She chanced a glance down. She was suspended at least twenty feet above the top level of gridways. It was a long way to the bottom.

Kel-Paten. Gods, did he fall too? Had one of the things that hit her in the darkness been him? He was so close behind her. Please. Don’t let him be down there. Sweat trickled down her cheeks. It had to be sweat. She wouldn’t cry.

“Tasha!”

“Kel-Paten?”

“Hang on!”

Like she had a choice? The conduit jerked again and she slipped another few inches. “Shit!”

“Wrap your legs around it,” he called, but she was already doing that, her Fleet training kicking in. Wrap one leg, lock the other foot on top of it.

Lock your hands. Pray.

The conduit jerked, jiggled. The rifle—miraculously still slung over her chest—cut into her breastbone. But up she went. It seemed like hours, but when she reached the gaping hole that used to be a wall, her tears hadn’t dried.

Kel-Paten grabbed her collar first, then one hand came under her armpit. He lifted her easily, her boots catching on the tangle of conduit that still remained. His arms went around her back and, holding her tightly, he dragged her back into the tunnel.

It felt so incredibly good to have something solid under her feet.

Someone solid to lean on. For a moment she thought she felt his face against her hair, his breath in her ear as if he were going to whisper something. But she must have imagined that, because his arms loosened, his hands coming to rest on her shoulders when she swayed toward him.

“You can let go now,” he said, and she realized she still held a section of the conduit between them in a death grip.

Slowly, painfully, she unfolded her fingers. “Oh, gods.” She bit down on her lip. How could she feel so numb and be in so much pain at the same time?

“Wait.” He unhooked her rifle’s strap, tossed the weapon on the pile of conduit next to her, and then lowered her to the floor. Kneeling in front of her, he took her hands in his, stroking, kneading. He hadn’t put his gloves back on, and in the uneven lighting she could see the scars striping his fingers, glimpses of the silvery powermesh implants on his palms. Yet his touch was so gentle. Her hands stopped spasming. The length of conduit—her lifeline—landed with a muted thud.

She stared at it for a moment, then looked up at him. “Thank you,” she said softly. “I’m sorry.” For causing you so much trouble. For having past associations. For loving you when all I can do is bring you pain.

His eyes were luminous in the patchy lighting. His face was a shadowed mask. “Can you walk? It’s not wise to stay here.” She nodded, snatched her rifle, and struggled to her feet. His hand on her arm guided her. “There,” she said, pointing to the hatchway with 7714

stenciled on it. She winced. Her shoulder ached like hell. So much for Eden’s best efforts with her rotator cuff. “There are some abandoned offices. I think... I need to sit down for a while.” The office with the sanifac was exactly where she remembered it. It took Kel-Paten only a few seconds to trip the lock. She stumbled in, her body shuddering every few minutes as fear spiked and receded, spiked and receded. A green strip of emergency lighting glowed in the ceiling; a smaller one was in the sanifac. Both rooms were empty.

Kel-Paten locked the door behind them as she crossed the room. She propped her rifle against the wall by the sanifac. It had an old-fashioned lever-operated sink, but it worked. She splashed water on her face, then, cupping her shaking hands, took several long drinks. And felt abysmally selfish. “Water’s clean and cold, if you want some.”

“No.”

She left the sanifac, walked over to the corner farthest away from where Kel-Paten stood in the dimness, and folded herself down onto the floor.

She hugged her knees against her chest and stared at the dark outline of her boots.

Please, someone wake me up. Get me out of this nightmare.

Another pair of boots walked across the room and stopped in front of hers. “Tell me again how this isn’t Serafino’s doing.” Logical conclusion: Serafino and Zanorian were both mercs. Both hated Kel-Paten and were hated by Kel-Paten. But Kel-Paten didn’t know what she did. She raised her face. “A Nasyry can do a lot of things, but I don’t think he can resurrect the dead.”

“Explain.”

“The short guy with Dag Zanorian? That’s Jonn Drund. Know the name?”

“Vaguely.”

“He died seven years ago on Lethant.”

“You know this for a fact?”

“I was there.”

“On Lethant?”

She nodded.

“Then you are Lady Sass.”

“I was, off and on until seven years ago. But Lady Sass is dead now too.” She gave a short, mirthless laugh. “Damned inconvenient when the dead don’t have the good graces to stay dead, isn’t it?”

“What kind of game are you and Serafino playing here?”

“Didn’t you hear what I said?” She sat up straighter. “Drund is dead.

Yet he’s here, alive. And Zanorian’s here, but he has only one scar. Last time I saw him—about five years ago—he had two. Damned proud of them and not about to have his face vanity-patched. Angel doesn’t have the commitment tattoo on her left wrist from when she and Suki pair-bonded.

It has to be at least nine years for them.”

She sucked in a breath, damning the fact that he could see her expressions far better than she could see his. “Zanorian and Angel would never call me Lady Sass, blow my cover in front of you.” They’d worked with her for too many years, whenever UCID needed to resurrect Lady Sass for a mission. “And Serafino would have to raise the dead to pull off this kind of shit. He’s simply not that good. He’s not even a full-blooded Nasyry.

“Moreover,” she continued, anger forcing her brain to work again,

“everything that you saw back in that freighter bay, everything that happened, is wrong and you know it. Gund’jalar doesn’t put contracts out on people, doesn’t abduct them. But if for some bizarre reason he did, he sure as hell wouldn’t put a wild-ass freelancer like Zanorian in charge.”

“He’d put Lady Sass in charge,” Kel-Paten intoned.

“Damned straight he would. But we didn’t do abductions. You know that. Hell, you’ve tracked his cells for years. But you only know him because he funds the Danvaral liberation movement by hitting up Triad freighters. What you don’t see is that he’s also the law—sometimes the only law—out in the Far Reaches. People listen to him because he’s intelligent and fair. He’s not a wanton murderer and he’s not a kidnapper.”

He was silent for two, three heartbeats. “I almost kidnapped you once.” Sass caught a slight change in the tone of his voice, or thought she did.

A degree or two of the intense chill around him thawing. She was probably wrong. Then she thought again about what he said: he’d almost kidnapped her. Sarna Bogue and the entry in his logs.

She looked away for a moment, then back up at him, her face hiding nothing. “I wish you would have,” she said quietly.

He turned abruptly and headed for the sanifac. She heard the water come on and in the muted green glow watched his silhouette cup his hands and drink as she had earlier.

He shut the water off but didn’t return to the room. He stayed with his hands planted against the edge of the sink, back bowed, looking down, saying nothing. She didn’t know if he was working up the courage to tell her he loved her or to kill her.

Either seemed a valid possibility right now.

THE OUTPOST

Go Blink! Tank panted, tired and thirsty. And hungry. His stomach growled. Hunting Bad Things was hard work. He wanted to nap but knew he couldn’t. FriendReilly was tired too.

There were just so many Bad Things here.

Friend? Here! He heard Reilly’s call and heaved a sigh.

Tank here! Go Blink! He appeared next to Reilly, who was facing down a large ugly smelly light. Tank wrinkled his nose in disgust. It must be a really old one. The stench was terrible.

A Blink shield encased much of its glowing body, but the Bad Thing pushed against it, straining the lines of energy.

Reilly wavered on his paws, one hind leg almost buckling. The sight of his friend stumbling shot fear through Tank. Friend hurt?

Friend tired. Help. Finish here. Go Blink for Friend.

Tank help! he said, but he wasn’t sure. He was just a fidget; he didn’t completely understand how to weave a perfect shield.

And the Bad Things weren’t dying fast enough.

This one strained against Reilly’s shield lines. Three snapped.

Shtift-a! Tank narrowed his eyes and ignored the rumbling in his stomach. Love MommySass. Love FriendReilly... He paused, sensing something that had been in the back of his mind for a while but he’d been too busy to notice.

Mommy? Silence. No, not silence. Pain.

No! Tank stood frozen, trembling. His stomach heaved. Mommy was gone. Bad Thing took Mommy. Tank go! Tank help Mommy!

Friend, please! Reilly’s voice was strained.

Another shield line snapped.

Shtift-a! Shtift-a! Tank’s ears lay flat to his head. His tail thrashed. His heart cried out in pain.

Reilly’s left hind leg collapsed completely this time. And he was too close to Bad Thing.

Misery closed in on Tank. If he left now, Reilly might die.

He bared his teeth, growling, and focused on old, stinky Bad Thing. Go Blink!

* * *

Eden studied the data on the implant, Jace coming over now and then to ruffle her hair or stroke her neck. What she would have given to have this information on the Vax! She could have removed the implant. And he would have had time to recover.

Now, although the medical equipment here was excellent, recovery would be a problem. That Bianca intended to kill both of them she had no doubt. She just didn’t know how long after the surgery they’d be allowed to live.

Which led her back to the only logical option, one she and Jace had fretted over as she paged through the data—they had to get out of here soon.

We not only have to get past the guards, we have to get past the Ved, Jace told her. The furzels have neutralized a number of them. But from what I can sense, there are still far too many alive. We’d never make it to the ship.

Not the Galaxus. The Traveler.

We have at least eight hours before sunrise, she told him. The planet’s slower rotation worked in their favor. Reilly and Tank are working hard.

And Tasha and Kel-Paten know where we are, because of Tank. Another two hours, and we’ll be able to—

Something large and dark suddenly appeared out of the corner of her eye. She spun the chair toward the diag bed. Jace was already moving toward it.

Tank, fur matted, ears flat to his head, stood unsteadily in the middle of the bed, a large black furry form by his front paws. A low, keening cry was coming from the fidget’s throat, and his tail lashed frantically back and forth.

“Reilly!” Eden gasped out the name, lunging for the furzels.

Jace had one hand on Tank’s head, another on Reilly’s back. Eden grabbed Reilly’s front paw.

FriendReilly sick. Tank’s small voice whispered in her mind. Help FriendReilly, MommyEden. JaceFriend. Help...

And Tank collapsed.

THE MINING RAFT

“Hypothesis, Sebastian.”

Sass raised her forehead from where she’d rested it on her hands and looked at Kel-Paten. Arms crossed over his chest, he leaned against the sanifac’s door-jamb. That was the first thing she noticed. The second was that his eyes weren’t luminous. He had powered down. That had to mean he no longer regarded her as a threat.

But most important, he called her “Sebastian” and demanded her hypothesis.

She chanced it. “You still owe me coffee from the last one.”

“Noted.”

His tone told her nothing. She opted for the premise that he recognized they were, if not friends, at least on the same side. “I posit Big Crazy Silly Space, as Tank calls it. Bad Thing took Jace and Eden to the outpost. Then came back and brought us to a place where it could set up scenarios and feed from our reactions.” She touched her thumb and little finger.

“McClellan’s Void.”

He mimicked the Rebashee gesture. His gloves were back on.

“Gund’jalar taught you that?”

She shook her head. “Worked on a Rebashee freighter when I was a kid.

Not that that has anything to do with my hypothesis.”

“It has everything to do with your hypothesis. Unless what we see here is not part of your life.”

“What you see here,” and she made a broad sweep with one hand, “are people I know, but their roles or relationships are wrong.”

“But the United Coalition knew you were Lady Sass when they permitted your transfer to my ship.”

“The United Coalition killed Lady Sass seven years ago. Up until that point, I was either Lieutenant Sebastian or Lady Sass, depending if Fleet or UCID needed me. But after Lethant, I was just Sebastian, happily cruising the space lanes on the Regalia, assigned to Fleet, not UCID. Then you asked for my transfer. Demanded it, from what I heard. Surprised the hell out of Ace—Admiral Edmonds—and shocked the shit out of me. You even brought me on board before the official start of the APIP. I’m here on your orders, not because I’m a spy or a traitor.” She drew in a breath. “I did not set you up.”

She waited for his next question but he stared past her. She wanted him to keep questioning. In spite of her hypothesis, she wasn’t sure if she was on HV-1 and hallucinating or physically in the void. She suspected the latter. Kel-Paten, with his ’cybe senses, should be able to tell for sure.

“You withheld information about Serafino from me.”

“Initial evidence suggested you were part of the problem. I had to put aside my personal feelings and focus on protecting the Alliance. And since Serafino was the repository of that evidence, I had to protect him as well.” She leaned her head back against the wall and regarded him evenly. “You never gave me any reason to think you trusted me. How was I supposed to trust you?”

“Fynn knew my reasons. Knew,” he hesitated, “how I felt. She told you.”

“She only said that she got conflicting readings from you. We didn’t know how to interpret that.”

He walked over to her, then hunkered down, hands loose against his knees. His eyes narrowed. “So ‘fun while it lasted’ was a game you played to find out?”

Fun while it lasted. Kissing him in the Galaxus’s cockpit because she didn’t want to hear that he loved her. Gods, the depth of her own stupidity never failed to astound her. But to explain that meant to explain— admit

—that she had broken into his cabin and downloaded his files, including his personal logs. She wondered how much more he could possibly hate her.

She could obfuscate her way around it, but then this damned void would no doubt plop them in a scenario in his cabin just so he could watch her be exactly who she denied being: Lady Sass, hired by the U-Cees to steal the Vax’s secrets.

And maybe, she realized with startling clarity, considering how damned exhausted and turned inside out she was, that was their ticket out of here: don’t give Bad Thing anything to work with. No more secrets, no more lies. No more games.

She looked at him squarely. “I knew how you felt about me before we left the Vax. By mistake, I ended up with copies of your personal logs—” He dropped down on one knee, his back straightening, hands fisting.

“You what?”

She held up her hand. “Let me finish. You can kick my ass all over this damned void if you want to after that, but let me finish.” His mouth thinned, but he nodded.

“I found them. I read them. They scared the hell out of me—”

“Because I’m a ’cybe,” he cut in tersely.

“No, you trock-brained idiot! Because I’m not the top-of-her-academy-class well-bred Tasha Sebastian you fell in love with.

I’m not anyone you could fall in love with. I’m a merc, a rim runner from Kesh Valirr. An undercover operative that Ace Edmonds and UCID

deliberately recruited after the Admiral Wembley scandal—you remember: prostis, trefla, double agents.” She ticked the items off on her fingers. “He got off with a hand slap. UCID couldn’t risk that again. I was their off-the-books project, just like Gund’jalar’s been for years. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, you know?”

His only response was a slight narrowing of his eyes. But the fact that he didn’t like what he was hearing didn’t stop her. “They dangled something I couldn’t resist: the chance to legitimately be somebody, to be part of Fleet.

I was nineteen years old, a raft rat ’jacking Triad haulers. So I took it, gladly, went deep cover with Gund’jalar, worked with arms runners, other mercs wanting to stop the Triad, stop you from doing to the U-Cees what you did to Danvaral.

“But they also put me on their own ships and stations as Tasha Sebastian, looking for double agents like Wembley, for security leaks, for abuses of power.

“But when I killed a senator’s son they cut me loose.” She thrust her hand through her hair as if she could shove the memories away. “He was selling children for sex. His father’s position made him untouchable. UCID

unofficially gave me and Gund’jalar the go-ahead to set up a compromising accident. That’s all it was supposed to be—just something to put him in the hospital long enough that we could dismantle his organization. We spent five months tracking him, making sure we had the facts right. Then things went very wrong.” She sucked in a deep breath, shuddering. She’d forgotten how much pain was involved.

“He had two little boys with him, on his estate,” she continued, watching his face for a reaction, seeing none. It didn’t matter. He had to know the truth. “If I didn’t take him down, he was going to kill them. I had no choice. But Internal Affairs didn’t see it that way. I was tagged for death or a mind wipe. Then Ace intervened and made deals I can’t even begin to comprehend.”

“Lethant,” he said.

She nodded. “Lady Sass had to go to prison and die. But Commander Sebastian had turned out to be one damned decent officer and could still be useful. But not, ” and she stressed that, “as a UCID agent anymore. My posting to the Vax was a total surprise. Ace and I figured that if you—if the Triad—knew who I was, I’d be the last person ever assigned there.

Then Serafino shows up and says he has proof of Triad corruption and that my posting was part of that. Something like ‘killed in the line of duty, courtesy of Kel-Paten.’ So I thought the Triad knew.”

“That’s insane—”

She held up her hand again, silencing him. “The implant in his head left big gaps in his knowledge. We needed the whole truth. My only option was to go to the one source that might have details on a highly classified Psy-Serv-ordered implant that was blocking his memory, details Eden couldn’t find anywhere else. Your personal logs just happened to be in the same directory as those files.”

He stared at her for a very long minute. “The only access to those files is in my quarters.”

“Yup.”

“You broke into my quarters?”

“The furzels did.” Gods, she missed Tank. “They unlocked the door from the inside.”

“The furzels.” He glanced away, shaking his head slightly, then turned back to her. “And did the furzels also bypass all my security to get the files?”

“No, I did that. If we ever get back to the Vax I’ll show you how, and then you can court-martial me for it.”

Another very long stare. Probably hand-picking the jury. Then he relaxed back into a half crouch again. “I’ve been thinking about that.”

“Court-martialing me? UCID will deny any knowledge of who I am, of course. But since Lady Sass wasn’t supposed to resurface again, they’ll roll over.” She huffed a short laugh and stretched out her legs. “Tell me Riln Marin at least has a decent bar in the prison compound. I really need a drink.” She knew she was being flippant. It was a defensive mechanism that had always worked in the past. Her impromptu confession left her feeling drained and uncomfortably vulnerable—she had no idea where she stood with him. And he wasn’t offering any clues.

“Sebastian.” He paused.

Her heart—idiotic optimist that it was—did a tiny flip-flop.

“Kel-Paten.”

“I think I know a way out of the void.”

Well, next to “I love you,” those were undoubtedly the words she most wanted to hear. “What do you need me to do?”

“Help me hijack a ship.”

“Any particular one in mind?”

He nodded, a small crooked smile curving his lips. “Zanorian’s.”

“The Windblade?” A Strafer-class cruiser maxed out to any respectable pirate’s specs.

“This is a semblance of your life we’re stuck in. I assume you know where she’s docked. Zanorian’s likely in sick bay on board.” His mouth quirked again. “And won’t put up much resistance.”

“He’s more likely at Ranza’s,” she told him, naming a nighthouse. “One of the prostis there is also a Healer. He’d have Angel or Drund—is Drund still alive?” She didn’t remember seeing him get off the floor after Kel-Paten hit him. Annoying if he had to die twice.

“Should be.”

“Then he had Angel or Drund seal the ship. He thinks his codes and his security are impregnable.”

“I know the feeling.”

Complaining or commenting? She couldn’t tell. “And where are we taking the Blade once we get her?”

“Remember those mathematical theories I used to prove that McClellan’s Void couldn’t exist? I reworked them based on the hypothesis that it could. I’ve narrowed them down to two. One of those, and the Blade

’s hyperdrive, should get us home.”

“HV-One first,” she corrected him. “That’s here in the void too, isn’t it?”

