Kiev’s alter ego, Dirrel, had been a peace-loving scientist a couple of thousand years ago during the pinnacle of Aros’ age of crystal technology and all of the wonders thereof. Dirrel, or Dirrellen as he’d been known then, had helped develop the consciousness transmogrification process. They’d been so excited to discover how to use the unique crystals electromagnetic properties to capture and store a human’s psyche before death swept away the energy into the universe.
That breakthrough had preserved the intellect of Aros’ brightest and greatest when the tectonic plates had suddenly shifted, causing the greatest redistribution of landmass ever experienced. The event had destroyed their world, throwing Aros into a primitive state.
When the end of the world had killed most of the population, Dirrel’s transmogrification program had yanked back the consciousness of those scanned into the system. On the bright side, their people’s knowledge had been kept safe inside the crystal computer’s databanks. On the downside, the collected consciousnesses were alive and awake. They remembered as well.
“Why don’t we go see what Lala, the wise-woman, has to say.” Kiev’s suggestion sparked a round of giggles from Radan as they made their way down the path to the city. His brief respite from duty was officially at an end. The best things usually came with a finite expiration.
Smiling faces and respectful bows greeted him at the city gate. “Did you see the alien fall from the sky?”
Kiev ignored the undue attention. He was a warrior now, and had been in many previous lives.
“Kiev, come by tonight,” breathed an overly endowed woman. She was vaguely familiar, reminding him of the carousing he’d been fond of before acquiring Dirrel’s reserve. She bit her full, painted bottom lip in invitation, fluttering her lashes, shaded the brilliant hues of a butterfly wing. “I remember what you like.” She remembered what he had used to like as simply Kiev. The woman would be surprised what direction his tastes ran to now.
You shouldn’t wait so long between women. Big breasts and probably a willing— He cut off the thought, shoving Radan through Lala’s shaded courtyard and into her receiving room. None of the wild women had interested him in a long time, not since he’d remembered the difference between love and lust.
The latter left him unsatisfied and wanting more—a no-nonsense woman who’d laughed at danger and secretly teared up at the beauty in a sunset. He could see her in his mind’s eye as if it had been yesterday instead of lifetimes ago.
Warm, feminine laughter soothed the longing in Kiev. As the one who’d prophesied the alien’s coming two summers ago, Lala should have the bulk of the fanfare. A swirling flower and spice-scented dervish descended on Radan, picking the boy up before dancing away again. “And how is my fine grandson today?” Lala pecked a kiss on Radan’s round little-boy cheek and set him down, sending the child off to the kitchen in search of a snack.
Lala turned the force of her lovely smile on Kiev. “And how is my favourite son on this fine day?” He could tell that repressing the need to wrap her affection around him about killed her. His lips twitched at the mental image of her having to bottle up all that motherly love.
“I am your only son, Lala, and the head of your House Guard.” Relieved, but still on edge, he strode to the window. Beyond the walls of the house, people were already gathering for the wise-woman’s word on their skewered visitor from the stars. “The day wasn’t so fine for the alien. It used a sheet to float from the sky and into the nettle tree grove.” Inside, he sneered at the alien’s lack of technology. A species with space-faring technology and the alien had had to leap with what amounted to bed linins to break its fall? Despite his people’s lack of faith in machinery, Kiev made sure to outfit his men with useful gadgets pertinent to protecting the city’s most prominent lady.
Lala delicately touched her lips with the ends of her fingers, no doubt remembering Kiev’s similar death a few years ago. Going over the cliff with his enemy hadn’t been a bad death, in either Kiev’s or Dirrel’s opinion. Kiev had broken the assassin’s neck mid-fall and, personally, he hadn’t felt much after the first impact until his resurrection. The sacrifice had been worth it—the assassin had never had a chance to touch Lala.
Her skin paled. Kiev wished he could spare her the pain of her grief. She swallowed, gathering up the long layers of her scarf-dress. “Then we must hurry to our guest. Fate offers a second chance to only a few.”
