When a
caravan of gypsies arrives at Alta Novis, looking to make a deal, these new
visitors raise suspicions. It isn’t until the battle lord sees what they have
for sell that his concerns and reservations are raised even more—a cannon,
guns, and other weapons that haven’t been seen in hundreds of years, and only
heard about in stories these days.
The
group isn’t happy when Yulen denies their requests, confiscates their weapons,
and sends them on their way, but not before loading their wagons with supplies
in a show of good will. But it isn’t enough for the gypsy leader.
When
one of their own goes missing, Yulen and Atty will stop at nothing to get the
battle prince back, but at what cost? Do their swords and arrows stand a chance
against guns?
A
number of obstacles stand in their way as they go to retrieve their son, but
the connection between a Mutah mother and her child will conquer all.
Warning! Contains figgy pastries, a human trade,
mutant bears, screamer arrows, raging hormones, coffee, shaved chocolate,
weather colder than a well digger's butt, a parent's worst nightmare, and a
son's ultimate revenge.
Since 2006, May 25 has been designated as Nerd Pride Day. In honor of this auspicious occasion, we asked everyone at Here Be Magic: "Tell us something nerdy about you..." Read onas our authors reveal their innermost geek!
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"Being a nerd is about feeling an intense adoration of a topic that inspires you to gather knowledge or paraphernalia far beyond the extent of the average fan. To wit, I have a billion pieces of vintage clothing that don’t even fit, all because I love vintage clothing. If that’s not nerdy in its own way…what is? Note: I am not a hoarder otherwise, only with regards to my nerdly hobbies. Also note: cats don’t count in the “not a hoarder” category. I have six."
"Do I have to do "just one", asked the giant nerd? I mean, c’mon, I’m a software tester in my day job, a general technophile, and a lifelong fan of multiple SF/F authors and media properties. I can yammer on for hours about Star Trek, Star Wars, Doctor Who, Battlestar Galactica, the MCU, Mac vs. PC, iOS vs. Android, and the minutae of worldbuilding in the Tolkien legendarium.
Especially Tolkien.
Come to think of it, that may be my answer right there. ;D"
◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ Nicole Luiken is an avid reader AKA a bookworm. Instead of bringing a towel with her wherever she goes à la Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, she brings a book to read, usually of the SF/Fantasy variety. The best way to lure her away from her books is with a Board Game Night.
"My personal nerdiness is on full display in my writing office. There's a figurine of Cerberus, the 3-headed dog that guards the gates of the Underworld, with various faeries and dragons to keep him company. My collection of Ray Bradbury sci-fi novels has a place of honor among rows of books on myths and legends and the paranormal. You'll see a signed photo from a Klingon cosplayer, a poster of demon-hunter detective Constantine, plus my vendor's booth banner and a couple of ID cards from the last comicon I attended. Not to mention the fully articulated wolf head that my hubs wore at said comicon... Why yes, those ARE Marvel action figures standing around my keyboard. I use them to act out scenes in my stories – honest!"
"I'm sure there I have multiple nerdy habits in addition to my lifelong bookworm obsession. I'm sharing my latest obsession—the Supernatural television show. Last year I binged the seasons with my daughters (their second time through) and we've been to the convention twice.
I impatiently wait for my Thursday night fix with, "The Boys", plus I have several Supernatural t-shirts that I wear with pride as if I am a Hunter waiting for Sam and Dean."
◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ ◦ "I’m in my 60s, and a grandmother. But that doesn’t stop me from flaunting my SUPERNATURAL t-shirt, my DR. WHO wallet, or whatever else I want to show off. My office is my nerdy paradise, with everything from a Superman doll, Phantom of the Opera artwork, X-Files paraphernalia, and my beloved bobblehead Groot. "When people comment on my stuff, I proudly tell them, “You’re never too old to be a nerd!”