“We’d be in a stronger position to rescue them if we leave the void and come back with a team from the Vax. ”

“We would. But I don’t think Eden and Serafino have that kind of time.” 29

THE OUTPOST

The Ved will pick up on it as soon we start using the energies of Novalis, Jace told Eden. He was sitting on the diag bed, an unconscious furzel cradled in the crook of each arm. Lights were dimmed as low as possible. They had informed Mara they needed at least an hour’s rest before starting the surgery or else Eden’s skills would be impaired by exhaustion.

What they were actually doing was just as risky as the surgery, given the number of Ved in the outpost. But he knew they had no other choice.

You’ll have to be ready.

Eden, next to him, nodded. Her eyes were shadowed. He knew her heart was breaking. Reilly was fading, would have died if Tank hadn’t transferred some of his life essence to the older furzel. That, in turn, almost killed Tank.

But on the Galaxus we used the energy, and there was a Ved on board.

The furzels weakened it. They must have done the same thing on the Vax. But there are a lot more of them here. Dozens. So I don’t know if we’ll have time for a strong healing. Plus, I’ve never taken a telepathic furzel into Novalis. I’m not sure how they’ll react to its concentrated energy. But whatever kind of healing we can achieve should at least keep them alive until their bodies’ energies kick back in.

Sad to say, he didn’t know if he and Eden had that much time left.

There wasn’t anything more they could do against the remaining Ved.

They knew their only chance of escape now had to come from outside—from Kel-Paten and Sebastian, who might not know anything about the Ved but could definitely handle Bianca’s human guards.

Bianca. He didn’t know what bothered him more: that he had been so blind as to what was really going on with her, or that he’d been so easily manipulated. Psy-Serv plucked his petty hatreds out of his thoughts and twisted them, making him believe the very people who could help him were his enemies. Like Kel-Paten, the infamous Tin Soldier.

He’d justified his taunting of the Triad admiral as a means to break down whatever programming Psy-Serv had put in the ’cybe—when in truth he was the one who’d been programmed.

Jace. Eden’s hand rested on his arm, her fingers touching the furzels’

soft fur. Her warmth, her love washed over him. He was so unworthy, but he clung to it, absorbing all he could.

As soon as you’re there, start working on Tank. Jace, being stronger, would start the healing process with Reilly. Don’t let anything distract you. No matter what you see, what you hear, ignore it. Focus on Tank.

Furzels are a Ved’s only natural enemy. He’ll know if there’s a problem.

He drew a deep breath. Ready?

Ready. Jace?

I know, Eden. I love you more than life itself too. Never doubt that.

Never forget that. Now come, sweetling. Close your eyes. He reached out mentally for her, laying a light trance over her mind. Her breathing slowed, steadied, and he matched his to hers.

Heart of my heart, breath of my breath, life of my life...

Gray mists swirled and parted, sparkling. She was a few feet in front of him. He waited, holding the sleeping furzels as she hurried to his side. He passed Tank to her. She held the limp form as if it were the most precious thing in the universe.

Jace sought one end of the stone bench as Eden found the other. He sat, positioning Reilly against his heart. Friend, he called. Friend. Follow me.

Follow my voice. Follow my energy.

The Ved erupted around him like howling demons. He flinched in pain as lasers slashed and split his skin. Fire raced up his spine. He was on the bridge of the Novalis—his ship, not this dream place—as the ship imploded around him, his crew’s lifeless bodies sucked out the hull breach into the dark, cold vacuum of space.

He felt it all. He saw it all. He spoke to Reilly.

Friend. JaceFriend is here to help. MommyEden is here to help. Reach for us. Reach for our energy.

A small answering glow. A slight twitch of a black tail.

Beside him, Eden swayed. He scooted over, let her lean against him. The Ved were wearing her down. He could feel it. But she was fighting, sending energy to Tank. He could feel that too.

A ship’s corridor. A lift bank. He pushed the vision away, but it slammed back on him. A ship’s corridor. A lift bank. He was waiting for the lift, Triad crew in black moving around him. The Vaxxar. He was on Kel-Paten’s ship. The lift doors parted and he started to step in.

Eden stopped him. Eden in the lift with a Triad officer, clinging to the man in an intimate embrace. The man kissed her, caressed her roughly as Eden demanded more. Then she looked at Jace and laughed... .

No, no. It never happened. He’d been in that lift. So was the man, a security officer. And Eden was there, but nothing had happened. She hadn’t laughed at him; she still loved him... .

Reilly. Where was Reilly? Jace forced himself to step away from the hallucination, concentrated on the feel of fur beneath his fingers, the small rise and fall of the narrow chest, the tail now curling over his arm.

Jace... Friend?

Reilly’s voice was weak but it was Reilly. An indescribable joy surged through Jace. JaceFriend is here, Reilly. Right here. You’re safe. Grow strong. Use my energy.

Tired. So many Bad Things.

You killed a lot of them. You did very well. Use my energy. Grow strong.

Tank?

Tank’s here too. With MommyEden.

Bad Things... JaceFriend.

Don’t worry for now. Grow strong.

No, JaceFriend. Bad Things. Reilly’s tail twitched harder. Bad Things took MommySass. BrandenFriend. Gone. Gone.

And from the fidget in Eden’s arms came a low, keening cry. Mommy gone!

Jace? Eden’s voice in his mind wavered. Their hope of assistance from the inimitable Tin Soldier had just vanished.

I’ll think of something, sweetling, he told her as another Ved poured boiling oil over his face. I’ll think of something.

THE MINING RAFT

It was too risky to use the main corridors on their way to the Blade.

McClellan’s Void or not, an officer in Triad blacks wouldn’t be welcome on a U-Cee raft off the rim world of Kesh Valirr, home to many Danvaral refugees and the target of raids by the Triad over the decades.

In the main corridors, Zanorian’s mercs would be the least of their problems. The tunnels, while not remotely safe, were less risky. And only the mercs would be looking for them in there.

Kel-Paten watched the way Sass stopped and listened at each tunnel junction, tested the security of each ladderway before climbing. Watched the way she held her body with a deceptive looseness, as if she could be caught unprepared. He doubted she could. She was moving, thinking, and reacting less like Tasha Sebastian and more like Lady Sass now. It was one of the reasons he hesitated completely trusting her, hesitated sharing his thought processes. Hesitated telling her how his entire world had ended when she disappeared through that hole in the wall and fell into the blackness.

He’d lunged for the cascading conduit on instinct, logic telling him that the chances she might actually be holding on to the other end were slim. A heartbeat later he hung over the edge himself, every ’cybe sense at max as he desperately searched for her.

When the conduit tugged back, his heart caught in his throat. It wasn’t until he had her back in his arms that he remembered to breathe again.

He almost told her, then and there, I don’t care who you were in the past, what you’ve done.

But he couldn’t. He didn’t yet know if she was even real and not just a psi-induced hallucination.

She seemed to believe it was her personal hell they were playing out, but it was also his. She was once again unattainable. At least with Tasha Sebastian he had the common basis of the Fleet and the Alliance. But the Tin Soldier and Lady Sass were on opposite ends of the spectrum.

And Lady Sass was Dag Zanorian’s lover. He didn’t need to see their interaction in the bay earlier to know that—nor was he dissuaded from that notion by the fact she’d decked him soundly. Her relationship with Zanorian was part of the profile the Triad had on her, a profile that included the very few, rare images of Gund’jalar’s top student. He wondered why he’d never noticed the resemblance in the years since he first saw her on the Sarna Bogue.

Or maybe he had and just chose to ignore it.

He was already hopelessly in love with her by that point.

She slowed, one hand splaying out. “Can you spike into any system or just Triad?”

A rectangular data-systems panel jutted out from the wall a few feet in front of them, its cover tarnished and dented. He reminded himself that there were very serious issues at stake here—hallucinations that could kill.

The crew of Degun’s Luck had learned that. Who she was and whether she viewed him only as a ’cybe had to be tabled for now. He peeled off his gloves and answered without looking at her. “Do you really think I wouldn’t know how to get into U-Cee hardware? But if you remember the primary security codes, I can work more quickly. Are we looking for Zanorian’s dock assignment?”

“We’re looking to create a diversion. RaftTraff gets mighty testy when a ship breaks dock. And I’m not willing to wait for clearance.” RaftTraff. Mining Raft Traffic Control. Definitely not Fleet terminology.

He flipped the cover open, studied the interfaces and crystal boards while she rattled off the codes. A patched mess but not unworkable. One stroke of luck: a compatible dataport. “What kind of diversion? I need location, start time, and duration.”

“I’d love to launch a raftwide mullytrock, but then we’d have every other damned jockey in straps burning bulkheads. ’Course, that would work too.

RaftTraff wouldn’t know which one of us to send the sec tugs after first.” Mullytrock. Definitely Lady Sass. He remembered Ralland at fourteen getting his mouth washed out with soap for saying that.

“You want a mullytrock, Sass, I can give you that.” Roving, sporadic power outages, ventilation failures, lift malfunctions. For starters. “But I still need start time.” He took his attention from the panel and looked at her. “How far are we from the Blade?”

“She’s right there.” She pointed to her left. “But we have to go down two access panels and up one level. That’ll bring us out about six docks up from her airlock. Figure fifteen minutes to get to that point. Five to ten to get on board the Blade, depending on who’s around.”

“I’ll start with lift lockdowns at the fifteen-minute mark.” He absently studied the panel as he thumbed back the covering on his left wrist port, wishing she wasn’t watching him become part of the raft’s data-grid. So her hand clasping his arm startled him.

She had her datalyzer out. “Let’s make sure you’re not going to get your ass fried when you spike in.”

“I doubt maintenance—”

“We’re overdue, flyboy.” She glanced up from the handheld’s screen and shot him a look that labeled him trock-brained idiot more than flyboy.

“It’s been almost forty-five minutes without a major calamity. No collapsing walls or resurrected dead men. No intense emotions for this thing to feed on.”

He hated explaining this. “I have... fail-safes to prevent permanent damage from a backwash surge.”

“And for the five minutes you’re in a reboot-and-recover mode, who’ll be restarting my heart?” She shook her head as if in annoyance and looked down at the datalyzer again. “Everything looks normal. But be careful, okay?” She released his arm.

She was worried about him. But of course she was. He had the formulas to get them out of the void. He pulled his own datalyzer from his utility belt, retrieved the files, then linked the datalyzers, transmitting the information. “If something happens to me, there’s the data you’d need.” Another glance down at her datalyzer and up again. “Thanks. But unless it’s really inconvenient, would you mind making sure you stay alive?” A trickle of warmth grew inside him, in spite of his uncertainties. “I’ll make it a priority.”

“You do that.” She shoved the datalyzer back on her belt. “Now let’s see how much trouble we can cause.”

He caused considerable, starting with the lift lockdowns just as they exited into the corridor leading to the Blade. Sass took off her jacket and tied it around her waist, then unsealed the collar of her tan and black uniform, trying, she explained, to make it look less like a uniform. He left his jacket on but shoved up the sleeves and opened his collar too. His gloves were off, his admiral’s insignia and comm link in his pocket. They had to survive for only five, maybe ten minutes in the public corridor and hope no one realized they were Triad Fleet officers.

Two maintenance workers hurried past them, a third trailing behind, guiding a loaded antigrav pallet. They threaded into an oncoming group—males and females—in a variety of coveralls and shipsuits in grays, dark blue, and green. Six, no seven, he counted, noting the position of hands and weapons. Noting where eyes looked. But the group was busy chatting and barely glanced at him or Sass as they passed.

“Thirty-Seven Blue, next one after this.” Sass kept her voice low as they neared a yellow-and-white-striped docking port, its airlock set back three feet from the corridor by a short accessway. “It’ll say Devan’s Duty on the ID plate. Shit!”

He saw them at the same moment she did. Four U-Cee Fleet officers in regulation tans coming toward them. Williamson would recognize him immediately—she was a smart, tough captain but no match for the Vaxxar when he’d pushed through the Zone in her sector at the beginning of the war. Kuhn was UCID and could easily tag himself and Sass. The other two—both males—he didn’t know.

Overheads flickered and popped, but the damned lights didn’t dim enough for cover and wouldn’t go out for another ten minutes. He grabbed Sass’s arm and veered sharply into 36 Blue’s accessway as if that was their destination. They needed cover, they needed to look like they belonged, he needed to look like anyone but the Tin Soldier.

He kissed her, pinning her against the bulkhead because there was no time to explain his impromptu maneuver—and he didn’t want to give her enough room to take a swing at him. Mean right hook, Serafino had warned. She tensed for half a second, then her lips parted and her arms moved quickly up around his neck. His ploy be damned, the taste and feel of her was electrifying, and it was all he could do to keep focused on the approaching footsteps. She deepened their kiss and leaned up into him, her body a contrast of soft places and hard utility belt.

“It’s our job to keep their lives interesting.” A woman’s voice came from behind him. Williamson, he thought, listening to the answering laughter.

“No arguments about that, Captain,” another female voice said. “In the meantime... ”

The voices and the footsteps trailed off.

He kept kissing Sass. He didn’t want to pull away from the hands caressing his neck or the tongue teasing his or the warm soft body arching against him, starting a riot of sensations that left him aching for more.

But he had to. The Tin Soldier and Lady Sass had a ship to hijack.

He released her mouth, stepping back, but her hands locked around his neck, stopped him. Her eyes fluttered open and the look there sent a flare of heat through his body.

“We have to go.” His voice was rough.

“Shhh.” One hand slid forward to cup his cheek. Rising up on her toes, she very gently brushed her mouth over his.

Her feather-light touch seared him. He bit back a groan. “We don’t—”

“I know.” Her voice was as raspy as his. She shook her head. “Never mind. Let’s go.”

She turned away, adjusting the strap of her rifle. He wondered what she was about to say. He wondered why she kissed him with that gentle kiss.

But there was no time to wonder.

He swept the corridor left and right with a quick but expert glance. No more U-Cee officers, no limping pirate captain coming to reclaim his ship.

Only a maintenance worker in orange coveralls heading away on the left.

He put his hand against the middle of Sass’s back and guided her out.

“An hour,” she said, as they ducked into 37 Blue’s accessway, where the ID plate read Devan’s Duty. She tapped at the lock’s keypad. “An hour and no major calamities.”

“Only because Williamson or Kuhn didn’t see me.” He paused, checking the corridor, covering her back. “Three... two... one.” An alarm blared discordantly through the corridor. Right on time.

“Tell me that’s your doing.”

“It is. The light system will fail on alternate decks in eight minutes.

Ventilation fans will be on half power three minutes after that. All will restore at the fifteen-minute mark, then the sequence, starting with lift lockdowns, will repeat, starting at the twenty-five.” She grinned. “A master of the mullytrock. No wonder I fell in love with you.”

A hydraulic hiss signaled the hatchway opening, halting his verbal reply, but it didn’t stop his chest from tightening at her words. Was this just another teasing quip? He didn’t ask—couldn’t ask. He pulled out his datalyzer and scanned for biosignatures or any anomaly that might indicate the presence of one of those psi-creatures on board.

She cradled her rifle against her, a look of determination on her face.

“Clear,” he said.

They stepped through the airlock, rifles at the ready.

“I don’t like this,” she murmured, locking the hatchway behind them.

“It’s too godsdamned easy.”

They moved with deliberate caution down the narrow corridor. A Strafer-class cruiser wasn’t a large ship: three small cabins, two cargo holds, a galley–ready room combination, and a large cockpit that was too small to be called a bridge.

But its equipment and security were not average cruiser fare. They were customized—and ingeniously too. The Blade’s systems were set to come online once the ship read Zanorian’s biosignature and palm print.

Unfortunately, they could provide neither.

Zanorian had much to be proud of, Kel-Paten mused, disabling security lock after security lock on the ship’s drives while Sass decoded the navigation system. He worked manually; there was no compatible dataport at the command station and too much else to do for him to leave the cockpit and search for one belowdeck in the drive room. It was almost as if Zanorian knew that one day the Tin Soldier would sit in the captain’s chair of the Blade and had intended to deny him access to spike in.

Which brought him back again to the woman he’d kissed and who’d gently kissed him. He had some very hard questions that needed asking.

But they had to wait until they broke dock and avoided any pursuit.

However, they’d have at least two hours in jump before they reached Panperra’s coordinates, which, by his calculations, should correspond to the location of HV-1 here in the void. Two hours where they’d be little more than passengers, the ship’s computers fully in charge. Two hours for him to ask those questions.

Lights flashed green before him. “Drives online,” he announced.

“Priming sublights.”

“Almost there,” she told him. “Okay. Nav’s online, weapons are online.”

“Life support at optimum.”

“Scanner, shields... we have a go.” She slid out of the chair at the nav station and strapped herself into the copilot’s chair next to him.

“Looks good. Still not happy, Sass?”

“Me? Nervous as a long-tailed fidget in a room full of rocking chairs.” Her grin lacked its usual confidence. “It’s still too godsdamned easy.” He initiated two diametric systems checks, not only because he wanted full data on Zanorian’s ship but because he didn’t discount her concern.

“Maybe it’s finished playing with us.”

“The void doesn’t start or finish playing. That’s what it is—continuous emotional upheaval for its own pleasure.”

“The void is an anomaly and as such obtains no enjoyment.” He studied the first systems check. Nothing unusual. “What feeds off our experiences is the psi-creature you said the furzels found.”

“Bad Thing.”

“So maybe we’ve bored Bad Thing. It’s moved on to someone more interesting.”

“Is that your hypothesis?”

He glanced at her. “It’s one I’m working on.”

“Gathering evidence can get fatal. Remember that.”

“Noted.” Data scrolled on his console screen. The second check came back clean as well. “Sublights ready, thrusters primed,” he told her. “Do we at least give traffic control a courtesy warning?” She shot him a narrow-eyed look, her mouth pursed. “Of course not.”

“Humor me,” he said, and disconnected the airlock, then began retracting the ship’s tether cables.

She sighed, keyed open the comm on her armrest. “RaftTraff, Devan’s Duty looking to flash out in two minutes.”

“Devan’s Duty, this is Raft Traffic Control,” a man’s voice replied from the speaker, sounding very annoyed. Kel-Paten checked the local scanners.

Two freighters and a bulky transport skimmer streamed away from the raft at speeds that explained the controller’s testy tone. Four other ships were in various stages of undocking. The exodus from his mullytrock had started.

“You are not cleared for departure at this time. Follow procedure and upload your flight plan. A slot will be assigned—”

“RaftTraff, Devan’s Duty is flashing out, one minute fifteen. Unlock your clamps or I’ll sheer the suckers.”

“You still owe for the damage from the last time!”

“Then unlock your clamps, darling,” Sass’s voice dropped to a throaty purr, “or we will be burning bulkheads. Devan’s Duty, out.” A series of muted thumps ensued. Kel-Paten keyed the thrusters, then eased the sublights to fifteen percent as the ship dropped away. The Blade handled well, feeling like a heavier ship than she was and without a Strafer’s usual tendency to yaw at undocking.

Sass tapped in a heading as he increased power, guiding the ship closer to the four departing freighters. Two more broke dock behind them and were on a similar path. He altered thrusters and sublight output.

