The Mammoth Book of Futuristic Romance (Mammoth Books)

by Trisha Telep

  The bastard laughed. Jessica glared at him until he stopped and cleared his throat. “He received some nicks and scrapes when he fell. I would never hurt him.”

  She snorted.

  He gave her his most sincerely charming expression, spreading his hands palms up. “You don’t understand. Neither of you were ever truly in danger. It just had to look as if you’d died. Your work must carry on. They were trying to stop it.”

  Jessica narrowed her eyes. “‘They’?”

  “The Naturalists, of course. TERA is too important, too life-changing. Your research must continue. We knew the army would catch wind of the assassination attempt and save you in time.”

  “If the government shuts us down, faking our deaths and kidnapping us won’t help our research continue, Stephen.” Jessica used her most biting tone, realising for certain what he wanted – a behind-the-scenes scientist who could continue research into unnatural ways to enhance a human body. To change people at a genetic level by playing God. That kind of research violated every medical ethic. But if she and her father were believed dead, they could continue that research and experimentation in secret, with no checks and balances to stop them. That was Stephen’s intention and he actually thought she would be tempted by the offer.

  Stephen gave her a look as if he’d just offered her an ice-cream sundae and a large spoon. “You know what I’m suggesting, Jessica. You could make this drug everything that it’s truly meant to be.”

  In her peripheral vision came a movement she’d been expecting. Their time had run out. Before all hell descended into the clearing, she looked Stephen straight in the eye. “TERA is already what it was meant to be. A drug that cures disease and fixes physical impairments. Why is that never enough for people like you?”

  Eight

  Men began yelling and firing tasers. Stephen spun toward the commotion. Jessica ran to her father’s side. Tears filled her eyes at his pain-filled face. There were scratches all over him and a bandage tight around his ankle. She began untying him. “Is this really from the fall?”

  “Yes.” He smiled at her, the love only shown for his work and for her shining in his eyes. “The blast made the foam disintegrate faster. Mike grabbed me before I could fall, but our position made landing awkward.”

  He nodded behind her and she turned to see an injured man lying on the ground. Her father continued, his voice suddenly grim. “Mike, on the other hand, was not hurt in the fall. All his traumas came after, when he wouldn’t give up intel on your possible hiding spots.”

  Jessica pressed her lips together, glancing at the chaos outside the cave as she worked on the knots binding her father. Both sides of the conflict stayed well away from the cave. The scientists would be no good to any of them if they were injured.

  Jessica freed her father and pulled him into her arms. She could have lost him today. It was a fear every day, of course, since he’d been forty-nine when she’d been born. After decades dedicated to medicine, one glimpse of her mother had shifted his focus. He’d been a loving husband and father until her mother had died. Afterwards, it had become the two of them, fighting the ills of the world together. But no matter how many medical advancements they made, the human body would only go so far before it quit.

  The fighting was over and men were shouting and organizing. Her father pulled away, taking in the anxiety on her face. “Airborne 81 out there?”

  Warmth spread over her face. “Yes.”

  She caught the eye of the injured soldier on the ground. “Mike?”

  Beautiful brown eyes peeked up at her. He grinned. “That’s me.”

  “Are you bleeding?”

  “No, ma’am. Sore ribs, broken leg, otherwise I’m fine.” He winked.

  Judging by the way the light hit his eyes and splashed across his face, a concussion and multiple cuts and contusions could be added to that list, but she nodded. “I’d better go check the others, then.”

  Mike frowned. “Be careful.”

  With a nod, Jessica headed to the entrance, trying not to be seen while she took in the status of their rescue. Before she made it inside, though, she ran headlong into a man who towered over her, his face shadowed by the setting sun behind him. She didn’t need a clear sight of his face to recognize the man she’d been following all morning. Without warning, a rush of elation had her jumping up to her toes and hugging him close.

  But Reid stood stiff, even as one of his hands patted her waist. Jessica pulled back. “Sorry. I was just so happy to see that you won.”

  Reid smiled at her, but it was a voice behind him that explained his reticence.

