out now looking for your transponder signal—they’ll find you as soon as you turn on the alert. I can’t wait to see you again, babe. It’ll be just like old times, I promise. Message end.” The screen went gray, then faded to black as the signal died.
Babe, he’d said. Like nothing had happened. Like he’d popped off to the corner for a beer and just wandered back. And hearing him say it melted you, just like it always did. She slammed her fists down on the console. Gods damn him for knowing her too well. Gods damn me for falling for it. She looked at the blank screen, tears threatening to well from her eyes, and she couldn’t decide if they were born of frustration or longing.

Galen set the speed on the treadmill at just outside his capability and launched into a hard run. Good that Syna had converted part of the cargo space into a makeshift gym—the tendency to lie fallow was high during spaceflight, especially in null where the ship handled almost everything and needed only occasional checks. Part of him wondered whether it had been her idea to install the treadmill and weights or if it had come from whoever was on the ship—he got the impression that it was an old boyfriend, just from the way her emotions clouded and went muddy when he had asked about the vodka. The Vanyari were notorious for their body worship. He’d suffered a lot of teasing on Siggurdsheim for his dark features and small frame, and he had taken up endurance running with the express interest in shaming the fair-featured giants into silence. It hadn’t worked, of course. Children have a vast capacity for casual cruelty, and they simply shifted their focus. By then it was too late, and he had grown to enjoy his long, hard runs as a way to focus his thoughts.

Because you’re doing this to think, rather than forget, right?

His inner voice, critical as ever, rained negativity like hammer blows. Like the endlessly repeating rhythm of his feet. Gods of star and void, what had he been thinking last night? Other than how she’d looked in her robe, with her hair damp and smelling of nutmeg. Telling her was the right thing to do, but she’d had some kind of breakdown after he confessed he could hear her emotions, had shut him out completely despite his best effort to put her at ease. At least if Jonas had survived, he’d have someone to ask about it. Jonas understood women, knew how to talk to them. Instead, Galen had managed to make her terrified of him, afraid that at any moment he would take over her mind and work her like a lovely marionette. He’d heard of psi-talents that strong, everyone had, but no one he’d met had even an inkling of that much power. He had begun to suspect it was yet another rumor generated by the Tse.
He stumbled as the treadmill’s speed caught his foot. Focus, Galen. Focus or fall. That was the point of the exercise, after all. If he could lose himself in the repetitive motion for a time, then he wouldn’t have to think about how he’d shoved her away from him.
Better not to get attached. He’d played up his confidence for her, but he genuinely had no idea what he’d find once they got aboard the lighthouse. If the Tse had reinforced it, and that wasn’t out of the question, then their chances rapidly approached zero in ways that made Zeno’s paradox look slow. If the Tse caught them, she’d be punished as brutally as he would. Her extensive contact with an unchartered psi condemned her to long and painful interrogations, and ultimately, a tattoo to mark her contaminated status. While he’d never met a psion with the ability to implant a suggestion, indeed had never heard of anyone who could, the Tse circulated the rumor far and wide. Fear and distrust kept people from trusting psi-talents, made them eager to turn them in rather than be labeled as contaminated.
He slowed the treadmill at last and called out to the room. “Bree? You listening?”
“Of course. How may I be of assistance?”
“Where’s the captain?”
“She’s on the bridge. Is there something I can do to assist you?”
The bridge? He wondered what she’d need there with the ship still firmly in null. Avoiding him, most likely. It made the most sense, especially after last night. “Tell me about her?”
“I’m not certain I should.”
Galen could hardly believe his ears. He would have sworn the AI sounded like a hesitant gossip about to spill everything.
“It’s okay. I just want to know more about her. Is she dating anyone?” He winced. Nice. Very mature. For an encore, you can ask the AI to pass notes for you. Do you like me? Check yes or no.
“The captain has not been involved seriously since she lost her partner.”
“What happened?”
“A raid on an unaligned trader went badly. They were transporting a full company of Tse marines, rather than just their weapons. He was overpowered while buying her time to escape.”
Gods. No wonder she raged against the Tse. The image of her as an avenging angel moving through the yacht made sense at last. She held the Tse personally responsible. “How long ago was this?”
“Almost a year now. It took many months for her to feel like going up again. Only when her supplies were critical did she return to the shipping lanes and look for work.”
He stopped the treadmill and stepped off, grabbed a towel and scrubbed the sweat from his face. Fabric softener was apparently not one of the supplies she kept on hand. He understood why she’d agreed to help him—the chance to avenge herself on the Tse had to be all but irresistible. He wondered if he could tamp that desire down without her noticing. He needed her help, certainly, but he didn’t need her to be reckless. That would only lead to getting both of them killed.
And he found himself increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of her getting hurt. Especially for him.

You don’t owe him anything. He’s an accidental passenger, that’s all. As soon as we’ve finished with the lighthouse, I can drop him at the first available starport and get on with my life. Syna stormed back and forth in her quarters, pillow clutched to her chest in case she needed to scream again. Everything she wanted on a plate in front of her. A commission. Steady trade routes, and the income that came with them. Anbjorn, back from the dead.
Anbjorn, a Tse agent.
The idea itself wasn’t uncommon—a lot of humans worked with the Tse. After all, the Hegemony gave exactly the thing lots of people wanted in their lives. Peace, order, a quiet, soul-killing tedium. The two species looked similar, could even interbreed to a greater or lesser extent. The results tended to be sterile, but that was only a minor hurdle that could be cured with modern medicine. She’d heard of humans receiving commissions well up the ranks of the Tse military arm. It only made sense that they used human operatives to infiltrate the areas they were interested in.
And she’d been a part of it. Helped the very people she’d sworn herself against. The aliens who had killed her lover—except they hadn’t. Not only had he not died, he’d never been in danger. The whole bad raid had been a ruse—he’d known, had allowed her to get captured in spite of it all. He’d lied to her from day one. She buried her face in the pillow and screamed.
It can’t all have been lies. Not everything. He had to have loved her—she’d seen it in his eyes. Felt it in the way he’d touched her.

Unless that was all part of the act. Suckering you in as the perfect cover.

Numbers cascaded through her mind; how long she could last on the bounty Anbjorn had offered, how much the repairs to the Quarry were likely to cost, how long she would feel guilty for turning over someone who had trusted her.
Not long enough. And if word got out that she’d betrayed a passenger for a better deal—even if the passenger was a wanted psion—her days on the fringe were done. No one would trust her with a cargo.

So what? So live in the Hegemony. The jobs are steady and you don’t have to worry about where your next meal’s coming from, or your next tank of fuel.

The urge to beat something into submission made her limbs vibrate with wasted energy. It would be so simple to arrange—a quick command to Bree, and the ship lists. The beacon goes off, and Anbjorn’s friends sweep in and clean everything up.
Syna slapped the door-open button with her palm and stomped down the hall towards the first cargo bay, thankful she’d never bothered to sell off the exercise equipment. Head down, she didn’t notice Galen until she had plowed into him at full speed. He bounced off her, into the edge of the door, with a squeal of alarm and surprise. “What the hells are you doing standing in the doorway?”
He flinched, surprised by her vehemence. Good. Let him be afraid. He lived and died by her good graces. “I was just leaving. Are you okay? You seem really upset.”
“Oh? Did you read that in my emotions too?”
“I don’t really have to. My mom was an ambassador, remember? Body language is part of the basic education curriculum.”
“What were you doing in here? How did you find out about the gym?”
“Bree told me.”

Of course she did. Syna vowed to have a talk with the AI about her tendency to be too helpful.
“I was having a run,” Galen said. “It helps me relax.”
Syna blinked. “That’s sick.”
“I blame endorphins, or something. I just feel a lot more focused after a good run. Helps me unwind.”
“Yeah, no thanks.” A crazy idea wormed its way into the back of her mind, and she blurted it out before she could reconsider. “You know how to fight?”
He looked offended. “I didn’t get shot up sitting on my ass in the lounge.”
She glanced down at the bandage. “How is the leg, by the way?”
“It’s almost good as new. Your autosurgeon did good work.” Fléchettes were sharp, but the wound edges tended to be clean, cut instead of torn. Healing accelerants worked well with them, but she hadn’t expected him to recover this quickly.
Of course, it wouldn’t have mattered if he had been crippled. She needed the release, the primal satisfaction of hands punching into meat. Syna smiled at him. “Great. I need a sparring partner. I haven’t had a good workout in months.”
A wry grin twinkled in his eyes. “I’d be happy to give you a working over.”
Heat flushed her cheeks and she had to remember to close her mouth. She thought of a half-dozen responses to his flirtation, then decided it was best to ignore it altogether. “I’m not going to pull my punches just because you’re shot up.”
“I didn’t expect you to. I hope you don’t expect me to stand still for you. You said you wanted a partner, not a punching bag. I won’t make it easy for you.” He gave an experimental bob and weave, showing off.
“If that’s the best you’ve got, I’d get a better workout from the bag.” She pushed past him and grabbed the sparring gloves out of the locker. “Still, I suppose you could surprise me. Let’s go.” The locker smelled like leather and sweat. It shocked her to realize how much she associated the smell with Anbjorn.
She thought back to the image on the video. The Anbjorn who had contacted her appeared clean-cut, his long hair and beard neatly combed and braided. Even with the cloak around his shoulders, he looked put-together. Tame. As though nothing of the barbarian she had believed him to be remained. Syna glanced over at the psion and wondered if he sensed her anger, wondered if he could tell it wasn’t directed towards him specifically, but instead towards his whole gender.
Galen grabbed a pair of gloves for himself and slipped them on. He carried himself like he’d had some training, she had to admit. His balance was low, his steps sure. He made a few lunges with his hands to test the weight of the gloves, but she watched his feet instead. A person’s stance told a lot about how they fought—he drew his weight into one leg or the other, leaving the empty leg free to respond while he remained balanced. A kicker’s stance. She’d have to watch for the unexpected attack from him.
“Bree? Three-minute rounds if you please. Are you ready, Galen?”
As soon as his mouth opened to reply, she leapt across the intervening space and hit him.