More ships joined the exiting pack, and for the next ten minutes Sass wove their way toward a large ore freighter. Kel-Paten worked smoothly with her but didn’t know why she chose that particular ship. Then he recognized what she was doing. The mirroring maneuver was called

“riding the shadow,” and it was dangerous and illegal in both the U-Cee and Triad Fleets.

“Hit her with a comm wash, will you?” she asked, sending a short stream of data to his console. “I want her ins and outs.” He keyed in the wide-band invasive scan designed to obtain a ship’s unique communications codes: one for incoming transmits and one for outgoing. Codes within those codes could be used to emulate a ship’s energy signature. That little trick she might have learned from UCID, but he doubted it.

Now the Blade would not only look like part of the freighter on another ship’s sensors—most specifically the automated, unmanned sec tugs—it would sound like it too. But they had to keep her on a very precise, very narrow course.

“The sec tugs shouldn’t bother us,” he said, locking in the pattern. They weren’t one of the ships “burning bulkhead,” as she put it.

“It’s not the sec tugs that worry me. I’d like to be as invisible for as long as possible. There’s a lot of traffic between the rafts. I don’t know friendlies from unfriendlies.”

“You don’t have to. Logic,” he told her. He’d given this psi-creature problem a good deal of thought. “None of the emotion-inducing experiences to date were fatal.”

“Falling through that wall sure as hell could have been!”

“But it wasn’t. I’ve analyzed everything that’s happened since we made HV-One. Your fall wasn’t fatal because if it was, you’d no longer contribute an emotional response.”

“And sending a skimmer on a collision course with the Blade wouldn’t create an emotion?” She snorted softly.

“A hull breach in space is instantaneous death. We’d be useless to it.

That’s why we had to get off the raft, where it could continue to throw problems at us, and into a smaller environment, where it needs to keep us alive.”

“The Galaxus going cold into the jumpgate, the fuel-line break?”

“All within range of a habitable world,” he reminded her.

“So your hypothesis is, the safest place we could be is in a small ship in the middle of nowhere?”

“It won’t try anything until we get back dirtside on HV-One.” She took her gaze off her console for a few seconds and stared at him.

Then, with a shake of her head, she went back to keeping the Blade on her very tight course. “Humor me,” she said after a moment, mimicking his request minutes before.

“I need some time to program in my calculations. Unless that freighter makes a big course change, you can keep us shadowed to her for another ten minutes.”

“She’s going for the jumpgate. So are we,” she argued, without taking her gaze from her console. “It would be a lot safer if we stayed shadowed to her the whole way.”

“It’s not necessary, and it ties you up. You’re too tired to hand-fly this ship for any length of time.”

“Get me some coffee and I’ll be fine. And let me know if you see any blue glowing blobs in the galley while you’re there.” He linked his handheld to the ship’s computer and, when his calculations were downloading smoothly, unsnapped his safety straps.

’Cybe senses at max, he performed a quick visual check in the cabins and corridor for any blue glowing blobs his datalyzer might have missed. He returned to the cockpit with two cups of coffee, knowing it would please her.

She inhaled the aroma, a small smile returning. “Mahrian blend, black.

Thank you.” She tapped at the console, then looked at him. “I’m not trying to be a bitch. But there’s a lot to be said for trust no one, suspect everything, and never take your hand off your weapon. I know you don’t understand that. It’s instinct for me. I wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t.” She went back to the console, taking a sip of her coffee.

He watched the data flow from the handheld to his console’s screen, then he looked at her. “Does trusting no one include me?”

“You thought I sold you out to Zanorian back on that raft,” she said without glancing at him. “Yet I let you walk at my back with a loaded rifle.

You tell me.”

He thought for a minute, wanting to make sure he said exactly what he wanted to say. He knew his timing was terrible—he probably should wait until they were safely in jumpspace. But she had asked him. “When I saw you with Zanorian, when I realized who you were, I thought nothing in my life could be worse than that. I was wrong. When that wall collapsed and you disappeared with it, that was far and away the most horrible moment I’ve ever had. And believe me, I’ve had some bad ones. But nothing could be as bad as losing you.”

She turned to him, her cheeks flushed, her lips parted as if she wanted to speak.

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “You read my logs. Then you know I’ve been in love with you for a long time.”

“You’ve been in love with Tasha Sebastian,” she said softly before going back to her screen. “She doesn’t exist.”

“Didn’t you read the very first letter I ever wrote you?” She looked up from the console. “When I was on the Bogue? Yes.”

“I had no U-Cee profile on you. I didn’t even know your first name. I fell in love with you anyway.”

She was looking at him with that odd mixture of confusion and elation, but elation seemed to be winning this time.

He took a chance—a huge one considering the uncertainties, considering he was a ’cybe officer and she was Lady Sass. But when she fell through the corridor wall, something inside him had changed. “Will you please quit shadowing that damned freighter so we can finish what we started in the airlock accessway?”

A blush colored her cheeks. Elation? Gods, he hoped he hadn’t lost his ability to read human facial expressions. “I have to set a course for that jumpgate—”

“Already done.”

“Show-off.” She made the final changes on her console, turning the ship over to the navigational systems. Then, with a swift move, she unhooked her safety straps and flowed across the short distance into his lap.

He didn’t give her a chance to change her mind. He pulled her hard against him, their mouths fusing. He wrapped his arms around her, not wanting to think about who she was or where they were headed. They had a half hour to the jumpgate, and he didn’t want to waste a second until the ship needed his attention again.

He had twelve years of emptiness to fill, twelve years of touching her only in his dreams, twelve years of imagining the softness of her body, which suddenly was real and his to explore.

He caressed the curve of her hip as she did things to his mouth—her teeth gently pulling on his lower lip—that made his breath hitch. He thrust his fingers into the hair at the nape of her neck and mimicked her movement, nibbling on her mouth, tracing her lips with the tip of his tongue. He was learning—though, gods, he knew he’d never had a teacher like this.

She arched back, guiding his mouth down her throat. He lost his grip on her hair and his hands fell to her waist as she—sweet holy gods!—rocked her hips against him, stroking him. He gasped against her skin, the unexpected pleasure of it almost blinding as he throbbed beneath her.

He licked her throat, trailed kisses over her collarbone as she arched again. The front of her uniform was open almost to her waist. He didn’t know how or when, but her hand on the back of his head told him that was where he needed to go, and he wasn’t going to argue. Not when the soft swell of her breast under his mouth felt so incredibly good. Then the tight bud of one nipple brushed against his lips, surprising him. He circled it experimentally with his tongue before taking the tip of her breast into his mouth.

Her low moan set hot, tingling sensations roaring through him.

Something primal in him responded, his groin pulsing, his desire to bury himself inside her blanking out all thought, all reason. There was only Tasha, his Lady Sass, and the feel and taste of her as he found her mouth again, his hands on her waist grinding her against him.

He hated uniforms, he hated the restriction of clothing, he hated the damned confines of the captain’s chair. And he hated that incessant pinging noise...

Shit! The jumpgate.

She seemed to realize it as he did. She jerked back, reaching blindly for the console. But he was quicker and closer. He swiveled the chair around, bringing her back against his chest as he keyed in the gate codes and activated the preprogrammed course to Panperra.

“Branden—”

“Shhh.” He took a moment to steal a kiss from her lips. “Under control.” At least, the ship was, as the nav comp locked on a fix. He was another matter. He was well out of control. If Psy-Serv traced his emo-patterns right now, he knew he’d melt their damned systems.

He could feel her breathing hard against him as the ship flowed smoothly past the edge of the gate, all systems optimal. Two more taps on the console and the computers were in charge.

They had two hours.

He swiveled back around.

She leaned up, palms on his shoulders. Her face was flushed, her lips slightly parted and swollen. He thought she’d never looked more beautiful.

He ran his hands up the curve of her breasts until they came to rest on her shoulders, then drew her to him, kissing her softly, gently. She kissed him back with small teasing kisses that made his heart race. Someday he’d ask her how she did that, how she knew just the right amount of seduction and playfulness. It mystified him. She mystified him.

She pulled her face away, one side of her mouth quirked in a small grin.

“Pick a number between one and three.” Her voice was breathy.

“One and three?” He shook his head quizzically. “The only possible number is two.”

“Ah, good choice.” She pulled out of his lap, one hand locked in the fabric of his shirt, bringing him with her.

He stood, tried to draw her back in his arms, but she was laughing softly. “This way,” she said, tugging him toward the corridor.

“This way?”

“You chose cabin number two.” She stepped over the hatch tread.

He followed. Cabin number two?

She tapped in a code at the second doorway. “Remember sooner or later, flyboy? Well, it’s sooner.”

The door opened. He saw a dimly lit cabin and a wide pillow-strewn bed.

His body heated.

Sweet holy gods.

30

Two things warred within Branden Kel-Paten as he stepped—almost stumbling—into the small cabin after Sass. The first was his overwhelming desire to make love to her. The second was his growing fear that in doing so, he’d lose her through ineptitude.

She knew exactly the right amount of playfulness and seduction. He had no idea. Over the years, he’d read books on human sexuality and various articles on lovemaking. And he had one brief failed encounter with a prosti on Raft 309. He should probably call up at least a few of those articles from his memory banks, but, gods, she was unsealing his shirt, tugging it out of the waistband of his pants as they stood only a few feet from the edge of the bed. He wasn’t even sure he could find his memory banks right now.

“Sass.” He stilled her hands, bringing her fingers to his lips. If she removed his shirt she’d see the scars crisscrossing his body. Ugly things that had made the prosti recoil. ’Cybes didn’t get vanity-patched, because their bodies were made for war, not love.

And his hands... his black gloves were a stark contrast to her soft skin.

Touching her perfect body with them seemed unnatural. Touching her perfect body without them was worse. His hands were synthderm and powermesh, with powernodes in his fingertips and palms. An abomination. He was an abomination. He had no right to—

“Branden?”

Her face tilted up to his, as if begging to be kissed. That he could do, because she’d taught him how. He brushed his mouth over hers, still gentle, then came back for a deeper kiss. But not too much. He had to control this, had to control his body’s reactions or he’d end up embarrassing himself. While her tongue toyed with his, he tripped the code in his mind, segueing into full ’cybe mode. Emo-inhibitors activated, hitting him like a cool draft of air. Her eyes were closed, but he put his vision on night function, just in case. No sickly glow as one more reminder of what he was.

He released her hands, enfolding her tightly against him, and rested his face on her hair. He caressed her back, the rise and fall of her breath steadying him.

He had to be in control. He couldn’t let her find out how shamefully inexperienced he was. He couldn’t let her see the ugliness that was a biocybe.

Her hands splayed against his chest. For as wonderful as she felt against his skin, he wished he could close his shirt. They should sit on a couch—there had to be a couch in here somewhere. Sit on the couch and talk. Kiss, touch, but not too much. He wouldn’t be able to react beyond a certain point, anyway. His emo-inhibitors—

She lightly dragged her nails over his chest, raking a nipple he had no idea was so sensitive. Heat spiraled through him. He sucked in a sharp breath as her fingers moved across his chest again.

“Hey,” he said, letting the breath out, but that was all he could say, because her mouth locked over his. And she wasn’t being gentle.

He broke the heated kiss carefully. “Tasha.”

“Mmm, Branden.” Her hands slid down his chest and tugged the rest of his shirt out of his pants before he gathered his wits to stop her. When he finally did grab her hands, she’d shrugged out of her shirt and stood half naked before him—even more enticingly beautiful than his dreams, her skin soft and creamy in the cabin’s dim light. Without thinking he stepped forward, reaching to touch one perfect breast.

Her hands curled into his waistband and unsnapped his pants.

Oh, sweet holy gods! He took a half step back and realized that would only undo his pants faster. He moved toward her instead, before those clever fingers went further and tested the already strained limits of his emo-inhibitors. He grabbed her arms, trying for another kiss, but she was pulling him with her. He caught her against him just as the back of her legs hit the edge of the bed. Her knees buckled, and suddenly she was on her back and he was on top of her, his bare chest against hers. Warmth flowed where they touched. He levered up quickly on one arm, but she’d already locked her hands around his neck. Her impish smile pleaded for a kiss.

He fought the impulse for all of 3.25 seconds, according to the readouts in the lower left corner of his vision. Kissing was good. It was something he was getting better at. It kept her from seeing the patterns of his surgeries. It kept her hands—wrapped around his neck—away from his pants.

He rolled onto his side, taking her with him in the kiss, one hand against the small of her back. He could do this for two hours, holding her, kissing her. Letting this warm trickle of pleasure drift through him. It was just a small trickle, it was just...

Her hand slid down his abdomen into his half-open pants and cupped him, making his breath stutter in his throat as her clever fingers stroked his erection. Molten waves of passion crashed through his emo-inhibitors.

Instinctively he arched into her hand, his mouth hard on hers, drawing pleasure from everywhere he could. He ached with the desire to love her—finally—after all these years. It was wrong. He knew it was wrong. He was a ’cybe, the Tin Soldier, an unholy creation, but gods help him, he loved her. And just once he wanted to be someone she could love—scars, synthderm, wrist ports, and all.

“We need to get rid of these,” she whispered, stilling her delicious torture to push his pants down his hips.

Briefly he thought of the scars encircling his thighs, but she kicked off her boots and, kneeling next to him, was shimmying out of her pants. He stopped and stared in unabashed admiration, his shame over his body’s imperfections usurped by his desire to feel, taste, and explore every inch of hers.

Heart pounding, he stripped off his gloves and the rest of his clothes and then pulled her down on top of him. Close like this was good. The cabin’s dim light was good. She couldn’t easily see what he looked like. He kissed her hard, heat and passion spiking and swirling through him, causing reactions in his body far beyond what he thought possible. His inhibitors were off-line, quite possibly decimated as she moved sensuously against him, their skin now slick from excitement. Her lips brushed his jaw, his neck, and when her tongue found the hard ropy scar on his left shoulder, he tensed involuntarily.

“Don’t,” he rasped, wincing when he realized he’d said it aloud.

She raised her face. “Does that hurt?”

Sweet gods, she was so beautiful it made his throat tight. “Not anymore,” he managed, brushing her hair back from the side of her face.

She lightly ran her fingers over the scar that circled the point of his shoulder, then found the wide one that went straight down his upper arm to the inside of his elbow. “Bet it hurt like hell at one time, though.” Her voice was soft, almost understanding.

“Yes.” He watched her face, saw the slight dip of her eyebrows into a frown. He was breathing hard, the warmth of her fingers on his skin mesmerizing.

She glanced at him. “Kisses make it better.” She brushed her lips over his, then kissed his left shoulder again, then the wide scar on his arm. His right shoulder and arm were next. He was amazed, humbled, and very aroused by her gentle touch, by her loving his ugliness. He twined his fingers in her hair, wanting her mouth on his—the only activity in which he felt confident—but she shook her head and angled back.

“Tell me what you like,” she said, her voice throaty.

“What I like? Just you. With me.” He touched her cheek.

“Nothing... special?”

He closed his eyes. He knew what she asked, but the descriptions of positions he’d read failed to surface in his mind. “I wouldn’t know,” he said finally, honestly. Because even if he could lie, his body couldn’t. “I never... ” and he let the sentence trail off.

Her eyes, half hooded with desire moments before, widened slightly.

Her lips parted. “You mean—”

“You’re the only one.” His voice was rough from desire and shame. “My whole life, you’re all I’ve wanted.”

She closed her eyes briefly, that impish smile returning when she looked at him, something twinkling in her eyes. “Don’t worry, love. I won’t be gentle.”

“Sass—”

But she’d already dipped her head, her tongue trailing down his stomach. She lightly nipped his abdomen, then took him fully into her mouth.

“Oh, sweet gods!” he gasped. Pleasure beyond description flowed through him, swirling, as she licked then stroked him. He was at the very edge of what little control he had, his body heating, his breath stuttering at her touch. Finally, at his limit, he reached blindly for her, found her hair, urged her up his body. A soft, wicked giggle rumbled against his chest, then his throat. Damn her, what she did to him! He loved her so much.

He found her mouth, kissed her as if she was the sole thing keeping him alive—because she was. Trembling now, he ran his synthderm and powermesh hands over her, wanting to give her the pleasure she gave him.

But he didn’t know how, didn’t know where to start or what she wanted, so he caressed, kneaded, the feel of her body moving against his intoxicating and dangerous. Too dangerous. If they didn’t slow down, he was going to—

She mounted him, taking him into her body, a heated wetness enveloping him. He sucked in a harsh breath of surprise and astonishment and then he was thrusting greedily into her, hands clasping her hips, matching her rhythm. All rational thought ceased. There was just overwhelming pleasure, cresting ecstasy; there was her low moan of desire and his own rasped utterance of her name, over and over. Then Admiral Branden Kel-Paten’s orderly cybernetic world exploded into a cascade of heat, pleasure, and passion.

Gods’ blessed rumps, he’s a virgin! Well, not anymore, Sass corrected herself sagely, her wry grin hidden by the fact that her face was snuggled against Branden’s neck. It made sense. His hesitancy in touching her, his shyness—and that was the only word for it—in dealing with her. His sudden almost about-face when she’d brought him to Angel’s cabin.

Somehow she thought her friend wouldn’t mind.

But Kel-Paten did mind once she’d started removing his clothes. When she saw the scars, she understood. They weren’t like Zanorian’s thin affectations. These were knotty, full of pain and bad memories.

Unpleasant. Best kept hidden.

She understood that too. She had scars. But hers were inside, while his were on the outside. Her experience on the raft had forced her to reveal hers to him, though far less pleasantly.

His arms tightened around her and he rolled over onto his side, taking her with him. She brought her hands to his shoulders, her face up to his, sensing a kiss coming. He needed a lot of kisses. That was okay. She did too. Kisses were reassuring. They both needed reassurance.

His mouth found hers, gently. He always started gently. Still cautious.

Still unsure—but of her or himself or both, she didn’t know. She wasn’t yet ready to ask. Odd how she could lay here naked with him and yet not be able to ask a simple question such as “do you trust me?” But she couldn’t.

So she kissed him back instead.

He broke the kiss with the same gentleness with which he started it.

“You okay?” she asked, because that was the kind of stupid thing first-time lovers always said. More so because their first time was really his first time.

“Beyond wonderful.” His deep voice rumbled between them. They were almost nose to nose. “But I don’t think I was— it was—that wonderful for you.” He stumbled over the last few words.

Her heart ached for him. Mister Perfection. Ol’ No Excuses Kel-Paten.

“It was incredible for me,” she said, brushing her fingers over his jaw.

“And not just because I finally know more about something than you do.”

“Gloating is unprofessional.”

She laughed softly. He did have a wry sense of humor.

“But thank you,” he continued. “I hope—I’d like to do better.”

“I’m available for private lessons.”

He reached for the blanket. “You should get some sleep first,” he said, drawing it up over both of them. “We have an hour fifteen before we need to be at the controls.”

An hour’s nap sounded like luxury, and she said so.

He kissed her forehead. “I’ll wake you.”

No. She’d wake herself in forty-five minutes. And teach him just how much fun they could have in thirty.

