Cosmic Cabaret

by SFR Shooting Stars

  “Indecent exposure? Ha!” Her voice shrieked a bit. “Men go topless all the time. They don’t get arrested. Talk about double standards!”

  She wished her voice was deeper, throatier, more commanding. Steve’s voice had been very commanding. Maybe not as commanding as the cop’s, but respectably deep and forceful. Hadn’t it? It was hard to think about Steve at the moment. Poor Steve.

  She swatted at the cop with her shirt and felt a satisfying thump as the sleeve whacked him soundly in the face, unseating his stupid glasses slightly. Good.

  He readjusted his glasses. Her makeshift stand rocked under her.

  “Miss,” he growled warningly at her, a deep scowl making his fierce face grow even darker. “If you don’t descend and follow my instructions right this minute, I’ll arrest you for assaulting an officer too.”

  Brianna laughed. He’d arrest her? Really?

  “How typically male of you. Making threats. Being a big bully. Who are you? My daddy? Going to spank me if I don’t obey?”

  The cop stared up at her, his eyebrows rising over the frame of his sunglasses, clearly astonished at her audacity. He took off his sunglasses and she was stunned by his keenly intelligent eyes. Which burned with something. He looked her over, his eyes studying the features of her face, trailing down her neck, then dropping down to her chest where they seemed to linger before tracing the indentations of her toned, bared stomach, pausing at the flare of her hips, and flicking over her jean-clad legs. His eyes burned right through the faded material. A strange tingling started up between her legs. Then he reversed the direction of his perusal until he was staring into her eyes again. His lips thinned, twisted, and something dark and dangerous flashed across his face. Maybe he was imagining spanking her. For some reason, that idea made her stomach flip in a most disconcerting way.

  So she held out her shirt like a hankie and dropped in on his head.

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  About the Author

  Want to escape? Selene Grace Silver writes contemporary, paranormal and science fiction romances that follow extraordinary characters on the path to love.

  Her science fiction series StarDaemon explores the love lives of a group of hybrid humanoids rebelling against institutional slavery during an intergalactic political collapse. Her paranormal series Witches and Warlocks of Los Angeles shadows modern day sorcerers who must master their powers to shift dimensional reality and find their soul mates, in order to defeat a centuries-old enemy. Finally, her contemporary romances follow lovers traipsing across the geographical and geological boundaries of the Western Hemisphere, from the sunny coasts of Southern California to the rainy Highlands of Scotland, to the frozen plains of the Upper Midwest to the cobblestone streets of Europe. No matter where Selene’s characters go, their journeys end in love.

  Selene has an MA in creative writing and is a member of the Romance Writers of America. She believes in two true things: love and the power of stories. Everything else is up for debate. Find her on Facebook, and on Twitter@SGSilverAuthor. She’s an avid reader too—check out her recommendations on Goodreads.

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  www.SeleneGraceSilver.com

  Forbidden Alliance

  A tale of the Scions of the Star Empire

  Athena Grayson

  Society tore them apart once. It’s going to take brain surgery and rocket science to put them back together.

  Landing an engineer's job on LS Quantum is Milady's once-in-a-lifetime chance to escape the overcrowded sublevels of Landfall and the past she can't remember. When a hotshot drive designer triggers fragmented memories of that past, she must find the truths in a ship notorious for its illusions.

  Thann Zalco stopped caring about anything but stardrives when he lost his love two years ago. Finding her aboard a luxury cruise vessel isn't the reunion miracle it seems when she can't even remember him without dangerous brain surgery and the cabal that first tore them apart is determined to make their separation permanent.

  One

  “Milady, if you keep striving for perfection, you’re going to lose efficiency. This is the backup to the backup of the coolant system, not the main drive injector.”

  Milady--not her title, but her actual name, or rather, the closest thing she had to one--stuck her chin out. “Redundant system or not, Palma, I’d be letting the team down if I wasn’t--I mean, my work wasn’t--absolutely perfect.”