Gods she’s fast. It was all the more thought he had time for before she was on him. The first shot caught him squarely on the chin and rocked his head back like a hinge. She smiled, predatory, like a shark that smelled easy prey. “That one I owed you.” The anger rolled off her in slow waves, equal parts aggression and dominance.
He grinned. “We’re even, then. My turn.” He threw an assortment of obvious shots, probing her defenses. She had reach on him, but only barely. Her biggest advantage that he could see was speed. Well, speed and a disarming beauty. He refused to think about the latter further. She countered his punches without comment, but he could sense the frustration in her. She wanted more of a challenge from him. He was happy to oblige.
She turned his next punch back on him, spun the block into a grab before he could pull his arm back. She drove two quick punches into his unprotected ribs and shoved him away. He countered by letting the shove spin him around so that he was behind her and launched a flurry of jabs that slipped from inside her guard to land on her shoulders and mid-back. She spun into another series of attacks and this time he gave ground, hoping she’d follow him.
She bought into it completely. Her left hand dropped and Galen snapped his right leg up to attack the opening. She caught him by the ankle and his momentum twisted him out of position, left him glaring up at her while she levered him off balance. “You telegraphed the leg too much. Nice try though.”
He returned her smile. “Glad you approve.” He flipped backwards, kicking out of her hand and driving his left foot squarely into her sternum. He came down, lightly, ready for her counterattack.
She didn’t disappoint, lunging forward with a speed that made him feel like he was in slow motion. He blocked what he could, marveling at how fast she could change stance and attack from an unexpected angle. When he pressed back, she fell away like water—his hits either not landing or landing without any force behind them. Pride was quickly supplanting the anger and frustration in the complex tangle of her emotions. She was enjoying herself. He tensed to lunge forward when Bree called out, “Time.”
They both relaxed, and she tossed him his towel from the side of the ring. “You’re pretty good.”
“I learned a lot watching the guards brawl at the embassy. When I was old enough, Mom let me attend martial arts with them. Said it would be good for my discipline.”
“Was it?”
“No clue, really. I always thought my discipline was good beforehand.” The AI called out a warning and Galen wiped his face one more time before tossing the towel out of the ring. “What do you think?”
She gave her feral grin again, and his pulse quickened. Gods, she has no idea how sexy she is. “That you need to study more.” Bree called the end of the break, and Syna attacked again.
The second round went better, he decided. Her basic attacks became recognizable—she had a set of three openings that she switched between and developed them based on his response. He timed his kicks to throw off her rhythm rather than strike her directly, and used the resultant opening to press the attack. By the time the AI ended the round they were both breathing hard, and she was grinning with obvious relish at the exertion.
“So, did we agree on the stakes for this?” He mopped at the sweat along his hairline and watched her.
“Stakes? I thought we were working out. Isn’t that enough?”
He gave his best “are you kidding me?” glance. “If it’s a workout, you’re willing to concede that I won. Right?”
“Not on your life, Psi-boy.”
“See? That means there’s competition. There should be stakes.”
A thin waver of suspicion trembled at the edge of her mind. He probably wouldn’t have noticed it had he not become so attuned to her moods over the last twenty-four hours. “Like what?”
“I was thinking dinner, but our meals are prepackaged. Easy to cook and easy to clean up.”
“It does take some of the sting out of it, certainly. Fifty credits says I knock you out.”
He laughed. She was good, but he was reasonably sure he could take her now. He’d learned her patterns; towards the end of the round she’d been slowing up, tired. “A hundred.”
“You’re on.”
Bree called out a warning before the next round. Instead of tossing her towel to the ground, she launched it straight at him. He caught it by reflex, the flapping cloth hiding her from his view for a moment. She was inside his defenses before he had time to react, but instead of throwing a punch she grabbed his head and kissed him.
Eyes open, he stood for a second, useless towel still gripped in one hand. Time slowed to resolve everything in minute detail—the smell of her shampoo mixed with the musky smell of her sweat, the feel of her lips parting, the playful brush of her teeth against his lower lip, the thundering rush of his pulse in his ears, drowning out almost everything.
He heard Bree say something over the comm, and Syna pulled away from him. Her cheeks were flushed, eyes narrowed in quiet hunger. The flood of emotions pouring off her was a tide he wanted to submerge himself in.
Then it registered. Bree. Had said something. He blinked, and Syna was wearing her predatory grin again. Her right fist drove into his jaw like a hammer, and he dropped to the floor like he’d been tasered. Immediately, Syna knelt beside him, a broad grin on her face. “You can add the hundred to your bill.”
“You cheated.”
“Hardly. I used all the talents at my disposal.”
He grabbed her arms and pulled her down on top of him. To his surprise she didn’t resist. Instead she collapsed with a startled giggle, her face scant inches from his. He found himself uncomfortably aware of how warm she was, the way her weight pressed upon him, and the way the neck of her jumpsuit gaped scandalously. He resisted the urge to look down her shirt. “They’re rather impressive talents.”
She smiled, her green eyes hidden behind half-closed lashes. “So I’ve been told.” She leaned down to close the gap between their mouths, and he rose to meet her.
The AI’s voice came over the comm unit. “Exiting from null space in three…two…one…” The ship lurched, defensive shield crackling loud enough to be heard in the cargo hold, and Bree’s voice came back in a panicked shout. “We’re under attack! Two Hegemony patrol boats, coming in hot.”

Chapter Four
“Aft shields to full,” Syna shouted as she ran towards the bridge with Galen hot on her heels. “What’s going on, Bree? How many have we got?” Doors opened in front of her as the AI cleared their path to the control center. Another volley rocked the ship as she dropped into the captain’s chair. The controls were already active, and she whispered a silent thanks to Bree for being on top of things. Galen slid into the tactical chair without prompting and studied the screens.
“Two patrol boats, Huang-class. No fighters, Captain.” Bree’s voice carried a note of concern.
“There’s bound to be others,” Galen said. “Patrol boats can’t wander too far from support, and Huangs are short-range ships.” She looked over at him, and he tapped his temple with two fingers. “Know your enemy.”
Gods but he could be cute when he was smug. His smirk had an impish quality that burrowed into her mind and awakened a heat in her belly. Enough, old girl. You can play house later, after you survive this. “Modulate shields for optimum against beam weapons. Fire decoy beacons to ten-ten and three-six.” Hopefully that should distract any tracking they’d use. “Galen, have you fired a mass-driver before?”
“Ambassador’s son, remember? We had escorts for that sort of thing.”
She sighed. “Aim here. Fire here. There’s no guidance so you’ve got to lead your target. In theory, the computer should be adjusting your crosshair based on range to target.” She ignored Bree’s hurt sniffle from the comm panel.
“A little primitive, don’t you think?”
“Go with what works. Man’s been throwing rocks at each other from the moment we grew thumbs. Besides, there’s no tracking to jam or confuse. Most countermeasures don’t work.”
He nodded and wrapped his hand around the targeting stick. “I can see the appeal. Didn’t you have missiles?”
“The key word there was had. They’re not cheap and I used my last two scrambles off Hamunaptra.” Another blast splashed across the aft shields and sent tendrils of energy arcing across the viewscreen. “How’re you holding up, Bree?”
“I am at optimum, Captain. I’d greatly enjoy staying that way.”
“I’ll see what I can do, baby.” She tapped out a series of commands on her console and the Quarry spiraled into a dive.
Galen swore. “Warn me next time, I was lining up a shot.”
“Don’t line up. Shoot. I’m not going to sit still and let them target me.” As proof to the point she rolled the ship again and twisted it across the path of the lead patrol boat. He pulled the trigger and a stream of high-velocity ingots poured towards the target. Syna saw the forward shield flicker as the slugs drilled through them—the Tse had been expecting energy weapons, rather than mass, and hadn’t adjusted their shields for the older weapon. She called for a magnification of the viewscreen and spotted a gas outvent where the heavy bullets had ripped through the hull. “Nice shooting.”
“I expected it to be more dramatic.”
“You haven’t taken them out yet, just hurt them. Aim farther back. Shoot for the engines.”
He laughed. “I’m lucky I hit it at all.”
She tapped in a new set of evasive commands. “Pray your luck holds, then. Where’s that other ship, Bree?”
“Two and five, Captain.” High and in the aft quarter. “They’re trying to catch us between them.”
“Don’t let that happen.” The Quarry pulled up in a slow parabola, and the Tse boats arced to follow. A shot from the higher boat lanced into the Quarry’s side and sent the ship rocking. The smell of melted plastic and ozone filled the bridge. “Bree? What’s our status?”
“Starboard shields are at twenty percent, Captain. I can’t take another hit like that one.”
“Kill the inertial dampers,” Galen said. Syna looked over at him, about to say something, but he cut her off. “Just do it, trust me.”
“You heard the man, Bree. Reroute power from dampers to starboard shield.”
“Affirmative.”
The next maneuver sent Syna’s heart rolling as, without inertial dampening, they felt every G of the high-speed turn. They turned sharper than she’d expected, however, and ended up outside the paired ships.
“Gotcha!” grunted Galen, and he jerked the trigger again. This time there was no need for magnification. A silent yellow-white sphere engulfed the patrol boat’s aft quarter as the drive was punctured and went critical. The Tse ship’s lights went dead and it continued past them. He whooped in exhilaration.
“Celebrate later. There’s still another one out there.” Thrusters roared and she pushed the ship down, eager to get underneath her foe.
“Luong-class cruiser inbound from system center.” Bree’s voice was flat.
“Fighters?”
Galen shouted, “Two wings, standard configuration,” at the same time Bree said, “None yet.”
She scanned the system for options—the Quarry was designed to go up against other trading vessels, preferably without firing a shot. Luck was all that had held them this long, but they’d be no match for a squad of high-mobility fighters. She spotted her chance and tapped the coordinates into her console.
“Captain? That path appears to move through a planetary-ring system.”
“My mistake, Bree. I meant to park us inside the ring.”
The main engines roared and the ship picked up speed towards her target. They’d have to cross the path of the bigger cruiser, but hopefully it’d still be too far out to respond.
“That other Huang’s circled back around,” Galen said. “She’s coming up fast.”
Syna shouted “Hull it,” without looking away from the monitors. Red indicators flashed to warn of the approaching belt of ship-killing ice and rock.
He squeezed the trigger, and she watched the line of fire streak towards the ship’s bridge. The superstructure held up a moment and then blossomed outwards as escaping gas rent huge holes in the sides of the vessel. She looked away before she could see anyone thrown clear of the ship. Vacuum was an ugly way for anyone to die, even the Tse.
“That’s both boats. Are you really taking us into a ring? Is that wise?”
“It beats the alternative. We’re no match for a Tse warship. At least not head on.”
The main engines fired again, slowing the Quarry’s acceleration. “Ten minutes to ring contact, Captain.”
“Find us a big hunk and land on it, Bree. Something big enough to hide us in its sensor shadow.”
“Aye, Captain.” The ship turned slowly and Syna realized that the dampers must have been turned back on. She looked over at Galen. “How’d you know that trick with the dampers?”
“I read it in an action novel.” He looked sheepish and incredibly kissable.
“Does the rest of it compare?”
“I expected louder explosions. And the heroine in the book’s not as pretty.”
She blushed and turned back to the console. A list of damaged systems scrolled up the screen. Starboard maneuver jets, waste recycling and the shield generators stood out as the most important. She levered up out of the chair. “Come on. We’ve got work to do or we won’t make it to your lighthouse rendezvous.”