"I grew up watching the original Star Trek every week with my younger brother. There are no words for how cool we thought the show was. So I think my proudest nerd/geek moment might be the fact that I am now an actual “Star Trek” Red Shirt Security Officer – I got to play one in the 2016 official audiobook of the Harlan Ellison original script for ‘The City on the Edge of Forever.’ That was one of my very favorite episodes back in the day, although there are quite a few major differences between the show that was broadcast at the time and the original Ellison script. My character for one thing LOL. "I only had seven words of dialogue in the audiobook BUT I said them to Kirk, with Spock standing next to us (in the teleplay script – sadly audiobooks are not usually recorded with a full cast all at one time, so I did my seven words alone in a booth but still….). I got to sign the title page of the script next to all the famous real actors, which was a thrill and I will forever be an official member of the Enterprise crew. And the best part is that my Red Shirt character doesn’t die!" ~ Veronica Scott, www.veronicascott.wordpress.com
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Now it's YOUR turn! Tell us one of your nerdy secrets! And on June 2, three lucky commenters will be drawn at random by the Rafflecopter. Two will win an adorable mini Millennium Falcon BOOK LIGHT! And one will win this Doctor Who travel bag!
(Must be a legal resident of the US and over 18 to enter. Winners will be announced in the comments on this post, in the Rafflecopter box, and in the Here Be Magic Here Be News feature of the blog. Email addresses will NOT be disclosed.)
I thought it might be a good time for a new excerpt from my best selling science fiction romance novel Hostage To The Stars! The story:
He rescued her from space pirates … but can he keep them both safe from the far greater evil stalking a deserted planet?
Space travel without Kidnap & Ransom insurance? Not a good idea. University instructor and researcher Sara Bridges can’t afford it, so when pirates board her cruise liner, she’s taken captive along with the mistress of a wealthy man, and brought to a deserted planet. When a military extraction team sent to rescue the mistress refuses to take Sara too, she’s left to the mercies of a retired Special Forces soldier, along as consultant.
Reluctantly reactivated and coerced into signing up for the rescue operation to the planet Farduccir where he once was deployed, Sgt. Johnny Danver just wants to get the job done. But when the team leader leaves one captured woman behind, he breaks away to rescue her himself.
As Johnny and Sara traverse the barren landscape, heading for an abandoned base where they hope to call Sectors Command for help, they find villages destroyed by battle and stripped of all inhabitants. A lone survivor tells a horrific tale of the Sectors’ alien enemy, the Mawreg, returning after being pushed out …
Searching for evidence to give the military, Johnny is captured. He regains consciousness in a Mawreg cage–with Sara next to him. Death is preferable to what the aliens will do to them… And even if they do escape their captors, can they alert the military in time to prevent another invasion of the Sectors?
The excerpt - Johnny's been stung by a cave dwelling, poisonous creature and Sara must cope:
She rummaged
in the pack for the medkit and brought it and the water, along with a T shirt
she’d grabbed. Tearing it into strips, she got ready to clean the wounds, which
had stopped bleeding but were becoming puffy around the edges and a scary
reddish black. Swallowing hard against the nausea rising in her gut, she said,
“I’ll try to be gentle but this is going to hurt.”
He laughed. “Can’t be worse than
the bite and the burn.”
She poured water over the wounds
and then daubed at them with a piece of the T shirt soaked in antiseptic from the
medkit. “Is there antivenom in this kit?”
Johnny shook his head. “Only a
generic. Keep the dose for you, just in case. I’ve had the injects for this
planet and a buncha others. I’ll be ok.”
“You’re not acting okay. Let me
give you the inject anyway.” She dug in the medkit, searching for anything
labelled antivenom.
He pushed her hand away. “No.
It’ll take time but I’ll sweat the poison out. Gotta extract the stingers
though.”
“What?” Sinking back on her
heels, she made herself scrutinize the puncture highest on his leg, right below
the kneecap. A red needlelike spike in the center drew her attention. “What do I get this out with?”