  Her supervisor lifted her eyebrows at Milady’s slip of the tongue. “Next time, just go for ‘within tolerances.’ We expect all our engineers and mechanics to be good, professional, and fast, not flawless.”

  “So put me back on the main stardrive assembly where it matters.”

  Palma--the stocky matriarch who ran Stardrive Maintenance Team Three--the best knockers-about in the belly of the beast, in her words--eyed her over the info-slate, then set it down on the shelf above their gear. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Good, because you know what I can do, and I’m going to waste on redundant systems.”

  “At least you’re not redundant on waste systems.” Her supervisor smirked at her own play on words. “But it’s about remembering what’s important without being distracted by the details. And not drawing attention to yourself.”

  Milady looked down, losing focus in the wire mesh bins of utility belts, tools, and protective gear that stretched out in rows next to the benches of the Ship’s Engineering locker room. Palma was right, and her supervisor was warning her that her flawless performance could become a flaw in itself.

  The soup of her past flung up a fragment of an impression of a memory. Anything less than perfection is unacceptable. But as usual, the fragment fizzled to nothing.

  No one else in Stardrive Maintenance would have felt the need for routine maintenance on redundant starship engines to be "flawless." Speedy, yes. Expensive, definitely. But not flawless. Flawless should be a word reserved for something special and delicate. A spire, piercing the murky atmospheric soup of her homeworld to glitter in the light of the four moons.

  When she closed her eyes, she imagined the spires, throwing crystal prisms into the clearer skies in the upper atmosphere. Beneath their domes, the House Lords set plots in motion, while their younger Scions clawed whatever power base they could from their established parents. Gossip feeds provided play-by-play narration of the action, while the Probabilities Markets created and destroyed fortunes based on the possible outcomes of those plots. Noble sons and daughters relied on a Social Capital Index, where their ratings determined where they stood in relation to each other and their goals, and a well-placed rumor could lift a humble third-cousin to the highest echelons of society...or destroy a daughter of the Emperor himself.

  "There you go, dreaming again. Your mind is a million klicks off starboard, girl.”

  Milady snapped her eyes open. Palma pulled a set of diagnostic gloves from the cubby and held one of them out for Milady to slip her hand into. Her fingers brushed the glove's inner lining and when they found seating in the fingers, the responsive fabric shifted. The weave tightened and the fibers condensed until the glove fit her hand as if it were custom made. The diagnostics flickered to life and the machine in her head purred in response.

  As usual, she couldn’t make sense of the internal noise, only the tone. Purring indicated contentment. Agitation was...uncomfortable, and usually heralded a double-shift while she rooted out a problem in the fusion system. Along with a killer headache for hours afterwards.

  "I was thinking about Nobles. Parties. Their Social Capital." She licked her lips and the faintest of phantom tastes triggered on her tongue. Something dry and carbonated, that left an afterburn of sweetness and maybe a hint of longing.

  Palma slipped on her own set of gloves--three-fingered and extra long, to accommodate the Drift mutation that had malformed her hands and arms and sentenced her to second-
class citizenship of the Empire that governed the worlds of the Torch. "You were thinking about nonsense, is what you were. You let them showgirls titter about the nobles. That world’s full of nothing but trouble and lies. We deal with flux plasma and fusion coils, and that’s your next assignment."

  "Quantum's taking on the Imperial entourage in less than a day. Of course everyone’s more excited than usual.” Milady fastened the toolbelt around her waist, weaving it into the rest of the harness assembly criss-crossed over her coveralls that allowed her to access the entire fusion stardrive system--even the parts that could only be accessed from upside down, like the plasma vessels she was about to fill. She twisted her black hair up into a tight knot and fitted a cap over her head.

  Palma rolled up a set of diagnostic probes and tucked them into her thigh pocket. “Outside these doors--out there, on the main decks, this place is full of things that aren’t what they seem. It’s easy to get distracted by illusions.”

  “Like the illusion that I’m a trained and qualified engineer?” Milady hitched up the responsive straps of the harness until they sat properly on her shoulders and didn’t also ride up her rear end. “Or that I have a past?”