She stopped at a ship’s closet long enough to grab a tool belt and two pairs of leather gloves. “No padding in these, but at least you won’t get burned if something’s too hot. Come on, I’ll need your help down in engineering.”
Galen slipped the gloves on as the ship settled onto one of the rocks in the planetary ring. The whine of anchor drills resonated down the corridors and set his teeth on edge. The drills would make it hard to lift off quickly, but it also kept them securely fastened to the rock. An important modification in a zero-g environment and, he knew, completely off the book on a ship this size. Like the mass drivers, for that matter. He wondered how many other modifications he’d see when they reached the engineering department.
Department turned out to be a dramatic overstatement. The entirety of engineering consisted of two long, narrow access corridors down either side of the main power plant. It was barely big enough for one person, let alone the two of them side by side. Heat from the power plant leaked through the walls and left him mopping at his forehead in a futile effort to keep pace with the sweat that soaked him.
Beside him, Syna fared little better. Her ginger hair matted against her skin, and perspiration beaded on the side of her neck. Galen had a sudden urge to kiss her, to taste the salt on her skin, hear the tiny gasp of surprise that she thought he hadn’t heard when she’d kissed him in the gym. Had there been more room in the cramped corridor, he’d be tempted to try.
Gods, what was this woman doing to him?
“Are you going to help or just stare down my shirt?”
Galen blinked, smiled. “Is there a way I can do both?”
She shoved a curl of hair out of her face, pink leaching into her cheeks. “Just hold this.” She indicated the wires in her hands with a jut of her chin. He had to shift closer to reach and found himself too conscious of the way she pressed back against him as she worked. He willed his body not to respond and hoped it wasn’t too distracted to ignore him. She mumbled something as she flattened her back against him.
“Sorry, what?”
“Close your eyes,” she whispered. His pulse lurched erratically until blue-white plasma illuminated the space, and he realized she’d issued it not as a come-on, but a warning. His eyes snapped shut and focused on the red-yellow afterimage of the welding lance drifting quietly behind his eyelids. “Two more, then I think we’ve bypassed it.”
“That’ll bring the shields up to full?”
“It’ll bring them back to where they were before we started this venture, which is something. Stay out of the aft-most cargo hold—I had to reroute power from its environmental controls.”
“Is that safe?”
The welder sparked again, the light savage even through his closed eyes. The smell of ozone and charged particles drifted through the air. Combined with her shampoo, it made her smell like a spice field after an electrical storm.
“Yeah, just don’t go in there. Not much choice in the matter, the starboard field’s influx coupler got slagged. I don’t just carry those around with me.” The welder flared again. “That should finish that.”
Galen opened his eyes cautiously. “You can’t ask Bree?”
Syna shook her head. “No. There’s no pickups in here, and no speaker for her to respond through. I have to do it from the hall.”
He grinned. “Ooooh, unchaperoned. I like it.”
She laughed, her blush renewed. Warmth flooded out from her, her emotions a sea he wanted to swim in. She has no idea how sexy she is, he realized. On impulse, he leaned forward and kissed her.
She froze for a heartbeat and a flicker of panic went through him, then her hand tangled in his hair and tugged him closer. Her body crushed against him and any control he’d aspired to evaporated. The heat of her body soaked through his skin, suffused him as he lost himself in her.
She broke the kiss long enough to take a breath, then tugged his hair back to bite along his jawline. The combination of teeth and tongue overloaded Galen’s senses. His knees lost any sense of strength they had, and he reached out for support with one hand.
There was a soft pop and a whiff of electrical smoke. She pulled up from the kiss and touched her nose-tip to his, a quiet smile playing across her mouth. “Please tell me you didn’t just rip out my lovely bypass.”
He looked to his hand, tangled in the wiring, as if it were an alien on the end of his arm. “I…am going to go ahead and say yes.”
She slid her hand between them. His nerve endings went crazy as he felt the back of her hand slide past his hips, and she grinned at him, heavy-lidded eyes sparkling with mischief. Her hand retraced its route with agonizing slowness and when it came up, presented him with the hand welder. “Then you get to fix it.”
He let out a ragged breath. “You’re going to kill me.”
“Later. If you’re very good.” She backed farther down the corridor to give him access to the panel he’d wrecked.
“You’re not going to stand over my shoulder, make sure I do it right?”
Syna laughed. “Oh no. I’m not getting close to you again until I’m certain you’re out of reach of everything fragile.”
He clamped back on the “Even you?” that leapt into his mouth, and strangled the words before they could find their way out. She was many things, but fragile wasn’t one of them. He settled for a quiet, “Aye, Captain,” and bent to the task.
When he looked up, she was still smiling at him. “Are you finished?”
“I think so. I tightened up a few of the nearby welds to be safe. Don’t want them to come loose during a rough—”
“That’s sufficient. Go to my quarters. I’ll be along after I’ve checked your work.”
A shiver wound its way along his spine and found a home six inches below his navel. Galen let out a slow breath to calm it and smiled. “Aye, Captain.”

What the hells are you thinking, old girl? If the voice was insistent in her head, the response shouted just as loud. I’m thinking he’s an incredible kisser, and it’s time to see what else he’s good at. That firm length he’d pressed against her hand when she’d passed off the welding torch didn’t hurt her opinion either. Syna leaned against the panel and gave the wiring a cursory glance. As she’d expected it was perfect.
What about Anbjorn? He was alive, after all. And he let me mourn him, let me think he was dead until he needed something. It had never been about anything but him. The revelation felt like a hand unclasping from her heart. That wasn’t love, not by a damn sight. Done with him. Done with his arrogance, his pettiness and his jealous rages. She couldn’t believe she’d mourned so long for him, after the way he’d treated her.
Was Galen any better? Perhaps, perhaps not. He’d not lied that she was aware of, had even told the truth after she’d threatened to kill him for doing something he couldn’t help. She smiled at the memory of his sheepish grin. Emotionally loud, he’d called her. He hadn’t seen anything yet.
She found him standing in the center of her quarters, a boyish smile flickering behind his eyes that lay at odds with the wickedness on his lips. She disconnected the comm unit on the wall and hoped Bree wouldn’t discover an emergency for the next hour. Or eight. When she turned back to him, a nervous grin tugged the corner of his mouth. “I shouldn’t have—”
Syna crossed the space between them and smothered his sentence with a kiss, as much to quiet his complaints as to keep from losing her nerve. Her hands slid up his back, felt the wiry strength in him, tangled in the hopeless mop of his hair. He replied in kind, his hands on the small of her back. She ground heat against heat, her desire a low growl in her throat despite the clothes that separated their bodies.
His hands cupped her breasts and she arched back for him, until he reached for the zipper to her coveralls. She batted his hands down and grinned at him. “My ship. My rules. I’m in charge.”
His smile came back, the fire dancing in his chestnut eyes. “Aye, Captain.” A shadow crossed his face and took the grin with it. “I need to tell you, before we go any further—”
“You can read my emotions, I know. You told me.”
“No. I… Look, it takes a lot of control to not be in someone’s head. Control I don’t really have when…” He blushed.
Gods of sun and star. He was embarrassed.
She gave her best hungry smile. “I’ll take that chance. Shirt. Off. Now.”
He pulled the dingy gray garment over his head slowly. As she’d expected, the olive flesh beneath was well toned—the kind of muscular strength that didn’t require thick definition and bulging pectorals. Not that he didn’t have a different bulge to be interested in. Syna kissed him again, her fingers stroking the thin patch of hair on his chest as she steered him towards the bed. It bumped against his legs and he sat down heavily, smiled up at her. “When’s it my turn?”
She pushed him onto the bed and straddled him. “When I say it is.” She bit her lip as she ground down onto his hips, felt his arousal pressing up against her. He groaned and pressed back. The sound set her pulse racing as much as his body’s response. She batted his hands away from her chest again.
With deliberate restraint, she dragged the zipper down until her hand rested on his taut stomach. She shrugged one shoulder, then the other, out of her coveralls, careful to always keep one flap of fabric drawn tight against her chest. When she dropped the cloth, the hunger in his eyes made the tease worthwhile. Syna curled her fingers under the edge of her bra and willed herself not to rush, even as the continued roll of his hips against hers encouraged exactly the opposite.
She lifted the Lycra slowly, watching his face the entire time. She’d never thought much of her chest—certainly Anbjorn always considered them a speed bump to areas he was more interested in. By the look on Galen’s face as she pulled the bra over her head, he’d never seen a finer pair in the universe. She shivered, feeling the fire in her blood roar from the naked hunger in his gaze.
“Now it’s your turn.”
His hand cupped her breast like it was a relic, thumb teasing the pebbled skin around her nipple until he replaced it with his mouth. She pressed him closer, fingers gripping his hair as he stoked her molten core to a boil. She whimpered, fumbled with his pants while his hands tugged her coveralls away. “So beautiful,” she heard, not sure if he’d whispered it or spoken directly in her mind. No longer caring about anything but satisfying the need that blazed in her, she kicked her legs free of the cloth and crawled back atop him. His every kiss burned on her skin, his expert touch answering her needs before she could voice them. When she couldn’t bear it any longer, she guided him into her, and the fire in her blood raged into an inferno.
She crushed her lips to his, heard the whispered pleas in her head and didn’t know if they were his or hers. Didn’t care. The ship, the planet, the whole damn Tse Hegemony could rot in the hells, just let this moment last forever. If having his voice in her head meant he could make her feel this good, it was worth it.

