Baby, it's Cold in Space: Eight Science Fiction Romances

by Margo Bond Collins

  Nadiah’s eyes flew open as she came awake in a start. Black nothingness surrounded her. Either she was newly blind, or she was in a space cell sealed away from all light.

  A space without heating.

  She shivered, chilled through to the bone. No surprise, as she realized in that next instant that she lay uncomfortably naked on some kind of stiff foam mattress, not unlike the temporary beds her parents used on their rescue ships for the slaves they rescued.

  It was certainly not the big, soft luxurious bed she’d hoped her adventure would conclude in, in which she’d be snuggled up to some hunky rogue she had seduced. Great. Her first serious attempt to get laid and she gets kidnapped, most likely by heartless slavers. The daughter of the Slaver Slayer himself? Her dad was going to go critical. She was so screwed. How had she ended up here? Possibly transported into a life of slavery, she might never again get to paint anything beautiful or choreograph a dance for joy. Her throat constricted and her eyes burned.

  Why had she thought she’d be able to sneak undetected down to Jagron’s pleasure palaces and home again? All she’d worried about was getting caught by her father, not about all the other dangers lurking in the shadows of the Q’Tran galaxy. She knew better. The daughter of vigilantes dedicated to thwarting the underground slave trade, she understood there were worse destinies than suffering unfulfilled mating urges. Oh, she knew that her father would track her down and rescue her eventually, but it could take years. Still, getting down and depressed when she didn’t have the facts all assembled yet? That would disappoint her father, and her mother, both resourceful, intrepid fighters. It wasn’t like Nadiah had never been in a tight spot before, it’s just that she’d never been in one…without them.

  First things first, as her Earthborn mother liked to say. Time was of the essence. Nadiah had no idea how long she’d been unconscious or where she was. Every click of time made the chance of escape or rescue more unlikely. The sensory deprivation made it hard to tell if the container she was in was moving or stationary. There was no way to see outside the space, nor inside either. Wherever she was, it had gravity, since her body was firmly settled on the surface without an anchoring device.

  What the hell had happened to her flight suit? Her weapons? No clothing, no weapon? No protection. She swallowed what might have been a whimper of fear. The bitter taste of some kind of herb lingered at the back of her throat. She’d heard rescued slaves talk about the gas used to subdue individuals and facilitate their capture. Now she’d experienced it. Obviously it affected memory too. Try as she might, she couldn’t recall recent events to explain exactly how she’d ended up here, wherever here was. The last thing she remembered was taking the stinger out alone to sneak down to Jagron. She didn’t remember being gassed. The idea that her memory was incomplete freaked her out more than her inability to see, maybe even more than her nudity. A quick skim over skin with her hands confirmed that she was physically okay. She had no bruised flesh, no pain. On the upside, apparently her kidnappers hadn’t injured her body. If they were space pirates, she’d have been raped and beaten to death. She’d be dead, and they wouldn’t have bothered to drug her for the experience either. So there was that small consolation. But why strip her? Why place her in this cold, lightless hole?

  Since her body still thrummed with an unfulfilled urge to mate, she must still be a virgin, which was a relief. She didn’t miss the irony of her new goal—to stay a virgin for the time being, after months of plotting a way to have sex. As an Earthling, her mother did not suffer a mating cycle, but her father’s race the dangerous KhaRya class did, along with all the other races from Kadis, her father’s home planet. While Nadiah’s need to mate wasn’t as debilitating as her father’s could be, her libido had been increasingly inflaming her to rash behavior. When she told her father, the powerful psychic had tried to dismiss how much of his DNA his children, especially Nadiah, had inherited since they looked mostly human. All Nadiah’s physical attributes appeared to come from her mother, except for her small, sensitive horns.

  A worry raised itself in her mind: did these kidnappers know who her father was? She groaned. Her tiny horns were generally hidden under her curls, but they may have discovered them anyway. She instinctively reached up and caressed their delicate curved smoothness, relieved to find them as they’d always been. Still, even if her abductors had discovered them, lots of people of varying species had horns. If they took her knowing who she was? She didn’t want to consider the possibility.