THE OUTPOST

Jace wove his mind tightly into Reilly’s until he wasn’t sure where the furzel started and he ended. It seemed the best way to utilize the healing energies of Novalis that were so much a part of him and so foreign to the furzel. The Ved continued to thrash at his memories. He ached at his father’s rejection, cried at his mother’s disdain. Through it all he held on to Reilly, now rapidly growing stronger. The furzel seemed to blossom in Novalis.

So did Jace’s knowledge. The collective memory of his people resided in this dream state. Linked to the furzels, amplified by the power in Novalis, Jace learned exactly how the Ved had infiltrated the Triad.

A Psy-Serv experiment? Eden, bonded to Reilly, was stunned by the revelations.

A dangerous one. Exiled to the malleable dimension of the void centuries before by their creators, the Ved had found an escape route when a dangerous Psy-Serv mind experiment opened the first pathway into Dreehalla. And the Faction was born—a parasitic symbiosis between human and Ved in the Triad. The human—the host—eventually died. But until that point, the Ved provided the human with a feeling of invincibility, power, omnipotence—whatever the human craved. And the human would crave, because the Ved needed more emotions to feed on.

The humans in Psy-Serv learned to offer the Ved sacrifices to keep them from destroying the host human: sacrifices such as ships’ crew, like Degun’s Luck and the others before it.

They answered the hail of a Psy-Serv pinnace with engine trouble.

Jace relived the scene with the information the furzels had pulled from the Ved they’d neutralized. The Ved fed off the kidnapped crew’s terror but also off the resulting fear as it spread through Lightridge. Mass hysteria was a tasty tidbit. Even stronger than the pleasure they were created to amplify for the Nasyry.

The Nasyry? Eden’s shock was palpable.

One of my people’s shameful secrets, Jace admitted. So long ago that the Ved’eskhar became legend, not fact: an energy being bred for the purpose of pleasure enhancement. A link to a Ved could make a simple kiss feel like an adventure into ecstasy. Then that memory could be augmented and you could experience it over and over, in greater intensity each time.

Like trefla, Eden said. Only a thousand times worse.

It drove people to the brink of insanity. To suicide. And then a Ved, released from its human host, would be frantic to find a new one. Its quest for pleasure changed to a quest for fear and pain, one where they no longer simply merged with a host’s mind but drew the host into this dimension with them, thereby opening a greater range of emotional experiences. Though our scientists said they couldn’t, the Ved learned, evolved. Thousands of Nasyry died in our attempt to banish them into the dimension you call the void—an empty place where, feeding on one another, they’d die. But they didn’t. Because of Psy-Serv, they’re able to move in and out of the void. And control my sister. He knew from her aura that Bianca was beyond his help. The Ved liked oullums. Though their lack of telepathic talents made them more difficult to bond with initially, oullums made stronger hosts because they had no ability to detect and possibly defend against a Ved. That’s why the Ved encouraged the Intergalactic Psychic Concordance and Protection Statutes and the harnessing of telepaths. No one to warn the oullums they were coming.

They’d learned from their mistakes with the Nasyry.

Reilly stirred, stretching his back legs. His tail twitched. Friend?

JaceFriend?

Tank, sitting in Eden’s lap, shook himself, then licked a spot of fur on his side. Friend? Food?

Jace felt Eden smile, even through her fear and heartache. Time, he told her. Mara, our keeper, grows restless as we rest.

But I’m not ready! The operation is too risky. Eden’s panic flowed into Jace.

He sent back warmth, a mental embrace. And a plan. There’s no way we can neutralize every Ved in this place. But with the furzels healed, maybe we can use them to open a single path out.

And how, Eden asked, are we going to get past Mara, the guards?

You pretend to put me under. I can put myself into a deep enough trance to muddle the med-sensors. Mara and her assistant will be focused on the operation and, with me unconscious, won’t consider us a physical threat. Then you say there’s a problem, something to bring Nando leaning over me. I’ll grab him. You handle Mara. I’m guessing they’ll be armed. We take their weapons and make a run for it, using the furzels to clear the way.

Jace. Eden’s tone was firm. So many things could go wrong. Not the least being I’m no expert in hand-to-hand combat.

If we can get to my old ship, we’ll make it. All you have to do is knock Mara down. There must be some piece of medical equipment in here you can use. He felt her confidence waver. I can take Nando out easily. And I’ll be there to help you. You can do it, Eden. You have to. He touched her in a ritual blessing: forehead, cheek, chin, and then brought her and the furzels out of Novalis. It’s our only chance.

THE WINDBLADE

Sass woke, her internal alarm opening her eyes at the forty-five-minute mark. A small smile touched her lips and, stretching, she turned toward him. He wasn’t there. She levered up on her elbow, shot a quick glance around Angel’s cabin. The sanifac door was open. No light from within, no sound of water splashing in the sink.

“Hey,” she said softly to the quiet room. “Kel-Paten?” No answer. Damn. She sat up fully. Her clothes were on the floor. His weren’t. Had she dreamed making love to him? Or had Bad Thing struck again, transporting her somewhere, some when else?

She threw off the blanket, then grabbed for her clothes. “Kel-Paten?” Her voice was stronger. But not strong enough to drown out the damning thoughts racing through her head or the small ache growing around her heart. She’d been too aggressive; some men didn’t like that. He needed to make the first move and she’d taken away that prerogative. She scared him off.

Kel-Paten? Scared? another part of her mind argued.

Yeah, well. She had no idea he was a virgin. She would have done things differently. Been... what? Gentler? She gave a soft snort at her own ruminations as she sealed her shirt and tucked it into her pants. There was a comm panel on the wall by the door to the corridor. She headed for it, keyed it to intraship. “Captain’s on duty. Status.” There was a moment of silence, then: “Twenty-six minutes forty-one seconds to the jumpgate. All systems green.”

He was alive. He was in the cockpit. More than that she couldn’t tell from his voice. Damned emo-inhibitors. And damn her own stupidity for not reading the signals of his inexperience. No doubt he’d envisioned making love to the well-bred, top-of-her-class Tasha Sebastian. He ended up with Lady Sass, raft rat and fugitive.

So much for dreams. His and hers.

She missed Tank. If nothing else, she’d get her fidget back on HV-1.

She palmed open the cabin door and headed for the bridge.

The hatchway was open. He swiveled in the pilot’s seat when she was halfway down the corridor, and even at this distance she saw his eyes were luminous. Powered up. Habit or precaution?

“Trouble?” she asked, stepping through the hatchway.

He frowned for a moment. “You could have stayed in bed longer.”

“So could you,” she said pointedly, because if he thought making love to her was a mistake, she wanted to hear it now.

“I don’t need as much rest—”

“I’m not talking about sleeping.”

He stared at her. She rested one hand on the back of the copilot’s chair, swiveling it around, but didn’t sit.

“You wanted me there when you woke up?”

She nodded slowly. “Uh-huh.”

“May I take you up on that offer at a later date?” He looked so sincerely chastised that she had to laugh, the ache fading from around her heart. The trock-brained idiot did care about her, about Lady Sass. “You damned well better,” she told him as she sat.

“Sass, I’m sorry,” he said as she turned toward the console. “I didn’t want to bother you. You needed the sleep.”

Sass. More and more, he called her that. She glanced at him. “I needed you,” she said softly, and was rewarded by his small, crooked smile of surprise.

“You damned well better,” he said, echoing her retort.

“Aye, sir. Now tell me why being here was preferable to being in bed with me. Trouble?”

“Preventive measures.” He clasped her hand briefly, then tapped at the console’s monitors, bringing up data. His gloves were off, and she wondered if he’d found a way to spike in. “I’ve been thinking about those fighters that chased us into the jumpgate at Panperra. I’m hoping they came from here.”

“From the void? So you’re thinking there is some charted way in and out, that this isn’t a parallel universe?”

“It can’t be parallel or our being here would violate the law of physics,” Kel-Paten said.

“But that wasn’t Zanorian or Angel, not as I know them. What else—”

“A dimension of its own, based on what data I’ve been able to collect.

How much is tailored to the observer and how much is externally controlled, I’m not sure. But if those fighters can move in and out, so can we.”

“And if they can’t?” Sass asked, with a strong feeling she wasn’t going to like his answer.

“Then we can’t use this ship, or anything created in here, to get home. It would cease to exist once we crossed through the gate. We’d die.” 31

“But there are options,” Kel-Paten told her, as Sass’s stomach executed a few flip-flops. She did not want to spend the rest of her life in the void being emotionally tortured by blue glowing psi-creatures. Dealing with her feelings for the admiral was tough enough without adding Bad Thing’s influence into the mix.

“Assuming this is another dimension,” Kel-Paten continued.

“Can’t you tell?”

“I’ve narrowed it down to two hypotheses.”

She knew that. But she didn’t realize they might be conflicting and said so.

“We’ve been here a relatively short period of time, with malfunctioning equipment and no correlative database to work with. What’s here,” and he tapped the Blade’s console, “is the first functional system I’ve had at my disposal. But I don’t know if it’s reliable.”

“The data could be part of the illusion.” Garbage in, garbage out.

“Exactly.”

“There must be some way to differentiate—” A question surfaced. “How do you know I’m real?”

He glanced down for a moment, and she had a feeling her question wasn’t one he wanted asked. “I imprinted your biosignature years ago,” he said when he looked back at her.

“Imprinted?”

“Dr. Fynn reads auras. I read biosignatures.”

“Like a datalyzer?”

He gave a short, curt nod.

His ’cybe functions again. Something he wasn’t comfortable with around her. “That’s why you’ve stayed powered up?” The glow in his eyes made sense now.

“If it bothers you—”

“Hell, no!” She was relieved there was at least one thread of sanity in all this lunacy. “So I’m me. How do I know you’re you?”

“Objectively, you don’t.”

So much for sanity. She pinned him with a hard gaze. “I’m overjoyed to hear that.” She thought for a moment. “Did Zanorian’s biosignature match?”

“His isn’t one I have on fi—memorized. And I don’t have the Vax’s databases to work with. But his appearance was different, and you noted there were associational inaccuracies. That’s one of the reasons I question if this is a parallel universe.”

“A parallel universe doesn’t preclude variations of the original.” His eyes narrowed slightly, but a small smile played over his mouth. “I do love the fact you punch holes in every hypothesis I come up with. But nothing so far confirms the parallel hypothesis. I do need to determine if we have to find another means of transportation. If the Galaxus was in better shape, we could use her, since we brought her into this dimension with us. But she’s not, and I don’t know what would happen if we repaired her with components created here.”

She did not want to die in jump. Or, worse, be stranded in stasis, the ship in a kind of hyperspace paralysis. Given that, she’d opt for the void.

At least the scenery was better. And she was sure she could find a bar.

Unless...

“The Mystic Traveler, ” she said carefully, because her mind was just now grasping the idea, “might have come from our existence. Maybe Andgarran didn’t disappear after he stole the ship—”

“He stole it?”

She shot him a narrow-eyed look of disbelief. “I bet Serafino told you he sold it, right?” She laughed. “Andgarran stole it, embarrassing the hell out of ’Fino, which is why we all thought he took off. But maybe he didn’t.

Maybe he was caught in the same kind of jump we were. And ended up here.”

“Or else this place created the ship out of Serafino’s memories.”

“Except that getting the Traveler back wouldn’t be a negative memory.

And so far that’s all I’ve seen here—Bad Things creating bad things.”

“But we can’t be sure.”

She shook her head. “Serafino would know. Just as I can tell you that this ship,” and she ran her hand over the edge of the console, “isn’t the real Windblade. And I can’t tell you why, other than I’ve been in the real one and this isn’t it.” Like Zanorian and Angel.

Kel-Paten leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers together. “That would mean abandoning this ship, hijacking the Traveler, locating Fynn, Serafino, and the furzels, locking them in a transbeam, and getting everyone on board, off planet, and through the jumpgate. Without anyone at the outpost taking retaliatory action. And without any more enemy fighters waiting to blow us out of the space lanes when we arrive.” Hell of a list. And a hundred things that could go wrong. A hundred ways to die. “Piece o’ cake. Anything else?”

“Yes.” The perimeter warning chimed. He turned to it, then slanted her a quick glance. “Don’t forget you still need me when we get home.” The Blade flowed out the jumpgate, a flawless machine of speed and stealth, weapons hot, scanner array parsing the starfield for anything that could remotely be considered a threat. Which encompassed, as far as Sass was concerned, everything. It had been more than three hours since their last Bad Thing-induced episode. They were not only overdue but she had a strong suspicion the void was collecting interest on it. She wanted to be long gone when it presented the invoice.

“Nice to know no one’s moved the planet while we were away,” she said, seeing HV-1’s data on the nav comp.

“Let’s confirm the Galaxus and the outpost before we celebrate.” An hour before they could do that. Another twenty minutes before they made orbit. The Blade had considerably more speed than the damaged shuttle and, thanks to Kel-Paten, had exited the gate on the proper axis.

Sass brought the sublights to max, then coaxed them a bit more. It had been only a few hours since they were dumped on the raft; the outpost was still in the dark of night. But the worry she’d held in abeyance now rushed to the forefront of her mind. Eden. Tank and Reilly. And ’Fino, that damned Nasyry pirate.

A lot could happen in a few hours. A lot had happened already.

Kel-Paten was running his simulations, data streaming down one screen, charts and schematics revolving on another. Tension hung in the air like a storm cloud riding the horizon. She thought of Lethant again.

The storms there were fierce, violent.

No. She pushed the thought away. Don’t draw it to you. Don’t give the void anything to work with. Even though Kel-Paten had confirmed there were no Bad Things slithering through the corners of the ship, Sass was nervous. She didn’t know how big one would have to be to grab them, sending them reeling again. A little one could be tucked inside a conduit on board.

She focused on HV-1’s data, now coming in more detail. Fifteen minutes later she whooped in joy. “Got her!” The Galaxus was a mere pinprick of data at this distance but recognizable. Kel-Paten confirmed her finding with a nod.

But they were too far for the Blade to scan for biosignatures at this distance. The Strafer-class ship wasn’t the Vax.

Minutes later they confirmed the outpost and then, surprisingly or perhaps not so, a few other scattered small settlements, no apparent threat. Illusions? Reality?

“We’re in a void-based ship,” Kel-Paten grumbled, double-checking all data. Sass understood: garbage in, garbage out.

But they had nothing else to go on.

They crossed out of geosynchronous orbit and into the low planetary orbit zone. Then the Blade’s scanner erupted with warnings. Weapons came online automatically. Heart pounding, Sass brought the data to her console with brisk precision.

“Bogies, six—”

“Eight,” Kel-Paten corrected. “Closing fast, port and starboard.”

“Got ’em. Shields at max.”

“Initiating evasive programs two and six. If I don’t like them, I’m going manual.”

“Agreed,” Sass said tersely as the first barrage of laser fire peppered the shields. “Shields holding.”

“Returning fire. Launching seeker.” Kel-Paten released the first of three long-range tracking torpedoes the ship carried. “Two minutes to impact.”

“Cutting it a little close, aren’t we?” A seeker could easily destroy the attacking and defending ship if it wasn’t detonated at a safe distance.

“Right at perimeter of the danger zone, not to worry. We’ll just get some chaff.”

Hell. And Eden thought Sass took crazy risks.

“We need to let our friends know we’re serious,” he added.

“Our friends look familiar,” Sass said as she shifted shield calibration to manual and keyed in a pattern.

“Affirmative. Same hull configuration as those at Panperra.” She played with the pattern again, then let the computer take over. Just a little something to cause a mullytrock in the attackers’ targeting systems.

The fighter targeted by the seeker veered violently. The missile corrected and closed the distance.

“Ten seconds to impact,” Kel-Paten said. “My compliments to Zanorian.

His ship handles well.”

“Actually, he’d be flattered as hell—”

“Impact. One down.”

“—to hear that,” she finished, bracing for the onslaught of ship fragments that would pepper the Blade’s shields for the next few moments. That was close.

“Noted. But he’s not getting you back. Launching seeker two.” The target was much farther away this time. “Noted,” she answered, and caught him quirking an eyebrow at her. She grinned in spite of the tension. The Blade shuddered slightly, the fragments acting as infinitesimal missiles stressing the shields. “Reworking shields.” She tapped them over to manual again, keyed in another series of illogical patterns.

“Three minutes to impact.”

“We only have one more of those,” she warned. She was in her element, working a ship in the heat of battle, coaxing more out of the systems, countering the attackers’ moves. But she was also practical and scared.

Only a fool would feel otherwise.

“Noted. I want to use them now because we can’t once we hit heavy air.” Kel-Paten angled the ship toward HV-1 again, thrusters firing, the fighters following. For a moment she tensed. His heavy-air, lower-atmosphere experience was limited. Why would he... ? “I take it I’m flying once we hit blue sky?”

“You know this ship, Lady Sass. I know your profile. That, too, is a compliment,” he added. Then a few minutes later: “Impact. Two down.” He launched the third seeker, and four minutes after that it was five against one. Not great odds, Sass knew, but the Blade was designed for combat and, unlike the Galaxus, handled heavy air with skill. There would be a few risky moments when she switched to the heavy-air engines. But the fighters—if they pursued—would have the same problem. She sucked in a breath, prepped her console for the change from copilot and pilot.

They were descending more rapidly now. Shield structure would have to change too, to compensate for the superheating upon entry.

Sweat beaded on her brow, as if she could already feel the increase in temperature. It had been years since she’d taken a Strafer dirtside in a wild dive. Landing the Galaxus with Serafino was a joyride compared to this.

“Three minutes to changeover,” she told Kel-Paten, whose aggressive actions with the ship’s lasers had caused one more attacker to wheel off.

They were down to four. But shields were down to seventy-five percent. A portside scanner flickered out, creating a large blind spot. Not good.

“We’ll be coming in nightside. I need my eyes.”

“On it,” Kel-Paten said. “Compensating.” He worked diligently at his console, then turned abruptly to a smaller engineering station on his left.

Sass glanced at weapons, now on autodefense.

“Best I can do right now.” Kel-Paten turned back to the main console as the port scanner monitor blinked on again. But there were gaps in the datastream.

“I can work with it,” Sass told him. “One minute thirty seconds to changeover.”

“Shifting command console to manual,” he said over the sound of the starboard lasers firing. “Bogies are pulling back.”

“Praise the gods and pass the peanut butter. Blue sky boundary forty-five seconds.” She focused on the dataflow as the sublights segued over to the heavy airs, the ship shuddering. The checklist flowed through her mind and she automatically adjusted the power grid and fuel mixture.

“Fifteen seconds to primary wing extension.”

“Thrusters—”

“Hold off, flyboy. We’re coming in hotter than I like.” But the bogies gave them no choice. They still followed, though at a greater distance. She prayed they’d pull off. She had other problems now.

“On your mark.”

“Extending wings, twenty percent.” The Blade bucked, slipping, a feed-valve rupture alarm blaring. Damn! This was not the way you took a Strafer dirtside. Zanorian would kick her ass all over Kesh Valirr if he saw what she was doing to his ship.

