The Mammoth Book of Futuristic Romance (Mammoth Books)

by Trisha Telep

  “McAbian residue readings are inconsistent with vortex formation,” Kel-Paten announced over the low, tense rumble of voices around them. “No known binary-collision region in this sector. Energy signature is not indicative of an interstellar gas cavity.”

  “So it’s not a star fart. Then what—?”

  An object flashed onto the Regalia’s short-range screens. A ship – less than three lightminutes out – impossibly, improbably hurtling through the blackness of deep space on a direct course for Regalia’s patrol group.

  “Deploy Starseekers. Forward shields full!” There was no jump gate here – no known and charted jump gate – but even if there was, no ship in her patrol group had logged a corresponding energy surge that preceded a gate transit. The unknown bogie had, to all intents and purposes, appeared out of nowhere.

  And that was not good news.

  Kel-Paten’s frown told her he’d surmised that ugly fact, and likely more.

  “We have ident on the bogie,” her tactical officer called out without turning from her sensor station. “Fighter craft. Triad TZ-Four. Starseeker leader confirms configuration.”

  “A Teaser? We’re being challenged by a godsdamned Teaser?” Teasers, like U-Cee Starseekers, were fast and efficient, yes. But a real threat only in fifteen-man squadrons that used the craft’s speed and agility to attack and withdraw in repetitive waves, wearing down a ship’s defensive shielding so the larger capital ships behind them could move in for the kill. A sole Teaser was little more than target practice for a ship like the Regalia. This meager effort couldn’t possibly be what Gund’jalar’s information alluded to, could it?

  “TZ-Four, subclass Ada,” Kel-Paten said as the Regalia adjusted course. “No accompanying battle group detected.”

  Yet.

  “Where’s the rest of the squadron?”

  “Sensors aren’t picking up anything right now, Captain,” Tactical told her.

  “Kel-Paten?”

  His frown deepened. “Negative.”

  No battle group. No squadron. Just a lone Teaser on the edge of the Far Reaches . . .

  “Scan for debris.” The small fighter had to have been part of an attack group launched by the Triad Faction against Rebashee patrols. But why was it heading insystem, not for the Triad border? Unless the yet-to-be-located attack group was aimed at the patrol ships currently under her command? Gund’jalar’s warning replayed in her mind. “Check all comm channels for distress signals, any kind of traffic. Scan the Teaser for life signs.”

  The pilot could be unconscious, the ship following a now-useless course. The ship’s location could be a freak accident. Happenstance.

  Except this freak accident was dumping a Teaser on her doorstep. And she was a firm disbeliever in happenstance.

  However, espionage was something she was very familiar with.

  “Your theories on using a vortex as a jumpgate,” she said quietly, because even though this was her ship, Kel-Paten’s work in that area was rightly deemed top secret. Especially as Kel-Paten had preliminary data that indicated a vortex’s energies might also hold the key to the destruction of the Ved.

  “Already scanned for telltales. Negative,” he told her, equally as quietly.

  That was good news and bad news. Good that the Faction hadn’t beaten them to the punch in harnessing a vortex’s power. Bad in that she still had no idea where the ship came from.

  “No debris, no distress signals,” Rembert, her first officer, reported.

  Also not good.

  “The Hallmark and the Noble report negative on debris and signals,” Lieutenant Lucari at communications confirmed.

  More not good. Sass was never happy when the not-goods ran in the plus column. “I don’t like—”

  “Distress signal active on Triad comm NB757.” Kel-Paten’s announcement interrupted her complaint. “Sending data to you now, Mr Rembert.”

  Triad comm NB757?

  Her first officer swiveled back to his station to start his data analysis. “Got it, Admiral. Thanks.”

  “It’s a coded squadron channel,” Kel-Paten said before she could ask. “Short range. If the U-Cees even had it in their databases, it’s likely been deleted as old intel. I haven’t used it since I was a cadet.”

  Try as she might, Sass couldn’t envision the dark-haired muscular man as a gangly twenty-year-old cadet.

  “No life signs, Captain,” Rembert called out. “No ship response to our hails, not even on that channel.”