~ * ~

Galen curled his arm around her shoulders while she slept, her ginger hair pale against his skin. Protective, even though he knew she didn’t need it. She hadn’t killed him for being in her thoughts—quite the opposite. They’d meshed together in a unity that he’d never achieved with a non-psi before. He’d lost himself in the haze of her emotions. No, he corrected, I found myself. He was ready to abandon the mission, forget Hamunaptra. Just give up everything and run away with her to somewhere that the Tse would never find them. Only the knowledge that there was no such space prevented him suggesting it. Sooner or later, the Tse would reach everywhere, as inexorable and inescapable as rot in a fallen log.
Unless they succeeded on Hamunaptra. If the psi resistance could hold the tide there, then perhaps it would stop the Tse’s expansion into the fringe. Or at least slow it long enough for two people to live out a happy life together. He stroked her hair, teased the sweat-damp curls from her face. For that to happen, they needed to get to the lighthouse and stop the fleet’s approach. That meant they needed to get past the cruiser that lay in wait for them further in.
An idea flickered into his head, crazy enough that it might work. He needed his arm back before he could execute it, however, much as he hated to disturb her. He kissed the top of her head. “I need you to wake up, Captain.” He couldn’t suppress the shiver of desire as he said the word.
Her eyes snapped open immediately, a blissful half-smile at the corner of her mouth. “It better be important to wake me up from that dream.”
“We need to fill a cargo hold with rocks, and then you need to let me modify your transponder.”
She sat up, all traces of sleep vanished from her face. He felt the momentary wave of panic bleed into him, then the embarrassment as she lifted the sheet to cover her chest.
He smiled. “It’s a bit late for that, hon. I’ve seen them, and they’re spectacular.” He cupped her cheek in his hand, let his thumb brush her lips. “All of you is spectacular.”
“Don’t change the subject.” She nipped at his thumb with a grin. “What are you thinking?”
“At the moment? How much I’d like to exhaust you all over again.” She glared at him and brandished a fist. He chuckled and added, “And how to get us past the cruiser that’s lurking out there.”
She rolled over him and shoved her feet into the coveralls. “Then what are we waiting for?”
For the first time, he realized her back had been tattooed by a network of scars. He reached out to brush them with his fingers. “What happened?”
“The Tse caught me when—during a raid. I spent a week in prison, waiting to be hanged for piracy. They gave me the lash to make me confess.” Her voice was flat and emotionless, a contrast to the cold loathing that leached out of her. A kernel of rage blossomed, unbidden, in his chest. All that the Tse had done, to friends, to acquaintances, paled in comparison. He wanted to crush the whole Hegemony for hurting the woman he cared about.
The realization took him by surprise, left him suffused with warmth that he wanted to share. He leaned forward to brush his lips across the scars, but she pulled out of his reach.
“Please. I don’t like to think about it. You understand.” Something else played along the edge of her emotions—loss? Resentment? Galen couldn’t piece together how it fit in with her hatred of the Tse.
“I’m sorry.” The words felt weak, even to him. He looked around for where his clothes had landed and pulled them closer.
“Not your fault. I managed to break out. I went to the fringe and stayed out of Tse space. I never planned to see them again.”
He realized suddenly what she was risking for him, what the Tse might do if they caught her a second time. His original plan evaporated. “You don’t have to come. You’ve got assault pods; you could launch me in one and jump back out of system. I wouldn’t think any less of you for—” She crushed the rest of the words from his mind with a kiss.
“Sometimes you talk too much. I’ve got you, and I’m not about to fire you off into space where I can’t get you back.” He caught a sudden flare of panic from her, followed by a slow chill of embarrassment.
He chuckled. “Good. I wasn’t crazy about the idea either.”
“So what’s your other plan? Please don’t tell me fire-and-forget was your only option.”
“It’s an old plan, but an effective one. I figured we’d disguise ourselves as a supply freighter.”
“Carrying rocks?” Her curiosity flashed like a bright spark between them.
“Carrying a dense compound in one hold. Cursory scan’s not going to look for more than proof that we’re loaded.”
“And the fact that we’re the very ship they were looking for?”
Galen thrust his legs into his pants and tugged them up. “That’s why I need to modify your transponder.”
“I don’t suppose I need to tell you that modifying your transponder is illegal.”
“Sorry, I thought you were a pirate.”
She grinned. “Captain of fortune, thank you very much.”
“Is that a yes?”
“Yes. Get on it. I’ll tell Bree you get full access.”
He smiled as he pulled his shirt over his head. “I’ve already had it, and it was everything I’d hoped it would be.” The pink that bloomed across her cheeks was worth the punch she laid into his arm, and he smiled all the way to the bridge.

~ * ~

“Moment of truth, Psi-boy.” Syna watched as the Tse cruiser crawled closer on her screens, the coffee she’d slammed to wake up now cold and heavy in her stomach. “Bree? Tell me if they so much as twitch.” She tapped in coordinates for the nearest jump point, ready to fire all burners on a moment’s notice.
“Aye, Captain.” The AI’s voice had been modulated—the bright, clear voice changed to the thinner vowels and soft consonants of a Tse accent. Hopefully it shouldn’t match any records the Tse might have of Galen’s or her speech patterns.
She looked at Galen, who kept his head bent over the tactical console. “You can change that back when we’re done, right?” If we get out of this madness alive, she added mentally. If he heard the afterthought, he gave no sign.
He smiled at her, and her heart thudded against her ribs. “Of course. We’re all good.”
“Tell me that after we get past the big war cruiser bristling with weapons.”
“So you’ll feel safer with it behind us?”
She glared at him. “Not funny.”
His modification on the transponder had been inspired, she had to admit. They wouldn’t look like a Tse ship, but between the rocks in the hold and the altered signal on the transponder the Quarry looked a lot more like a long-hauler than the short-hop frigate that she’d started as. At least to a sensor array. Visuals would still show the same ship, of course, but hopefully, the Tse weren’t big on visual confirmation.
A Tse voice came over the comm lines, calm and emotionless. “Attention, Independent Trader Shenlong. This is the Constant Perseverance. You are entering restricted Hegemony space. Heave to and prepare for boarding.”
Bree responded over the cabin speakers rather than directly over the comm to preserve the illusion of being on the bridge. “Negative, Constant Perseverance, negative. We’re behind schedule as it is.”
“State your destination and purpose.”
“Headed to Proxima Thule lighthouse, dropping off Helium-3 and supplies for the 371st. I was told not to make them wait.”
Syna knotted her hands together and pressed them into her lap as the comm went silent. When she looked over to Galen, he gave her a reassuring smile and mouthed the words, “No problem.”
The seconds dragged by. Each one that passed made her more certain the Constant Perseverance would open fire without warning. At the end of two excruciating minutes, the comm crackled. Syna nearly choked on her lurching heart.
“Thank you for your patience, Trader Shenlong. Proceed along your current course.”
Syna waited until the comm popped into silence and let out a long sigh of relief.
“What? I told you we had nothing to worry about.” Galen cracked his knuckles as an exclamation point.
“You were holding your breath too, don’t think I didn’t notice.”
He smiled. “Maybe I was thinking about what we could do to celebrate.”
She felt a blush warm her cheeks, matched by the heat his look raised in her belly. Gods, is this what it’s supposed to be like, getting excited at the thought of him? In all the time she and Anbjorn had been together, he’d never made her feel the way Galen had in a few short hours. There’d been lust, of course, and the sex had been energetic. But it had always been couched in terms of his own prowess—how long he could go, how many times he could make her climax. Never a consideration of her own presence, save how she allowed Anbjorn to be more and better. Galen had turned all that on its head, had shown more interest in her pleasure than his own, known what she wanted without her having to ask. She could already see the addictive nature of that kind of attention.

Mind on your work, old girl. Fun later. “When it’s all said and done, then we can celebrate. Until then, you can tell me everything you know about the lighthouses.”
“That won’t take long. No one I know’s ever been inside one.”
Syna’s jaw dropped open. “You planned to assault a lighthouse, not even knowing what you’d find inside?”
“To be fair, we had decided that if we couldn’t figure out a way to access the lighthouse, we could just drive the yacht into the transmitter array at full speed.”
“My gods. You really were on a suicide run.”
He held up his hands, as though he could wave the notion out of the air. “Not anymore! I’ve seen you fight. We’ll have surprise on our side. We have a good chance at this!”
“And what am I supposed to do if you get killed? How am I supposed to go forward from that?” The words left her mouth before she realized she was saying them.
Galen stared at her. She counted her heartbeats while she waited for him to laugh. Instead, he shoved himself away from the tactical console and kissed her. It wasn’t the ravenous crushing kiss from before, just warm. Reassuring. He rested his forehead against hers. “You don’t need me or anyone else to protect you, so I’m not going to swear something goofy like that. Besides, you’re a better fighter than I am. For what it’s worth, you’re the most incredible woman I’ve ever met. I’m like a moth, drawn in by the fire of you. I won’t give you up without a fight.”
She nodded as she stood into his embrace and wrapped her arms around his hips. “You’re a terrible fighter.”
“Most of my opponents don’t kiss me mid-combat.”
“Their loss. You’re fun to kiss.” She proved her own point, tugging his lower lip with her teeth.
“We’re in visual range of the lighthouse, Captain.” Bree’s alien accent made the hairs on Syna’s neck stand up. She loosened her grip on Galen and turned to face the main window.
Proxima Thule Lighthouse hung against a backdrop of stars. A central cylinder supported docks at one end and a habitation ring at the other—all in the elegant, rounded shapes common to Tse architecture. Above the ring, the cylinder supported a broad dome that she assumed to be the null beacon array. It looks so innocuous. So normal. Not at all like the vehicle through which Tse expansion was so extensive, so unstoppable. The lighthouses made null travel reliable, made communications between systems possible in a reasonable amount of time.
The station rotated to bring a small corvette into view, hanging from one of the docking arms like overripe fruit. She let out a disappointed breath. “Well, there’s at least one person on board that thing.”
“Maybe it’s only one,” Galen said, and she narrowed her eyes at him. “Yeah, I didn’t think it would be either.”
“They still think we’re supposed to be here, or they’d have opened fire.”
“Then there’s still a chance.”
“Not if one of us doesn’t commandeer the lighthouse’s defense batteries. We fooled the Constant Perseverance once—I doubt they’ll be as forgiving when their lighthouse blows up.”
“Sounds like we’re splitting up then. You shoot down the cruiser, I take out the beacon.”
“Think you can handle it?”
“Of course. All the soldiers will be coming after you.” He put his arm around her waist and squeezed her to his side. “I’ll be done in half the time it takes you.”
She tugged him around for another kiss. “That sounds like a wager.”
“I already owe you a hundred credits.”
“You could go double or nothing.” Syna hooked her thumbs into his belt loops and smiled at him.
“Not a chance, I’ve seen you cheat. How about loser on the bottom?” His hips pushed against hers for emphasis.
“You’re on.” Fire flushed through her as she tried to find a downside to losing that bet. “Bree? Take us in to dock.” She laid her head on his shoulder and watched the lighthouse grow to fill the bridge window.