“Must be jelly... ” Kel-Paten intoned, and in spite of her growing case of nerves, she laughed.

“’Cause jam doesn’t shake like this. Okay, flyboy. Give me a bit of back burn. Heavy airs”—and a long vibration rattled through the ship—“online.

It’s blue-sky time.”

And then she was hand-flying the ship, putting her through her S-curves to bleed off speed, watching hull temperature as she did so. The shields held, but just barely. The bogies behind them stopped firing.

Maybe they knew shield failure at this point would do the job for them.

Data came in from the port scanners intermittently. Whatever fix Kel-Paten had applied was failing. He tried another patch, but this wasn’t the Vax. He couldn’t spike in and become part of the system.

Then shield strength dropped another ten percent, and the port scanner died.

He clicked off his straps. “I can work through a datalink below—”

“Don’t,” she told him, teeth clenched, “even think about it.”

“Damn it, Sebastian—”

“Damn you, Kel-Paten! No.”

“And how do you intend to find the outpost, the landing strip?”

“The old-fashioned way. Looking out the forward viewport.” She shot him a quick, narrow-eyed glance. “I’ve done it before.”

“At night?”

“That’s where you come in.”

He stared at her for a moment, then sat and raked his straps back across his chest. And not happily.

“If we crash,” she told him, “I’ll buy you a beer in hell. Now, where are those bogies?”

“They pulled off three minutes ago. They’re not heavy-air capable. That gives me time to go belowdecks and—”

“No. It’s a simple word. Learn it. They probably have skimmers—Interceptors—heading for us from dirtside. I need you here.” Another S-curve, the last as the Strafer was starting to fly now, its wings out at fifty percent. She began a controlled descent as stars winked around her in the night sky.

Kel-Paten went back to working his console, silently, patching damaged systems. Sass flew the Blade through the blackness, grateful for a cloudless night and two bright moons, grateful he wasn’t going to try to kill himself again to save her.

Wind buffeted the ship, a small bit of air turbulence. She reduced the shields; they were creating unneeded drag. If Interceptors showed up, the shields would come up automatically again. As much as they could. They were below fifty percent now. And all they had to fight back with were lasers, creativity, and luck.

Then she had to land this thing, get to the Traveler—

Or maybe they didn’t have to land this thing at all. There was a shortcut. And it would make one mullytrock of a diversion. “Branden,” she said, and he looked over at her with a questioning glance. “Did the transbeam generators take any damage?”

“None.”

“I think I like your idea of crashing this ship.” One dark eyebrow rose. She waited. Then he nodded. She knew he would catch on, once she gave him the two major components.

“It’ll be a tight transfer,” he cautioned. “This isn’t a long-range unit. But I have the coordinates for the Traveler. It’ll take me only a few seconds to program them—”

The remaining working scanner blared in alarm. Sass flashed a glance at her console, adrenaline spiking. Interceptors, three of them. Coming in hot, firing.

“Make it quick,” she told him as he swore out loud. Laser fire hit their shields, breaking through at Port Bulkhead 46 aft. She sealed the compartment with quick, tense moves. “We’re not going to have much time.”

THE OUTPOST

He looks so damned vulnerable. In her nervousness over their impending escape plans, Doc Eden Fynn forgot that Jace Serafino was not unconscious on the surgery table, even though his damned kissable mouth was slack and his damned twinkling eyes were closed.

Appearances are deceiving, he whispered in her mind, his tone playful and seductive.

Stop it! she told him, flashing an image of a rectal thermometer. Next to her, Mara finished laying out the instruments, including three different levels of sonic scalpels and two medical lasers. Mara and Nando seemed far more concerned with the instruments that would touch the implant than with Jace’s condition. They barely checked his life signs on the diag panel.

Both wore, as Jace surmised, small but deadly laser pistols clipped to their belts. Cure ’Em then Kill ’Em, at your service, she thought with disgust as she ran her medicorder over Jace’s head and chest. She took a deep breath. Time to start the show. Gods, Sass was so much better at this than she was. But Sass wasn’t here.

“Hmm.” She made that worried-medical-doctor sigh. Mara was a med-tech. She knew what it meant.

But Mara, it seemed, wasn’t interested in anything the medicorder said about Jace.

“Hmm,” Eden said louder, and tapped at the medicorder. “I seem to have a possible equipment malfunction.” She glanced from Mara to Nando. “Do you have another medicorder handy?” At Mara’s nod, Nando unclipped one from his belt and handed it to Eden.

“Thanks.” She flipped it on and stared at it a moment, foot tapping.

“Hmm,” she said again.

“Doctor Fynn.” Mara was clearly not pleased. “Delaying the procedure—”

“Assures the implant won’t be damaged,” Eden cut in brusquely. Her anger wasn’t feigned. “I thought I was getting an incorrect reading. I’m not. See for yourself.” She thrust the medicorder’s screen almost to Mara’s nose.

The woman stepped back, then frowned. “Abnormal brain waves around the harness. He didn’t have that earlier. We ran full scans on him.”

“He has it now.” She turned and shoved the medicorder toward Nando, who stood on the other side of the surgery bed. “Maybe you can explain it.”

Nando had to lean over Jace to see the screen. Which is exactly what Jace wanted him to do. Now, he told Eden.

He lunged upward. Eden swung the medicorder and smashed it against the side of Mara’s face. The woman stumbled backward, one arm coming up to shield her face, the other reaching for her pistol.

Eden struck again with the medicorder, grabbed the woman’s arm, and pushed her backward, giving the med-tech no room to raise her weapon.

But Mara was strong. She kicked out, catching Eden in the shin. Pain shot up her leg as grunts and thuds sounded behind her. She momentarily lost her balance. Mara shoved her back toward the bed.

Eden tried for another blow with the medicorder, but Mara was quicker this time and, blood streaming from her nose, caught Eden’s arm as it swung inches from her face.

“Nando!” Mara bellowed, locking Eden’s wrist in a paralyzing grip.

A screeching yowl filled the room. Reilly, launching himself from his hiding place on a supply shelf, latched on to Mara’s thigh, claws slicing through her uniform.

She jerked sideways but didn’t let go of Eden’s arm.

Laser fire sliced the air. Eden wrenched around, dragging Mara with her, her arm numb, her leg spasming. Bianca stood in the doorway.

“Stop this now!” She held a pistol in both hands, switching her target from Eden to Jace, now pulling himself off the floor. Two guards were behind her, rifles at the ready.

Fuck. Jace’s desolation filled Eden’s senses as his voice sounded harsh in her mind.

“Against the wall, both of you, hands out!” Bianca ordered.

Eden, sweetling, I’m sorry.

It’s okay. Her voice trembled, tears pricking at the back of her eyes. We had to try. She glanced surreptitiously around as she limped toward the back wall. Reilly and Tank were nowhere to be seen. Go Blink, she told them. Be safe. Please, go Blink.

Reilly help! came back the small voice.

No! She leaned wearily against the wall and stared at Bianca. Be safe.

Mommy loves you. Mommy will always love you. Now go Blink!

I’ll always love you, Jace told her softly.

Bianca moved swiftly into the room, guards flanking her. Mara, her face still smeared with blood, had her pistol out and aimed it at Eden.

“Kill me,” Eden said, “and you’ll never get the codes for the implant.”

“I don’t have to kill you,” Bianca replied. She jerked her chin at Nando, whose left eye was battered shut. “Hand me a scalpel. I’m going to do a little surgery on my brother. Not enough to kill him, Doctor,” she told Eden, “but enough to make him wish he was dead. Let’s see how long you can listen to him scream.”

THE WINDBLADE

“Ten thousand feet and descending,” Sass called out over the din as she seesawed the Blade through the night sky in a final attempt to avoid the Interceptor’s lasers. They’d taken six more direct hits aft. Compartments 52 and 47 were blown. Shield-failure alarms blared, engine-temperature alarms wailed, incoming-craft-advisory alarms trilled. At least the cockpit-pressure alarms ceased screaming in her ears.

Small reassurance, that.

“Almost there,” Kel-Paten called back. They needed a secure lock on the Traveler in order to transport to the ship, or else they would shortly share a beer in hell. Starboard laser banks were depleted. The weapons comp targeted the Interceptors, returning fire with the port banks, but wouldn’t last much longer.

Zanorian would be really, really pissed if he saw the holes in his beloved ship right now.

A console behind her sparked. Cockpit lights—already on emergency greens—flickered ominously. “Shit.”

“Got. A. Lock.” Kel-Paten spaced his words in between his frantic actions on his console, his hands moving rapidly from one screen to another. He’d removed his safety straps, hooking one leg around the base of his chair to keep from being thrown to the cockpit floor. “Got it!”

“Go!” Sass shouted hoarsely. “Program a four-minute lag. I’ll be right behind you.”

He grabbed her shoulder. “You go. I’ll follow.”

“You need to be first on scene. We’ve been over this.” He was far better equipped than she was to take out any guards on board and get the ship online. “Damn you, go!”

“Sass—”

She spared ten seconds to glance at him. The desolate look in his eyes tore at her. “I love you, Branden. Remember that, no matter what. I love you. Now go! That’s an order.”

He kissed her quickly, not much more than a glancing brush of lips, his fingers fumbling in his shirt pocket. His admiral’s insignia—five stars cresting a slash of lightning, set in gold and diamonds. The Blade dipped as he pinned it to her shirt. “Keep this part of me with you forever.” His voice broke. “I love you, Sass.” She leveled the wings as he stepped away.

She bit her lip to keep from crying and, hands trembling on the console keypads, listened to the muted whine of a transbeam kicking on behind her.

Five thousand feet. Four thousand. She had to make sure the Blade—so heavily damaged it strained her ability to control it—didn’t take out the outpost or, worse, the Traveler. She had to hold her on course to a crash scene just south. Enough to pull the guards from the buildings. Enough that no one would be watching the Traveler. Enough to give them time to find Jace, Eden, and the furzels and get off planet.

They’d be pursued. They expected that. But they’d have a fresh ship and full laser banks.

She hoped. She prayed. Or else it was all for nothing.

Three thousand feet, flying in the dark with no instruments. Not even Kel-Paten’s night sight to guide her. Flying by feel, by gut instinct.

Kel-Paten would be on the Traveler by now, taking care of any guards, powering up ship’s systems. She thought of that. Not how she had no idea how she was going to release the controls two and a half minutes from now and make it to the back of the cabin in time. The Interceptors behind her still raked the ship with laser fire.

A red light glared bright on the console, a new alarm adding its funereal dirge to the din.

The transbeam generator had died.

For a moment she sat frozen, staring at the information on the screen.

Then a cry—primal, angry, and harsh—rose in her throat. Wordless, pained, she let it out as she desperately shunted any remaining power to the unit. Engines, lights, guidance, weapons comps went black and died.

Life support, air recyclers went silent. The transbeam generator never came back on. She was trapped.

Twenty-eight hundred feet. Two thousand. In the bright moonlight Sass could see the faint outlines of the treetops below. It was past four minutes.

Branden was listening for a transbeam signal that would never chime.

But the crash, the crash he would hear.

Her fingers found the diamond insignia. “I love you,” she whispered, tears trailing down her face as the Interceptors attacked again. The Blade

’s starboard wing sheared off from enemy fire, rendering the controls useless. But she was clear of the outpost, clear of the Traveler. That was one of the last bits of data she’d seen before the console went dark.

Now it was only the moonlight and the stars and the oncoming treetops.

And a part of Branden with her, forever.

Captain Tasha Sebastian forcibly leaned back in her seat, ship shuddering and yawing beneath her, and rested her hands on the armrests. If she was going to die in the captain’s chair, she was damned sure she was going to look like a captain when she did so.

She brought the image of the blue-purple Bad Thing deliberately into her mind. “Fuck you and the equinnard you rode in on,” she told it.

MommyMommy! said a small voice in her mind as something warm and furry suddenly thudded into her lap. Go Blink!

32

THE MYSTIC TRAVELER

The roar of Interceptor engines overhead was almost deafening, even from inside Serafino’s ship.

It was minuscule compared to the pain lancing Kel-Paten’s heart. The four-minute mark had elapsed. He knew immediately that something was very wrong.

He worked with intense, methodical precision at the transbeam controls of the Traveler, his ’cybe functions at max, his emo-inhibitors on triple duty, every Psy-Serv-designed control program in his system activated. Yet his hands shook as he stood as he keyed search after search.

He couldn’t get a lock on Sass. There was too much interference from the Interceptors and the wild spikes from the Blade’s failing systems.

With each passing second, his chest tightened unbearably, but he didn’t stop trying. Three times he glimpsed her biosignature, made a grab for her, and lost it. At six minutes forty-one seconds, when the scanners showed the Blade’s battered outline, starboard wing gone, the ship careening wildly out of control, he had to look away. Tremors racked his body.

Not like this. Gods, please. Pull up. Fly!

He altered parameters again, rekeyed the search. At eight minutes twenty-seven seconds the ground under the Traveler shuddered violently, sending vibrations into his boots. The sound of the explosion followed.

His legs buckled. He locked his knees, locked his arms, pushing heavily against the transbeam console. His stomach heaved. He couldn’t stop trembling.

A siren wailed in the distance. He turned to stare out the viewport, and his night vision, now blurred by tears, showed square land vehicles racing down the tarmac toward the plume of smoke, the tips of orange flames licking into the dark sky.

He wanted to cover his face with his hands. But he knew if he let go of the console he’d collapse.

“Branden!”

He went rigid for a second, then spun to his right so quickly he lost his balance. He grabbed the back of the copilot’s chair, stumbling because there was the sound of hurried footsteps in the short corridor that led to the bridge and a voice, her voice, even though there was no way, she couldn’t possibly be—

“Tasha!” He gasped her name and surged forward, closing the distance between himself and the woman coming toward him, a black and white fidget under one arm, two backpacks looped over the other, a twinkling insignia on her shirt.

He yanked her against him, Tank squirming between them then plopping to the floor along with the backpacks.

Oof! BrandenFriend!

“Tasha!” He buried his face in her hair, felt her arms wrap tightly around him. “Gods, Tasha.” His voice wasn’t much more than a whisper, and sobs—his and hers—punctuated the words.

He framed her wet face in his hands and kissed her hard, tasting her tears, life flowing back into him.

“The transbeam failed,” she said against his mouth, but he kissed her again, not letting her talk. They could talk about what had happened later.

Tomorrow. Next month. Next year.

“We don’t,” she managed, turning her face, but his mouth followed, covering hers again. “Have time,” she added, breaking that kiss too.

“I know. I know,” he breathed into her ear, but he couldn’t let go.

She angled back and ran her fingers down his wet face. “It’s okay, flyboy,” she said softly.

He could only nod, his throat closing.

“Jace and Eden,” she said. “Reilly can’t Blink both of them here. Here’s Eden’s biosignature.” She grabbed her datalyzer from her belt. “Get her via transbeam. Reilly will bring Jace.”

Go Blink! JaceFriend go Blink!

“Now,” she said, shoving him toward the rear console.

He moved, reading Fynn’s numerical code from the handheld. He keyed it into the transbeam access module, hit wide scan, locked on to her with no trouble.

“Got her!” he said over the low whine of a transfer in progress.

“How in hell?”

He heard Serafino’s surprised exclamation, shot a quick glance over his shoulder, and for a split second didn’t recognize the hairless man, shirt torn, blood running down his left arm. Sass grabbed Serafino as he wobbled dangerously. “Sit, ’Fino, here. You look like hell.”

“Jace?” Eden Fynn was a blur off the transbeam platform, shoving past Kel-Paten, almost tripping over Reilly, who darted out of her path with a yowl.

“Let’s go!” Sass waved Kel-Paten forward with a jerk of her hand. “Get those engines hot. I’ve got weapons, nav. Eden, secure ’Fino and the furzels.”

“Got them all,” Eden replied, but her voice shook.

Kel-Paten slid into the pilot’s seat as Sass, in the copilot’s, raked the straps over her chest. He permitted himself one long glimpse of her—hair ruffled, face smudgy, furzel fur streaking the front of her black jacket, five diamond stars glistening. She was alive.

“Guess we don’t give traffic control a courtesy warning,” he intoned.

She shot him a sly glance, then looked over her shoulder at Fynn and Serafino. “Brace for emergency takeoff. This is not going to be pleasant.” Pleasant? No. It was going to be godsdamned wonderful.

Lady Sass was alive.

* * *

A pair of Interceptors was on their tail within minutes, but those few minutes were enough to create a slim margin of safety. Plus the Interceptors were heavy-air fighters, and the Traveler was heading far out of their range and at a speed they couldn’t match.

Serafino’s old ship was Triad-built. Kel-Paten recreated a spike port easily in the pilot’s armrest, in spite of being flattened into his seat by the pull of gravity. That made piloting—though Sass handled that at the moment—navigation and defense more a thought process and less a physical one.

The Interceptors swung away and regrouped for another attack, but he and the weapons comp were on them. Aft shields took the worst of the hits, dropped down to seventy percent at one point, but between his fixes and Sass’s wild revisions, they held.

Sass. He couldn’t stop sneaking glances at her. Losing her had been unbearable. Finding her was indescribable.

Loooove Mommy, trilled a small voice in his mind.

For a moment, Kel-Paten tensed and was about to shoot a less-than-kind comment back at Serafino. Except Serafino wasn’t on the bridge—he was in the ship’s small sick bay with Fynn. And that wasn’t Serafino’s voice.

They cleared the planet’s lower atmosphere. Artificial gravity kicked on.

Sass sighed and wiggled a bit, adjusting her straps. “One problem gone, but more to come, no doubt.”

The Interceptors had pulled off. But the deep-space fightercraft were very likely out there, waiting.

Love BrandenFriend, the voice cooed.

Branden friend?

“Branden friend?” he repeated aloud.

“What?” Sass frowned.

Tank jumped into his lap and sat. BrandenFriend!

Oh, sweet gods. “I think your fidget is talking to me,” he said slowly, automatically adjusting shields to counter deep-space effects. “I’m hearing... this is crazy.” He shook his head.

Sass chuckled. “You can hear Tank?”

Mommy! BrandenFriend! Safe. Reilly hunt. Tank hunt. Safe.

“He said—”

“I heard him that time.” She reached over and ruffled the fidget’s ears.

“Safe? Did you check for Bad Thing here on the ship?” Look. Hunt. Small Bad Thing. Very small. Dying now. I Blinked it. I did! I did! Want to see?

“You get that?” she asked him.

The fidget’s nonsensical chatter could easily make his head spin. “He blinked at a bad thing.”

“The furzels found a small psi-creature on board and neutralized it.

They call it Blinking. I tried to explain this before.” She had. It made no sense then. It made even less now.

“Don’t try to analyze it, Kel-Paten. Just listen and accept. It gets easier the more you talk to him.”

He wasn’t sure he wanted to talk to a fidget. “Why am I able to hear him?”

She shrugged. “Ask Serafino, not me. But first we need to ask him if this is the real Traveler. ” She tapped a few commands into her console.

“Approaching geosynch. You have the con.”

He accepted full control of the ship with a coded thought.

