Evernight Publishing ®
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Copyright© 2016 April Zyon
ISBN: 978-1-77233-752-5
Cover Artist: Jay Aheer
Editor: Jessica Ruth
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
DEDICATION
To my Evernight Family, thank you all for taking me in and keeping me.
To my readers, I love you all and you know it. Without you I wouldn't be here. Please join my reader group, I have cookies! :) https://www.facebook.com/groups/moirahonor.readergroup is the link to that one.
And finally, to Jessica my editor. I can’t express just how much I love you, how important that you are in making my books shine as they do! You are truly a rock goddess to me!
PETR’S MATE
Space Wars, 4
April Zyon
Copyright © 2016
Prologue
“Sam, I need you.” If any man other than Dillon Higgs had said that, she would have melted. No man ever said “I need you” to Sam Henry. However, it was Dillon Higgs, and those words just made her laugh.
“Yeah, I’m sure you do. Higgs, what do you need this time? Need me to run a blood panel on another one of your gals so that I can see if she’s got a disease or not? You know, condoms are free now.”
“Well I need that, too, Sam, but no, what I really need is for you to come on the next mission.”
She snorted in laughter and popped another carrot into her mouth, where she munched it happily. “Yeah, I’m sure that NASA wants me, Samantha Henry, to come on their flight to find our new home?”
“NASA wants it because I told them they need it,” Dillon cut in. “Look, Sam, here’s the truth. Dr. Baxter broke his leg. You aren’t an astronaut, but you have been through the zero-G training with us. You know the specs front and back.”
“Only because I have instant recall,” she grumbled and sat up. “I’m afraid of heights and you want me to come on a space flight?” And she knew at that moment that she was going to go. She was going one because their planet, their race, needed it and two because Dillon asked her to and he knew that was the factor that would send her over.
“I know, Sam. You know I wouldn’t ask if there wasn’t a damn good reason. There just isn’t time to train another medical doctor. We need you, kiddo. I need you.”
“Dammit all, Dillon,” she complained but nodded, even if he couldn’t see her. “All right. I will let the board know and meet you in two days?”
“I’ll send a car for you tomorrow morning. Don’t argue. Uncle Sam insists that his girl is taken care of, babe.”
And that’s when it hit her. She was going to be the only woman on the six-year trip. Beautiful. Not!
****
Two years into their mission, Sam knew something was seriously wrong with Dillon. He and Jack, the XO, had a massive yell fest in the crew quarters, which wasn’t unusual. The ship was massive, but its two living habitats were small. Sam was in hydroponics with Freddie when the alarm sounded.
The crew raced to the bridge and there stood Dillon, arms crossed over his chest, and for a moment Sam knew she saw joy—unbridled joy—in his face. When he saw them, he turned. Panic lit his eyes. “I couldn’t stop him. He took one of the suits and said he needed a walk outside to clear his head, which we all do.” And he was right. They all did space walks, checked the hull of the ship, repaired damage, but never alone. “He didn’t tether off and turned his jetpack on full force. I didn’t even realize he had done it until his life signs just crashed.” He looked to Sam. “Sammy?”
She moved to the panel and checked the biometric readouts of all aboard, with one startling missing piece. “He’s gone,” she whispered, then looked up at the viewing window. “Why didn’t you call when he went out?” she asked as she turned a horrified glance to Dillon.
“He said he was going out for a walk with you, Sam. I knew that you and he had a thing, so I didn’t want to ruin it for you.”
“What?” She and Jack barely tolerated each other. He didn’t like her, and she didn’t like him, but they both knew that and each stuck to their own sides of the ship, so to speak.
“Sir, there is an incoming meteor shower,” came the calm voice of Daniel over the vessel’s speaker system and the ear mikes they all wore.
“Copy that. We’ll discuss this later. For now, everyone, you know what to do.” Dillon looked at Sam and shook his head. “Come on, Sammy, time to sleep for a while.” His brutal grip of her arm had her afraid. For the first time she was terrified.
The room where they huddled down in meteor showers was small. It was the very center of the ship, with hydroponics above it and the central computers below. There were nine small pods, one for each member of the crew, except for the one person who remained outside of the pods to make sure they were all sealed up. Freddie spoke up. “All right, boys and Sammy,” his eyes twinkled in devilment, “time to get in your gear and into bed. I get to tuck you in nice and tight. See you all after the storm,” he said as he began to set the pods manually before moving to the computer.
Each member of the crew stripped down to just their underwear and stepped into the pods. The bands that closed over them were not only to hold them in place but to keep bio readings of each one. Sam paused by Freddie and looked up. “I’m giving you an order, Freddie. As the chief medical officer, my rank right now supersedes even the captain’s.” She licked her lips and dropped her voice another octave. “Wake everyone but the captain when this is over. We all need to talk.”
