The Mammoth Book of Futuristic Romance (Mammoth Books)

by Trisha Telep

  He straightened, clearing his throat. “Where in hell am I?” This was not the bridge of the Sarna Bogue, though he could have sworn, moments ago, that that was where he was.

  The furzel scampered across the decking and plopped down at his boots, then flipped onto its back, baring its very plump belly. A small high-pitched childlike voice exploded in Kel-Paten’s head: Brandenfriend! Tank loooves you. MommySass loooves you. Rub belly, please?

  He glanced down at the furry creature then back up at Lieutenant Sebastian. Tears trailed down her face – yet, illogically, she was grinning. He fought the urge to wipe those tears away. He shouldn’t touch her. He was Kel-Paten. She’d be afraid. Yet . . .

  She stepped toward him and he didn’t try to stop her when she took his lethal gloved hand in her own, her fingers curling through his, flooding him with a surprising warmth.

  “Sebastian?” He paused, embarrassed by the roughness of his voice.

  “Kel-Paten.” She paused too, and smiled up at him through her tears. “Welcome back, flyboy.”

  CAPTAIN’S QUARTERS

  Branden Kel-Paten picked up the sweater he had no memory of wearing, then inspected the hiking boots he had no memory of acquiring, then cataloged the forty-six other items that were his in a closet he shared with . . .

  A small hand rested lightly on his arm. “It’s just a closet, Branden.”

  “Yes. Yes.” A closet – a cabin he shared with Tasha Sebastian. “It’s just that I don’t fully remember much of this.” Things were coming to him in snatches, like the twinkle of stars viewed dirtside – unlike stars in space, which didn’t twinkle but were unchanging points of light.

  His life right now felt like those dirtside twinkling stars working in triple overtime.

  The best and the worst of it was Tasha. He remembered fully now their first meeting twelve years before on the Bogue, and in detail from there how he surreptitiously followed her career from lieutenant to commander on the Asterion’s Star. He risked his own career paying agents exorbitant sums to keep track of her and obtain images of her. He even wrote her love letters that he never sent but kept securely buried in his very secure files, of course.

  Though not all that secure. A few months ago, she had admitted finding them, when she was assigned to his flagship as part of the now-defunct U-Cee-Triad Alliance. He didn’t remember any peace accord between the Triad and the U-Cees, short-lived though it was. Nor did he remember Tasha’s attaining the rank of U-Cee captain. But he would remember, a Lieutenant Jameson assured him. Those rapidly twinkling stars of data would soon solidify into real chronological events. For now, his memory banks were in overload; his restore firmware still hunting and deleting the last vestiges of the coded worm the Faction had inserted into his mind through a devious trap within a rigged Trojan in the TZ-Four fighter’s AI systems.

  “At least you remembered the most important thing,” she said with a wry smile, referring to the trigger phrase that had restored him to her. “It would have been nice, though, if you’d clued me in that you’d made that your override phrase.”

  He cleared his throat because the words he wanted to say – I hate reminding you that I’m not fully human – seemed to be stuck there, as they always were. He settled for: “It’s not often I underestimate the enemy.” And that enemy included himself – something he had admitted to an angry Ralland at Lightridge Station, in a brief conversation they had had an hour before.

  “What worries me, Sass,” Branden continued, his voice still rough, “is that right now the enemy knows me better than I know myself.”

  The hand on his arm moved to his waist. With a sigh, Tasha drew herself against him, head on his chest. “It’ll all come back to you eventually, flyboy. Don’t stress yourself out over it.”

  But while he waited for “eventually” to happen, he felt clumsy and stupid. He loved her so much. And she knew exactly how to move against him, how to touch him. Everything was so effortless when she did so.

  He kept waiting for her to bolt away like the prosti on Mining Raft 309 when he’d been much younger, and drunk and shamed. The woman, seeing the scars on his chest and the synth-derm mesh on his hands, had recoiled, horrified.

  Gingerly, he rested those same synth-derm mesh hands on Sass’s shoulders.