  “Dad is going to throttle me,” she whispered.

  Her low voice sounded loud in the darkness, echoing back, startling her in its solitariness. No response. Only silence followed the wispy shadows of her words. Was she truly alone? A longing rose up in her mind for someone, anyone, to share her situation. She’d never done well solo. Even when she painted, she liked to have someone in the room to chat to, or her favorite music playing. Her sister Shosh usually practiced her instruments in Nadiah’s art studio while she worked. Why had she ever taken off on her own? Because Shoshi had refused to join her at the last minute. Shosh, who always backed out of their best, albeit craziest, schemes at the last minute. The girl had no heart for serious adventure, unless it occurred inside a book or if it were a new complex piece of music to play. Still, she was glad now that Shosh wasn’t trapped with her, likely headed to a life of drudgery and hard labor.

  “Never you mind,” she told the dark. Nadiah was generally quiet in crowds of people, and had little to say, but around family, she was affectionately called a chatterbox. Now, the sound of her own voice lent her a slight sense of comfort, the illusion that she wasn’t alone, wasn’t totally impotent against her mysterious abductors. Information-gathering time. She wouldn’t get out of this bind until she figured out just where she was. Her parents would expect her to do what she could to rescue herself even as they did everything they could to rescue her too.

  She brushed her fingertips against the material of the cushion underneath her body. It felt pebbled and slick, a stiff plastic-like material over a spongy thickness. She guessed it was one of the temporary sleeping mats ubiquitous across the galaxy. She strained her eyes wide open to see…anything.

  Nothing.

  This is what it must feel like to be completely without the ability to see. No one was blind anymore—modern medics could fix most birth deformities and illnesses that destroyed someone’s sight. There were even synthetic replacement orbs with enhanced vision for those desiring advanced sight. Only the truly poor and those of the religious casts on remote planets refused medical repairs or enhancements. As an artist, Nadiah’s dependency on her sight stretched beyond practical need. It was core to her identity and relationship with the world.

  The bitter taste of the sleeping agent lingered unpleasantly in her mouth. She remembered that some drugs used by slavers could do more than damage a person’s eyes, changing the color and the shape of the orbs. Her eyes were a natural emerald green, one of her best features, inherited from her Earth-born mother, and she was just vain enough to want them intact as well as functioning.

  This complete darkness unnerved her.

  Scared the daylights out her, really, as her mother would say. Literally. She stifled a panicky laugh. A lame sense of humor was better armor than panic, right? That or she might be suffering from a bit of hysteria. She wondered again how long had it been since she’d been taken. How long had she been unconscious?

  “Just take some deep breaths, silly,” she commanded herself out loud in her best gruff imitation of her Dad’s deep voice, a talent she’d perfected over the years. Sucking a big gulp of air through her mouth, she wondered whether the oxygen levels were set to humanoid specifications. Did the air feel thick in her throat?

  As she panicked over this new possibility, it suddenly became difficult to breathe. Apparently, she wasn’t any better at following her own mock orders than she was at following her Dad’s. The blackness became more sinister and oppressive. Terror won ou
t, and for a few moments, she lay frozen, gasping at the air, afraid to even sit up. What if she was in a tomb, in a body box? What if she reached out and immediately discovered she couldn’t move. What if this sense of openness around her was an illusion created by the darkness?

  More than anyone she knew, she depended on her senses—sight, sound, smell, taste, touch to navigate the world. Her mother told her that she’d been extra sensitive to the physical world from the moment she was born. It was what made her an artist, a dancer.

  She thought of her father again and how, if she managed to survive this misadventure, he was never going to let her out of his sight again. Ever. That actually sounded appealing for the first time in her life. She’d prided herself on her independent personality, and now…she saw the foolhardy nature of it. Mostly in the past, she’d limited her mutiny to her art. Don’t paint risqué scenes, Nadiah. Okay. She painted flower and plant arrangements which made a person think of skin and vaginas and engorged penises. Because the paintings ended up selling well and helped to fund her parents’ vigilante activities, she got away with her little rebellions. Her mother loved her work, but her father refused to let any of it be hung in the family home or his ship. He’d also made her use a pseudonym. Professionally, she was the reclusive Totto, a name her mother had suggested based on some famous artist from Earth’s history.