  Palma’s lips twisted. “You’re here because you know what you’re doing. Even if you don’t remember it, somebody trained you somewhere. And you have a future, girl. Nothing illusory about that.”

  Two

  Getting on LS Quantum was easy if you had the money. Struggling holo-journalists, however, didn't have the money. Without the money, you needed connections. If you were a struggling holo-journalist like Kella Ahdab, you didn't have those either.

  But the staffing director didn’t know that. After too many of the wait staff had failed the new clearance checks put in place by Imperial security, the director seemed almost eager to allow Kella to smooth talk her way into a position as a drinks girl. She squeezed her curvy self into an outfit that didn't leave much to the imagination and hitched on a harness that looked like something that belonged in a sex dungeon and not in the food service industry. Thankfully for her, it dispensed drinks and not kinks.

  She was the equivalent of a walking champagne fountain for one reason — to get the scoop. The scoop was that something might be less-than-flawless on the gigantic pleasure barge that offered delights from exotic locales and entertainment to titillate and amuse, and right before the Imperial entourage was about to set Royal foot on board.

  Of course, she’d love to get the scoop on some salacious scandal that the flagship of Blue Star Lines was serving week-old prawns, or that the cruise director moonlighted as a dominatrix, but alas, the prawns were shipped in fresh from Hareem every morning, and the cruise director’s contact information specified her dominatrix duties could be scheduled two nights a week through the shipboard scheduling service, and she accepted all major credit transfers. It’s hard to make it a scandal when it’s part of the services. Kella’s grumpy thought shifted her features into a pinched expression.

  Like the pinch of a bra two sizes too small for her that also happened to be a champagne fountain that dispensed bubbly from two nozzles where her nipples would be.

  But she pasted on a saucy expression as she lined up with the other girls, ready to circulate through the main ballroom, dispensing champagne wishes from her abundant cleavage. Fortunately for her, no one else took the ridiculous costumes in the serious vein for which they were clearly not intended. The idea was a bawdy joke, she'd much prefer it that way. Judging from the cautious and uncomfortable expressions on some of the patrons’ faces, so did they.

  With one eye on her abundantly bubbling boobs and the other scanning the crowd, Kella drifted through with the other girls, flirting with the gentleman patrons, catching the eye of some of the ladies, and dropping a well-placed wink here or there. Along with a boob-full of champagne and the occasional zingberry eliciting bawdy laughs from delighted patrons.

  As she circled the ballroom, she passed tall viewports that opened onto a stunning stellar vista. Music cued to the observer’s presence swelled from discreetly-placed speakers in the ornate window frames to enhance the experience of the elegantly-gowned ladies and formally-dressed gentlemen gliding past. As Kella scanned the glamorously-outfitted nobles, the augmented reality display on her brand-new neural implant provided pop-up, realtime information on each face she focused on. Oh my, she thought. This thing really is worth the brain surgery.

  The glowing curve of Landfall’s surface filled a quarter of the space and eclipsed much of the Torch’s glow, save for the planet’s leading edge. Beyond the homeworld, two of the moons hung like luminous globes. Jioni glowing gold and green, and Hareem--closer to Quantum but furthest from Landfall--a watery blue jewel studded with tiny green island chains.

  The darkened surface of the homeworld’s night side was anything but, filled with millions of glimmering lights from the spires of the arcologies housing trillions stretching kilometers up from the surface. The lights were diffused by the planet’s thick atmosphere, which went from breathable at the Spires to chewable in Kella’s neighborhood in the lower mid-levels.

  Kella became conscious again of how easy it was to breathe the filtered air of the cruise liner. Even in an outfit that squished all her squishy bits into interesting shapes. As an employee, she was aware that was part of Quantum’s allure--the extra oxygen gave everyone a little contact buzz, while the subtle scents of spices, flowers, and herbs evoked a mood depending on where you were and what time it was.