  Another sigh from her. “It’s late.” Her soft voice vibrated against his chest. “Actually, it’s really early. We’ve missed a whole shipnight of sleep.” She lifted her face. “Let’s—”

  “I don’t need much sleep. But I’ve kept you awake too long. I can,” and he motioned aimlessly toward the main room of their quarters, “spend time with my databases catching up on my, um, life.”

  Her hands slid down to grab the waistband of his pants. “Bed, Branden. Now.”

  Oh sweet gods. He had a very clear feeling that “bed” and “now” did not involve sleeping. And just because his body knew what she meant – and was announcing its intended cooperation with embarrassing enthusiasm – did not mean he had any skills, any methods, any godsdamned techniques in his databanks to honor her, to please her, to love her as he so very desperately wanted to do.

  It would be – he would be an abysmal failure.

  He cleared his throat. “Tasha.” He paused.

  “Branden.” She paused.

  “You need to understand that I’ve never been with . . . well, I’ve never wanted to. Not with anyone else. Just you. And you weren’t . . . on my ship. We aren’t – weren’t on the same side. So I’ve never—”

  “You have.” She pinned him with a hard stare, but her mouth was twitching.

  “I have?”

  “We have. Lots of times in the past seven months.” She stood on tiptoe, her breasts brushing his chest as she touched her lips to his. “Lots.”

  His blood heated. His breath stuttered. His emo-inhibitors went fully offline. “What if I don’t remember . . . how?”

  She yanked on his waistband again and guided him down to the bed. “Then you’ll be the only man in the history of the galaxy to lose his virginity twice,” she said, straddling him as she worked on the seal-seam of his uniform shirt. “And I’ll be the luckiest woman in the galaxy who gets to claim that honor. Twice.”

  “Sass?”

  “Flyboy?”

  “Make love to me.”

  “Is that an order, Admiral?”

  “It is.” He swallowed hard. Oh, those clever, clever fingers of hers!

  “My pleasure.”

  “No, really.” He gasped. “The pleasure is all mine.”

  Oooh. MommySass loooves Brandenfriend!

  What? Telepathic furzels still startled him.

  Tank! Sass telegraphed through that same link in his mind. Privacy, please!

  Oops! O-kay. Tank go blink!

  He reached for her face and brought it close to his. “Tasha,” he murmured. “Come kiss.”

  Memories of Gravity

  Patrice Sarath

  The news of my grandfather’s death reached me three months after the event, the transmission hindered by distance and garbled by the solar flares that mangled radio signals from Earth to the middle planets. Those of us on Bifrost Station in orbit around Jupiter were resigned to outdated mail and stale news; I preferred it that way. Piloting a shuttle between Bifrost and the research center on Ganymede required all my concentration, or so I told myself.

  Still, the automated pinging of the transmitter with my code piqued my curiosity even as it triggered a strange reluctance. Who would be contacting me? I didn’t have anyone on Earth I cared to correspond with, not since I’d been emancipated as a teen and made my own way in the solar system. I had left everything behind, and the only people who would care for me were dead. But I lived my life according to one principle: face the unpleasant head-on. That way you always see it coming.

  After docking my shuttle and shedding my suit, I pushed toward my quarters to pick up the transmission. Still stinking of eight hours in a pressure suit, I sat down at my spartan des
k in my spare quarters and called up my mail.

  Transmission to: Captain Beatriz Sabatini, Bifrost Station

  Date: 26 May 2237

  From: Maher, Craven, Edelweiss, and Stroheim, Attorneys at Law

  Dear Captain Sabatini,

  We regret to inform you of the death of your grandfather, Richard Aldo Sabatini, on 10 May 2237.

  Almost at once I was thrown back into my childhood, reliving memories I had tried so hard to bury – so hard that I had fled off-world from them, and halfway across the solar system. The adults at the funeral home had whispered over my head as I had sat kicking my chair, sad and frightened, not even the pretty dress and the shiny shoes making up for what I knew.

  What will become of her, poor thing?

  I heard the grandfather is taking her in.

  Has anyone contacted her father?

  Delicate laughter had followed, and I’d strained to make out the words: Does anyone know which one he was?