Want to see? Want to see? Tank pawed Kel-Paten’s arm.

“BrandenFriend and I can’t leave the bridge right now, sweet baby,” Sass said. “There might be bad ships out there. As soon as we’re in jump, we will.” She nodded at Kel-Paten. “Pet his head and tell him he did a good job.”

“What?”

She mimicked a stroking motion with her hand. “Pet him. Say, ‘Good furzel.’”

“Sass—” He paused, deliberately.

“Branden.” She pursed her lips, eyes narrowed. Definitely sassy. “Do it.” He touched Tank’s soft head, rubbing the place between his ears. “Good furzel.”

Tank leaned against his hand and purred. BrandenFriend.

A warning chime pinged. “Right on time,” Sass intoned. “Five unfriendly friends. Tank, go to sick bay. Go to Eden and Reilly. Be safe.” O-kay. Safe. Go Blink!

The fidget vanished. Kel-Paten started slightly. Sass had evidently caught his uncharacteristic flinch and grinned. Sweet gods, how he loved her smile. “Time to get to work,” he told her. “Hour twenty to the gate.”

“We’ll make it.”

He took a moment to squeeze her hand. Then it was coded thought and physical action.

“Seeker launched,” he said. The Traveler—a larger ship than the Blade

—carried four. A good defense against their unfriendly friends, who, because of their small size, were appearently armed only with lasers.

Their small size gave them speed and agility, though.

Sass played with the shields. “Three bogies coming in hard portside—”

“Got ’em.” His response was faster than weapons comp’s, and he raked the pair of attackers with laser fire—not seekers, because the ships were now too close. The pair quickly split apart but not quickly enough; debris trailed behind one of them as it slowed, tumbling. Two down. Three to go.

“Got problems with shields, starboard aft,” Sass told him. “Can you tweak it?”

“Take the con.” He shifted command functions to her console. “I’ll work weapons and see what I can do.”

Starboard shields did have a problem. His first patch took, then failed.

He worked a more detailed one, taking longer than he liked because he had to split his attention between the repair and the attacking fighters.

Sublights were again beyond max capabilities, and the Traveler dipped and wove as it streaked for the gate. An hour to go.

He launched another seeker at a fighter that had pulled back, then caught Sass’s concerned frown.

“Have two more,” he reminded her. “And, yes, I’m worried what will greet us on the other side too.” He needed something to work with until the Triad Fleet showed up to defend one of their own. Of that he had no doubt.

“Those are Psy-Serv ships,” she said.

He nodded as he watched the seeker gain on its target—this one more wily than the others. It might well evade the seeker, but it would also be far off their tail by the time it did so. “These psi-creatures must be some kind of mutant experiment of theirs.”

“They’re not. They’re mine,” said Serafino’s voice from behind them.

Kel-Paten and Sass turned almost in unison. Serafino, leaning on Fynn, walked slowly through the bridge hatchway. Tank and Reilly trailed behind.

“Yours?” Sass asked before Kel-Paten could.

“Not personally. They’re Nasyry.” He eased down into the seat at navigation behind Sass and ran a hand self-consciously over his shaved head. “Thought you might need my help, Kel-Paten.” There was something different about the man, and it wasn’t just his appearance.

“You need to be in sick bay.” Fynn took the chair next to Serafino but left one hand on his arm.

“We’ll nap in jump, sweetling.” He turned back to Kel-Paten. “The Ved’eskhar are a Nasyry mistake.”

It took a moment for Kel-Paten to recognize the name. Ved’eskhar.

Vampirelike energy beings. He’d found only a few odd, chilling references in Psy-Serv files over the years but nothing definitive.

“The furzels killed the one that had been left on this ship to guard it,” Serafino was saying. “They’re the Veds only known natural predator.”

“What is Psy-Serv doing with them?” Kel-Paten asked.

“It’s not what Psy-Serv’s doing with them,” Serafino answered ominously. “It’s what they’re doing with Psy-Serv. The pet has become the master.”

The Traveler shimmied as the shields absorbed incoming fire from the two remaining fighters.

“On it,” Kel-Paten said, tripping weapons command codes in his mind, shoring up the starboard shield again.

“I know what’s wrong with the shields,” Serafino said, swiveling around to the nav-station controls. “I’ll handle them. You keep those bastards off our tail.”

Kel-Paten hesitated. Psy-Serv was telepaths. The Nasyry was a telepath.

He wasn’t sure if he trusted the man—

“Admiral Kel-Paten.” Serafino angled back around. “Eden can confirm I’m not the enemy. But I need to apologize first. My lack of respect toward you was wrong. I was fed a lot of misinformation,” and he tapped his head,

“by Psy-Serv.”

“The implant,” Kel-Paten said, a little stunned at the change in the man.

“That implant also recorded things, damning things that Psy-Serv can’t afford to have known, including what we’ve just been through. We don’t have time to go into it now,” Serafino added as the ship dipped again. “I’m asking you to trust me. I understand if you can’t.”

“Do it, Branden.” Sass nodded at him, but he was already transferring control of the shields to Serafino. Serafino wasn’t the only one who’d changed. The console in front of the Nasyry lit up, flowing with data.

“Thank you,” Serafino said. “And by the way, congratulations on your promotion, Sebastian.” Grinning, he pointed to the insignia on Sass’s shirt.

“Fix the shields, ’Fino,” she said. Blushing.

Kel-Paten caught her eye as Serafino swiveled to his console and she was turning toward hers. Her smile was soft, but it faded as she looked at the scanners. “Here they come again.”

“Got ’em,” he said, segueing into the weapons comp and targeting with all laser banks. “Forty minutes to the gate. Serafino, shields look good.

Keep it up. Dr. Fynn, please keep Captain Serafino alive. We need those shields. Sass, I’ll take the con back now.”

“Shunting command codes to you in five,” she said. “Four, three, two—she’s yours.”

“Affirmative.” He plucked the datalyzer from his belt and handed it to her. “Download that to the computers, send a copy to Serafino’s station. I need to know before we hit the gate what we’re dealing with. Is this your real ship, Serafino?”

The fighters launched another barrage. Kel-Paten countered, answering with a barrage of his own. He was saving the seekers, for now. Serafino’s information worried him.

“Real?” Serafino asked.

“Your Ved dropped us on a raft off Kesh,” Sass said before Kel-Paten could. “We met up with Zanorian and Angel. Without Suki. Drund was there.”

“But Drund died on—” Serafino stopped as if suddenly realizing he said too much.

“Lethant,” Sass filled in. “The admiral knows who I am, ’Fino.”

“That explains the promotion,” Serafino quipped.

“I’m glad you approve,” Kel-Paten said, but it was an easy exchange, as was Serafino’s answering grin. “It may be,” he continued, “we’re dealing with a dimension that can copy things from our minds. Like this ship. Or it could be something else altogether. I need to know before we hit that gate. Because I’m not sure if anything created here can cross it without dis-integrating.”

“This ship looks real, but let me run some checks,” Serafino said. “And, yes, that’s exactly what we’re dealing with: a dimension manipulated by the Ved.” Starboard shields flickered. Serafino was on the problem before Kel-Paten could mention it. “They operate within the observer’s paradox—that is, the observer influences the outcome. The Ved extract a memory that’s highly emotional, magnify that for the host body. What my people realized too late was that the symbiont wasn’t the only one having the experiences. And when the Ved hungered for more, it went seeking more experiences and more hosts. It learned to control both.” The pair of fighters had pulled back. Kel-Paten didn’t know if that was a good sign or an omen of a new tactic. He considered using a seeker, opted against it. He didn’t know what trouble they yet faced ahead.

Fynn left her seat and hovered over Serafino, medicorder beeping and clicking in her hand.

“Psy-Serv, running experiments to recreate the Nasyry dimension of Novalis, found the Ved about thirty years ago,” Serafino continued. “And now the Ved control Psy-Serv.”

“This ship, Serafino,” Kel-Paten intoned. “I’m not going to chance the gate—”

“No risk. She’s real, not an emulation. Looks like Rej paid for his sins,” Serafino added with a grin.

“Here they come again,” Sass warned.

Kel-Paten knew that. He watched them even as he talked to Serafino and, as always, kept Sass in his line of sight. He quickly brought up three evasive-action patterns, chose two, and then realized neither would work.

The fighters weren’t moving in to attack. They were moving in to suicide—and at an unbelievable rate of speed. They were already too close to use the seekers.

“Serafino! I need aft shields at max.” Even as Kel-Paten shouted the command, he rerouted the power grid. “They’re going to ram us.”

“Shit.” That was Sass. “Eden, grab the furzels, strap in. Hang on!”

“No,” Serafino shouted back. “I can take us into jump now!”

“There’s no gate here,” Sass argued before Kel-Paten could state the same concern.

“Nasyry don’t use them. And I’m nas garra. A pilot guide, remember?”

“Jace.” Fynn sounded angry and scared.

“I know what went wrong last time, Eden. Kel-Paten, give me the con.” Kel-Paten had no choice. Blind jump or death. “You damned well better know what went wrong last time,” he said, shunting the command codes to navigation. He subverted all the fail-safes and engaged the hyperspace engines. The Traveler shuddered violently, as if from the center outward.

“I never make the same mistake twice. Spike out, Kel-Paten,” Serafino advised. “Thirty seconds to jump.”

“Forty-five seconds to impact,” Kel-Paten answered back. He withdrew the feeds in his wrist and reached for Sass’s hand. But she was already reaching for his. The fighters were closing fast.

Alarms blared on the Traveler’s bridge, set off by the incoming fighters and the hyperspace engines being pushed beyond specs and capacity.

Kel-Paten tightened his grip on Sass’s hand and felt the first twinge of disorientation.

The Traveler jumped.

The starfield outside the bridge viewports disappeared, replaced by a blackness streaked with colors. The shuddering stopped, hyperspace engines dropping into sync. Incoming alarms fell silent.

“Hot damn,” Serafino said. “I actually did it.” Then he slumped forward in his chair, his arms hanging limp at his sides.

33

Kel-Paten swiveled his chair around at the sound of footsteps coming down the short corridor leading to the bridge and watched Sass approach.

To say she looked tired was an understatement. She looked exhausted.

Barring another crisis, he would order her off duty as soon as he heard her report on Serafino’s condition. A ship in the sterility of jumpspace needed minimal human attention.

“Don’t scowl, Kel-Paten.” She stepped through the hatchway. “Eden has him sedated. Tank and Reilly are perched on his chest like two furry med-broches. He’ll make it.”

He assumed as much. If Serafino was at death’s door, he would have been called to sick bay a half hour ago. “I should have her sedate you next.

You’re off duty as of right now.”

“Lady Sass thanks you and will take a nap,” she said, settling into her seat at the copilot’s console. “But Captain Sebastian has too many things to worry about.” She cocked her head. “Don’t you want to know what happened in the outpost?”

He’d figured her delay in returning from sick bay was because she was chatting with Fynn—something that would have very much worried him two weeks ago. He did wonder, however, if Sass had told the CMO about what happened on the Windblade. How would the CMO—whose determinations could justify filing a Section 46 on an officer—view his role as Sass’s lover?

“You’re scowling again.”

He reached toward her, curling the fingers of his right hand into hers.

His left was spiked in to the ship through thin cables trailing from the armrest. Her hand was warm and reassuring, even through his gloves. It still amazed him how willingly she touched him when he was under full

’cybe power. “Tell me about the outpost.”

“They ran into ’Fino’s sister, who not only cut off all his hair but decided to slice up his body with surgical lasers. All because Eden had rigged that implant in his head so she was the only one who could remove it.”

“The implant that shut off his telepathy.”

“And sent him instructions from Psy-Serv and recorded everything he did so that Psy-Serv could retrieve it later.”

“Was his sister a simulation, like Zanorian?” He still played with hypotheses in regard to what had happened on the raft.

Sass shook her head. “Eden said her aura showed she was real-time.

She’s Bianca Kel-Rea. Recognize the name?”

He ran it through his memory banks. “An Officer Galen Kel-Rea was an evaluator on a Psy-Serv training project fourteen years ago. The Vax transported the team to their meet-point on Fendantun. That’s the only reference I have for a Kel-Rea. Other than that he was a pompous bastard.”

“That pompous bastard married Serafino’s sister shortly after you met him, brought her under the influence of these Ved creatures, and together they set out to control Serafino—one of the few rogue Nasyry around—for Psy-Serv. They twisted your transporting Kel-Rea on that mission to you being the match-maker who put them together so that Psy-Serv could pretend to hold Bianca hostage. It was close enough to the truth—Kel-Rea was on the Vax and Bianca was part of Psy-Serv—that it registered as true to ’Fino. He underwent the surgery believing he was saving his sister’s life, when in fact she didn’t care if he lived or died. She’s an oullum; she hates all telepaths. And, yes, Officer Kel-Rea has an implant too. That’s how Psy-Serv used—or misused—the Intergalactic Psychic Concordance and Protection Statutes. The high suicide rate they quoted for telepaths as proof that the talent drove them insane was a ploy. The suicides were due to failed implants. Telepathy itself is completely benign.” He nodded, seeing the facts fall into place. “But telepaths sense the Ved.

So restricting those talents is the only way the Ved and Psy-Serv can ensure their own survival.”

“Brilliant deduction. No wonder I love you.”

He squeezed her fingers, because her words of affection tended to make his own catch in his throat. It was all too new, too tenuous. And he’d wanted her so very badly for so very long.

“Did Dr. Fynn have any explanation why I can hear Tank?” he asked when he found his voice again.

“The furzels were injured in the outpost. That’s something else I need to tell you. To heal them, ’Fino and Eden took them into Novalis—the place, not his ship. The furzels became stronger. ’Fino told Eden he thought they accessed the old knowledge, so maybe their telepathic range expanded too.

That’s how Tank was able to transport me off the Windblade and back to the forest after the transbeam failed. And how Reilly brought Jace to this ship. They weren’t capable of anything like that before.” The Windblade. When he closed his eyes he could still see the ship’s battered image on the scanner. Could still see the curl of smoke, the harsh glow of flames.

“I couldn’t get a lock on you,” Kel-Paten rasped. “You don’t know how—”

“It’s okay.” She leaned forward and brushed her lips over his.

It wasn’t. He had failed her—something else he’d never forget. He cleared his throat. “Back to Serafino’s implant. You told me on HV-One it contains proof of Psy-Serv activity. Now we know it has Ved activity as well. If that’s intact—”

“Eden says it is.”

“—they’re going to want it. Is he functional enough to give us a list of agents controlled by the Ved?”

“He will be, in a little while.” Her fingers tightened around his.

“Branden, what we know will tear the Triad apart. It could well end the Alliance, since Psy-Serv was involved in the treaty negotiations. The U-Cees will balk at what they see as psi-manipulation.” Those issues had hovered in the back of his mind ever since he saw the guard at the outpost with a Zonn-X, and he told her that.

“If the treaty fails, we could be enemies again,” she said.

“Never.” He caressed her fingers with his thumb. “I know the Triad.

Once our ministers realize what’s happened, they will immediately act. I promise you. The Alliance will stand.”

“But just in case... ” She sucked in a breath. “I have no authority to make this offer. But I need you to know that you, your crew, and the Vaxxar are welcome on my side of the Zone and as part of our Fleet.” His thumb stilled. She was talking as if another war was a certainty and the Triad was in the wrong. “My existence has been far from perfect,” he said slowly, “but one thing I’ve never regretted is serving the Triad as an officer. It is who and what I am. I would fail in my duties if I let the actions of a small faction in Psy-Serv alter that.”

“The Faction may not be that small. They’ve been involved with Psy-Serv for over two decades.”

“Psy-Serv is not the Triad. Our code of honor is strong. There could be a few rough spots when we get back, but then everything will proceed as before. Trust me.”

“You’re the only one I trust,” she said. “And I hope you’re right.”

“I am.” He brought her fingers to his lips, brushed a kiss across her knuckles. “Now. I’m ordering Captain Sebastian off duty. No arguments. I have a randomizer search program running, gathering jumpgate fixes. If Serafino wakes and can help, fine. But if he doesn’t, I can still get us home in about two hours.”

Standing, she pulled her hand out of his. “If you get bored being brilliant, you know where to find me. Cabin two, starboard side.” He watched her leave, indulging himself with the sway of her hips, and then turned back to his calculations. The program already defined three strong possibilities for gate exits. If he concentrated on those for the next fifteen minutes, he might just find himself not only bored but with forty-five minutes to spare before he had to be back on the bridge.

He did it in twelve.

“Five minutes to gate perimeter,” Kel-Paten said, wishing it was Sass sitting in the copilot’s seat and not Serafino. But even though he felt sure his calculations for the Tygaris gate were flawless, their entry into jumpspace was at Serafino’s hands. If something went wrong on exit, he wanted those same hands in the best position to get them out.

“Five minutes,” Serafino echoed. “Looks good. Feel free to drop me off at the casinos, come back in a few days. I should have at least a sweet million credits by then. I really need to upgrade this ship, now that I have her back.”

Sass’s light laughter from the nav station made him smile. Actually, he’d had a difficult time keeping a silly, idiotic grin from his face ever since he left her cabin ten minutes before. The woman was amazing.

Wonderful. Incredible. And he was finally taking her to Tygaris.

Well, almost. First they had to get Serafino safely ensconced on a Triad Fleet ship and—according to Dr. Fynn—back in sick bay for at least another three hours. Which was also why he chose the Tygaris gate from those the randomizer search had offered. This was Captain Ralland Kel-Tyra’s sector.

“And,” Serafino drawled, glancing over his shoulder to where Fynn was seated next to Sass, “Doc Eden and I have to do some very special jewelry shopping. So make that a sweet two million.”

“I’m glad to know you’re willing to spend as much on me as you are on your ship,” Eden retorted with a laugh.

“Sweetling!”

JaceFriend looooves EdenFriend. Tank was on the bridge, probably near the nav station. BrandenFriend looooves Mommy!

“Two minutes,” Kel-Paten said over the din. “Doctor, secure the furzels, in case we hit any problems on exit.”

“Aye, sir,” Fynn answered. “I have them.”

“We’re going to exit weapons hot—I don’t know who those Psy-Serv fighters might have talked to by now. But this ship will broadcast my personal ID. The Dalkerris or any one of Captain Kel-Tyra’s fleet will recognize that immediately. That doesn’t mean there won’t be confusion.

But that does mean I do all the talking until I give the order otherwise.”

“One minute and it’s still sweet,” Serafino said. “Damn, but I’m good.”

“Have a clear fix,” Kel-Paten announced, tripping codes in his mind as the ship edged toward the gate. “Locking fix. We have a lock. Integrating.” The Traveler shimmied slightly.

“Not to worry.” Serafino made adjustments. “Disconnecting hyperspace engine.”

“Deep-space sensors online. Scanners on,” Sass announced. “We have live data.”

“Sublights coming on in three, two... ” Serafino tapped at his console.

“We’re on sublight.”

“Confirming position,” Sass said. There was a moment of silence.

“Position confirmed. Tygaris jumpgate.”

