Explode: Team Supernova (The Great Space Race)

by Teresa Noelle Roberts

  Boring though it was, Rita was all for highly paid, legal jobs. For that matter, she was all for a new kind of neurorelay. Maybe the competition would drop the price enough that she and the rest of the crew could afford them instead of relying on old-school com-pads. Only Mik and Gan had neurorelays, and her captain and his husband had early models that sometimes caused migraines.

  But she’d drawn the short straw and she was out with the floater collecting bins of slag while everyone else from the crew was celebrating Kenu Aram, the local “celebration of the gods’ gift of love and desire”, in the ways you’d expect. Gan and Mik planned to check out the shows, eat whatever wasn’t still wriggling when it hit the plate, then shag each other’s brains out. (As long as they didn’t encounter anything that smacked of a child being hurt. Her boss had a highly developed sense of outrage, and Gan just liked to rough up bullies.) Xia was looking for a chance to get laid or, failing that, to cause some amusing trouble or pick the pockets of distracted lovers. (And then buy them presents with their own credit chits, because that was what felinoids did when they stole.) Then she would head back to the ship to have a drink with Buck. Buck was getting drunk, which was pretty much the way he celebrated every day he woke up and no one was shooting at him. For that matter, he drank on days someone shot at him, though fortunately that didn’t happen much. A low-level buzz, he said, helped keep the horrors away. When you were a broke veteran of the losing side of a war, it wasn’t easy to get a better treatment than that.

  Poor Buck—the wonderful, crazy big brother she and Xia never knew they had until they signed on to the Malcolm.

  He’d gone out yesterday while things were still quiet to check out the sights and pick up another bottle of his favorite soy whiskey. But he had no intention of going to the festival itself. Too crowded, too many loud noises, too many things that could trigger his PTSD, and he still had bruises from the last time he’d gotten the horrors in a crowd. Not to mention an outstanding warrant on that planet, because by the time they’d pulled him off the person who’d jostled him one time too many, he’d done some damage.

  Buck could have done this job, though. It was plenty quiet here in the industrial district, nothing that would upset Buck’s shattered nerves.

  And Rita didn’t want quiet. She wanted to be at the festival. It wasn’t her first time on San’bal, but the last visit had been to a factory town in the desert to deliver some spare parts for the robo-line. Her R&R consisted of rock-climbing with Xia and watching the cat-girl hunt down and eat gulbas, little mammals that occupied the same ecological niche that rabbits did on planets settled by humans. The desert was beautiful and the rock-climbing had been first-rate, but she hadn’t gotten to explore the local culture. The only natives she’d met were a couple of workers who’d helped unload the boxes of parts, and they hadn’t spoken enough Standard to chat. She hadn’t even tried any local food.

  But now she was in the capital city with a huge festival in full swing. A festival that was all about love and sex, both of which were lacking in Rita’s life at the moment.

  On any other nonhuman planet, Rita would have suspected this San’balese holiday was a case of a local marketing firm picking up on Valentine’s Day, on the theory that if humans would drop hundreds of credits to win a lover or keep on the good side of the one they already had, their people would too. This festival even fell in mid-February on the Standard calendar, which was arbitrarily based on that of Old Earth, although on San’bal, it was high summer.

  But if any race was going to have its own traditional festival of love and desire, it would be the San’balese. Every woman in the galaxy knew that there was nothing like a San’balese romance novel or holo—even if you had to gloss over the sex scenes to ignore the extra limbs. Not to mention the extra sex organs.

  She drew a line at actually fooling around with four-armed quadrupeds. She wasn’t prejudiced, but she suspected it would be awkward at best, if not physically impossible. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t see the sights, dance to the music, have a few drinks and whatever greasy local street food a human could digest, maybe flirt with a San’balese guy and enjoy a playful kiss or two.