Chapter Five
The clang of the docking clamps locking on to the Quarry echoed throughout the ship. Syna tried not to think about how similar it sounded to the gallows bell that rang every morning when she’d been imprisoned. No sense going into this with a bad attitude. It’s going to be tough enough as it is.
She checked the fléchette pistol at her hip for the fourth time as they waited for the airlocks to synchronize. Behind her, she caught a whiff of machine oil as Galen broke open and inspected his autofléchette. She’d kept the rifle for emergencies and had never expected to see it used in something as crazy as what they had planned.
He patted his bulging pockets, loaded down with the extra clips he’d grabbed, and slung the rifle over his shoulder. “You’re really just taking a pistol. Against an entire army.”
“There can’t be more than a company, the habitation ring’s too small.” My gods, he’s rubbing off on me.
Galen laughed. “Good point. Still, I thought you might want something a little more…”
“Lethal? I’ve got my baby.” She caressed the hand guard of her monoblade. “I prefer things to be up close and personal.”
“It’s certainly when you’re at your best.” He grinned and she kissed him roughly, resisting the urge to nip and draw blood just so she could carry a piece of him with her into battle. A reminder of what she fought to protect. It wasn’t an uncommon habit among the more crazed of the Vanyari soldiers. She hadn’t thought it made sense until now, but suddenly she understood.
Bree coughed from the comm panel. “Airlock opening in ten seconds.”
Syna broke the kiss and tousled his hair. “Ready?”
“Too late now if I’m not.”
The screamsword wailed as she freed it from its scabbard and thumbed it to life. “That’s certainly true.”
Four.
Three.

“I’m falling for you. I wanted you to know, just in case.” The voice filled her mind, sent warmth blossoming into her like gentle sunshine. She heard a gasp of shock and realized it was her own.
When she glanced at him, he looked unapologetic. The words terrified her, forced her to admit that she had something to lose. You have something, even if you don’t admit it, came her subconscious’s reply. She released her monoblade and the airlock was quiet. She looked at him, burning the warmth of his eyes and the twist of his smile into her memory. “I’m not…” good at this. “I’m pretty fond of you too.” Syna swallowed hard and rushed past the sudden burn in her throat. “So don’t think for a second you’re not coming back alive. Got it?”
“Aye, Captain.”
Zero.
Syna charged as soon as the airlock iris had opened enough to admit her. The squad of four soldiers on the other side, all dressed in the saffron uniform of the Tse, still had their weapons holstered. It didn’t stay her hand. The monoblade’s thirsty howl rose and fell in shrieking destruction, muted as it passed through flesh only to scream for more as it came free again.
The last of the soldiers turned to run but managed only a step before she caught him and struck him down. She looked back at Galen. “The elevator should be towards the center. Get to the beacon. Do what you have to do.”
He nodded, reached out and wiped a smear of gore from her face. “I’d wish you good luck but you obviously don’t need it.”
She grinned. “It never hurts. See you soon.”
“Good luck.” He looked at her a moment longer, then turned and ran.
Syna watched him disappear around the gentle curve of the corridor and then ran in the opposite direction. No soldiers stopped her; indeed the entire docking ring seemed deserted. A cold fear lodged itself in her throat. What if they were waiting for Galen? What if they’d all been pulled to defend the beacon? She’d sent him to his death.
No. He was smart, and a good fighter. She’d seen that in action, even when it was a friendly match. He could hold his own, at least long enough for her to take care of the threat posed by the Constant Perseverance. If the war cruiser could bring its troops into play, neither of them was getting out alive.
Still, better to hurry and get upstairs as fast as possible.
She spotted a set of stairs and skidded around the corner to descend them. The battery hung below the docking arms, so if she kept going lower, she had to find it eventually.
The staccato cough of an autofléchette sent her diving back around the corner. The stink of propellant gas and shattered ceramic filled her nostrils as she took cover. Voices jabbered in Tse from the bottom of the stairs—she counted three, but that didn’t mean they didn’t have friends who were less talkative.
She risked a glance into the hall, but they hadn’t rushed up the stairs to face her. They must still think this was a full assault, that more people than her waited in a defensive position. She couldn’t let them find out otherwise.
Syna charged the stairwell and vaulted over the safety rail, monoblade shrieking. The Tse looked up, too late to bring their weapons to bear as she fell onto them. The weight of her fall buried the blade in the first, and she kicked the back of the sword to drive it free. The vibrating edge threw a scarlet arc into the air as it continued on into the next body. For all the strength of their military, the Tse preferred ranged combat. Their weapons and shields gave them an advantage that she stripped away with close assault.
She brought the blade around for the throat of the next soldier when a hand grabbed the sword and knocked it aside. She looked up to see a human in the uniform of a Tse officer. His hand had been replaced by an elegant prosthetic of obvious Tse construction. A shimmer in the air around the hand revealed the presence of a powered field—it explained how he had grabbed the blade without losing his fingers. He smiled and said “Checkmate” in heavily accented standard.
Syna drew her pistol and shot him in the throat. “Don’t talk. Attack. Talking wastes time.” That had always been Anbjorn’s motto—if you had the drop on someone, any time you wasted gloating was time they had to counter your strategy. Better to finish them immediately.
The officer sank to his knees in slow motion, his prosthetic fingers ineffective as they pushed at the ruin of his neck. She kicked him over onto his back. Her arm came around and the pistol coughed twice more, finishing the remaining soldier. Syna started down the hall then turned and grabbed the identification card off the officer’s lapel.
The card opened the next set of double doors, taking her onto a mesh catwalk that ran the perimeter of a cylindrical room. Below, a set of transteel windows allowed a view of the space outside Proxima Thule. Three weapons consoles stood beneath the windows, their chairs empty. Syna leaned against the closed door, her heart a trip hammer against her ribs, throat on fire from exertion.

Rest later. Move. She shoved herself away from the door and started for the nearest ladder when a voice froze her in her tracks.
“I wondered when you’d get here. Gods, babe, you look great.”

Galen unslung the autofléchette as he ran, the image of Syna carving through the Tse without a care in the world seared into his brain. Her gore-streaked blade and spattered face. This was her, as much as the passionate, unrestrained woman he had made love to was her. His angel of war, driving a vengeful blade through all who opposed her. Beautiful and terrible in equal measure.

Have to keep moving forward, have to stop the Tse if we want anything like a future. He focused as much of his mind as he could out ahead of him, looking for anyone who might stop him from reaching the elevator. A strange throb pressed on the corner of his awareness, pushed in on him when he tried to expand his awareness too far. No doubt a side effect of the beacon opening into null.
The elevator, when it opened, was mercifully empty. Astringent smells burned his sinuses as the doors closed on him and the small car began a rapid ascent to the far end of the station. Along one side of the door a small map of the station showed the location of the car as he rose. He felt the subtle shift in pressures as the car slowed to a halt and reached out again with his mind to check his surroundings.
Pain lanced into his forebrain immediately, white-hot behind his eyes. He lurched against the door, vaguely aware of other minds beyond, tasting iron in his throat as blood filled his mouth and nose. The pain blinded him, refused to recede; he could only barely make out the shapes in the elevator car. He felt the door start to rotate open and slapped the emergency stop. The muzzle of his autofléchette pushed into the room beyond, and he yanked back hard on the trigger to flood the space with near supersonic ceramic needles. When the autofléchette stopped its coughing bark, Galen fumbled for another clip from his pocket. The spent magazine dropped from the rifle, and he slammed a new one home.
In the near quiet, he heard whimpering. Galen blinked until his vision had mostly returned and peered out through the crack in the door. He choked back the bitter acid that flooded his throat when his brain registered the carnage in the hall. Most of two Tse soldiers covered the floor, recognizable only by the remnants of uniform cloth that stood stark among the crimson mess. A third, who must have been farther back, pulled himself across the floor towards the end of the corridor. The sounds that came from his throat had long since passed anything recognizable as intelligent, just a constant mewling cry of agony.
Galen released the stop on the door and raised the autofléchette to his shoulder. His first shot ended the suffering of the poor wretch trying to crawl away, as much out of mercy as anything else. He raised his rifle and fired again, just as a pair of hands came around the wall. His target howled, hands perforated by the needles, while Galen charged forward. He fired twice more as he rounded the corner and the Tse dropped. Galen looked down at the corpse. Medic’s tags flashed from the dead man’s lapels. His stomach lurching, he checked the injured man he’d killed in the hall. The same Tse emblem adorned his lapels.