  I forced myself to concentrate on the present and read the rest of the message. It was simple, text only. My grandfather had left me everything, but owing to ancient Earth laws, I had to return home to deal with my inheritance in person. I could not assign a proxy, nor could I engage a lawyer off-world to represent me in these matters.

  I sat back, staring at the frozen text hanging in the air in front of me. Out of habit I lifted my hand to the scar that ran from my temple to my jawline, the last gift from my grandfather before I fled his presence.

  “How far do I have to go to get away from you people?”

  The bitter words hung in my small quarters much as the text did, unanswerable. In death my grandfather had as strong a hold on me as he had had in life. I imagined him glowering at me the way he had whenever I’d disappointed him, which was often.

  “You are a Sabatini, Beatriz, and with that privilege comes great responsibility. We are not like other people. Let them misbehave, hmmm, child? Let them shirk their duties. Genes will tell, Beatriz. Genes will tell.”

  By other people, I knew he meant his daughter-in-law, my mother, and her dissolute lifestyle.

  A small green light blinked patiently in the air at the end of the message, waiting to catch my attention. I touched the air where it blinked, and another message unfolded, this one an image transmission. I was surprised; that was expensive, even as tightly compressed as the message was.

  The pixelated image resolved in front of me into a small bright scene: the family cemetery on Tern Island where I grew up. Generations of Sabatinis were laid to rest in the little overgrown grassy field, ancient gravestones weathering in the cold, wet island climate. My grandfather’s grave was an upthrust obelisk in the center of the cemetery, shining and polished, surrounded by fresh dirt. I shook my head. Typical.

  The image included a sensory file. The lawyers had really spared no expense. Pine trees soughed overhead, and I could feel the bright warmth of Sol on my shoulders. The waves broke on the shore and the whitecaps dazzled in the sunlight. I could smell the salt air and feel the breeze against my cheek. I shivered in the cold air.

  The sensory file paused for a split second and then began again, and I shook my head in dismay. As if I would be won over by warm sunlight on my shoulders. I liked the sun where it was, I told myself, so far distant it was hardly bigger than a star.

  I reached forward to close the image when something caught my eye and I paused. In the shadows on the farthest edge of the cemetery stood a figure. I couldn’t make it out clearly but I could tell it was a child. Without thinking I leaned forward and my forehead brushed the image, sending it into a pixelated frenzy. Disgusted, I sat back and waited for it to resolve again. It was no use. The harder I looked, the blurrier the figure got, until finally it blended into the shadows and I couldn’t see it any longer. No matter. I knew who it was, and who it was impossible that it could be. My grandfather was not the only ghost who haunted my nightmares.

  Wet spray hit me in the face with salty seawater and I sputtered and gagged, my eyes stinging from the faceful of ocean. The wave had almost knocked me flat. I still had jelly legs even after exercising to rebuild muscles gone slack from zero-g. I windmilled my arms and caught myself on the old fat posts lining the edge of the slippery wharf, waiting for the ferry to take me to Tern Island.

  The sun was low in the sky on this wintry afternoon and I shivered in my coat and scarf.

  I could see the ghostly lines of the massive near-Earth space station that was our closest satellite slowly rotating overhead, and I felt comforted. Space was not so far away after all, despite the weight of gravity that held me down.

  “Well look who’s here. Beatriz Sabatini, return of the prodigal daughter,” someone called, laughter in his voice.

  I turned cautiously, clutching my duffle bag and holding my hood down over my cap, recognition making my heart speed up with an unaccustomed happiness.

  “Ethan Cardenas,” I called back. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m your ride, darling,” he said, and despite my misgivings I had to laugh at the double meaning. Ethan Cardenas, a ferry boat captain. I really was back on Earth.

  Ethan waited for me in front of the rickety old office that perched on the rocks at the very edge of the wharf. He carried a thermos and was bundled in a yellow slicker, big black boots, and a wool watch cap. He was bulky, broad-shouldered, with creases around his eyes as if he spent his time peering into far distances. What I could see of his face was dark-skinned and clean-shaven.