“I’ll do it.” He tried to sit.
His hands were shaking.
“Yeah, tough guy, I think this
is my job.” Clearly he wasn’t going to be able to do anything as delicate as
pulling out the stingers.
He fumbled at his belt. “Knife.”
She reached past him to pull the
knife from its sheath. “What do I do?”
“Get the tip under the stinger,
flip it out. Don’t touch it, still has venom.” He shut his eyes and put one
shaking hand over them. “Can’t see straight right now.”
Sara did her best not to hurt
him but she cringed at the way her clumsy efforts with the knife had to be
causing him pain. He didn’t make a sound and finally she had the first stinger
out. She looked at it on the knife tip for a moment, seeing how it had tiny prongs
to help it stay in the wound once the creature had attacked its prey.
Shuddering, she rose and stepped to the cave entrance, flinging the stinger
into the brush. Going to kneel beside Johnny, she said, “I’ve got the hang of
this now. Hopefully I can do the other one more easily.”
“Doing fine,” he whispered, so
softly she could hardly hear him. “Burn salve next. Red tube.” He undid the
fastenings of his combat boots and toed them off with a lot of false starts.
“I saw it in the kit, don’t
worry.” Knowing what she was dealing with, she made quick work of extracting
the second stinger, with less incidental damage to Johnny’s leg. Then she
washed the wounds again, applied antiseptic, the burn salve and a bandage from
the medkit. He was barely conscious. Sara staggered outside the cave and threw
up, falling to her knees for a moment in sheer terror. Then because she feared he’d
try to come find her, possibly hurting himself in the process, she made herself
stand and walk into the cave with more confidence than she actually possessed.
She got the bedroll out of his
pack, pushing the tab to make it expand and tried to arrange it smoothly, close
to where he lolled drunkenly against the cave wall because she didn’t think she
could move him very far, but at least not lying close to the cave’s entrance.
“All right, my friend, time to lie down.” She got her shoulder under his arm
and tugged to get him to rise. She was exhausted by the time he’d limped to the
sleeping mat and lowered himself to the ground with her help.
“Drink some water,” she said,
holding the canteen to his lips. “You’re going to get dehydrated.”
“Lemme rest a minute and then
I’ll go patrol.” His voice was slurred and faint. A tremor rocked his frame.
Sara patted his shoulder. “Don’t
worry about patrolling right now. Rest sounds like a good idea.” Gently she
covered him with the thin blanket and then retreated to a nearby boulder to
sit. Dropping her head into her hands for a moment, she gave in to the tears
that had been threatening for the last hour while she tended to Johnny. Sara
rocked back and forth, struggling to breathe past the tightness in her chest
and lightheadedness. Never in a million years would it have occurred to her
something would happen to Johnny. He’d seemed so tough and indestructible.
So there I was one recent morning, struggling to wake up,
sipping on some caffeine-infused liquid, and browsing headlines online, when
one pretty much jumped out at me:
All righty then. Naturally, I clicked on that click bait.
Like some of my fellow Here Be Magic-ers, I tend to write romantic fiction set
in a paranormal world, so my first thought was, I wonder if AL (I was half
asleep so my eyes had originally misread A.I. as AL in the first sentence, but
I thought AL worked so I immediately named Google's artificial
intelligence AL) … anyway, I wonder if Al had read any of my stuff, immediately
followed by, I wonder if Al liked it? Plus, does Al write reviews?
Once I stopped self-absorbing the headline, I actually read
the rest of the article. Wow. Al is kind of a deep poet. I mean, I’m no poetry
fanatic and I suck at poetry, but I’m pretty sure Al has me beat at deep, dark
poetry prose. Click on the link above to read a sample of Al’s work.
I was curious about Al’s other creations, so I Googled more
about it and only found a bunch of articles written by journalists apparently
shocked that Al had picked up some good writing from reading “bodice-ripping
romance novels.” Because of that stigma, you know? I hate that stigma.