  Right now, the assembled guests were enjoying a cocktail hour in anticipation of the acrobatic Cirque performance, featuring buxom and scantily-clad acrobats performing aerial delights in the company of strapping male counterparts. The fiber-optic infused columns supporting the ballroom’s projection ceiling were lit with blues, purples, and golds and the air smelled fresh and herbal. Later on, when the more adult entertainment came out, the lights would go to the reds and oranges of promised carnal delights scented with the warmer spices.

  And Kella would be off duty by then.

  She leaned over at the beckon of an older gentleman flanked by two other drinks girls whose overtly-tinted lips curved upwards in practiced smiles.

  “Is this a divine vision I see before me?” He licked his lips and for a moment, Kella thought he was going to reach out in order to confirm.

  Her eyes widened, but her sisters in cabaret solidarity shifted their arms in practiced motions to intercept the grabby hands. “Ah-ah,” the left one purred.

  “We mustn’t play in the fountain we drink from,” her mirror image admonished.

  The man’s fingers curled into his palms and he pulled his hands back. “Of course, my dears.” To Kella, he said. “I do apologize. I’m a student of history, and for an instant, I was reminded of House Apsara.”

  “That’s not a House I’ve heard of. Is it in one of the colonies?” Perhaps the old gent was drunk, but it was her job to know every noble House in play, and Apsara wasn’t known to her. In spite of the risk of more grabby hands, she was intrigued.

  “Dear me, we should be so fortunate. House Apsara only exists as a remnant. Ah, forgive my rudeness. I am Mr. Rensom Garibaldi. Proud to be of service.” He tapped the breast pocket of his sombre-hued suit, where a discreet insignia would have identified his House affiliation. But instead of any of the sigils of the nobles that regularly graced her feeds, she saw a symbol of three interlocking triangles and recognized it immediately.

  “You’re with the Landfall Cultural Trust,” she whispered, clapping her hand over her mouth. The Cultural Trust, with its five ancient Trustees, was the organization charged with maintaining the Empire’s history, ostensibly through the registry of the noble families that formed the ruling class. But everyone knew their ancient and massive database registry of Landfall’s nobility was more than just insurance against inbreeding.

  As if holding the power to approve or deny marriage alliances between noble Houses--and make or break the House’s reputatio
n on the Social Capital Index--weren’t enough, the Cultural Trust was the leading organization dedicated to tracking Drift--the mutations that afflicted a growing portion of the population of Landfall. Tracking it...and some said eliminating it.

  A bead of sweat started in the center of Kella’s back, just under her bra strap. Breathe, she told herself. She swallowed sudden moisture pooling in the back of her throat and under her tongue. The extra dampness she felt in the creases of her elbows prickled.

  “Oh yes. It’s my honor to be an adjunct in the archives,” the man was saying.

  Kella forced herself to listen. Relax, she told herself. The room was warm and it would be weird if she didn’t sweat a little. “How fascinating. What’s this House Absara?”

  “House Apsara. Oh, it’s a fascinating story. The Apsara was one of the original colony ships to make landfall on Yelena. There’s a fragment of the original crew manifest in the Hall of Trustees. With pictures. On real paper. You have that look about you.”

  Kella’s smile began to feel like a grimace. “Oh, go on. I’m nobody. Just a girl from the middies on Landfall. I’ve only ever gone to Jioni twice in my life. Certainly not all the way to Yelena.”

  He dropped his voice in a conspiratorial tone. “House Apsara became the first Terraformers.” He shook his head and tsked. “It’s a shame. They had to be written out of the database and their House charter taken away.” He gave her a look full of significance. “Can’t have Shapers shaping us, now, can we?” He patted his Trust insignia. “House Apsara is the reason there’s a Terraformers’ Guild.”

  “I’m no noble, even from a defunct House. And I’ve never even met anyone from the Shapers’ Guild.” Kella kept her smile fixed, but her neural was recording every second. Not that she’d need a recording. This old man’s chatter was filling up the well of her nightmare fuel with high-grade stuff. Don’t be ridiculous. He’s a rambling old grandfather who thinks you remind him of someone long forgotten. Deflect. “Shapers are scary.”