  Something felt wrong, very wrong. Sass couldn’t pin it down, other than a gut feeling. There were too many unexplained variables: a ship out of nowhere broadcasting on an old frequency in very short range . . .

  “Tractor her in, Mr Rembert,” Kel-Paten called out.

  Sass’s right hand shot up. “Belay that.” She turned. “I don’t like this. It’s not a rescue. No one’s alive aboard. Lock it in a tow if you want, but I don’t want to risk—”

  “Ship’s breaking apart, Captain, Admiral!”

  “Reel her in, Mr Rembert.” Kel-Paten looked down at her. “We’ve suspected for months now that the Faction is moving assets across the border into this sector. If this is an error on their part, then this could get us information we need. Now.”

  “And if she’s rigged with a bomb?”

  “Shuttle Bay Eleven,” Kel-Paten told Rembert. Then to Sass: “That will—”

  “Okay. I don’t like it, but . . .” She tightened her lips. Bay Eleven was triple-plated for just such situations. Somehow that didn’t make her feel better.

  “Got her! Eleven it is,” Rembert replied.

  Sass nodded her confirmation. “Call back our Seekers, Mr Rembert.” She glanced over at Kel-Paten. “You’d better be right about this ship’s threat potential.”

  A small smile quirked Kel-Paten’s mouth as he spiked out, and his eyes shifted back to their normal pale-blue hue. “I always am.” He rose. “Let’s go see what our lucky find will reveal.”

  CORRIDOR UPPER BRIDGE DECK

  It took Branden Kel-Paten’s cybernetically enhanced mind all of three-point-six seconds to calculate the exact time it would take for the lift to travel from the upper level of the bridge to the lower shuttle docks on the Regalia and he knew – from that and from, well, experience – that that was exactly enough time to grab two decent kisses or one very excellent deep kiss from Captain Tasha Sebastian.

  Never one to settle for anything less than perfection, he opted for the latter.

  “Branden,” Sass began as the lift doors whooshed closed, “I think—”

  “Thinking not required,” he rasped as he pulled her roughly against him and covered her already opening mouth – convenient, that – with his own. He took in her small oomph of breath and used that to let his tongue find hers. Then her hands splayed against his chest slid upward, curling around his neck, and Sass – his Sass, the woman he’d loved in secret for so very long – did her best to redefine his definition of an excellent kiss.

  It had been seven months since his decades-old fantasies had become reality, but she still made his heart pound, made his hands tremble, made his body go electric in ways the cyber-surgeons who created him never imagined. They couldn’t have. They’d created him for war, for death, for ugliness. What he had with Sass surpassed all descriptions of beauty.

  He still woke by her side every ship morning fearing her presence was all a dream – or another Ved-induced hallucination like the one that had tortured them with bizarre alternate realities seven months before in McClellan’s Void.

  “My, oh my,” she said, her voice breathy, when he broke their kiss one level before the shuttle decks.

  “I haven’t seen you since breakfast.” That wasn’t totally true. He could “see” her anytime he wanted simply by spiking into the ship’s vid cams. But seeing her wasn’t the same as feeling the heat of her skin on his. He needed that. Desperately. “It’s almost dinner.”

  “And if someone else boarded the lift?”


  “Not possible.” Well, except for Tank, who could blink himself anywhere on the ship within seconds, and who had more than once shown up at some rather inopportune times. “I reprogrammed it before we left the bridge.”

  “Smart ass,” she quipped as the lift doors opened. Three crewmembers waiting for the lift saluted and stepped aside.

  “Thank you, Captain,” he told her, motioning for her to exit first.

  “My pleasure, Admiral.”

  “No, mine. Really.”

  The sound of the lift doors closing behind them was immediately followed by the sensation of a small hand smacking him on the rump. He grinned.

  “Be careful with this so-called lucky find of yours, Branden. I don’t like it. And my Rebashee contacts are getting chatter that something’s in the works.”

  He sighed. “You and Gund’jalar grant the Faction capabilities I don’t think they have. By the time I escaped, the Triad had lost most of the key officers, top personnel.” Some escaped with him but far more were murdered. That was one of the many losses he felt keenly.