I won’t go into all of the reasons I personally think
romance novels are awesome, but I will praise Google for making Al a politer
and more romantic fake person by reading our books. Also, someone who writes
sci-fi should totally take this premise and run with it for their next sci-fi
romance. Or maybe not. It kind of mirrors this movie (“Uncanny”)
I watched recently on Netflix, which was OK but a little slow in parts, but I
suppose it’s worth watching if you like sci-fi romance thrillers.
***
Angela Campbell writes paranormal mysteries about psychics and their pet sidekicks. Learn more about her and her books at www.AngelaCampbellOnline.com.
In terms of science fiction popularity, has any other catch phrase been more widely known, more widely referenced in everyday speech around the world than this one? Many come close, but for recognizability, I think not, but that's not the point. The beauty of science fiction is the dream of the ghost of Christmas future. Transferring a human body from one place to another instantly. Light speed. Humanistic robot entities that can think for themselves. Light sabers. Alien cultures. Science fiction writers are true dreamers who imagine, anticipate, potentially influence technological advances. Now throw in some romance and you've got my kind of book!
Take Jules Verne, for example, the man known as the "father of science fiction" who lived during the 19th century. It's said that his book Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea was the inspiration for the modern day submarine invented by Simon Lake, a huge fan of Verne as a child. After developing his design for a submarine and successfully launching it in 1898, he received a congratulatory message from Jules Verne himself. A number of Verne's fictional ideas became reality. Consider a weapon Verne described in this same book that sounds a lot like a taser. A gun that shoots electric volts? To see more of how his work influenced technology that we take for granted, click here. However, he wasn't the only early science fiction writer that had a strong influence on what we see in the world today. H. G. Wells, once called the "Shakespeare of science fiction", lived in the 19th century as well and happened to describe a weapon that killed with noiseless heat and a flash of light. Something like this can actually be seen in the military now. It's called a Direct Energy Weapon. He also described genetic engineering in The Island of Dr. Moreau, just to name a few of the forward thinking ideas that became reality.
But hold on! We don't even have to travel that far back in time for evidence of popular science fiction somehow giving the world ideas for cool gadgets. The cellphone that sits in your pocket as you read this was made from the genius of Martin Cooper who led a development team over at Motorola. He gives credit to Captain Kirk, no less, because of that handheld communicator that we saw so often on Star Trek. Even more recent, we can see the sequel to Back to the Future when Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) rides a hover board through a town square. Would it surprise you to know that recently, on "Outrageous Acts of Science" a scientist managed to create a true hover board? (be prepared for a short commercial before viewing the short video)
So here's the fantastic part of all this. Technology is booming. The rate at which it manages to be created grows exponentially with talk of CRISPR, the most cutting edge ability to edit genomes. Oculus rift allows the user to be completed submerged in a virtually reality. These are things that are actually happening. And what's coming down the pike? Zero-sized intelligence which references these super small chips with huge capacity for information, and coupled with that is quantum technology in simplification which is a microscopic entity that can think like a computer but does not need all the circuitry. More of the futuristic craziness includes nano technology that can be seen in all disciplines including medicine and engineering. BMI or Brain Machine Interface will allow you to move things with your mind, just by thinking about them.
So what are the implications? Imagine the great fiction that can come when authors research futurist's ideas and trends before taking the next leap into the future with their groundbreaking plots. Dark Network hactivists (hacker/activist) who wreak havoc on a nation with their plots to destroy government entities. Doctors that can inject nano technology through a syringe allowing microscopic tools to work on a patient at a cellular level in order to cure cancer? Will there be characters that have zero-sized technology implanted in their minds? The possibilities for telling new and exciting stories are not only endless but entirely exciting.
Thanks so much for spending some time thinking about the future with me. What futuristic innovations are you most excited about becoming a reality? I'd love to hear from you.