Through the viewport, the first twinkle of the starfield glistened in the vanishing color-streaked haze of jumpspace.

“Confirming with Tygaris jumpgate,” Kel-Paten said, monitoring sublights, scanners, sensors, life support. And Sass. He could still feel the slick heat of her skin against his as he opened the Traveler’s communications ports. He needed to establish contact with the Triad quickly. He’d just come through a jumpgate in a ship on the Triad’s known-enemy list, weapons showing hot.

He sent out a sequence of codes that every computer in the Triad would immediately acknowledge far more quickly than any spoken identification.

Some trock-brained ensign might not remember his face, his name, but no Triad computer would permit its system to fire a weapon on a ship broadcasting Admiral Branden Kel-Paten’s personal codes.

But a Psy-Serv ship might.

So he intended to obliterate anything that fired on them. He had two seekers left.

He saw the huntership just as Sass did. “Triad huntership, diamond class, forty minutes out,” she said, relaying coordinates.

Diamond class. He had the coordinates before she did. He knew the ship well. Very well. Thank you, sweet gods.

He opened the voice comm and didn’t even try to keep the smile off his face. “Dalkerris, this is Admiral Branden Kel-Paten. Put me through to Captain Kel-Tyra, priority one.”

The wait was less than three minutes. He didn’t know if Rall was asleep or in a meeting or simply filling his coffee cup in the wardroom. But when the visual link came on, it was Ralland’s typically messy office—stacks of files, a discarded jacket, a holo-album, a racquetlob helmet—in the background. And Rall, uniform shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows. Three diamond stars sat crookedly over his breast pocket.

“Admiral Kel-Paten.” Ralland Kel-Tyra sat ramrod straight in his chair.

“May I say it’s very good to see you, sir. I—we were worried.”

“You should know better than to worry about me, Rall.” Kel-Paten leaned back. “You’re among friends. You can drop rank.” Kel-Tyra’s shoulders relaxed. He crossed his arms on top of his desk, his lean face creased with concern. “What in hell happened?” His gaze darted, taking in the rest of the bridge. “Captain Sebastian. Serafino.” That rated a quirked eyebrow. “And... ma’am, I apologize, but I don’t know you.

Doctor, I assume?”

Fynn wore a blue med coat. “Eden Fynn, CMO on the Vaxxar, Captain.

No reason you should know me. You look far too healthy.”

“Dr. Fynn. Of course.” Kel-Tyra nodded, then looked back at Kel-Paten.

“The old man’s planning your funeral arrangements. You have no idea how godsdamned glad I am to see you, Branden.”

“The feeling is mutual, Rall. We’ll be alongside in thirty-one minutes, seventeen seconds. Would you be so kind as to provide a secure docking port? And I do mean secure. This is priority one. The Illithians are not our only problem.”

“I want Serafino and Eden to stay on the Traveler for now,” Sass said, fiddling with the clasp on Kel-Paten’s insignia. They had docked without incident at an airlock on the command tower, two decks down from the bridge on the Dalkerris’s port side, clamps locking on with a clang that reverberated through the Traveler. Serafino and Kel-Paten were working the shutdown checklist on the command console. Through the viewport, the hatchway tube’s lights rotated red. Air pressure had yet to equalize in the extended rampway.

Sass pushed out of her seat at navigation. “Here.” She handed the insignia to Kel-Paten, who turned to her with a questioning frown. “Let’s not complicate matters for poor Ralland Kel-Tyra. He’s had enough to worry about without wondering why I’m wearing that.”

“Actually, no, he wouldn’t wonder at all,” Kel-Paten said softly, with a quick glance at Serafino. But he took the gold and diamond stars and slipped them into his pocket.

Serafino turned. “Sending me back to sick bay?”

“Eden wants you there,” Sass answered. “It would be embarrassing to our cause to have you pass out cold in Kel-Tyra’s ready room.”

“Eden just wants me naked,” Serafino replied, grinning. He ducked as a lightpen sailed past his head and clanked against the viewport. “And that’s exactly how I want her. But, honestly, Sass. I’m fine.” He shoved himself out of the seat. “And I think if Rowdy Rall hears it from my own—” Serafino’s legs buckled. Kel-Paten caught him under the armpits, then lowered him back to the chair.

“This is embarrassing,” Serafino rasped as Eden waved her medicorder in his face.

“The things you do to get my CMO’s attention.” Kel-Paten stepped toward Sass. “Doctor, can you get him to sick bay or do you need me to carry him?”

“I’ll manage,” Eden and Serafino said in unison.

“I’m sure you will,” Kel-Paten put in smoothly as Sass chuckled.

“Sebastian?” He looked down at her.

“Kel-Paten.” She caught a sparkle in his eyes. He’d powered down. A good sign, she thought, as they headed down the corridor for the airlock. A very good sign. This might not be the Vax, but they were home. They were safe.

Mommy! Mommy! Tank go with!

She picked him up. “Sweet baby,” she started. She was sure Kel-Tyra wouldn’t appreciate—or understand—a fidget in his ready room. But she owed her life to the furry creature. And she hadn’t had time to spend with him with all that happened. What little free time she’d had in jump, she and Kel-Paten spent exploring each other’s bodies, making incredible love.

She ruffled the fidget’s head. “Tank go with,” she told him, tucking him in the crook of her arm. “But behave. And don’t steal anyone’s food.” Food? Food?

Kel-Paten stroked the fidget’s nose with one black-clad finger. “We’ll see if Captain Kel-Tyra can find a dish of cream for you.”

“You still hear him?” Sass asked as the lights on the airlock panel went green.

“Not always. Loud and clear just now.”

Cream. Sweet!

Sass reached for the hatchway release, but Kel-Paten grabbed her hand.

“One second.” He brushed his mouth over hers, then caught her lips in a deep kiss that warmed her all the way to her toes. “Now we’re ready.” Sass trotted down the short rampway a step behind Kel-Paten, through the shipside airlock, then down a flight of four stairs to a well-lit waiting room with a row of cushioned gray chairs and a small viewport that showed the Traveler’s hull. A man and a woman entered the room from a corridor door as she reached the last stair tread. Both were in Triad black, but the woman stayed by the door, hand on one hip. Security. The tall man kept walking toward them.

Ralland Kel-Tyra. Drop-dead gorgeous, as Eden often noted. He’d unrolled his sleeves, straightened his captain’s insignia and uniform collar.

He quickened his pace, and his smile, as he held one hand out toward Kel-Paten, was genuine.

“Branden.” He clasped Kel-Paten’s hand in a firm grip.

The resemblance between the two men, standing so close together, was immediate and unmistakable. Sass had thought she saw a similarity in the way Kel-Tyra quirked an eyebrow earlier. But that was on the vidscreen. It wasn’t the same as seeing him in person.

Her instinct told her they were brothers. She wondered if Kel-Paten knew and, if he did, if he’d ever feel comfortable enough admitting that to her.

Friend? Tank asked her.

Friend, she told him. Friend of BrandenFriend. Safe here.

Kel-Tyra turned to her. “Captain Sebastian. A pleasure. And this is... ?” He noticed the fidget.

“Tank,” she said, shifting the fidget’s bulk so she could accept Kel-Tyra’s hand. “I hope you don’t mind.”

A quick glance from Kel-Tyra to Kel-Paten. One quirk of an eyebrow answered by an identical one.

“Not at all,” Kel-Tyra answered. “Please.” He indicated the doorway with a sweep of his hand. “I know you have something important to tell us.”

The security officer fell into step as they exited into the corridor. Sass let Tank trot along beside her, his plumy tail flicking left and right, his small voice making singsong comments in her mind.

Big ship! Friends! Fun!

Conversation in the corridor was innocuous. Yes, they were safe. No major injuries, though Serafino was confined to sick bay for a few more hours. The Vaxxar was updated on their status, as was Admiral Roderick Kel-Tyra.

Sass picked up Tank when they entered the lift and was still holding him when they stepped into the ready room just aft of the Dalkerris’s bridge. A gray-haired man stood at the far end of the wide viewport, his back to them. It took a moment for her to register he was in civilian clothing. Kel-Paten didn’t appear to notice him but walked to the long table, his focus on his hushed conversation with Kel-Tyra. He stopped, hand on the back of one chair and motioned for her to come by his side.

She heard the ready-room doors slide closed and the security lock click on.

“Would you like some coffee?” Kel-Paten asked, looking down at her.

Kel-Tyra held up one hand.

“Admiral, Captain, excuse me. I know you asked for a closed meeting, but we have someone on board who can be a great help. Minister Kel-Sennarin, of course you know Admiral Kel-Paten. But have you met Captain Tasha Sebastian?”

The man in the dark suit smiled easily as he strode to the table. His thick gray hair framed a long face with a slightly bulbous nose.

“I don’t recall having the pleasure. Captain?” Defense Minister Kel-Sennarin. Kel-Paten’s former CO and now his superior at Triad Strategic Command. And, according to Serafino, an assassin for Psy-Serv.

The door behind her was locked and—damn it!—she was unarmed. Sass wound her fingers into Tank’s fur. “Minister,” she said, her smile far less easy than his. Not a friend, Tank.

Bad man?

I think so. Tell BrandenFriend.

O-kay.

Beside her, Kel-Paten twitched ever so slightly. If Sass hadn’t watched for it, she never would have noticed. Tank was talking to him, she hoped.

She couldn’t hear the conversation.

“Have a seat, please,” Kel-Tyra was saying. “I’ll have an ensign bring coffee. How do you take yours, Captain Sebastian?”

“Black,” she answered automatically, sitting gingerly. She shoved Tank down into her lap. Stay.

O-kay. BrandenFriend question. Question. Not understand. Sorry.

Try.

She ruffled his ears, her whole body tense, adrenaline coursing through her veins. Kel-Sennarin here on the Dalkerris. He was the Defense Minister. He had a right to be here. But why now?

She tried again. Tank tell Reilly. Reilly tell JaceFriend. Bad man.

Kel-Sennarin. You understand?

O-kay.

Kel-Sennarin was talking while Ralland Kel-Tyra ordered coffee through a comm panel on the far wall. The Fleet was so concerned, Panperra in an uproar. The ships that had attacked the Galaxus had unfortunately been destroyed. No, he had no idea of their origin. Perhaps Admiral Kel-Paten knew more?

Sass could see something warring inside Kel-Paten. It was the minutest of things, a slight tension around his eyes and mouth. But she knew him.

He was struggling. Because of what she had Tank tell him? Or because—like the last time she brought up Kel-Sennarin’s name as part of the Faction—he refused to believe her?

Could Jace be wrong?

Damn it! They needed Eden or Serafino here. Someone to read Kel-Sennarin’s thoughts.

Kel-Paten clasped his hands on the table. “We think an alien entity may have infiltrated Psy-Serv.”

“The Illithians?” Kel-Tyra asked.

“You have proof?” This from Kel-Sennarin.

“What do you know about the Ved’eskhar?” Kel-Paten asked pointedly.

Sass almost kicked him in the leg under the table. She wasn’t sure what side Kel-Sennarin was on. Admitting they knew about the Ved could well seal their death warrants. Or maybe only hers, Eden’s, and Jace’s.

Kel-Paten had cost the Triad too much money. Him, they’d reprogram.

Kel-Tyra looked puzzled, but the minister nodded. “I remember the name from a class in my university days. A Rebashee legend. No.” He made a small aimless motion with his fingers. “Nasyry. Yes, I believe that was it.”

“They’re not legend,” Kel-Paten said. “They’re real.”

“You have proof?” Kel-Sennarin asked again, but then coffee arrived, served graciously by a young ensign who brought a dish of cream for Tank.

Sass put it on the chair next to her. She didn’t want Kel-Sennarin’s attention on the fidget. She didn’t know if he knew what furzels could do.

Almost unconsciously, she slipped from being Tasha to Lady Sass, her outward demeanor relaxed but every nerve taut, ready, waiting. She sipped her coffee, watched, and listened.

Watched Kel-Sennarin’s concern. Kel-Tyra’s surprise. Listened as Kel-Paten took them minute by minute through the blind jump, the crash landing of the Galaxus, the disappearance of Serafino and Dr. Fynn.

But not the mining raft. Zanorian, Angel, and Drund were left unsaid.

The Windblade was never mentioned. Neither were the furzels’ strange abilities or the name Bianca Kel-Rea. It was the Galaxus they’d managed to get airborne and crash as a diversion so they could use the Traveler’s transbeam to grab Fynn and Serafino.

And it was the Ved, only the Ved, who were the enemy, controlling a few misguided Psy-Serv agents.

Was he editing what happened because he didn’t trust Kel-Sennarin?

Or because he was protecting her identity as Lady Sass, rim runner and mercenary? Student of Gund’jalar. Enemy of the Triad.

Or was Kel-Paten’s loyalty to the Triad so strong that he honestly didn’t see that the Triad was part of the problem?

Kel-Sennarin rubbed his hands over his face. “Branden, this is devastating news, if true.”

“Unfortunately, Max, it’s fact.”

“Captain Sebastian.” Kel-Sennarin turned to her. “The Triad is in debt to you, to the United Coalition. We will take immediate action on this.”

“The United Coalition will offer every assistance,” she said perfunctorily as something registered in the back of her mind. Max. A common name, but Eden had said Serafino’s sister was waiting for someone named Max and—

“And poor Captain Serafino, with that deadly device in his head. I’ll make sure our best neurologist, Dr. Kel-Novaco, personally takes his case at Sellarmaris Medical.”

Kel-Novaco. Max and Kel-Novaco. Those were the names Eden told her Bianca had mentioned.

Gods.

For a moment she froze, then: “That won’t be necessary. Doctor Fynn already handled the matter.”

She saw it. The slight tension in Kel-Sennarin’s eyes. The almost unnoticeable dip of his mouth. Kel-Sennarin and Kel-Novaco wanted that implant. They wanted Serafino dead because he was Nasyry. And they knew she knew that.

“Sebastian.” Kel-Paten touched her arm lightly. “Dr. Fynn didn’t—”

“While we were in jump.” She stiffened her spine, as she had on Lethant when lives depended on her answers. “That’s why he almost passed out on the bridge. He was just out of surgery.”

“He obviously still needs medical care,” Kel-Sennarin said. “Captain Kel-Tyra, can you arrange for emergency medical transportation to Sellarmaris immediately?”

“No.” The word was out of Sass’s mouth before she could stop it.

“Excuse me?” the Minister asked.

“Sebastian.” Kel-Paten’s voice was a low growl of warning.

“Admiral Kel-Paten.” She gave him a hard look. Read between the lines, damn you! “Transporting Serafino and the implant is not advisable at this time.”

“That’s not your decision to make,” he shot back, then turned to Kel-Sennarin. “Max, I apologize. Captain Sebastian has had—we’ve all had a very difficult time. But she’s U-Cee and doesn’t understand that Psy-Serv is not the Fleet. It’s not the Triad.”

Kel-Sennarin smiled at her. A chill ran up her spine. “We’ll take very good care of Captain Serafino. I can even arrange for you to accompany him, if you like.”

Like hell he would! This time she did kick Kel-Paten’s leg under the table. He had the presence of mind not to flinch. Or else she didn’t kick him hard enough.

“Minister. Captain Kel-Tyra,” Kel-Paten said tightly. “May I speak to Captain Sebastian alone for ten minutes?”

“Absolutely.” Kel-Sennarin rose. “Captain Kel-Tyra, if I may borrow your office, I’ll alert Sellarmaris Medical that Serafino will shortly be on his way.”

Sass rose swiftly and spun on Kel-Paten the moment the doors closed behind the two men. “Are you out of your fucking mind?” He stared at her, his face a stony mask. Then he stood, towering over her. “Captain.”

“He’s one of them. Eden heard Bianca say that Max—which has to be Max Kel-Sennarin—and a Dr. Kel-Novaco were waiting for Serafino’s implant. And Serafino has proof Kel-Sennarin’s a murderer. I told you this.”

“Have you seen this proof?”

“I wasn’t in the outpost. But Serafino—”

“Has had a malfunctioning implant in his head for several years and has admitted there are errors in his memory. I strongly suggest you consider that before you accuse Max of treason.”

Sass realized her breath was coming in short, hard gasps. She was suddenly afraid. “You’re Psy-Serv, aren’t you? Serafino said they programmed you—”

“Gods, no.” He thrust one hand through his hair, and when he turned back to her, his face was pained. “Tasha, you’re not thinking straight. I should have let you sleep instead of—”

“Making love to a U-Cee who doesn’t understand the difference between Psy-Serv and the Triadian Fleet? I know the difference, Branden. The question is, do you?”

“I’ve known Max Kel-Sennarin for twenty years,” he replied forcefully, eyes narrowing again. “He is not a Psy-Serv agent.” He pointed to Tank, who crouched on all fours in the chair. “If there was a Ved on this ship, he would have warned you, wouldn’t he?”

“The Ved don’t have to—”

“Wouldn’t he?” Kel-Paten stepped closer, a vein pulsing in his jaw.

“Yes, but—”

“Exactly. You trust Tank. I trust Tank. Serafino is wrong. Fynn misheard the names. Kel-Sennarin is not the enemy. He’s as loyal to the Triad as I am and will help us stop the Ved. That means you will work with him and you will let him take Serafino to Sellarmaris. Do you understand?”

She glanced behind her. “Door’s not locked. We can be in jumpspace before they know we’re gone. I can contact Ace—”

“Sit down, Captain. That’s an order.” Sass stared at Kel-Paten for a long moment, then slowly folded down into her chair, drawing Tank into her lap. She bowed her head over his soft, furry body, her heart breaking. Tank, sweet baby.

Mommy? Mommy sad.

Very sad. Help Mommy. Tell Reilly and JaceFriend exactly what I say.

Now listen.

I listen.

Tell JaceFriend. Flash out. Burn bulkhead. Thirty seconds. Repeat that.

The fidget trembled under her fingers. He knew something was very wrong. I tell Reilly, JaceFriend. Flash. Out. Burn. Bulk. Head. Thirty.

Seconds. Flash. Out.

Good furzel. Tell him. Now, she added emphatically, praying Jace was well enough to function.

O-kay.

“Do you understand, Captain Sebastian?” Kel-Paten repeated.

She raised her face. “I love you, Branden,” she said softly. “Never forget that.” She closed her eyes because she couldn’t bear to see his pain. But she couldn’t risk Serafino’s life, the lives of every empath and telepath in the Alliance, just because her heart was breaking.

Tank. Take Mommy with. Go Blink back to JaceFriend. Now!

Tank and Mommy! Go Blink!

Silence.

She fell on her ass in the corridor just aft of the Traveler’s bridge. The decking trembled under her, sublight drives roaring.

“Flash out, ’Fino,” she screamed as Tank raced ahead of her through the hatchway.

“Docking clamps—”

“Shear ’em.” She raked the straps over her chest, locking herself into the copilot’s seat, and brought her console online. Eden was wide-eyed at navigation. “The minute we clear the ship, we jump. Can you do it?” Serafino fired the starboard laser cannons, the intense glow flaring white-hot across the Dalkerris’s hull plating. “Absolutely, Lady Sass.” He was grinning. “Destination?”