“The alien is dead.” Softening his harsh tone, Kiev sighed. Lala took her visions seriously, and so did the people, for good reason. While the scientist in him had balked, he’d still done a study and calculated her at ninety-six per cent accuracy for the wise woman’s visions. The other four per cent could be a margin error for faulty interpretation. “I do not know whether it is even human, much less the woman from the stars that you predicted. It might have scales and tentacles instead of arms.” He shook his head, frustrated with his own thoughts. Visions, psychic ability, and conferring with the gods had no real basis in science. He regretted the words instantly—now spoken, they couldn’t be taken back.
He tensed, waiting for the expressions of old friends and family that said he’d revealed too much of what he had become. The host. Guardian of the Past. He was the representative of the technology that had failed their planet long ago. His people both feared and revered him.
Kiev could have laughed. If only they knew the real truth of it.
“I would pray for human, my son.” Lala brushed by him, taking her cloak from the hook by the door. She slanted a long glance over her shoulder. Her soft, sweet smile said that she knew who and what he was. And accepted him. “Because it would be unfortunate for my future grandchildren to have to slither about like garden snakes.”
Chapter Two
Distractions loom ahead. Don’t lose sight of the end goal.
Love on the rocks. The future of a relationship will be endangered if you can’t let go of old hurts.
Sasha regained consciousness slowly. She held herself still against the pain she knew would strike again.
“Are you going to just lie there? Because we do not have eternity.”
Sasha’s eyes flew open at the rich, accented voice and she saw…feet. Translucent feet that belonged to an equally see-through, uniformed woman. Sasha frowned. At least, she thought the high-necked unitard was utilitarian enough to be a uniform.
Easing herself up was surprisingly painless and she cast her gaze beyond her greeter to the ghostly crowd watching her.
She sighed and spoke out loud, testing her abilities.
“Well, damn. I’d kind of hoped I’d live through that.” Standing, Sasha nodded a polite hello at the crowd and brought her hand up to inspect her own ghostliness. Sure enough, her form lacked its usual solidity. “My horoscope was looking up until this mess.”
Too bad she’d bit the big one. That was decidedly unlucky. Maybe she could haunt that ass, Hobbs, for tossing her off her own ship. Though technically she’d jumped, Sasha was sure turning traitor was a big, black mark on Hobbs’s karma. She certainly wasn’t counting her death as a suicide.
“Ahem,” the ghost in the unitard said.
“Aren’t they supposed to bring us the brightest and bravest?” sniped one of the ghost women. “She doesn’t look very smart.”
Sasha frowned. Great, she was stuck in alien heaven—she supposed it could be hell—with a bunch of biddies.
Unitard Woman crossed her arms over her chest and shot a silencing glare at the heckler. Even in death, Unitard’s titties were stupendous. Sasha noted that her own miserly assets would apparently follow her to death and beyond. The woman even had amazing hair, dark and straight. Sasha bet the locks were silky smooth without one frizzy end. A bit uncomfortable with the direction her thoughts were leading, she scanned over the crowd of onlookers. Not one of them had the same intensity or beauty as the woman before her.
Death’s door-greeter cleared her throat again. “Time is running out, so pay attention, miss
.”
“Captain Sasha Tran of Fortune,” she introduced herself, feeling out-of-sorts and a little self-conscious. She’d worked her ass off for her commission and damned if she’d let mutiny and death take her title away. Only, the board of directors at Northern Star Trading had that authority. The woman’s military bearing had Sasha straightening her spine and wanting to salute. Rank and file had never appealed to her before and she attributed the impulse to being dead.
“NaTashamarilla.” Unitard dropped her arms to her sides as she dipped forward in a polite bow. Not one to insult a potential customer, even a spectral one, Sasha copied the movement. She was happy to note her hostess’ appreciation of the courtesy. “As civilisation has shortened the use of proper names, you may call me Tasha. Now listen, Captain Sasha Tran.”
“Sasha is fine.” She wanted to zip her lips at the dark expression Tasha gave her. The woman could even give Sasha’s mother a lesson or two in the ‘evil eye’ department.
“You do not have the mentality of a military officer.” Tasha sized her up like a kith trader ready to make an offer for prime goods.