Today for SciFi Week, I'm sharing an excerpt from STAR CRUISE: MAROONED, right after the enemy had attacked the cabin the humans were sheltering in. (Red is a member of the ship's crew. Callina is one of the cruise ship passengers.):
Apparently deciding there was no more
amusement to be gleaned, the pirate officer moved away from the net confining
Red and Callina. “Bring the prisoners to the beach,” he said, still in Basic.
“We’ll see what exactly we’ve captured and decide what to do with them.”
A
moment later, a pirate soldier scooped up the double burden as if the net and
its contents weighed nothing, hoisting them a good eight feet off the ground onto
its shoulder. Carrying them with ease, the alien took the path toward the lake.
Head down over his captor’s spiny mantle, Red couldn’t do much more than endure
the next few moments until they were tossed carelessly onto the sand by the
lake. Fortunately, the way he was trapped in the coils of the net, he cushioned
Callina’s fall. He heard thuds and cries of pain or protest as a few other
prisoners were deposited close by. Craning his neck painfully, he found the
Primary in the net next to him on one side.
Figures
that guy would survive, while Meg…he forced himself to redirect his thoughts.
“Hey, how you holding up?” he asked Callina.
“I-I’m
okay. What are they going to do with us?” she whispered.
“Hard
to say. I’ll protect you as much as I can.” He made the promise, knowing full
well there might not be anything he could do. “Our treatment will depend on what
brought the Shemdylann here.”
“Silence.”
The closest guard kicked sand at them, and Red closed his eyes against the
shower of grit.
A
few moments later the sticky webbing dissolved, as a Shemdylann soldier passed
a light emitter over them, set to the proper frequency to counteract the coils.
Before he could make a move to do anything, Red was pinioned from behind by one
alien, while another dragged Callina by her hair into a position next to him. He
and the other survivors were in a line, seven altogether, facing the insect-like
Shemdylann officer, lounging in a complicated seat brought for him by his
subordinates. A lower-ranking officer stood behind the chair, waiting to carry
out any orders. Shemdylann by the dozens bustled to and fro on the beach,
setting up some kind of apparatus, more of the strange chairs, and performing
other tasks. One or two of the hulking, dark red-and-black creatures had
wandered into the lake to their double-jointed knees and were staring at the
Falls. Assessing the odds, Red took note of the three large craft crowding the
landing pad. Too many to all be from one ship, unless it was a battlecruiser.
The Shemdylann must have a major presence in this planetary system.
“I
didn’t expect to gather slaves here, did you?” The commander spoke over his
shoulder to the waiting officer.
“A bonus,” the subordinate said, snapping his
mandibles in apparent pleasure.
The Shemdylann in charge waved
one appendage at the prisoners. “Remove your outer clothing, humans, in order
for me to assess your value.”
Glancing
at each other as if for courage, most of the group prepared to obey the order.
Mr. Finchon stepped forward.
“What
are you doing? Don’t provoke them.” His stepdaughter grabbed his elbow.
Shaking
off her grip, he adopted his usual arrogant stance and said, “I invoke the
rules of the Freemarket Repatriation Pact.” Chest puffed, chin jutting, he waved
his right wrist. “I have the terms here, on an embedded chip.”
“What’s
he talking about?” Red asked Mr. Bettis, who was standing on the other side of
Callina.
“Like
an insurance policy, very hush-hush. Some of the wealthiest in the Sectors paid
through a broker on Freemarket for the right to be ransomed rather than killed
or enslaved in the event of capture by the Shemdylann,” Finchon’s assistant replied.
“Now,
this is intriguing,” the commander was saying, clicking his mandibles. “Bring
him to me. If you lie, human, your death will be protracted and entertaining
for my crew.”
“No
lie.” Not waiting for escort, Finchon strutted to a position in front of the
chair and stood motionless as his wrist was scanned by a subordinate who rushed
forward, instrument in one pincer. “I’m Ahmeril Finchon and I like to know who
I’m dealing with. You are?”