A medical squad. They thought you were bringing up wounded. No. He couldn’t be certain of anything except that they had medical badges. He walked down the hall at a slower pace, unwilling to reach out with his mind again and risk rupturing another blood vessel in his sinuses.
Hallways radiated out from the central hub of the station, connecting to the residential ring beyond. There’d be no access to the beacon out there, he knew, and looked instead for any passage that led deeper into the core of the lighthouse. No one came out to stop him. Galen started to run again, encouraged by the lack of resistance. The first door that met his qualifications gave way under his shoulder and he charged inside.
Instantly, a dozen voices battered against his mind. The white sterility of the room added to his disorientation, and he dropped the rifle to press both palms to his temples. He squeezed until the pain cut through the confusion and he could focus. He raised wards to defend himself from the probing attacks, and they abated enough to let him concentrate on the room. Three banks of covered beds lined the walls; each accompanied by a small vitals readout and connected to the wall by a series of cables. At first glance, Galen thought he’d stumbled into the medical ward by mistake. The medical squad made more sense.
He went to the closest bed—a child, no more than thirteen, lay inside. Skin so thin as to be transparent covered the boy, whose eyelids flittered in the throes of REM sleep. The metallic web of a psi-amplifier had been attached to the child’s bald head and to half the cables that snaked from the wall. Additional cables emerged from the boy’s abdomen, filled with fluids Galen couldn’t recognize that pulsed in and out of his body. The patient in the next bed was a woman, Tse to judge by her golden skin and near-perfect features, clad in the same white shift and head apparatus as the boy. Sores, crusted and calloused with age, showed where the clips dug into her shaved scalp. The third bed was a young man, the fourth a man gray with age. Liver spots stretched across his hands where they lay folded on his chest.
Galen opened part of his defenses, trying to probe the minds that had assaulted him. A barrage of questions surged over him. “What’s going on? Who are you? Where am I? Why can’t I wake up?”
A dark realization turned his blood to ice and Galen sank to the floor. The reason psi-talents couldn’t stare too long into the featureless gray of null, the strange longing that threatened to yank them into fugue states when they gazed into the abyss, what happened to those talents who were drummed out of the Tse’s savage training academy, the secret of how the lighthouses penetrated into null space at all. The room made the answer to all those questions coldly apparent.
The beacon was nothing more than the terrified mental scream of psions, being used like giant, living transmitters to penetrate the fabric of reality and allow the Tse to expand. How many lighthouses across the Hegemony? How many psions sacrificed to feed each? Rage and grief dueled for supremacy in Galen’s mind. He dragged himself to the center of the room and sat down. Cautiously, he lowered the rest of his barriers and reached out to them. “How long have you been here?”
As soon as he thought the words, queries poured in like a wave. He tried to sort them, to organize them, but they rushed in too fast to manage. He struggled to stay on top, then surrendered and let their questions carry him along. He began to discern patterns in their agony, the same terrified question repeated over and over. “Why won’t I die?”
Unsure of any other way to end their pain, Galen showed them the only way he knew.

Anbjorn stepped into view, his wolf-skin cloak draped around the shoulders of a Tse officer’s uniform like a natural outgrowth of his ego. In a sense, Syna supposed, that’s all it had ever been. He smiled at her, hands open to show they were empty. “It’s been too long. How’s Bree? Did you get the portside stabilizer looked at? I worried that they shot her up too much during your escape.” His inflection left no questions as to the reality of her flight from prison. The son of a bitch. He’d known she was there, known what they were doing, and all he’d done was arrange it so she could think she’d escaped. Fury bubbled over in her chest.
“You let them torture me for six days! You let me think you were dead!”
He climbed the ladder to her and stood just out of arm’s reach. In person, she could see what video had tried to hide—there was a softness to him that hadn’t existed before. His cheeks were jowly behind the braided and combed beard, his belly beginning to show signs of fat. “I didn’t want to. You have to understand, it was my mission. I only did it because I had to.”
“What, the Tse held your family hostage?”
He rolled his eyes. “I couldn’t break cover with you. It was too risky, and the Hegemony didn’t want to lose a valuable information source. I did what I could to make up for it.”
Meaning he didn’t let them torture her too much. Syna’s eyes burned and she blinked away the tears of rage. Her hand crushed down on the safety rail, and she wished it was his throat. “How can you betray your own people?” How could you betray me? she wanted to add.
“Easy. I like to be on the winning side. I thought you would have learned that about me, at least.”
“But the Tse aren’t even human!”
He cocked his head, his confusion obvious. “They’re more than human. Stronger. Faster. More streamlined. They’re the next step in human evolution. Fewer teeth, no appendix, and more importantly, no cancers. No heart disease. They’re everything we aspire to be.”
“I’ve never wanted to be any more than I already am.”
“Then excuse me for thinking bigger,” he said. Her hand drifted to the hilt of her monoblade and he whispered, “It doesn’t have to be like this. I know the rogue talent’s with you. Surrender him to me. We can put the blame for all of this on him. They’ll pardon you. Things will be the way they were.”
“When I thought you had died, I would have given up anything to have you back. Avenging your death is what kept me from breaking in prison. I swore I would punish the Tse and their collaborators for taking you away from me.” She heard her voice rising, no longer caring what he or anyone else thought.
“I told you, I had to—”
“Now that you need something, you come crawling back to me? It can never go back to the way things were. The Anbjorn I cared about died that day. Whether or not you lived, the only part of you I respected is gone. Your honor.”
He tugged the axe free of his belt and charged, his voice bellowing a Vanyari war cry as his cloak billowed behind him. Syna ducked under the scything blade and swept his legs out from under him. Overbalanced, Anbjorn toppled forward into the safety rail but not over. Her monoblade screamed as she brought it down for the kill.
His axe sang a companion song as it matched her blade and turned it aside. He wore a bemused smirk on his face as he pushed himself away from the edge and stood to his full height. His chuckle sounded like distant thunder. “You’re really going to fight me? After all we’ve shared?”
“You already showed me how much that meant to you.” She pressed in corps-a-corps and drove her knee towards his groin.
He twisted enough to catch the shot on his thigh. “I know all your tricks, hon.” He tangled his hand in her hair and tugged her close for a kiss. “You’ve never beaten me. Why don’t you stop this before I get angry?”
Syna resisted the urge to spit the taste of him from her mouth. Outside the windows, the Constant Perseverance slipped into view. It was returning to station at speed, no doubt to collect her and Galen. She looked back to Anbjorn and nodded, hoping her smile looked sincere. “You’re right.” She shut off her monoblade and ran.
She was in a barely controlled fall down the next ladder around the catwalk before Anbjorn realized what she had planned. Her feet slammed into the deck plates and the shock drove her teeth together hard enough to light stars across her vision.
He started down the ladder closest to him, while she shut off the friend-foe identification overrides that kept the station from targeting an allied vessel. The systems locked onto the Constant Perseverance with a beep.
Anbjorn roared, his axe over his head as he came at her. Syna waited until he was close, then pulled her pistol and fired.
The ceramic shredded the saffron cloth of his uniform, revealed the reinforced mesh beneath. He lashed out with a backhand that split her cheek and sent her sprawling to the floor. “You tried to kill me! Hells, until now, this could have been foreplay. Lucky for me I already suspected you were stupid, weak and untrustworthy.”
Syna touched her cheek, feeling the sticky damp of blood seeping from the cut. Nothing broken, though she was certain he’d loosened one of her teeth. “I saw you die. I’m just helping your body catch up.” She spat on the floor and tried not to notice the pink tinge it carried.
“Same old Syna. You just don’t know when you’re beaten. I used to think it was romantic, that against-all-odds streak of yours. Looking at it now, I can’t decide if it’s delusional or just sad.”
She threw herself off the floor and charged, a weapon in each hand. He reached for her, but she cartwheeled to one side. She lashed out with the point of her boot and caught him in the stomach. Air woofed past his lips in a cough, and he brought the axe around in a clumsy arc.
She danced away from the strike. “The domesticated life doesn’t suit you. You’ve let yourself grow soft, Anbjorn. Once upon a time, I’d have broken my foot on your stomach. Now? You’re more lapdog than wolf.”
He roared again and charged.

Galen collapsed against the wall of the elevator car, his face streaked with tears and blood. Untrained, unfocused, the wild psi-talents in the beacon had no knowledge of how to shut down their own neural paths, so he taught them. One by one the diagnostic panels flickered and turned red as the imprisoned psions willed themselves to die. Galen kept his mind open in spite of the pain, listening as one by one the voices that filled the room dropped into silence. The beacon’s signal died, and he wondered how many ships had been following it, now lost somewhere in the featureless nothing of null.
Once the thought might have horrified him. Now he saw it as a fair trade. How many of his friends, secreted away by the Tse, languished in other beacons scattered across Hegemony space?
The elevator doors opened and he lurched out into the hall. Through the transteel view ports that lined the docking ring, he could see the Constant Perseverance drawing closer. Cold fear scrabbled at the edges of his heart. The ship was still there, Syna hadn’t taken the batteries. She’d run into trouble. He resisted the urge to search for her mind with his own. If she was fighting for her life, then he couldn’t afford to distract her. He broke into a run.
Signs of her passage became evident—his angel of war, bringing death to her enemies. He ran down a stairwell slicked with blood and corpses and charged towards the room at the end of the hall. Galen exploded through the double doors and had his ears shredded by the shriek of two monoedged weapons powering into each other. On the floor below him, he saw her—locked in close combat with a giant almost twice her size. His braided hair and wolf-skin cloak made no question of his Vanyari origins. The two of them moved with the speed of demons, feinting, striking and defending as they danced across the floor of the room, ignorant of his presence on the catwalk above. He realized too late that he’d left the autofléchette in the beacon room.
He spotted the main controls for the battery on the far side of the room, unguarded. Waiting. Galen moved around the catwalk as quickly as he could without drawing the combatants’ attention. If either of them spotted him, everything would fall apart. He slid down the ladder and eased into one of the console’s chairs. Everything had been set up, he realized. The FFI system was disabled. All he had to do was point and shoot.
The Constant Perseverance shuddered as high-powered particle beams hit it amidships. The next volley tore through the bridge as a secondary explosion rippled along the spine of the cruiser. Behind him, Syna shouted over the scream of their weapons. “Get back to the Quarry! Now!”
Galen leapt out of the chair and charged towards her, not even sure what he would do. He only knew that he wouldn’t leave her. Her eyes widened as she realized he was getting closer rather than fleeing, and that was all the distraction her opponent needed. The Vanyari kicked her feet out from under her, and Syna tumbled to the ground. Her screamsword went silent as it clattered out of her hand onto the deck plates. With a roar of triumph, the Vanyari raised his axe for the coup de grâce.
Time slowed to a near stop.
He looked at her face one more time, saw the moment she realized what was coming, and threw himself into the path of the blade.
The monoaxe tore into Galen’s shoulder, the sides of the axe head grinding against the bones as it cleaved. The rolling twist of Galen’s body turned the weapon with it, wrenched it out of the giant’s hand as he continued past Syna and collapsed nearby. The blade went inert as it left the Vanyari’s hands, becoming an awkward weight that dragged against Galen’s ribs. He lay there for a heartbeat before his body realized the extent of the trauma, and agony seared through him. Somewhere, he heard Syna scream his name in denial.
The reek of gore filled his nose. He opened his eyes to find blood, too much blood, pouring out around him. Pink froth bubbled along the path of the axe with every breath he took. Breathing hurts so bad. Easier just to stop. No. Not yet. Not until she’s safe. The giant still stood over Syna, his face a combination of rage and confusion. The Vanyari looked down at her and then slowly panned his eyes over to Galen as though working out a particularly difficult math problem.
As soon as their eyes met, Galen pushed.
The Vanyari’s eyes went wide, his fingers twitching at the sudden, searing pain. He stumbled back, dropping to one knee. Syna rolled free and her monoblade shrieked into life. Galen broke the contact as the same motion that brought her up arced the monoblade around to punch through the giant’s chest.
“Galen! Don’t you die on me, you stupid son of a bitch.” He felt her hands slapping at his cheeks, knew he had to stay awake, but it was so hard. He was so tired. Sleep would be easier.
A realization blossomed in the back of his mind and he looked up, forcing himself to focus on her face amid the blur of the rest of the room. “I get to be on top.”
She laughed and he closed his eyes, feeling her tears splash against his face. “Yes. You won. I don’t care. You have to live long enough to collect or it’s no fair. Come on, hold yourself together. Just a little bit longer.”
He felt her tugging at him, felt himself lifted up. He wanted to argue with her, tell her to get out in case the Constant Perseverance had called for reinforcements, but it seemed like so much work. She shouldn’t burden herself with him. He tried to muster the strength to roll out of her grip, but she clamped down on him like a vise. He needed to tell her something. Anything. He mustered another breath despite the complaints from his chest and whispered, “I love you.”
Message delivered. He let unconsciousness envelop him like the tide.