Taking Tasha’s comment as momentary permission to speak, Sasha nodded. “I’m a civvie captain. Small, fast commercial trading ship specialising in romantic imports. The skill set is both public relations and business management. Piloting skills help too.” She zipped it again as soon as she realised that Tasha wasn’t interested. Sasha had always thought that being dead would be a lot more relaxing.
“You are not dead,” Tasha told her at the end of an exasperated sigh. She rubbed her temple in an elegant three-fingered circular pattern. “Not yet.”
Before she could ask anything else, Tasha held up a finger. “Since time is short, let me explain.” Sasha nodded for her to continue. “Two thousand years ago this planet, Aros, was a thriving centre of civilisation. Our scientists created the crystal technology that enabled us to preserve our lives long after death and share our knowledge with our descendants by bonding with a new host.
“But back to the beginning. Despite a few political misunderstandings and prejudiced factions, we believed we had a good treaty with our sister planet, Atmos. Aros was too busy dealing with a series of natural disasters. Earthquakes, storms…our people were too focused on evacuation and preservation to pay our sister planet much attention.”
Sasha nodded again. Both of the primitive planets shared the same orbit around the system’s sun, though neither had a moon. The planets’ close proximity possibly gave them the benefits of a moon apiece. Sasha had hoped the unique worlds would have equally rare minerals, or at the very least artefacts to sell to the scientific community.
Pain flickered across Tasha’s features before she continued. “It was not until too late that our government discovered Atmos’ tectonic deharmoniser. A doomsday device, you might say.” More pain and sadness clouded Tasha’s face. “I died before I could pass on what I’d learnt. I found out later that a small fleet of my people’s ships were able to muster a counterattack, destroying much of Atmos’ resources. After that, the remainder of my people were consumed with survival. There has never been a reason for me to establish the primary bond with a host. Until now.”
“So, let me get this straight.” All of Tasha’s talk about time running out was making Sasha paranoid. She imagined that she could feel the shadow of the injuries she’d sustained when those trees had speared her. She waved to encompass the crowd of women. “You all are dead. I’m not. So, when I wake up soon, it’s going to hurt like hell since I’m not really healed.”
Waving off an interruption, Sasha continued. She held up one finger to finish her point. “But I’m probably going to be possessed by a ghost who lives in some kind of crystal machine built by scientists thousands of years ago. All of which were killed off by nerds from the other planet. So, since all of you are dead and I’m obviously hallucinating, I won’t really care about this when I wake up anyway, right?”
“Wrong.” Tasha ground her teeth. It was interesting to watch a ghost trying not to lose it. Tasha took in a deep calming breath, thrusting out her full breasts. Sasha had an urge to reach out and caress the lean curved lines of the other woman’s rib cage and hips. “You are in the transmogrification chamber, which will heal you if you decide to accept our bonding. Should you choose life, our souls will fuse and our memories will merge. As one, we will have a chance to stop the next tectonic attack on Aros.”
“You just want my body?” Stupid, stupid, stupid. As soon as the words left her mouth, Sasha regretted them, mostly because of the odd attraction she was having. Not that she was homophobic—she’d just never had this kind of interest before. She rubbed both her hands over her face, now really beginning to feel the sharp ache where the holes would be in her shoulder, abdomen and leg. “Sorry. You think the natives on Atmos are going to use the earthquake machine on you again? You realise they are in worse straights than you, right?” Sasha rubbed at her shoulder, willing the pain to abate. She tried focusing on Tasha, but wondered about her hair. Did ghosts smell nice? Focus! Sasha chided herself to stay on topic. “The other planet is mostly primitive terrain with pockets of civilisation that make monkeys seem advanced. I know—I’ve done a lot of poking around this system this last year, searching for new trade possibilities.” She held up her finger again. “Just so it’s clear, this is me stating that I was careful of the First Contact laws.”
Sasha didn’t think Tasha had heard, since she overrode the last statement. Did it matter? Her own thoughts were scattered all over the place.
“I believe that someone has the tectonic technology, and that someone is trying to use it.” Tasha frowned—her exotic features stilling as she turned her attention inward, obviously focused on a tragic past.
Exhaustion slammed into Sasha. “This is going to hurt, isn’t it?” Either the merging or the waking up—Sasha didn’t know which she was asking about. She was half sure this was a hallucination, hopefully by extremely good drugs in an infirmary centre.