Freddie nodded and in his eyes she saw that he understood the importance of her authoritative tone. “You got it, Doc.” He kissed her forehead and told her it was for luck before closing her into the coffin of glass. He watched as all of his friends went off into a silent slumber.
****
Whoever said that cryo-sleep was dreamless and painless had never been in one of the pods before. The nightmares plagued her for countless millennia, until her pod finally opened. It wasn’t the friendly face of Freddie she saw or the light of their ship. No, it was Dillon, madness in his eyes as he tugged her free of the capsule and roughly put his hands over her mouth. “We’ve been boarded.”
Sam looked around. The area that should have been white and gleaming was now black, pockmarked, and barely held an atmosphere. “What happened?” she demanded, then felt her heart stop when she turned and all of the other capsules contained skeletons pressed against the glass. She would have screamed, had Dillon’s hand not brutally covered her mouth.
“Don’t fucking do it,” he growled against her ear. “We’ve been boarded. We have to get the fuck out of here, get weapons, and get my ship back.”
But Sam knew their ship was no more. If the damage was this severe in the heavily shielded heart of the ship, then their ship was a lost cause. She tried to fight Dillon but he dragged her behind him, not giving her the chance to hesitate, the opportunity to fight. He pulled her along, then pressed her body against the filthy hull as two big men in uniform walked by carrying pistols.
She felt the jolt, then weightlessness, like they had been let go. She would have thought that they were letting them go into a scrap heap, but that wouldn’t explain the two men in uniform standing in front of what was once the central nervous system of their ship.
When Dillon left her,
he moved up behind one of the men and tugged out a pistol she hadn’t even seen, shooting the first one in the head, then the second. She frantically backed away from Dillon. He had lost his mind. There was no other way to explain it. The madness was evident in his eyes as he swiveled on his heels to swing the new weapon he took from one of the fallen toward her.
A second before he would have fired, the panel gave out a tired, almost nonexistent “intruder alert,” which had Dillon turning from her and running down what was left of the heart of their ship.
Dropping to her knees, hands over her mouth, she began to scream.
Chapter One
The clearing of a throat pulled Petr’s attention away from the reply he was working on in return for the latest vid his sister, Adira, had sent. Ensuring his personal data pad was locked, Petr lifted his chin to pin a look on the young officer hovering at the end of the table.
He had figured the dining hall at that hour in the midst of a shift was the best place for privacy. It had worked until now. The young sub-lieutenant looked nervous. “Lieutenant?”
“Apologies, Fleet Admiral van Jahnsen,” he said. A tremor ran through him even though he snapped a salute.
“On board a cruiser or in informal settings it is Admiral, Lieutenant.”
“Of course, sir. Apologies, sir.” The young man was getting more nervous by the minute.
Petr did not like the effect his rank had on the young, impressionable officers. Petr wasn’t one to use his position often, only when someone overstepped the boundaries of their society in ways that truly pissed him off.
To that end, he waited patiently while the young man gathered up his courage. “First Admiral Chevon requests your presence on the bridge, sir. We received a transmission of unknown origin. It was weak and distorted. Moments later an unidentified craft crossed our outer border.”
Frowning at that, Petr pushed to his feet. He waved the young lieutenant out ahead of him, tucking his data pad carefully away in a pocket. “Do we have any other information on the craft or potential occupants?”
“Not at this time, sir. The admiral has ordered us to investigate but we are not yet in range for a full scan of the craft. It passed the sensors lining the border, which gave us what little we now have.”
He rode the lift with the young man, his mind spinning in concern and curiosity. Striding onto the command deck of the cruiser, he nodded to the commanding officer. “Time to intercept?” he asked.
Chevon, apparently having instructed the lieutenant to pass along all pertinent details, didn’t appear surprised by Petr’s pointed question. “Within the hour, sir. We should have it on radar shortly prior. From what we could discern from the data coming in from the sensors on the border it has a small radar profile. Likely why it slipped through.”
The man moved to a console and nodded to the woman working at it. “Bring it up.”
The screen above her head, eye level for Petr, lit up with data and some grainy images. Chevon put a finger to the small object tumbling lazily through space. “The sensors read it as debris. There was a blip of something that potentially could be a life sign, but it was too quick and faint for the sensors to accurately interpret, would be my guess. Per standard protocol, a notification was sent to the closest available vessel, us.”
Petr nodded slowly, narrowing his eyes on the images. “Play it again,” he requested absently. The images were reset, and he again watched the little oddly shaped item tumble on a wobbly axis while it passed through the sensor ring. Twice more he asked it to be replayed before having the crew member send it to his work data pad.
He wanted to see if he could clean up the images a little more. He could have asked the crew to do so, but he had the time. Beyond that, Chevon had many crew members on board who were fresh out of officers’ school. This flight was a training mission of sorts. “Alert me when we are within radar range. I will be in my quarters.”