  “Understandable, Dr Cross.” Another soldier emerged from the shadows behind Reid. Reid’s superior officer circled around Jessica to go straight to her father. “Good to see you doing so well, Dr Cross. You gave us all quite a scare.”

  “Nathan, it’s good to see you. Is everything taken care of, now?”

  Within minutes, the injured Mike, her father and Jessica were loaded onto another helijet. Seeing Reid appear in the doorway was almost déjà vu. This time, he spread a warm blanket over her and another over her father. Her pajamas weren’t a complete lost cause yet, but they were thin, and cold air had covered the valley as soon as the sun had retreated. Reid sat across from them, his posture military perfect and his attitude properly withdrawn.

  Jessica looked at her hands, twisting the blanket’s ends in her fists. This had been the most eventful, dangerous day of her life and now she felt a connection to Reid. But did he feel the same for her? Or was that connection just the residual effect of an adrenalin rush they hadn’t crashed down from yet? Did it really mean anything?

  Jessica dreaded the answer.

  Nine

  Jessica hurried to set her flute of champagne on the waiter’s tray as he passed by during the Eutopia fundraiser. Eutopia. She snorted. Just another way of saying there were still issues that must be dealt with. Nothing was ever good enough. Cure illness, fine. Now there’s poverty. Or political strife. Or too many hangnails.

  Considering the dark mood she’d had the last few months, alcohol was not a great idea. She and her father had testified against Stephen Carson and the men who’d blown up their helijet and attempted to kidnap them. She’d seen Reid once at the courthouse, from a distance. He hadn’t spoken to her that day or any day since the helijet explosion. Normally, having someone pass in and out of her life didn’t bother her. Other scientists, receptionists, medical interns – they usually had no effect.

  A soldier who saved her life, then shared chocolate with her, should probably be the same. And maybe if Mike had been the one to rescue her, he would have been. But Reid’s eyes haunted her. She’d stared into those expressive blue eyes so much that day, reading his directions as easily as reading a book. Not seeing him, except in her dreams, had become a painful, nagging weight she’d never experienced before.

  Her mood was ruining everything right now. Jessica straightened, ready to avoid anyone asking her to dance. She just wanted to grab her purse and leave.

  “What’s wrong, Dr Sweetheart? Your experiments not turning out?”

  Jessica’s eyes widened and she spun to the voice at her back. The full skirt of her peach gown brushed against black-clad legs. Her gaze traveled up his formal long-tail tux to the three gold strips at his cuffs, and farther, to his broad shoulders decorated with stripes and stars and gold braid, and more ribbons than even she’d won for her doctorate research. Shock made her voice flatter than she intended. “Lieutenant.”

  Reid’s face went from a charming half-smile to smooth and expressionless. “I didn’t mean to bother you, Doctor. Just thought I’d be friendly.”

  He started to turn away and she panicked. That was not what she wanted. Not at all. Snagging his fingers, the tension in his hand and arm warned her not to attempt pulling on him. Jessica rushed in front of him and stared up into his face. “Friendly is an offer to dance.”

  He raised a brow. “I think not.”r />
  She tilted her chin up and raised a challenging brow. “Haven’t you learned by now? Thinking should be left to the geniuses.”

  His lips twitched. Not quite a smile, but it would do. She tugged him onto the dance floor. It wasn’t easy to talk, but it was not impossible, until his arms surrounded her again. He held her waist and hand at a discreet distance. She cast around for something more to say, but nothing seemed quite right. Too personal, to distant, too accusatory. As he stared over her shoulder, not seeming to be part of the dance at all, she went for the only tactic that seemed like it might work.

  “Gee, save a girl’s life, then don’t talk to her again for three months. Is that the way with soldiers, Airborne 81?”

  That brought his gaze back to her. “It is if the soldier in question is trying not to take advantage of a momentary attack of hero-worship.”

  Her eyes widened, then fell to the bow tie at his throat. “Oh.”

  As an incredibly good-looking man, he probably got that all the time. Desperate, needy, lonely women who had a day of excitement in their otherwise staid lives and refused to let it go. Is that what she’d become? Jessica tried to release her hand and step away but he wouldn’t let her. She looked up, reading his eyes again.