~ * ~

Galen’s eyes flickered and relief flooded through her, a warm rush of comfort that pushed all Syna’s other concerns from her mind. She pulled the sheet back and checked his wound. The damage from the axe had been extensive—even the abilities of the autosurgeon had been stretched to keep from losing the arm. The healing accelerants seemed to have stabilized the injury for now—new pink flesh grew along the edges of the cut, the tight stitches precise and even. Healthy, but he was going to need a long time to recover and an attentive nurse. She looked forward to providing him with both.
“Am I dead?” His voice was a ragged croak that descended into a shallow cough.
Syna pushed the damp curls back and kissed his forehead. “Not anymore.”
“How?”
She patted the autodrug she’d jabbed into his hip. “I’d tell you love kept you going, but it was really just adrenaline. Kept your heart pumping until I could get you hooked into the autosurgeon. I keep one of these with me in case of acceleration trauma.”
“Lucky me.” He smiled, coughed again. She placed her fingers over his lips to quiet him.
“No, lucky me.” She had him, had dragged him back from the edge of death, and there was no force in the hells that would keep him from her. “Now don’t strain your throat.”

“Can I have some water?” His voice in her head was like a warm blanket around her shoulders.
“I should tell you not to do that, either.” She tapped his forehead with her fingertip. “The autosurgeon’s not good with brains, so I don’t know what damage you’ve got in there.” She pulled a bag of water from the med-bay’s chiller unit and fed the straw between his lips.
He drank greedily, then looked at her. “How long have I been out?”
“Five days. Plenty of time for us to move to a new location. I didn’t want to wait around Proxima Thule for the Tse to come calling.”

“Good choice.” He smiled and pushed the straw out of his mouth. “What now?”
She grinned. “What now is you need to rest. You shouldn’t even be awake, but Bree told me you were coming out of it and I wanted to be here when you did. When you’re better we can discuss the what nows beyond that.” She checked the readouts on the autosurgeon and adjusted the sedative feed so he could sleep.

“Not getting rid of me that easy.” His hand folded over hers, squeezing lightly.
“You fool. I’m not getting rid of you at all. I just want you to get your strength up. You’ve got a debt to repay.”

“I won the bet.”

“Hardly. You lost consciousness. Hells, according to the autosurgeon you were technically dead for twenty-two seconds. That makes me the winner by default.”
He laughed, coughed, laughed again. “Unfair.” It took her a moment to realize he’d said it out loud.
Bree called out from the bedside monitor, “Actually, I can confirm your death if you want. I’m supposed to keep a copy ‘as proof’. Oh, and I’d have an easier time following the conversation if one of you wasn’t mind-talking.”
Syna smiled. “Maybe we just don’t want you eavesdropping this time.” The AI made a mock-hurt noise as Syna placed a clean bandage over Galen’s stitches. “And as for you, unfair or not, a rule’s a rule. You forfeit. Not to mention that you scared me half to death. What the hells were you thinking?”

“Thinking’s overrated sometimes.”

“Says the psion. Very cute. Once you’re healthy, I’m going to make you wish you had died.”

“Kill me with your body, I’ll die happy.” The thought carried images of ways she could do exactly that.
A warm flush blossomed on her cheeks. “You’ll need to rest up more for that, Mr. Ambitious.” Syna grinned and kissed his forehead again. “And work on your flexibility. Then we can think about it.”

“So I get to stay?”

Syna laughed and squeezed his hands in hers. Had he been stronger, she’d have hugged him. “Yes, you big idiot. You get to stay. As long as you want. You’ll be tired of me long before then.”
He grinned and opened one eye, squeezing back with what strength he had in his fingers. He cleared his throat and croaked, “I’ll take that bet.”
“Loser’s on the bottom.” Syna pressed his fingers to her lips and smiled.

About the Author
J.C. Hay writes, knits, and sometimes writes about knitting from a secluded location in the middle of the United States. When not cloistered behind the keyboard or tangled up in yarn, J.C. is subservient to a pair of papillon dogs—the dark masters—and an incredibly patient, supportive spouse. J.C.’s fiction can be found in Twelfth Planet’s New Ceres Nights, Fantasist Enterprise’s anthology Sails and Sorcery and Eden Studios’ zombie anthology Book of All Flesh. Part-time film snob and full-time foodie, J.C. spends too much time pushing friends into new experiences and not enough time updating the website www.jchay.com.

The last will and testament of a forgotten Earth…

The Mythmakers

© 2010 Robert Appleton

An Impulse Power Story

For Captain Steffi Savannah and her crew of deep space smugglers, life has become little more than a dogged exercise in mere survival. Their latest disastrous heist ended with another dead crew member—and no place left to hide. She’s even finding it hard to dredge up any excitement over the giant, crippled ship that appears on their radar, even though it’s the salvage opportunity of a lifetime.

They find that it’s no ordinary alien vessel. It’s a ship of dreams, populated with the last remnants of Earth’s mythical creatures. Including the blond, built, mysterious Arne, one of a race blessed with extraordinary beauty—and few inhibitions. Though he won’t tell her exactly what he is, in his arms Steffi rediscovers something she thought she’d never feel again. Wonder, love…and hope.

It isn’t long, though, before the Royal guard tracks them down, and Steffi and her crew are faced with a terrible decision. Cut and run. Or risk everything to tow the ship and her precious cargo to safety.

Warning: This book contains moderate sexual activity, strong language, and high-cholesterol breakfasts. Also features hot nudists, naive men and other equally rare fantasy creatures.

The invaders thought they had crushed humanity. They messed with the wrong species.

Metal Reign

© 2010 Nathalie Gray

An Impulse Power Story
Francine Beaumont is tired. Tired of waiting for an armada of Imber ships to finish off what’s left of humanity. Tired of fear and privation. Tired of living like a rat, feeding off what scraps the cat lets her have.
When the chance comes to hit the Imbers where it really hurts—right at their fuel supply—she takes it. One stealth cruiser. One pilot. A cargo hold filled with explosives. A suicide mission for sure, but better that than doing nothing.
As the ship’s cook, John O’Shaughnessy knows everything that goes on aboard the warship. And something is definitely up with his Frankie. If she thinks he’s going to let her carry out this crazy plan of hers alone, that stubborn woman has another think coming.
Frankie thinks she’s gotten away clean…until her instincts tell her she’s not alone on her mission. Still, it’s a shock to find her peace-loving John standing there with eyes that spell murder. Now is a hell of a time to discover they’re more than friends. But there’s no turning back…

Warning: Space invaders were seriously harmed in the making of this story.

From zero to naked at warp speed…

Taking Liberty

© 2009 Jodi Redford

Rini Campell’s one shot at keeping her field agent position with the United Galaxies’ repo department means bringing in the spaceship Liberty. Piece of cake. Except she didn’t count on the pilot still being on board. Or being buck naked.
Lucus Granger doesn’t have time to deal with a pain-in-the-ass repo agent. Not when he’s minutes away from dropping off a cargo haul for the psychotic alien dictator of Aquatica. Though he figures it’s just about the stupidest bargain he’s ever made, he allows Rini to tag along for the flight.
Big mistake.
Stranded in enemy territory, they find themselves fighting a battle on two fronts. Against a creepy dictator who’d as soon drown them as look at them. And against a blazing attraction hotter than the godforsaken planet itself. For these two wary hearts, love could bloom in the desert…if it doesn’t kill them first.

Warning: A feisty heroine and yummy hero getting sweaty in the desert. Squid aliens who bring new meaning to the word slimy. Oh, and some close encounters of the sexy kind.