  Kenu Aram was the biggest holiday of the year on San’bal, a high holy day as well as a huge party, though Rita didn’t know much about the religious aspect. That would be interesting to research during the next long flight, but right now the party was enough for her. The entire planet was decked out in green and purple flowers. Their sweet, citrusy fragrance filled the air, and priest-like characters in purple and green robes were handing bouquets and blessings to anyone who appeared to be single. Music echoed from every corner and courtyard. Every restaurant in town had seating spilling over into the streets, and street vendors sold candy and a bubbly green alcoholic drink that was apparently the local equivalent of champagne. It was bigger than Valentine’s Day and Mardi Gras and that wacky spring agricultural festival on Khetti with the giant penis puppets rolled into one, with partying in the streets, masks, costumes, and occasional public nudity.

  Rita wanted to experience it all, dammit. She was a spacer for exotic adventure and seeing new sights. It certainly wasn’t for the money, which was usually erratic and piss-poor when you worked on a tramp ship, especially when your captain had a heroic streak that, however laudable, led to breaking local laws on a lot of more backwater planets.

  And it certainly wasn’t for the glamorous lifestyle. She spent her life on a cramped cargo ship with a drunken, handicapped ex-soldier who couldn’t afford limb regen, an intergalactic slacker sex kitten, complete with ears and tail, who was Rita’s best friend, but was also trouble going somewhere to happen, and a married queerbent couple whose hobby was rescuing abused children no matter what the cost. Rita loved her crewmates, but she’d been looking forward to spending time away from them, not working, soaking up the culture of an appealingly exotic world, and meeting some new people.

  Including, in her dreams, a candidate for a festival fling. There must be some anatomically compatible tourists wandering around Kenu Aram hoping to get lucky, and if the universe had any sense of justice, or even of fun, Rita would be out there getting lucky with one of them.

  Of course, Rita knew better than to think the universe went in for fair play. Otherwise Mik wouldn’t have to worry about rescuing exploited kids because there wouldn’t be any. While the universe was in the business of making things fair, he and Gan could be in charge of a luxury cruise liner instead of the rickety Malcolm, Xia would meet someone who liked her style of adorable naughtiness and could afford to pay off the people she annoyed, and Buck would still have both his legs and a future. Maybe even a family. Everything about Buck suggested that if his planet hadn’t been invaded when he was still young and idealistic, he’d be a contented dirtsider with a steady working-class job, a wife and a passel of kids.

  At the very least, Rita would have the day off today, and maybe a date with someone hot, humanoid and non-contagious—ability to speak any language she did a bonus. Oh, she had bigger dreams, but for today she’d settle for some of the little things.

  Instead, she was maneuvering a floater through an industrial park, collecting bins of slag. Lift ’em with the antigrav device, tip ’em into the big bin on the back of the floater, move on to the next one. Repeat until she found herself checking whether Buck had stashed a bottle in the floater, though it wasn’t lunchtime yet. (Alas, he hadn’t.) The only good thing about this particular job, besides the pay and the fact it was so dull she could daydream while she did it, was that the stuff supposedly wasn’t toxic.

  Supposedly. Of course, they’d been lied to before about things like that.

  As she positioned the antigrav at the next recycling bin, she thought she heard banging and rattling coming from inside.

  A trapped animal? While moving bins, she’d already startled a gulba, a number of ratlike leetas, a couple of stray cats and some animals she couldn’t identify, but must be pets, since they had collars. If an
animal were stuck inside, she’d try to find some way to get it out.

  Rita used the antigrav to raise the bin’s heavy lid, then carefully moved the floater over so she could peer inside. Sympathy for animals or not, she’d rather keep a safe distance from a startled, potentially irate thing with teeth and claws.

  At first, what she was seeing didn’t make sense: rust, amber and saffron-colored feathers, tipped with black, and a swath of something green and purple that might have been festival draperies.

  A gigantic bird?

  But there weren’t any birds on San’bal, according to what she’d been able to learn on the Galaxinet, and she hadn’t seen anyone on her previous visit. If there had been birds, Xia would have chased and probably caught them, even if they’d been as big as this appeared to be.

  A discarded costume with an animal underneath it? Part of last night’s festivities had involved the locals all running around in fabulous costumes, drinking copious quantities of the green bubbly booze.