  The scary, expressionless look had gone, and he now seemed gentle, teasing. “Are you trying to abandon me? On a dance floor in front of hundreds of strangers? Now that is just cruel.”

  “No, of course I won’t do that.” Confused, she settled back into his grip. “Have you been well?”

  Do you think of me? Dream of me? Remember holding me and maybe miss it? Desperate, foolish, whiny woman.

  “My health is good. The weather is good. This event is good.” His eyes mocked her attempt at innocuous conversation. “The case is closed.”

  She blinked. “The case?”

  He raised a brow. “The one where I had to be debriefed, write reports, and speak to a jury in a completely unbiased manner.”

  “Oh.” She nodded. “That case. It’s closed for me, as well. Last week I finished signing the final paperwork.”

  “I know,” he said meaningfully.

  Jessica met his gaze again, but couldn’t quite read him this time. “You know?”

  “Now I can dance with you without any accusations of tampering with an investigation.”

  Jessica scowled. “Who would accuse you of that?”

  “At this point, no one who matters. So, sweetheart, can I have your number?”

  “Oh.” Yes, that was genius thinking at work. She finally understood why he’d stayed away. And he wanted her number. Jessica’s eyes darted to her purse, left at the table beside her father. Her father, whose twinkly eyes were focused on the two of them on the dance floor. Jessica looked back at Reid. “I don’t have a pen, or my phone, or my business card with me.”

  He smiled. “I can get it from you before we say goodnight.”

  A glow she could actually feel spread across her face. “Yes, you can. But if you kiss me again, you’ll have to promise to take your time.”

  He chuckled. “That’s a promise.”

  A promise he fulfilled three hours later when he escorted her to her car. In the slowest of increments possible, he cupped the side of her face in one hand, slid the other arm around her waist, and did nothing short of caress her lips with his. Jessica closed her eyes and sank into him, one hand at the nape of his neck, playing with the smooth skin there. Her other hand reached around his back, pressing him even closer. This was exactly what she’d wanted, needed, dreamed about since his first abrupt kiss on the run.

  Reid sucked her bottom lip between his and stroked his tongue lightly across it. Jessica shivered. This was absolutely worth jumping out of a jet for.

  Seven Months of Forever

  “Games of Command” Adventure

  Linnea Sinclair

  CAPTAIN’S OFFICE: UNITED COALITION HUNTERSHIP REGALIA

  Chatter strongly indicates the Triad Faction plans a significant move against the U-Cees. Attached is all I know right now. Target or targets have not been conclusively identified—

  “One minute!” Captain Tasha Sebastian grumbled at the flashing green icon on her desk screen even though the icon couldn’t hear her. But it made her feel that at least she wasn’t ignoring the damned thing as she studied the information on enemy activity in the Far Reaches.

  However, you shouldn’t discount, Sass, that your name is high on the list. After all, you robbed the Faction of an expensive and irreplaceable asset.

  It was that expensive and irreplaceable asset that now, via flashing green icon, wanted her attention. He would have to wait. The heavily encrypted packet from the Rebashee Underground took priority – and concentration. She was able to decrypt the data only because she had, after all, spent a good part of her early years as a raft-rat named Sass, and had been trained in the fine art of code-breaking – and ship hijacking – by a Rebashee mercenary.

  The same mercenary who’d sent her this information in spite of the fact that the raft-rat was now a United Coalition huntership captain. The Rebashee had no love for either the U-Cees or the Triad Faction. But they hated the Faction more, especially with the recent assimilation of the Triad by the parasitic Ved’eskhar. “The new and mullytrocking-improved Triad, thanks to the Ved,” Gund’jalar, her mercenary mentor had noted in a previous missive. If ruthless and morally bankrupt could be seen as an improvement. Sass doubted the thousands of Triad citizens psychically tortured saw it as such.

  It took her ten more minutes to decrypt and process Gund’jalar’s latest intel. The information was vague and felt as if the Ved-controlled Triad hadn’t yet committed to a definitive course of action.