“As you wish, Admiral.” Chevon saluted briskly before moving on to pass instructions to the crew.
Pausing briefly to watch the interaction, he felt a hint of a smile tug at his lips. Chevon might be gruff, but he was an exceptional and patient instructor. One of the best still on active duty. It was why so many that came through officers’ school fought to gain a position on his cruiser for the mandatory two years of in-field training. Those that came from Chevon’s cruiser were better officers for it. The man put his crew through every conceivable scenario. And Chevon had many experiences with which to draw from to make sure they were ready for whatever their next posting might be.
The crew listened when Chevon spoke, not merely out of respect for his rank but also for the knowledge they knew he had to share with them. Petr stood for another moment, watching the interaction between the crew and their leader since it was part of the reason he was on board the cruiser. He was there to evaluate how the new officers were integrating into their roles before he’d return to his own vessel, which he’d left in the skillful hands of his second.
Satisfied that everything was well in hand, Petr left Chevon to the situation that presented itself, and what he could teach his young crew. His mind turned instantly to the sensor video once he cleared the bridge.
In his quarters, Petr settled in at the workstation and slotted the data pad into the port of the station. Once it queued up, he pulled the file off and got to work on getting some clarity. He could have waited for them to arrive, and intercept, but Petr was not feeling all that patient.
Odd for him. He had patience out every orifice even on the worst days. Unless it involved his sister or something that piqued his interest. Like this mysterious and unusual craft. While the programs began their work to remove some of the noise of space that often distorted the sensor feeds, Petr collected a snack and beverage. His original plan was to go to the dining hall and eat there, but he’d been drawn into the video his sister had compiled and lost himself in it. Seeing his niece and nephew, who had grown so much since his last visit, was well worth skipping a meal.
He could not believe how big they both were getting. Once he returned to his own vessel, he would have to see about arranging another trip to visit with them all. Even that rogue Fintan, who had actually dared to entice Adira into falling in love with him. While it was now mostly the principle of being the older brother that kept him harassing the other man, Petr did actually respect him. And Fintan treated Adira like the jewel she was. Good thing, too, or Petr would have personally shoved him out an airlock when they had first met in person.
Easing back into the chair before the workstation, Petr watched the program work at scrubbing out all the unnecessary background noise that translated into white spots or garbage on an image. He set it to working on the one image where the craft was at the closest point to the camera sensor array. It was still quite small, but if he could get rid of the excess items clogging up the picture he could blow it up more.
He stared at the monitor while eating his snack. The soft beep from the workstation pulled him out of the trance-like state he had fallen into. Shaking his head, Petr set aside his cup. The program was now analyzing the image, filling in what it could, and slowly it was clearing up. The final image was crisp in comparison to where it had been.
Petr clicked on it to enlarge it. What he found had confusion sliding through him. A few more clicks, and he got it as large as it would go while remaining clear enough to see it. The writing on the outside hull was unusual. There was also an image in primary colors marking the exterior. Neither were familiar to him, nor was the shape of the craft. And it was definitely some kind of spacecraft. Approximately twice as large as one of the Imarian crawlers, it had a unusual shape to it. Narrowing his eyes, he leaned in, knowing it wouldn’t help him to see it more clearly and yet unable to stop himself.
His communication device chimed softly. Leaning back in his chair, he pressed the side to activate it with his touch. “Yes?”
“Admiral, the craft is now in radar range,” Chevon tol
d him.
“On my way.” After locking down the workstation, Petr quickly returned to the bridge. Stepping onto it, he nodded to the officers who saluted, making his way to Chevon’s side. “What do we know?”
“Not much more than we did, sir. We will be in range soon to bring it on board. Now that we have a bearing, we’ve increased our speed slightly to scoop it up.”
“I’m reading two life signs, sir.”
Petr turned his attention to the young female officer. “Anything more?”
“Their life-support system appears to be failing. Based on the computer models, they have perhaps a day’s worth available. The last hours would be thin, though.”
“That makes boarding easier,” Chevon muttered. “I’ll have the boarding party readied. Once it’s in the cargo hold, they can sweep through.”
Petr made the decision immediately. “I will go with them.” Chevon’s sharp look said he wanted to argue but was hesitating. “I’ll remain behind the first men in, but I’m intrigued by this craft.” He was also highly trained in close-quarters combat, more so than even the highest ranking of the security personnel that Chevon would be sending in. Petr knew what it was like to have to fight for his life every moment of every day.
The commanding officer gave a slow nod. “As you wish, sir.”
One of the other officers called out the time to intercept. Giving Chevon a nod, Petr headed through the cruiser for the large cargo hold that would be the unusual craft’s home for the time being.
It seemed to take much too long for them to pull the ship into the hold. The first four from security began their sweep. From his vantage point at the area they had managed to open on the craft, Petr watched the men pause to look around now and again before moving on.
Petr's Mate Page 1