  “And you don’t feel the Ved’eskhar give them a definite advantage?”

  “Granted, the Ved control those who remain. But that’s exactly my point: they’re alien creatures. Parasites. Their goal is to feed on humans’ emotional reactions. The success of the Faction as a military and political entity is not their concern. I’ve believed all along they would get sloppy militarily. This could well be the first of many errors we’ll find.”

  “Show me the rest of the squadron, or its debris, and I’ll feel better. That kind of error I understand. But a ship just showing up with no logical explanation—”

  “We don’t know how long it’s been traveling. The explanation could be just out of sensor range for us. I can access the Teaser’s systems – I know a Teaser’s systems – and find all that out and more.”

  Sass slowed as they approached Shuttle Bay Eleven. “I want one of our furzels to scan the ship for Ved resonances first.”

  “Agreed.” Kel-Paten knew he could handle anything mechanical or cybernetic. He’d integrate his personal firewalls with the security blocks already resident in the U-Cee probes. But telepathic parasitic aliens were something he’d never been programmed for. Furzels, however, hunted them with great success. That was why there were virtually none of the small furry creatures in the Triad, and why every U-Cee ship and station housed them.

  He followed Sass into the shuttle bay control room, and listened without comment while she requested a scanning furzel from the division chief on duty. The slender lines of the captured Triad ship – the Ada-class TZ-Four – drew him to the large viewport. Sleek, powerful, agile, adaptive, it was everything the Triad had been before the Faction. Yes, this one was battered, her hull caved in badly on her port side. But those flaws couldn’t detract from her beauty, not even with the Regalia’s spiky security probes circling her, scanning for explosives and detonation devices.

  He’d flown TZ-Twos in training and Threes in actual combat. “The Ada-class TZ-Four was released fifteen months ago,” he told Sass and the chief as they watched the brown-striped furzel sniff the viewport, its fur-tufted ears cocked forward, long whiskers quivering. He couldn’t hear its thoughts. He wasn’t linked to it as he and Sass were to Tank. But he recognized the scanning posture.

  “If the ship is a newer model then why was it broadcasting on an old comm channel?” Sass asked as the furzel disappeared from its perch in a blink, and then reappeared moments later.

  He’d considered that question. “The NB757 comm was needed to integrate with older ships.”

  A plumy tail twitched. The furzel shook itself and stared with golden eyes up at the red-haired female ensign who was its teammate and handler. “Negative on Ved resonances, Captain,” the woman said.

  “Probes show negative on explosives,” the chief added, pointing to the hovering holo screen with its rotating schematics of the craft.

  Kel-Paten held back his “told you so” until the chief followed the ensign and the furzel out of the control room.

  Sass snorted softly. “Just how long has it been since Teaser squadrons used NB757?”

  Kel-Paten accessed his memory banks. “Twenty-one years, three months. TZ-Twos were the last official usage, though it existed on some early Threes because—”

  “They had to talk to the older fighters. I know. But this is a TZ-Four.”

  “Exactly my point. I know her specs, defenses, and data structures because they’re based on systems I’d developed for the Vax.” That was another loss he felt keenly: The Vaxxar, his former Triad flagship, now little more than scrap, thanks to the Ved. He shook off the memory and tossed one of her trademark phrases at her: “Piece o’ cake.”

  She responded with her green eyes narrowing in a clear warning. “Piece o’ cake, my ass. Be careful. That’s an order.”

  Kel-Paten dropped into the seat the chief had vacated and inserted one end of a makeshift data-spike into the access port. The Regalia was a U-Cee ship, not Triad. It might now be his home, but it was still foreign territory. Linking the other end to the ports in his wrist would grant him control of and access to the probes and through them the TZ-Four. A bit of home, a bit of familiarity. He hadn’t realized how much he missed Triad tech until he’d seen the fighter.

  “You hear me, flyboy?” She cuffed him lightly on the shoulder.