  Or it’s possible, she argued with herself, that our friends in the resistance are finally causing trouble, forcing the Faction to scatter resources. The U-Cees had hoped for that ever since the incursion of the Ved caused the collapse of the original U-Cee-Triad alliance over six months ago. Though she recognized she could be being overly optimistic.

  But Gund’jalar wasn’t an alarmist. This was something he wanted her to know now. She noted it.

  My sources expect a more detailed update within a few shipdays if not hours. As soon as I know, so will you. Until then, my friend and best student, watch your back.

  She closed the packet and filed it under three levels of encryption that, thanks to new security protocols Kel-Paten devised, could only be accessed by herself or Kel-Paten. There was still work to do with their personal protocols, but running a five-ship patrol group in the Far Reaches – right on the edge of the Triad border – had, understandably, taken precedence.

  “Okay. Next?”

  The flashing green icon was still there. She tapped it.

  My office. Five minutes. Coffee awaits. BKP

  A second box pulsed behind the first. Impatience thy name is Branden Kel-Paten. She opened that too with a swipe of her finger.

  Your coffee’s getting cold. We may have to explore other forms of heat . . .BKP

  That made her grin in spite of the dire tone in the intel from Gund’jalar. For a man – she rarely thought of Branden as a bio-’cybe anymore – who was a virgin a mere seven months ago, he was a quick learner of these “other” forms of heat.

  “The admiral beckons,” she told the plump and purring black-and-white furzel sprawled across the corner of her desk. She hadn’t intended to update Kel-Paten on Gund’jalar’s information until she received the specifics promised in the second report. But Branden, a former Triad admiral, had been working with his own sources – Triad expats, for one – and a comparison of intel at this point might be advisable considering they were in the Far Reaches.

  Looove Brandenfriend, was the telepathic furzel’s answer. That and a furry bared belly. She gave Tank’s belly a quick rub then headed for her office door. “Tell Branden I’m on my—”

  The general quarters alarm whooped through the Regalia’s corridors. Sass spun back toward her desk.
“Tank, go blink! Blink to your kennel now.” The furzel, well used to emergencies after their recent Faction-sponsored insanity in McClellan’s Void, teleported – blinked – out of Sass’s office and, according to the icon on her comp screen, into the safety of his personal life-pod in her quarters.

  She slapped her shoulder comm link, connecting to the officer of the watch on the bridge. “Captain here. Status.”

  The information the OOW gave her as she jogged toward the lift made her gut clench: an interstellar thermal wave a few light-minutes out. It had sufficient power to turn a huntership like the Regalia – not to mention the two cruisers and two frigates traveling with her – into a ragged line of deep-space debris. The fact that she’d faced such a wave twice before only made her throat tighten.

  Three times is never the charm it’s purported to be.

  She lunged out of the lift, colliding with a tall dark-haired man in freighter grays, his hands encased in black gloves. Admiral Branden Kel-Paten was a commanding presence even though he no longer wore an intimidating, black, enemy Triad uniform. He’d lost more than his virginity seven months earlier: with his defection from the Triad, Branden had lost his history, his home, his fleet, his commission. That the U-Cees’ very formidable former enemy was still referred to as admiral was only because the half-human, half-cybernetic officer continued to earn it.

  “We must be some kind of damned vortex magnet,” Sass said tersely as Kel-Paten propelled her toward the bridge, one hand firmly grasping her forearm.

  “Statistically improbable, Sass, but I won’t disagree with you.” The flat tone of his deep voice told her he was fully in his ’cybe function. That and the luminous glow of his eyes.

  “Captain on deck,” the officer of the watch sang out.

  Sass waved the bridge crew back to their seats with a perfunctory, “As you were.”

  Kel-Paten slid into the chair next to hers in the center of the U-shaped bridge and, with a quick motion of his wrist, spiked into the ship’s systems through the cybernetic interfaces that augmented his body. Collision alarms fell silent. Sass gleaned her data the old-fashioned way, studying what the screens and holographic master plot board before her told her. Yes, it was a thermal wave, but this time . . .