“The hell of your choice,” she said, wiping the tears from her eyes as the thrusters jettisoned them hard away from the Triad huntership. From Branden Kel-Paten. “I need a beer.”

34

UNITED COALITION HUNTERSHIP REGALIA

It was too quiet at the edge of the Zone. Captain Tasha Sebastian hated quiet. It left space for thoughts to intrude as she paced the curved apex of the Regalia’s bridge, hands shoved in her pockets, heart empty. Six months and counting since the Traveler had burned bulkheads in Tygaris.

Five months since the Alliance fell apart. One month, three days, and fourteen hours since—

She turned abruptly, paced back toward the command sling, her gaze taking in the various data cascading over the huntership’s screens: sublights at optimum, sensors on full sweep, scanners parsing the starfield in all directions.

Last week there were three refugee ships to keep her and her crew busy, including an ore freighter filled not with sharvonite but people. Triad citizens, afraid, hungry, desperate; their leader—trained captains were scarce now—not sure if the U-Cee huntership with its security skimmers circling him were real... or another Ved-induced nightmare.

The man’s uncertainty had continued until he saw Tank by Sass’s side on the viewscreen and—twenty minutes later—another furzel at the heels of the armed security team that efficiently boarded his ship under Commander Cisco Garrick’s watchful eye. Word had spread. The Ved could emulate many things, but not a furzel.

Furzels had been banned in the Triad. Telepaths were slaughtered.

Kel-Sennarin had kept his word—Psy-Serv was disbanded. The Faction, the Ved, were now the Triad.

That Alliance was no more, but a new one had emerged—the Rebashee and the Tsarii joining with the U-Cees to seal the Triad borders.

The Illithians wisely kept their distance.

“Captain.” Lieutenant Lucari, the communications officer, turned at her station. “Incoming message from Doctor Serafino.” Ah, Eden. “I’ll take it in my office.”

She headed off the bridge, then palmed open the second door on the right. The comm screen slanting out of her desk showed the triangular U-Cee logo. She plucked Tank out of her chair, planted a kiss on his head, and tapped on the deep-space link. The furzel sprawled across a long printout with a sigh and closed his eyes. Love Mommy.

Love you too, sweet baby.

“Doctor.” Sass smiled as Eden’s face appeared on the screen, a white furzel draped over the back of her chair. Four others in various colors and sizes sauntered or stalked across the credenza behind her. “How goes the furzel farm?”

“Five new litters this week, including these.” Eden tapped at her desk, bringing up an image that both she and Sass could see.

Three tiny but plump black and white bundles curled in a soft blanket.

A small sigh of pleasure escaped Sass’s lips.

“Tank’s cloning was successful,” Eden said. “Thought you’d want to know.”

“Copy me on the image?”

“Sending. Jace is very excited.”

Sass motioned to the sleeping fidget on her left. “Tank, as you can see, is beside himself with joy.”

“When are you coming through Glitterkiln?”

“Probably within ten days. We’re just about at the end of this tour. Ace said she might have us swap with Fourth Fleet and take the Staceyan Belt after that.”

“Wise decision. You need to get away from the Zone.” Get away from the Triad border, Sass knew Eden meant. Away from memories of a certain Triad admiral and their encounters in the Zone when he’d been a mere captain. “Eden, I’m okay.”

“Grief takes time,” Eden said softly. “A month isn’t always long enough.” Not a month. One month, three days, and fourteen and a half hours since she’d found out Branden was dead.

Killed in the line of duty. She had no idea what that meant in the Triad, where the only news came from refugees, who heard it from other refugees. She only knew what it meant to her—an empty ache that had yet to fade. And when there were no refugees to rescue, no Ved-controlled Triad cruisers to deflect, far too much quiet.

“Tell ’Fino I’ll see him at the Starfield Doubles tables in ten days.” She pasted a smile on her face.

Eden shook her head knowingly. “Aye, Captain. It’s a date.” The screen blanked, the U-Cee logo winking back on.

Her fingers hovered over a small star-shaped icon. A touch and she could bring up the logs. Sometimes it lessened the pain. Most times it did not.

She knew them all by heart anyway.

I don’t know where you found that No, No, Bad Captain shirt. Nor do I know where you found those pink sweatpants. But sweet holy gods, Tasha, you don’t know how close I came to totally losing it and making more of a fool of myself than I already have.

It seems all I’m able to do in your presence is stare at you like some stupid schoolboy. I just want to talk to you. I’ve been trying so hard to reach you, but I’m so afraid, and the gods know if you found out you’d probably think it hysterically funny... but I’m so afraid of losing you. I don’t know how close I can get. I tell myself all the time that you’re here with me on the Vax and I should be thankful for that! It’s more than I ever thought I deserved. I know where you are, I know you’re safe, I know I can protect you.

She closed the file, closed her eyes, sat in the office’s deafening silence, her head against the tall back of her chair, willing herself to feel nothing, knowing she felt too much.

Mommy sad? Don’t be sad.

Tank’s innocent love washed over her. She leaned forward and rubbed his belly fur. Then she sighed. “Mommy has to get back to work, sweet baby.”

She stood. Red-alert sirens erupted.

Shit! Sass flicked on intraship as Tank bolted off the desk into the safety kennel in the corner of the office. “Sebastian to bridge. Status, Mister Rembert!”

“Incoming interstellar thermal wave,” her First Officer told her.

“Five-point-two on the Graslan scale. McAbian-residue readings—”

“On my way! Sebastian out.”

The bridge was a flurry of frenzied activity, U-Cee officers moving efficiently from station to station, specialists glued to their chairs but swiveling quickly as new information downloaded to nearby screens.

Voices were tense, commands clipped. Every screen streamed with data.

She stopped behind Rembert and in less than fifteen seconds knew what they had.

“McAbian levels increasing at the rate of twelve parts per nanosecond,” she called out as she darted for the command sling. “Chances of a vortex in the next ten minutes is eighty percent and rising.” She slapped at intraship as she sat. “This is the captain. Secure all decks. We’re on a rift horizon. Sebastian out.” She raked the straps across her, grabbed the arm-pad console, and swung it into place. “Switching helm control to manual, ten seconds... nine... eight... Hang on, boys and girls, it’s going to be a rough ride.”

The vortex’s primary flare came in a blinding flash on the forward viewscreens. The Regalia lurched, buffeted by the energy spiraling outward. Bridge lights flickered as Sass, heart pounding, coaxed the huntership through a series of countermoves.

“Remy, watch those vanes.”

“On it, Captain.”

“I’m retracting forward vanes... now. Advise on any structural slippage.”

“Hull’s holding, Captain.”

“Inverting aft vanes, ten percent.”

The ship shimmied, jerking. Alarms wailed again. She altered vane pitch. The shimmying lessened though didn’t stop completely. One alarm, blessedly, fell silent.

“Status, Remy,” she called out.

“Almost through the wave, Captain. Two minutes, eight seconds... ” Another hard shimmy. More lights flickered. Voices were still clipped, but Sass could feel some of the tension abate. The Regalia, trooper that she was, held tight. The last alarm ceased and, at a heartbeat past the two-minute mark, she allowed herself a long breath.

Tank?

Ooh, bumpy jumpy time. Tank o-kay. Food now?

She bit back a small grin. Few minutes.

She tapped intraship, opening the link to sick bay. “Cal, how’s my crew?”

“Two broken arms, one concussion, one broken furzel tail. All under control,” Dr. Monterro reported easily.

“And the gods smile on the U-Cees once again,” she intoned, cutting the link. “Remy?”

“Minimal damage. Repair crews are already reporting to stations.” She unhooked her straps. “Find out where in hell that thermal wave came from,” she told him as she stood. “I’ll be—” A short-range-scanner alarm trilled discordantly.

“Huntership, Captain,” Rembert called out. “Attempting to acquire configuration and ident now.”

She sprinted to his station, scanning the data as it streamed down his screens.

Her heart stopped.

Rembert locked in the information. “Ship is—”

“The Vaxxar. ” She breathed the name. Sweet holy gods.

“Get me all images on forward screens,” she ordered, swinging around, heart pounding again, throat dry. Her hands went cold, clammy.

The Vaxxar. His flagship.

“Confirming Triad huntership Vaxxar, ” Rembert said. “Going to full shields, weapons online. We have visual on screens one and three forward.”

She saw. Her breath caught in her throat. The one-time pride of the Triadian Fleet hung in the star-filled blackness of space like a triangular dark void. No lights dotted most of her hull. Those few lights she saw were dim, sparsely scattered. The command tower was dark. Sensor dishes and comm arrays were little more than twisted wreckage.

“Remy, get me life signs!”

“Scanning, Captain, but we’re having problems getting past her shield configurations. She’s spiking off the scale.”

Wild, erratic power surges. A ship in the throes of death. Plays hell with the sensors. Nullifies any transbeams.

“Drop our shields. Helm, bring us alongside.”

“Captain?”

“Do it! She can’t hurt us. And that’s one less level of interference you’ll have to compensate for.”

A moment of silence. Her bridge crew probably thought she was crazy.

But her crew—save for Perrin Rembert, Cisco Garrick, and Cal Monterro—didn’t know she was his Lady Sass. And he was her flyboy.

“Lowering shields.”

“Engaging thrusters.”

She walked back to her command sling, surprised her knees didn’t buckle. She tapped open the link to the shuttle bays. The transbeams were useless. But a shuttle at close range could use lasers to punch a hole in the shields. “This is the captain. Prep the Liberty. ” She had to get on board.

She had to know. She had to see. Even if it tore her heart in half.

Rembert stepped away from his console. “I strongly advise against—”

“Noted.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“I go alone, Remy. But thank you.”

“At least take Tank.”

She nodded. That she would do. He had a right to know too. Days after they left the Dalkerris, Serafino had explained that the furzel’s link to Kel-Paten was because she and the admiral had made love. Bonded. Tank was grieving too.

“Captain, wait.” Not Rembert’s voice but Lieutenant Lucari at communications. “I’m picking up a voice signal. No. Lost it.” Her fingers moved rapidly across her console. “Got it. Voice and visual. It’s coming in on an old Alliance stream we used to synch our datalyzers.” Sass grabbed for the back of her chair, waved Rembert off as he stepped toward her. “Center screen, now.”

Something flashed below her. Tank, Blinking into her seat. Mommy!

Her fingers trembled as she touched his head.

The Regalia’s center screen flickered, shifting from the starfield to a green-tinged bridge. Upper tier. She recognized it, recognized the U-shaped command center, the double-command sling, and, in front of that, the curve of the railing.

And a tall dark-haired man, gloved hands braced against it.

“Branden.” She breathed his name.

He raised his face as if he heard her. “United Coalition huntership Regalia, this is Branden Kel-Paten. I don’t know if you can hear me. Our comm array is down. Life support is failing. We can’t control the shields, though we’re trying.” He glanced over his left shoulder at a man sitting at a nearby station.

Gods. Ralland Kel-Tyra, nodding. It was then she realized no one on the Vaxxar’s bridge was in Triad uniform. Kel-Tyra’s shirt was light-colored.

Kel-Paten’s was collarless, slightly darker. Freighter grays.

“I repeat. Our comm array is down. Weapons banks, life support depleted. We’re not a threat. We are... we are all that’s left. The Triad is no more.”

“Lucari! Get me a voice link, anything, with the Vaxxar!” Sass ordered.

“Working on it, Captain.”

“Regalia, if Tash—if Captain Sebastian is on board or anywhere in your Fleet, reach her. Please. Tell her I... tell her Branden Kel-Paten hopes—prays—her offer still stands. If you can hear me, Regalia, send us a signal. We have only two hours of air left—”

“Remy, alert Monterro, prep the shuttles.” She spun back to communications. “Lucari!”

“Still trying!”

Damn it! Branden... She wanted to scream in frustration.

BrandenFriend! Tank go Blink!

“Tank!” The seat in front of her was empty. She stared back up at the center screen and suddenly the furzel was there, balancing on the wide railing in the green-tinged darkness, plumy tail flicking back and forth.

Kel-Paten flinched, Ralland Kel-Tyra behind him rising swiftly from his seat. Then, in a blur of movement, Kel-Paten grabbed the furzel, clasping him tightly against his chest as, head bowed, he dropped slowly on his knees to the floor.

The Liberty—the first of the three shuttles to launch—glided easily under Perrin Rembert’s touch, with only a few small thumps as she aligned with an exterior docking port on the Vaxxar’s command tower.

Sass was at the shuttle’s airlock hatchway; she’d spent the entire five-minute trip there, boots set wide for balance, fingers grasping a handhold. She couldn’t sit. She sure as hell couldn’t be strapped into a seat like Dr. Monterro and his assistant were. Regulations be damned.

“We may have to manually engage the lock,” Rembert was saying.

“Sensors show widespread outages in her power grid.” Something thunked, clanked. Whirred.

“Negative that. Receiving signal from the airlock. Synchronizing.” Rembert keyed in the codes.

Sass sucked in a long, shuddering breath. She had died a hundred deaths on the way over, would die a hundred more until they got that godsdamned mully-trocked hatchway—

The airlock panel light blinked from red to green, air quality and structural data flashing on. She slapped at the release button with a sweaty hand and squeezed sideways through the sliding hatchway door as it groaned open, wiggling as her utility belt momentarily snagged on something.

Then she was free, running down the short rampway tube, her boots clanging sharply against the metal grid plates. The shipside airlock was already open, but she saw him before she cleared it, saw him moving toward her, his eyes luminous, his lips parted as if in uncertainty.

She surged through the airlock hatch tread and he grabbed her, arms tight as metal bands circling her back and waist as he spun her around.

His face—rough, unshaven, wet—rasped against hers until their mouths met, fusing in a kiss of blinding passion, of reckless desperation. Of surrender.

She raked her hands up his neck and through his hair. It was longer, felt thick and wavy to her fingers. She grasped a handful and kissed him harder.

He groaned, his hands caressing, kneading her back, her hips, skewing her utility belt, then traveling back up and over her shoulders, splaying against the nape of her neck.

She broke the kiss and framed his face with her hands. In the white glow of the only working overhead light, she saw silver sprinkled through his temples, deeper lines at the corners of his pale eyes. He’d lost weight.

She felt it when her hands explored him, saw it in the hard planes of his face.

“Damn you, flyboy,” she whispered.

“I love you, Sass,” he whispered back. “I need you. I’m sorry—” She kissed him gently, halting his apology. His breath shuddered against her mouth.

Footsteps came up behind her.

“Admiral Kel-Paten,” Rembert said as Sass stepped away. Kel-Paten, arm around her waist, drew her back against his side. Remy, gods love him, was saluting. “Glad you made it, sir.”

Kel-Paten nodded but didn’t return the salute. “Thank you. It’s not admiral anymore. Just Kel-Paten. Or Branden.”

“Sir, you will always be Admiral Kel-Paten.”

Kel-Paten drew a breath, then stopped. Sass knew he hadn’t expected Rembert’s earnest reply.

“I need to start with your most seriously injured,” Cal Monterro said as Sasha, his orange-striped furzel, sat down at the CMO’s feet to lick a spot on his haunch.

Kel-Paten nodded. “Timm Kel-Faray. My First Officer. Sick bay’s gone, but we rigged a stasis chamber in my office. He’s been on basic regen for four months. Tank’s in there with him and Rissa. If you could—”

“On our way.” Monterro waved his med-tech forward, the furzel trotting briskly behind.

“We have two more shuttles en route,” Rembert said. “They’re waiting for clearance from you to dock. Then we can start with the evacuations.

How many on board, sir?”

“Besides Timm and Rissa, twenty-six others, plus Rall—Captain Kel-Tyra and ten of his crew.” He drew in a deep breath. “Thirty-nine. And me. That’s all that’s left of the one hundred eighty-two who stood by me when we mutinied against the Triad, against the Ved. Four months ago.

They’re on the bridge or in the ready room.”

“And working airlocks?” Rembert asked.

“Just these two.” Kel-Paten indicated them with a wave of his hand.

“I’ll get the shuttles in position, sir. If you’ll bring your officers and crew?”

Kel-Paten hugged Sass tightly against his side again, then stepped back, slipping his hand through hers. “We’ll go now.” She followed him down the darkened corridor, remembering he didn’t need light to see. Remembering what he just said. “Four months ago? Why in hell didn’t you contact me?”

He guided her around a broken pylon. “We were dragged into the void.

When I finally got us out, they grabbed Ralland’s pinnace from the Dalkerris, on his way to meet me on the Vax. Eight top crew and officers and Ralland. He’s my brother, Sass. I couldn’t leave them—I couldn’t leave him in there. So I went back in. Three hours ago we managed to get out.

To here.”

Suddenly she knew how. “The vortex—”

“Using a vortex is an idea I’ve worked on for a few years. I told you and Eden that after we captured Serafino. It’s not perfect yet. I had to bastardize the weapons system and the shields to do it, but it works. No jumpgate, no Nasyry pilot required. And oddly, any Ved on the ship perish in transit, even though they survive through a normal jumpgate. I thought the U-Cees—the Alliance—might find it useful.” Useful? How about the gods’ gift—no. The Tin Soldier’s. She followed him up two flights of green-tinged stairs to the upper tier of the bridge.

The damage she saw to the once magnificent command center appalled her. The sight of thirty-seven people standing in unison and saluting her when Kel-Paten announced, “Captain is on the bridge,” made her throat close up and tears come to her eyes.

“At ease. Thank you,” she managed, then, “Welcome home. Now let’s get you to safety—and to hot coffee and cold beer.” Ralland Kel-Tyra, the last to leave the bridge, brushed her cheek with a kiss as he filed by.

Kel-Paten cuffed him lightly on the shoulder, then slipped his hand back in hers, tucking something between her fingers.

She pulled her hand away to examine the object, knowing by touch what it was before she even held it up in the dim light. Five diamond-studded stars riding a slash of gold lightning.

“Keep it this time. Please.” He secured it to her shirt, just over her captain’s bars.

She knew she would never let it go again. A part of him, a part of Branden Kel-Paten. And a promise of forever.

She threaded her hand back through his and let him lead her through his ship’s dark and dying corridors to the airlock’s hatchway. A fat, long-furred black and white furzel sat patiently waiting for them in the bright glow of the only working overhead light. Guardian of their safety. A beacon to guide them home.

About The Author

A former news reporter and retired private detective, Linnea Sinclair has managed to use all her college degrees (journalism and criminology) but hasn’t soothed the yearning in her soul to travel the galaxy. To that end she’s authored several award-winning science fiction and fantasy novels, including Finders Keepers, Gabriel’s Ghost, An Accidental Goddess, Games of Command, and, coming in 2007–2008, The Down Home Zombie Blues and Chasidah’s Choice. When not on duty with some intergalactic fleet she resides in Naples, Florida, with her husband and their two thoroughly spoiled cats. Readers can find her perched on the third barstool from the left in her Intergalactic Bar and Grille at www.linneasinclair.com.

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