  Arguments with her father and mother about her art never resulted in physical repercussions, even if they drove her father crazy. But this little act of rebellion was probably going to earn her a beating. Her father and uncle often threatened to use the sort of punishment common to their home planet, but they never had actually followed through. Her sister Shosh had been born with all the caution Nadiah was missing. Their parents were likely frantic at the moment. By now, they would have discovered that she and the stinger shuttle were both missing. Shosh would’ve caved and confessed everything. They’d be searching for her. That fact was the one thought that made her breathe easily again. Her family would not rest until she was found, dead or alive.

  “Let’s focus on the positive,” she chided herself, again speaking out loud. “Alive. You’ll find me completely, totally, absolutely, ecstatically alive. And uninjured. It’ll all turn into an amusing tale of adventure.”

  She remembered the tiny tracker imbedded under her skin and a quick slide of her fingertips inside her knee reassured her it had not been discovered or removed. Yep. Her father would tear these kidnappers from limb to limb when he got here. If she hadn’t already escaped on her own. He’d find them nonetheless and make them tear themselves limb to limb. He had that power. Then he’d probably lock Nadiah up until she turned fifty. She sighed. And shivered.

  She had just planned on a short joy ride down to the planet Jagron, notorious for its pleasure palaces, and where her father was selling a number of her recent still-life paintings to fund another rescue expedition. Tired of being under her parents’ thumb all the time, and knowing they were planning an overnight stay on the famous sex planet, she thought she’d be relatively safe sneaking in a secret trip. Her mother had already been on her own, navigating an alien world for two years by the time she was twenty.

  Nadiah blamed her recklessness on the distraction of her mating instincts. She hadn’t finished a single painting in a month, and it’d been even longer since she’d choreographed a dance. She needed to broaden her physical understanding of the world. She needed to have sex, once and for all. Her parents were like Earth’s rabbits, mating constantly. As their daughter, and an adult now, she must share that same need for physical contact, and once she fully explored her sexuality, her art and her dance could only mature and intensify.

  Lying in fear in the dark, cold and without a plan, was pointless. She cautiously sat up on her mat and managed to not bump into anything. She took a deep breath, feeling increasingly acclimated to the quality of the air.

  It was hard growing up traveling most of the year in a family spaceship. It was even harder growing up the oldest child with a telepathic father and uncle. Meeting new people, especially guys: easy. They visited a lot of planets, encountered lots of other humanoid species across the galaxy. Getting to spend time alone with a guy: not so easy.

  If a guy even had a random thought about her, her dad immediately intervened. If a guy, not knowing her dad or her Uncle Kugen was around, had a sexual thought? He’d better be a fast runner. She couldn’t even start up a relationship remotely because whenever she used the coms, their ship’s AI recorded everything. And unless she met up with a species that couldn’t be controlled mentally by her father, like her Earthborn mother, she feared that she’d never have a relationship free of her father’s interference.

  Life was so unfair.

  “Don’t be such a drama queen,” she chided herself.

  Another Earth term. It wasn’t that her mother didn’t understand Nadiah’s frustration; it’s just that she was busy with the far more important family calling, rescuing enslaved humans, and she had four other kids demanding her attention all the time, and she was married to one of the most demanding males in the universe.

  If and when Nadiah fell for a guy, he was not going to be anything like her controlling father. Knowing Nadiah’s impatient nature, her mother had said she’d work on arranging some time for Nadiah to get away, dirtside somewhere, but the “perfect” opportunity had yet to arise. Nadiah had taken things into her own hands.

  “All alone and fr—”

  Had she imagined…was that a sound? A cough? A sort of gurgling sound? Someone with a clogged throat?