Tasha smiled sadly, holding out an elegant, long-fingered hand. “Birth is never pleasant, but always worth the effort.”
“Says you.” Sasha closed her eyes, gritted her teeth and grabbed the outstretched hand with her own work-roughened one.
Nothing happened at first. Opening her eyes, she noted the pleasant feeling of their joined hands. Tasha was indeed solid. Warmth seeped from Tasha into her, bringing Sasha’s senses alive. Extremely alive, as she realised that the closer Tasha drew her, the more sexual the feeling became. Sasha had never in her life thought she’d be turned on by another woman. Well, there was a first for everything. Sasha had never been dead before either. The energy radiating between them made her pant with desire—her nipples hardened into nubs. Thoughts of sliding against the taller, full busted woman, sent an electric sensation spiralling down Sasha’s spine, as she clenched her abdomen and pussy in anticipation.
Tasha was breathing pretty hard too. Deciding to get on with things, Sasha pressed her lips against Tasha’s full ones, taking the time to slip her hand along her partner’s curved hip and over the swell of her ass. With her other hand, she explored the weight and shape of Tasha’s breasts, taking time to circle and tease the nips into hard buds. The strangled sound Tasha made was enticing, as was every curve and dip between breast, waist and the line of her ass. Sasha tried to find an opening to the skin tight unitard and was frustrated when her caresses and search yielded no fastenings.
Having Tasha in her arms felt warm, right, complete in a way that Sasha had never experienced before. The kiss was more demanding than exploratory as Tasha clasped her head, holding Sasha to her. The first taste of tongue was a bit of surprise, but Sasha opened her mouth eagerly, inviting the intrusion. She moaned with every smooth slide of tongue on tongue, hanging on to Tasha’s ass cheeks. Tasha thrust her knee between Sasha’s legs, dragging her up so that her wet cunt trembled as she rode the firm thigh.
It wasn’t enough. Sasha wanted to touch naked s
kin. She wanted her mouth on Tasha’s tits, sucking her nipples hard. She needed—
Tasha tugged Sasha’s waistband open, before burrowing her hand down their bodies, between her thigh and Sasha’s pussy. Sasha’s legs buckled when her partner spread open her folds with agile fingers, pressing against her aching nub. Pleasure imploded inside Sasha, sucking in more warmth and energy than she had imagined. She rocked against Tasha’s hand as her fingers filled her channel, thrusting in and out. Sensation expanded in a tingling wash throughout her body.
She shuddered, rubbing her torso against Tasha, needing to be closer. She screamed into the lingering kiss, then convulsed around Tasha’s fingers, buried deep in her core. Wave after wave of orgasm carried her away.
Sudden debilitating pain struck every part of her, from her cervix outward.
It was excruciating. Screaming provided no release. Every nerve ending was on fire. Her whole being felt as if she were being ripped apart and knitted together on a cellular level.
Sasha wanted to die to end the agony, but clung stubbornly to the memory of life. Her mother on Earth. The spaniel she’d had when she’d been a kid. The sheer excitement of flying through the air on her first shuttle mission. Riding high astride her squirren, long hair streaming behind her, while Dirrellen yelled at her to make the flying rodent land. Making love with him that last night before leaving for Atmos. She’d thought that would kill her. It hadn’t, but someone else had, far from her home and Dirrellen’s side.
With their Pyches now bonded into one unit, Sasha was Tasha. They were two entities reborn into a single new woman with the memories and experiences of both of her previous lives. She remembered how difficult it had been for Tasha to refuse his proposal—to say goodbye. She’d wanted him to evacuate and make a life with a woman not obligated to the safety of her people. That was her one regret—abiding by her orders and not telling him that she wouldn’t come back.
She had to live again. Someone had to find the tectonic deharmoniser and destroy it. Until then, Aros wasn’t safe, or Earth, or any other planet. Sasha-Tasha had died once on an alien planet, drowning in her own blood. She’d died again on those damned trees today. Sasha fought the dark numbness that crept over her senses. Pain meant life. Three strikes and you were out, right? She couldn’t fuck it up again.
Star Fire Page 2