Making
the guttural cawing sound that was a Shemdylann laugh, the officer said, “Like
all of your kind, you believe in your own importance, despite the evidence to
the contrary.” Tapping his clawed toes on the sand, he studied the scanner as
his soldier held it close. “Hmm, I’ll make a tidy profit on this trip besides
the other rewards. Congratulations, human, you do have the prepaid right to transmit
a hefty ransom through the Freemarket broker.” Opening a pouch at his belt, the
commander withdrew a chain made from intricate silver links, with one cuff at
the end. Leaning forward, he snapped the shackle over Finchon’s left wrist,
saying as he attached the other end to a loop piercing his carapace, “You’ll
stay with me at all times, both for your protection and to ensure I collect my
reward. And I, by the way, am Captain Ar-Taan-Crxtahl, since you have such a
desire to know who holds your fate in his claws.” The alien yanked on the chain
slightly and cackled anew.
Biting
his lip, the billionaire regarded the cuff with distaste, turning it on his
wrist with one finger, but said nothing.
“Sir,”
the soldier with the scanner said, “According to the terms of the agreement, he
also paid for the right to ransom anyone else he chooses.”
“A
well thought out codicil,” said the commander. “I applaud you. Are there any
among this clump of humans you wish to add to the deal? At full price, of
course.”
Finchon
turned on his heel in the sand and frowned at his fellow prisoners, assessing each
one in turn.
The Story:
Meg Antille works long hours on the charter cruise ship Far Horizon so she can send credits home to her family. Working hard to earn a promotion to a better post (and better pay), Meg has no time for romance.
Former Special Forces soldier Red Thomsill only took the berth on the Far Horizon in hopes of getting to know Meg better, but so far she’s kept him at a polite distance. A scheduled stopover on the idyllic beach of a nature preserve planet may be his last chance to impress the girl.
But when one of the passengers is attacked by a wild animal it becomes clear that conditions on the lushly forested Dantaralon aren’t as advertised – the ranger station is deserted, the defensive perimeter is down…and then the Far Horizon’s shuttle abruptly leaves without any of them.
Marooned on the dangerous outback world, romance is the least of their concerns, and yet Meg and Red cannot help being drawn to each other once they see how well they work together. But can they survive long enough to see their romance through? Or will the wild alien planet defeat them, ending their romance and their lives before anything can really begin?
Many of us at Here Be Magic are also long-time fans of Sci-Fi and have written SF books (usually with at least a sprinkle of romance). If you are, too, please join us for a week of dishing about Sci-Fi!
I never know quite how to describe my SF series. YA SF? Dystopia? Neither quite fit. If you read the first chapter of Violet Eyes, you might not even realize it was science fiction. Angel appears at first to be a mostly-normal if rather outrageous high school student, though it soon becomes clear that Angel has many secrets.
You might also notice that the novel is set in 1987. And yet Violet Eyes' direct sequel Silver Eyes is set in 2098 --and no, there's no time travel. Angel is seventeen in both books. So how did I pull that off?
To explain that I first need to tell you why Violet Eyes is set in 1987 instead of present day. You see, I wrote the first draft of the book in 1987 when I was a teenager. The book moldered in a drawer for a long time, but I never forgot it. I always loved the character of Angel--she's smart, athletic and reckless--but the thought of rewriting the book a decade later daunted me. I'd have to update all that teen slang and pop culture references. Was there any way I could justify setting the story in 1987, I wondered? And then the perfect solution hit me, an idea that galvanized the whole book and spawned the sequels. I already knew that Angel and her nemesis/love interest Mike were genetically-enhanced: what if the scientists watching them had placed them in an artificial setting, a Historical Immersion Project, where everybody else were people on vacation, paying to experience a recreation of the past?
Jackpot. (And all due to my laziness.)
Simon & Schuster published Violet Eyes and its sequel Silver Eyes in 2001. They are still available in ebook and sell well enough that I've recently published book three in the series, Angel Eyes. Book four, Golden Eyes, will be released January 2016.