  Nadiah shifted and the sound of her weight and bare skin rasped against the crinkling plastic surface under her. She had to be in a large chamber of some sort. A sealed room with hard surfaces for walls. So not a coffin. She inhaled deeply through her nose and relaxed slightly because she seemed to be acclimating to the air. That’s when the faint smell registered. It’d been there all along, just beyond her conscious notice. An organic but definitely not-her smell. At least, she didn’t think—she turned her face into her armpit and sniffed. Okay, not sweet, but still, not the same smell. She sniffed the air again. A wave of intense mating heat flooded her body at that moment and she broke out into a sweat despite the frigid temperature.

  “Hello? Is someone else in here?”

  No one answered. Just empty black space. Her anxiety spiked again. Don’t panic, she thought. Do. Not. Panic. Panic achieves nothing.

  Losing her wits would be stupid considering that she had no idea where she was. She tried to fall back on the defensive skills her parents taught her while she was growing up on the planet Illysia, and while they were traveling half the year on a spaceship as they rescued and transported enslaved people across the galaxy. She’d been trained for every contingency, she’d thought; her father was remarkably thorough in teaching her weapons and self-defense—not that she’d been a great student—but clearly even he hadn’t anticipated her getting into a position in which she was naked, weaponless and completely in the dark. After all, as a telepath, he was never completely in the dark.

  “Now what, Dad? Surprise, surprise. Your little daydreamer has managed to outwit you and ended up somewhere you can’t protect her.” Something like a sob rose up in her throat and she swallowed it back. Her parents hadn’t raised a simpering idiot. She might not be a warrior like her brother Grange, but she wasn’t a fainting violet either. At the very least, she was her mother’s daughter.

  Her dad’s voice sounded in her mind: never let your fears incapacitate you, Nadiah.

  Was his voice in her head just a memory, or was he close enough to telecommunicate? Sometimes, he did manage to send her messages. Half-Earthling as she was, his ability to read or control her mind was hit-and-miss. If he and Kugen were together, which was a possibility since her uncle would likely do everything necessary to join the hunt the minute he heard she was missing, they’d find her eventually. Her uncle, also a powerful telepath, could project his mind over great distance
s, while her father could actually take control of the mind of anyone born of most species. Since she didn’t inherit his KhaRya gifts, she never had been able to distinguish one of her own thoughts from one from her father. And that was the power of her father—his extraordinary ability to place ideas into one’s mind without one knowing about it. Real or memory, it mattered not. She stiffened her spine physically and figuratively. Thinking of her dad possibly being close by inspired her. When he found her, she didn’t want him to find a sniveling daughter in distress.

  “I’m going to find a way out of this before you even locate my tracker, Dad. Then you’ll see that I’m perfectly capable at managing my own life.”

  Here was her chance to prove her own resilience and cleverness. This was exactly the type of scenario that would allow her to demonstrate that she was all grown up and ready for more independence. Cripes, she was 20 Earth years old!

  “See! Adventure happening. Personal test,” she chattered aloud.

  At that moment, she realized her bladder was bursting. The rotten luck of being female. If she had the anatomy of a guy, she’d just turn to a wall and piss on it. Time to investigate—with some caution—her jail cell.

  Uncertain of how high the chamber rose, she rolled onto her stomach, pushing up onto her hands and knees cautiously. She reached above into emptiness and slowly stood. She warily swung her arms out around her and touched nothing. Without the ability to see, she feared stepping forward and falling into nothingness, so she dropped back down to her knees again and inched slowly forward, seeking the edge of the mattress. She checked several hand spans to the edge on her left. She slid her fingers down slowly over the squared edge and followed the mattress down about two inches until she touched a hard, flat surface. So smooth and cold, the floor felt like metal. Make that ice-cold metal.

  “No wonder I have goose bumps on goosebumps,” she huffed, suppressing a shiver.

  She scooted forward, tracing the edge to determine the size of the mattress. The rustling noises her movements made dominated the space so devoid of all other light and sound. Except that increasingly permeating smell. That smell had all her senses on extra sharp alert. Musky, organic. In fact, it was weirdly appealing, even in its singular dominance. Definitely animal in nature. Surely her brain wouldn’t misinterpret a potential threat. She took another deep breath, committing the smell to memory. There had to be another living thing in here. Was it intelligent?