  Some costumed person who’d enjoyed way too much of green bubbly and had climbed into a recycling bin to sleep it off? It didn’t seem like a desirable location for that, but maybe his equally drunk friends tossed him in as a joke.

  While she was still trying to sort it out, the lump of feathers moved.

  Rolled over.

  Opened his eyes.

  Stars and moons! Not a bird, not a costumed drunk—a Banjali.

  Maybe she should have thought of that sooner, but you hardly ever saw Banjalis off Banjal. Their glorious wings were only fully functional on low-gravity planets, and anything approaching Old Earth normal, like San’bal, was uncomfortable.

  “Hey, are you all right?” Rita asked, hoping he could understand her. “Need a hand getting out?” The gravity was probably too high for him to fly easily, especially if he was hung over.

  The Banjali stirred, giving her a better view.

  Definitely male. Definitely gorgeous. And definitely naked. Xia’s tail would have started twitching at first sight.

  The pleasure of that view, however, was spoiled by the strips of purple and green synthsilk—they could have been torn from the buntings that draped anything in the city that didn’t move fast enough—gagging him and binding his ankles and wrists.

  And by his injuries.

  The poor man looked like he’d had a run-in with an Arcturian bearcat. His golden skin was a mass of bruises, scrapes and shallow cuts, one eye swollen shut. But Arcturian bearcats didn’t use laserpistols, and she was pretty damn sure the wound in his shoulder was a pistol shot. No one injury seemed life-threatening—and Rita, thanks to Buck’s twitchy temper and Gan and Mik’s noble but dangerous hobby, not to mention their propensity for taking jobs first and asking questions later, had seen a few life-threatening injuries in her time—but he had to be in a world of pain. All the banging she’d heard must have been him flapping and thrashing while trying to roll over. That must have been some kind of fun with a laserpistol wound in his shoulder.

  “Hang on, buddy,” she said. “I’ll get you out of there.”

  Bad Kitty (Chronicles of the Malcolm 2)

  Fighting slavers? Piece of cake! Assassins? Exciting! Love? Terrifying!

  Ever since felinoid Xia used the lethal skills she was forced to learn as a kitten, a darkness inside her clamors to be fed. Helping Rahal Mizyar, the felinoid warlord of Cibari, take out slavers will feed that darkness while doing good. Besides, Rahal Mizyar is insanely sexy. The devil’s bargain she made—to work for him and share his bed in exchange for his protection for the Malcolm’s crew—is going to be hot.

  Rahal suspects Xia is his mate, but raised by humans, she isn’t familiar with the concept. So he’s determined to make her fall hard and fast for him. That means playing up his bad-ass image and not confessing he became warlord through guile, not violence.

  Private lawman Cal Janssen has been hired to learn if Xia is the long-missing granddaughter of the felinoid prime minister. He’s tracked her to Cibari but isn’t sure how he’s going to make contact with her in the warlord’s palace—until someone mistakes him for notorious arms dealer/interplanetary playboy Karn the Viking Anders. Cal’s not sure which is more astonishing: being recruited to help with Cibari’s nascent law enforcement in his disguise as Karn or being seduced by Rahal and Xia. The latter is definitely more fun.

  Xia’s in cat-girl paradise, with two adoring men who are also crazy about each other, and a good excuse to kick evil asses.

  Then Xia realizes she’s fallen in love with two men who don’t exist. And running away may be a deadly mistake.

  More information here.

  XIA WOKE ALONE in the dark and smelled the human she’d been sent to kill.

  Her tail and whiskers twitched. The pupils of her golden eyes changed from narrow slits to black holes that almost overtook the color. She squinted to focus, seeing the gray shape of her prey.

  He was a bad man. They’d told her that, so it was fine to hunt him.

  She just hoped she wouldn’t have to pretend to like him this time, let him touch her. Hurt her. That had been awful. It had helped, though, in a weird way. When she’d had a chance to kill that man, it felt like she was taking back something he’d stolen from her.