Enjoy the following excerpt for Taking Liberty:
They spent what felt like hours combing the nearby terrain for remains from the Starflight Folly. Other than a few stray pieces of twisted metal, nothing useful cropped up. Certainly nothing that would get them off the godforsaken planet.
Rini used the toe of her boot to clear sand away from a strip of metal protruding from the ground. Satisfied she’d uncovered most of it, she stooped and pried the object from the desert’s tenacious grasp. She buffed the metal with the hem of Lucus’s shirt to get a better look at the symbol etched on the corroded surface. “This looks like one of the symbols from the rock.”
Lucus stopped poking through a stack of charred cactus husks and strode to her. She handed him the metal piece for inspection. “Yep. This is probably from the Starflight’s masthead. Used to be captains would fly their ships with their crew’s names and rankings displayed. Not sure why the practice isn’t kept up.”
She stared at the shadow of day-old beard gracing Lucus’s jawbone and became seriously irked when her nipples tightened at the idea of being teased by the dark bristles. “How is it you’re fluent in ancient Illonican?” she demanded in hopes of distracting her aggravating hormones.
He gave the metal strip a final look before tossing it on top the burnt cacti. “When I first started trading, I did business with this grizzled farmer on Orrik who used to be a professor of languages.” A grin overtook his rugged features. “Guess Cal needed a change of pace from harvesting melons all day because he’d toss lecture books at me every chance he got.”
“Hmm, wish I’d known Cal when I was busting my hump trying to keep my grade point average steady at the ranger academy.”
A teasing hint of challenge danced in Lucus’s eyes. “The girl who graduated top honors had trouble keeping up her grades?”
“Just in languages and anthropology.” She batted away a persistent army of gnats trying to roost in her hair. The damn things were a nuisance, particularly when she already felt sticky and grimy.
Lucus’s palm suddenly squashed against her forehead. She gave him a double blink and one corner of his mouth quirked. “One of the gnats snuck by you.”
“Um…thanks.”
“Anytime.”
The heat of his skin continued seeping into her and she began to wonder if he’d forgotten where he’d plastered his hand. But then an intense look crept into his expression and she had no doubt he knew exactly what he was doing. His face inching closer, he snuck his hand along her cheek. She licked her lips. “Before this goes any further, I think we should both remember we don’t like each other.”
“I like you fine.”
His lips brushed just to the side of hers and she released a shaky breath. “You said the same thing about your brother.”
“Yeah, but I don’t have this overwhelming urge to lick my brother’s nipples.”
“I should hope not, because that would be majorly twist—” Lucus’s mouth swallowed the remainder of her sentence. His tongue coaxed its way inside and she had trouble remembering why kissing him back was an incredibly lousy idea. Her hands crept under his shirt and roved over the damp skin above his rib cage. Talk about unfair. Here she felt like a gross, sweat-soaked dishrag, yet Lucus’s body was a slick and delicious yummy treat.
His lips trailed to the underside of her jaw and she gasped, blinking against the overhead glare of the sun. “What are we doing?”
Lucus’s chuckle vibrated against her neck. “If you have to ask, I’m severely out of practice.” His teeth scraped the sensitive hollow beneath her earlobe.
“This…” She swallowed and tried again. “This is a residual effect of our close call with death.”
“Mm, you think?” His tongue traced the shell of her ear, making her shiver.
“Yes. I mean between the near drowning in the cell and crashing, it’s a miracle we haven’t ripped each other’s clothes off.” Oh man, why the hell did I say that?
“Excellent point. Maybe we should do something about it.” His fingers swept to the buttons on her shirt and flicked the first one from its hole.
She should stop him. She should really, really stop him.
Eventually.
He made quick work releasing three more buttons. Her shirt gaped open and his hand slid inside, molding perfectly over one breast. His thumb rasped the cotton and lace covering her nipple. Gasping, she arched into him. Warm, firm lips resettled over hers with a groan. The sound rumbled through her, striking a match to her already inflamed senses.
His tongue glided over hers. She tasted desire and hot, aroused male. Dizzy from the sensory overload, she curved a hand around the nape of Lucus’s neck, the ends of his dark brown hair tickling her knuckles.
She pulled back slightly, the oxygen leaving her lungs in staccato bursts. “You and I. Bad idea.”
“The worst.” He pushed her tank top upward until it was anchored beneath her armpits. Dipping beneath her bra cup, he caressed one traitorously eager nipple.
“You need to stop doing that.” Even as she forced the wispy words from her mouth, she leaned into him, effectively offering more of her breast to fondle.
“Yeah, I should.” Lowering his head, he eased the lace away and circled her nipple with the tip of his tongue. The touch might have been feather-soft but it sparked a lightning-bolt reaction throughout every nerve receptor in her body. His teeth enclosed her nipple before he suctioned the bud inside the warm, wet cavern of his mouth.
“Oh God.” Her knees started to give and he caught her tight against him. So tight, there was no mistaking the solid nudge of his erection against her belly. I want that. Much as she debated telling her inner slut to shut up, she couldn’t deny the truth in those three embarrassing words.

Trust will either destroy them…or save them both.

The Promise of Kierna’Rhoan

© 2008 Isabo Kelly

Kira Farseaker led a sheltered, privileged life—until her discovery of a cruel secret plunged her into an underworld of danger. Now she vows to use her money and position to save an alien species, the Shifters, from government-sanctioned extermination.
A secret planet, a Farseaker legacy known as Kierna’Rhoan, could offer at least some of the evolving Shifters the sanctuary they need to survive. To get them there safely will be the most dangerous mission Kira has ever attempted—a task that isn’t made any easier by her attraction to the dark, hungry eyes of a suspected spy.
Officer David Cario’s assignment to a Shifter extermination squadron is just the break he needs to learn why his sister was executed. Earning the trust of his commander’s ex-wife, suspected terrorist Kira Farseaker, is easier said than done, especially when crossing into her world brings him face to face with truths he isn’t prepared to discover.
Swept up in a growing whirlpool of corruption and treachery, Kira and David find themselves locked in a struggle between duty and a growing passion that could destroy everything they’ve worked for. Or save both their lives.

Enjoy the following excerpt for The Promise of Kierna’Rhoan:
Kira stood staring at the door that led to David, trying to settle herself for another confrontation. The fights and accusations were wearing on her. The exhaustion that had swept her in the lift sat heavily on her shoulders. And dread mixed with a tingling of anticipation at seeing the Guard. Just the thought of his kiss made her lips burn. Knowing she’d remember the feel of his touch all too vividly in his presence, Kira wasn’t sure she’d be able to manage this meeting. But it had to be done.
Pushing her hair behind her ears, she left Command. Raf stopped her in the corridor just outside the air-sealed entrance to the fan rooms.
“Kira,” he began, then fell silent and stared at the floor for a few minutes, his brow deeply creased with unspoken thoughts. After a time, his brow softened and he grinned. “You’re something else, Farseaker. And for what it’s worth, I think liars are the best kinds of people.”
A laugh burst from Kira so suddenly it surprised her and made her laugh harder. “Glad to know it,” she said when she could talk again. “Thanks.” She tapped his arm gently. “Now, get off your ass and make sure you’re ready to pilot us off this rock.”
He smiled, winked and squeezed her shoulder before walking away. Kira shook her head, baffled by the scene but thankful for the release of tension. When she stepped through the air seal into the smoking rooms, she was grinning.
David leaned against a wall, taking a deep drag on his cigarette. He’d seen Kira and Raf’s brief exchange—the air seal was transparent—but he hadn’t been able to hear them. It didn’t matter. Seeing was enough to make his blood boil. Her grin didn’t help his state of mind any.
He took another deep pull on the cigarette, waiting for her to notice him. When she did, her step faltered. She slowed, moving toward him with a wary gaze.
“I think there are a few things you’d better explain to me,” she said.
Her hard tone made him bristle. “I was going to say the same thing.” He puffed at the cigarette again, the glowing tip almost to his fingers. He dropped it to the floor, smashed it beneath his boot heel and lit another.
“Me first,” Kira said, ignoring his glare. “What was all that about Ennoren killing Raf if he thought he was my lover?”
“A fact,” David answered with a shrug. “The commander would kill him for the simple fact that he was having an affair with you.”
Her brow creased. “I doubt that. He might kill Raf, but not because I was having an affair with him.” She stopped, her gaze unfocused and turned inward, then quietly said, “Unless he thought it would hurt me. Then he might kill him.”
“Would it?”
“What?”
She snapped her gaze back to his face, and David felt the strength of her golden eyes in his every cell. “Would it hurt you if Raf were killed?”
She dismissed the comment with a wave of her hand. “It always hurts me when someone I know gets killed.”
“But would Tygran’s death hurt you especially?”
She puffed out an impatient breath and paced away. David could see the conversation wasn’t going the way she wanted it to. He didn’t care. He needed these answers.
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, David,” she said. “And it doesn’t matter anyway. I want to know why you didn’t want Ennoren to think you were here last night. You tell me I’m keeping you a prisoner—”
“You are.”
“But you warn me before I go to talk with your commander,” she continued over his interruption, “so that I’ll make a specific effort not to mention you.” She stopped and turned to face him. “Why? I could have slipped. I could have given away that I knew where you were. He’d have a warrant to search the mansion within minutes if he thought I was keeping you here. Why would you give me a warning you must have known would put me on guard?”
“Why would I want him to know I’m here?” David countered, throwing his half-finished cigarette to the ground and stalking closer to her. “You said you’d release me within the week. Why would I want Ennoren, of all people, to find me here when I know he’d kill me on sight?”
The statement made her gasp. “What…?”
He got in her face. “I told you already. I don’t want him to think you’ve slept with me. He’d kill me for that as easily as he’d kill Raf for it.”
“First, why would he assume I’d sleep with you just because you were here?”
“After our meeting at the blockade, he has every reason to suspect that you wanted more from me than conversation.”
“Oh! You arrogant son of a bitch,” she nearly shouted in indignation.
David grabbed her chin, none too gently, and lifted her face. “Don’t dare deny your attraction to me, Kira. There were two of us involved in that kiss in the canteen.”
She jerked her head out of his grip and stalked off. “You’re as delusional as Ennoren.”
She stopped abruptly and David, following close behind her, almost knocked her over. He grabbed her shoulders to balance her, but as soon as she steadied herself, she wrenched away from his touch.
“None of this has anything to do with anything,” she spat. “Whether I’m attracted to you or not, whether Raf is my lover or not, has nothing to do with anything. I have less than three days now, and I don’t have time for this pettiness. You don’t want Ennoren to find you here? Fine! He won’t. I’ve got—”
David grabbed her shoulders again and hauled her close. “Is he?”
“What?” she demanded.
“Is Raf Tygran your lover?”
Her mouth dropped open. “I can’t believe you’re still…” She expelled a disbelieving breath, shook her head and shoved away from him.
She started to walk off again, but David kept pace with her easily. “Answer the question, Kira.”
“It’s none of your goddamned business!”
His arm dropped like a bolt against the steel-plated wall beside her, stopping her retreat. She turned, her golden-eyed gaze sparking like lava. Her breath came in deep, angry heaves that made her chest rise and fall sharply. And David felt his blood reaching critical heat. “I’m making it my goddamned business,” he answered, his voice low and rough. “Are you having an affair with Tygran?”
She lowered her gaze and pushed against the arm that blocked her retreat. “I don’t have time for affairs,” she mumbled. “With anyone.”
He gripped the back of her neck, barely maintaining his control against the storming desire riding through him. Forcing her head around, he tilted her face up, bringing her lips only a breath away from his. “Make time,” he whispered hoarsely, then covered her mouth with a hard, desperate kiss.

Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

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