Lana's Comet (Outer Settlement Agency)
Page 8
No picture this time, just audio from a voice he never thought he’d hear again.
“On orders of the Outer Settlement Agency and under the orders of my own damned self, you will state your purpose, state your claim and state where the hell I can find Agent Cyprus Dhoma.”
Cyprus turned on the vidlink, waved to his brother and fell back into the piloting seat. Relief flooded through him, unraveling every clinched and aching muscle. He was safe and more importantly, Lana was. “We’re free and clear.”
“I wouldn’t exactly say that,” she said, pointing to her face. “It’s too late, I think.”
“You wrong.”
“I’m a doctor.”
“I feel it. Lana. Everything really will work out. Trust me on this.”
“What about us? This thing between us?”
The comms and panels blinked before he could answer. By the time he’d started the docking linkup process, she’d passed straight out. He kissed her sweat drenched face in full view of the screen, picked her up and carried her to his brother’s waiting ship.
Chapter Thirteen
Lana blinked against lenses that still grated against her sensitive eyes. While nanocores fused with her visual relay system, she sat down in the chair of her dormitory one last time. She’d miss this place. Sure, her weeks here had been…rough, but she passed every test, ticked every box and brought down a multitrillion-credit organization. Doctoring isn’t what it used to be.
The ramifications of that were just starting to ripple through. Data cores were wiped clear, fifteen Meash Two directors now awaited trial in OSA prison cells and they razed two facilities to the ground in hopes of permanent decontamination. OSA waited until the beginning of the cleanup operations to release the details of the mission per Cyprus’s advice. It averted the threat of riot and regained wavering support for the government.
For their part, she and Cyprus faced a closed door meeting with twenty high-ranking officials. In the middle of this debriefing, two OSA generals had scrambled for the exits. Lana smiled at what the others had done to them for their disloyalty.
But that was then. She had less to smile about these days.
The lenses readjusted, the slight twinge on her pupils pulling her back to the present. She gathered up the last of her things and headed to the transport shuttle. Dozens applauded at her entry into the vessel and everyone offered to help her to her seat.
Everyone except for him.
Since that meeting, they’d been separated for questioning. By the time she told her story to every major council in the system, Cyprus had already been carted off for a promotion of some sort. At least that’s what they told her. That was four weeks ago. She hadn’t heard anything since.
One of the students from her recruiting class locked into the seat next to her at the front of the craft. “I officially forgive you for all those laps. Are you really blind behind those lenses?”
“You’re welcome and none of your business.” Also known as, somewhat. Cyprus had gotten her to the medipod too late and now her vision relied on these things. Her vision for her life? A fair trade. Her universe had been reduced in color, but not by much. There was another loss that cut almost as much.
The shuttle door slammed shut and her heart dropped to sludge at her feet. Cyprus wasn’t coming.
Salt stung the tiny striations where the lenses worked their way into her irises. She’d get through this. She was tough. Blindness. Galaxy saving. The loss of a man wasn’t anything to be worked up about.
And yet when the door reopened and a tall, blond man entered, her heart burned to cinders at the realization that it wasn’t him.
The door closed again and the thrusters sent their shuttle upward to the space station Comet. The trip on a vehicle this large took forever, but when the double-barreled metallic behemoth appeared through the porthole, she made up her mind to start over again. Why not? A few thousand people lived here. She could meet someone and begin fresh with a normal romance. The Comet would be the place for her new life.
Alone.
Sort of.
The door opened to raucous cheering and instead of rotating scenes from throughout the galaxy, the walls flashed her name along with a picture of the space station itself.
One man stepped forward from the crowd.
One beautiful man with short-cropped blond hair. “Cyprus?”
A grin split his face and he rubbed the place where his hair ended, just above his cheek. “They made me shave it for the new position. You think you can stand it? It shows off my ears.”
“They’re your grandmother’s ears. I…uh…saw her on the datacell you gave me. Lovely.”
“Clone ears.”
“Don’t start.”
He shifted from one foot to the other and his face displayed a very strange emotion that she might almost label as uncertainty. He cleared his throat and looked to the floor. “They wouldn’t let me see you. Then I started training and…well…I couldn’t and…shit.” He looked up, took a deep breath and tried again. “Lana, I want you to know that I—”
“How upset would you be if jumped in your arms right now?”
He chuckled and moved in closer, not stopping until the tips of his boots touched hers. “Very. These sorts of things require order and some modicum of decorum.”
“I see.”
Her heart was in the middle of burning to crispy flakes of heartbreak and humiliation when, to the delight of the crowd, Cyprus grabbed her hand and raised it above their heads. “Ladies and gentlemen! With her arrival, it’s official. We are now standing in the newly renamed Comet Lana.”
“What? You can’t be serious!”
But the evidence was all around her – on the walls and faces in every direction she turned. Cyprus leaned down to speak, cupping her ear in a feeble attempt to blot out the cheering hordes. “I went straight from interrogation to training.”
“I know.”
“And straight from training to you. I pulled some strings to make this ceremony happen. My mother’s here too. I figured we could spend some time together. The three of us. And you and me. Mostly you and me. We’ll both be stationed here and… hell…I just came to get you.”
The lips she’d longed for crashed onto hers and the cheers around them morphed to hoots and sighs.
She pulled back and tilted her head to the side. “What about your reputation? This public display can’t be good for that.”
“Don’t you worry about my reputation. Of course, if you doubt it, you can always join the next trainee class.”
“Oh, no. No, no, no. You’ll be doing what I say from now on.” Then she kissed him again and winked, “But I’m prepared to keep that just between us.”
Cyprus puckered his lips, made actual smooching noises and shrugged. “Don’t laugh. I’m yours, Lana. I fought to get here, damn near begged to make it happen. You’re mine and I don’t care who knows it.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Besides, I still you owe you a date.”
Fin
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Did you love Lana’s Comet? Then you should read The Genie’s Witch by Lyn Brittan!
A genie down on his luck, Tig wanted nothing more than to get to Vegas and wait for life to unscrew itself. Things would have gone just fine, if not for the witch in the airport shoving her way to the front of the line. He had every intention of letting her know how little he appre
ciated her rudeness…then he looked into her eyes and felt the chains around his heart clink
to the floor.
Dinah craved a peaceful vacation and was willing to step on a few toes to get it. Unfortunately, some of them belonged to a sizzling genie with lust on the brain and trouble in his eyes. He, and the trouble, followed her home. Damn shame she couldn’t separate the two. She didn’t need or want anything long term, and had to make him understand that.
Yet more than lust is on the line. Dark forces mean to separate and destroy them both. What started as a mile-high fling, rapidly turned into a fight for life and love. Only together do they have a shot of making it out of this alive.
Read more at Lyn Brittan’s site.
Also by Lyn Brittan
Outer Settlement Agency
Solia’s Moon
Anja’s Star
Quinn’s Quasar
Outer Settlement Agency Omnibus
Lana’s Comet
The Djinn Series
The Genie’s Witch
A Genie’s Love
Watch for more at Lyn Brittan’s site.
About the Author
Lyn grew up in the New Orleans and decided to live like her heroes, James Bond and Indiana Jones. She wasn’t totally successful and never had to shoot her way out of a hotel bedroom. She’s still coming to terms with it. She writes Young Adult and New Adult as Pamela Lyn.
Lyn is addicted to Twitter! http://www.twitter.com/AuthorPamelaLyn
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Read more at Lyn Brittan’s site.
About the Publisher
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