  Thank the stars this man was letting down his guard without letting down his pants or even trying to touch her.

  He was still a bad man. They’d told her that, and it had been true all the other times. But this one was polite at least, so she wouldn’t play with him. She’d let him die quickly and cleanly. They kept telling her that was the best way—more efficient, they said—but it was hard to remember when someone had hurt her or other little kids.

  Xia pounced, claws out, and went right for the throat. Blood poured over her, more blood than there should have been. Enough blood to drown her.

  But she liked it.

  She licked her lips, drinking it in, wondering if the man’s meat would taste good. She was half-starved, hungry enough to take a bite and find out. She opened her mouth, sank in her sharp teeth and ripped…

  And realized she was biting into Mik, the man she called Dad.

  This time, Xia really woke up, safe and alone and gagging on something that wasn’t there, in the brightly lit cabin on the Malcolm. Until recently, she’d shared this cabin with her human friend Rita.

  Good thing Rita moved in with Drax, Xia thought dimly as she started to claw the pillow and scream. Rita would want to comfort her because Rita was a good person. Rita would think she understood these nightmares, but she wouldn’t.

  Xia had almost died in a fight with the assassin Nitari Belesku not too long ago. Belesku was still under contract to kill Xia and the rest of the crew, which would give any sane person, or even a slightly crazy one like Xia, bad dreams. They had another assassin after them as well, a San’balese woman whose name they’d never learned. That one was also trying to wipe out the Malcolm’s crew, who were the witnesses to her betrayal of her own planet and to her attempt to kill Rita’s lover, Drax.

  All logical reasons to sleep restlessly, but not the reason for Xia’s bad dreams.

  Rita and the other humans on the crew didn’t…mustn’t…understand the real reason.

  The real nightmare was that trying to kill another sentient had felt so natural. The moves she’d been taught as a child were all in her muscle memory, just waiting to come out and play. She’d bitten Belesku, licked Belesku’s blood from her claws, and it had tasted good. Tasted like prey, only infinitely better than the little rodents and lizards she’d catch when they were dirtside.

  She’d thought that, thanks to the good efforts of Mik and his husband, Gan, she’d escaped her childhood. Learned to be civilized, despite not having parents of her own species to teach her about food versus not food, prey versus sentients.

  But her marled-up past had caught up with her and she didn’t know how much longer she could fight it.

  Xia had insisted on taking the newly refurbished smaller cabin
once Drax moved onto the Malcolm, letting Rita and Drax take the cabin she and Rita had once shared. Nothing noble or self-sacrificing. In a new-to-her, smaller space, Xia didn’t feel so alone.

  Most of the time.

  It wasn’t working right now.

  Rita had always been good about letting Xia hug her or crawl into her bunk to chat before sleeping. Xia had always made a game of it, flirting outrageously and pretending to suffer unrequited lust in such over-the-top terms it was obvious she was joking.

  She’d never wanted to admit the truth to Rita, who had a sort of innocence from growing up in a happy family on a decent planet like New Canada—physical contact and companionship helped her handle the darkness, as long as she was with someone she could absolutely trust. For her first two years on the Malcolm, Xia had slept on a mattress on the floor of Mik and Gan’s cabin, and they’d let her into their bed when the dark overwhelmed her. They were good guys. They never complained she was getting in the way of their passion. She figured that out on her own when she got a little older, gritted her fangs, and insisted on moving into her own space. Then she left the light on for years, until Rita joined the crew and Xia realized right off that she could trust the human woman with everything, including her nightmares.

  Too bad she couldn’t trust random lovers the same way, or it would be a lot easier to take care of the darkness. But she didn’t like sharing a bed with someone she didn’t know. Sex was one thing. Sleep was far too vulnerable.

  Even with the light on, like it had been since she moved into her own little cabin, Xia could feel the darkness creeping in. Not the friendly, warm darkness of an evening spent having sexytimes in good company, or the exciting blackness between planets when you were traveling someplace new, or the playful darkness you crept through to pull off a prank, but the slimy, creepy darkness of her nightmares.