  I minced over to him cautiously. The soles of my boots clicked uselessly on the stone. They could be magnetized at need, but little good that did me here. He was laughing at me.

  “Still got space legs,” he said. He looked like he was enjoying my awkwardness, and I seethed. He was always teasing me when we were kids. He was handsome now and looked like he knew it, but he was just as infuriating. “When did you make landfall?”

  “Three months ago,” I said. Quarantine and mandatory re-immersion had taken that long. Once Earthside, I had to meet with my grandfather’s attorneys and go over the will.

  He snorted. “Took you long enough.”

  I didn’t bother to reply. He had clearly never been off-world and didn’t understand about launch windows and transfer points. He turned to give me an assessing look. I flushed and straightened under his gaze.

  “My, you’ve grown, Skinny,” he said, using his old nickname for me. I had been a gangly child, all arms and legs. Space and zero-g had only accentuated that. I managed to raise an eyebrow and give it back to him.

  “Same with you, Pudge. Still the same jerkface kid you always were.”

  He just laughed, as if he knew his needling got to me. “Come on into the office. My mom wants to say hi.”

  He took the duffle bag from me and hefted it easily with a look of surprise. “This is all you’ve got?”

  It was half my height and stuffed solid with my worldly possessions. I had taken little with me when I left Earth, and had accrued not much more. When every kilo is an extravagance, spacers learn to live lean.

  “Yes,” I said stiffly. “I travel light.”

  To my surprise, he said, “I hear that.” There was a weighted undertone to his voice that made me wonder, but he didn’t say anything more. I followed him into the office, and breathed a sigh when he closed the door on the winter day. The office was warm and well lit. Old charts were hung haphazardly on the wall in between sophisticated and modern transmitting and depth-sounding equipment. My eyes were drawn to the ancient twentieth-century phone that hung on the wall. Its twin was in the kitchen of the house on Tern Island. Mrs Dawes, the housekeeper, used to use the phone to call the office to put in the weekly grocery order.

  Mrs Cardenas bustled out of the back room, a smile of pure delight gracing her broad face. She was a short, wide black woman, her hair only lightly frosted with gray.

  “Little Beatriz, how you’ve grown. Come here, girl, let me give you a hug.”

  “
Mrs Cardenas, it’s wonderful to see you again.” I hugged her back with delight. She had been so kind to a small, frightened child and a surly teenager – I felt a pang at the way I had thrust her out of my memory along with the rest of my childhood. She hadn’t deserved that.

  “Jupiter,” she murmured, rubbing my back once more and then letting me go. “So far, Beatriz. It’s good you’ve come home. Take off those wet things and sit awhile. I’ve got some soup and the rosemary biscuits you always loved so much. Goodness, child, you’ve gotten so skinny. They must not be feeding you well in space.”

  Ethan must have noticed that I moved slowly with fumbling hands to take off my coat and remove the scarf from my face. I unwound it and placed it on the hook, and put my coat and hat on top of it, gathering courage before turning around.

  I could see their expressions as they took in the scar, a reminder of my life on Tern Island. Mrs Cardenas’s lips parted; Ethan’s face was unreadable. I tried to tell myself I didn’t care. A little flirtation between old friends; that’s all I wanted anyway.

  “Oh, Beatriz,” Mrs Cardenas said softly. “We should never have left you there.”

  “It’s all right,” I said. I managed a smile and touched my scar. “I survived. Every day it reminds me that life is good.”

  “Well,” Mrs Cardenas said. “Let me get you some food.”

  While his mother went to bring back dinner, Ethan took off his coat and watch cap and hung them next to mine. He wore a knitted sweater and kept the scarf around his neck. All that clothing made me wonder what he looked like without it. Heat crawled up my cheeks and I looked away.

  “Here you go,” Mrs Cardenas said, bustling back in with bowls of soup, and balancing a basket of biscuits. Ethan grabbed the biscuits, and I cleared a spot on the long table that doubled as workspace. It was just like I remembered when we were kids, and I breathed deep, taking in the aroma of minestrone and rosemary biscuits. The first spoonful was heaven.