  He held one end of the data-spike between gloved fingers and slanted a glance up at her, the woman he’d dubbed his “green-eyed vixen” more than a dozen years ago. “Sebastian.” He paused deliberately. The name-and-pause was a ritual, also established long ago as a challenge to his patience. Now it held a distinctly sentimental and affectionate tone.

  “Kel-Paten.” She paused as well. Her mouth twitched.

  He fought the urge to kiss those twitches; the world of hidden and forbidden Triad data beckoned him. For the past four shipweeks – ever since the Regalia had pulled him and what was left of his officers and crew off the dying hulk of his flagship, the Vaxxar – he’d been living in an environment where he really didn’t belong. An environment where – in spite of Sass – he was an outsider. His rank was a courtesy. His contributions were appreciated, but as an adviser, not as part of the team. Now, with this, a Triad ship, he knew he could make a significant difference. Intel reports hinted that the Triad Faction was amassing a secret battle group in the Far Reaches. This TZ-Four had to have come from that – probably a remnant of war games gone wrong. He was going to use their mistake to undermine them. Destroy them. Just as they’d destroyed everything he’d once held sacred: his commission, his fleet, his flagship, his home.

  He activated his full ’cybe functions with a thought, and clicked the end of the data-spike into his wrist. It took him seven-point-three seconds to guide the probe to the access port on the Teaser’s hull, and another three-point-five seconds to initiate a secure connection. Firewalls – his and the probes’ – shielded his entry. His mind slid down the datastream pathways as if he were just another bit of code, which he was. Six seconds more and he was at the main databanks.

  If not for the years of training he’d been through, he would have gasped aloud. Luck? This was beyond luck. This was a veritable mythical heaven of information on the Faction’s fleet and its movements. Its battle plans. Its . . . there. It had to be. More than just battle plans. The Faction’s security access codes. The U-Cees, the Rebashee, hell, as far as he knew even the Illithians hadn’t been able to obtain these, though many had died trying.

  “This is incredible,” he told Sass as he mentally surged toward the databases, grabbing for . . .

  Pain.

  Blackness.

  Nothing.

  SICK BAY

  Sass perched stiffly on the edge of a chair in Dr Caleb Monterro’s office, and turned her cold cup of coffee around in equally-as-cold hands. Her throat was still tight from the screams she’d held back when Branden had collapsed to the control-room decking. Her
chest ached from the shards of her breaking heart raking her insides raw.

  But he was alive. The med-techs confirmed that when they arrived. Cal Monterro confirmed that when he hooked Kel-Paten up to the recently upgraded cyber-human diagnostics panel in sick bay’s Room Six. But no one could say more than that, not even Lieutenant Jameson, the ship’s leading cyber-tech, who was admittedly more used to dealing with military-issue computers than with a half-human Triadian bio-’cybe.

  But Jameson, the cyber-tech, was all they had. The U-Cees had never been able to get full specs on Branden Kel-Paten. The few medical files they’d been able to retrieve a month ago from the Vaxxar were corrupted by the power spikes surging through the dying ship’s failing systems. Though what they did know formed the basis for the instrumentation in Sick Bay Six.

  Even with all that, they knew so little. And the only person who unequivocally had all the answers was unconscious in Cal’s sick bay.

  The one hope she had left was Captain Ralland Kel-Tyra, Branden’s brother – well, they shared the same “paternal genetic donor”, as Branden often put it. Though that fact was kept secret by the Triad for years. Like Branden, however, Kel-Tyra was a former high-ranking Triad officer who’d defected to the U-Cees when the Ved took control of the Triad. She knew Branden was integrating their personal security protocols with Kel-Tyra as a fail-safe – just as Kel-Tyra’s were in a secure file on the Regalia. Sass kept staring at Cal’s desk screen as if by thought alone she could will Kel-Tyra to answer. The officer of the watch – hell, the whole ship knew where she was. The minute Kel-Tyra responded to the Regalia’s message, she would be alerted.

  It had been more than three hours since that message had gone out. U-Cee controlled space was large, but military communications had been designed to account for that. An hour, two at most. She should have heard something – even if only a receipt confirmation. She hadn’t.