We're kicking off Excerpt Week at Here Be Magic, with various authors sharing excerpts from published and unpublished works. I'm offering a new excerpt from my latest best seller STAR CRUISE: MAROONED.
The story:
Meg Antille works long hours on the charter cruise ship Far Horizon so she can send credits home to her family. Working hard to earn a promotion to a better post (and better pay), Meg has no time for romance.
Former Special Forces soldier Red Thomsill only took the berth on the Far Horizon in hopes of getting to know Meg better, but so far she’s kept him at a polite distance. A scheduled stopover on the idyllic beach of a nature preserve planet may be his last chance to impress the girl.
But when one of the passengers is attacked by a wild animal it becomes clear that conditions on the lushly forested Dantaralon aren’t as advertised – the ranger station is deserted, the defensive perimeter is down…and then the Far Horizon’s shuttle abruptly leaves without any of them.
Marooned on the dangerous outback world, romance is the least of their concerns, and yet Meg and Red cannot help being drawn to each other once they see how well they work together. But can they survive long enough to see their romance through? Or will the wild alien planet defeat them, ending their romance and their lives before anything can really begin?
And the excerpt:
“Can I get two volunteers to help us get Sharmali
settled at the ranger station?” Meg asked. “Keep an eye on her?”
“Well,
don’t look at me,” Harelly said, as several of the other guests glanced in his
direction. “I only play a doctor on
the trideo shows. The sight of blood makes me ill.”
Callina
and her husband, Peter, volunteered. As the other passengers slowly hiked
through the sand to their pavilion by the lake, Meg, Red, and the volunteers
headed for the ranger station on the far side of the landing pad.
“What
about him?” asked Bettis, who Meg remembered was Finchon’s employee, a personal
assistant or something. He and his wife filed past the groggy charter Primary,
who was sitting now, holding his jaw.
“I’ll
deal with him later,” Red said.
“He’s
gonna be pissed. He’s gonna sue you and your company for every credit,” the man
predicted, excitement in his voice. “He’ll probably end up owning the whole
cruise line before he’s done.”
“Not
my problem right now.” Red’s voice was cheerful.
Meg
admired his attitude. She was dizzy with anxiety and worry, happy to follow his
lead for the moment. What in the seven hells had Drewson been thinking, taking
off without them?
The
ranger station was ominously quiet. The storm shutters were latched and the
usually immaculate landscaping had become overgrown, weeds running riot,
untrimmed vines establishing a foothold on the ornamental fence, and even
scaling one wall.
“How
long do you guess the rangers have been gone?” Meg said, eyeing the building.
She glanced at the living quarters to the left, noticing the same general run
down air. The three small houses were tightly sealed, as if hunched against a
coming storm.
“The
forest grows fast,” Red said. “Probably not more than a few months. I wonder
why we weren’t warned, though.”
“Warned?”
Callina Bettis picked up on his remark. “Are we in some kind of danger?”
Red
and Meg exchanged glances. “He means we should have been notified there
wouldn’t be any immediate help onsite,” Meg said, forcing herself to speak the
lie calmly. “In case of an emergency, like the unfortunate bite Sharmali
suffered.”
Setting
the injured woman on a picnic table, Red went to the front door of the station,
Meg on his heels. She tried activating the portal to no avail, punching the
tabs hard. “You think the last person out would have left it set to open,
general access, in case anyone needed help the way we do.” She thumped her fist
on the door.
“Unless
the staff didn’t expect anyone to be here,” Red said. “Are you sure there’s not
something you forgot to tell me?”
“I
swear, you know as much as I do.” She leaned closer and lowered her voice.
“Drewson was boning Pirankai in the private cabin when I got to the shuttle, coms
off, so if there were any bulletins, he missed them.”
“Idiot.”
Red retreated a step or two, eyeing the door. “Well, nothing for it.”
“Are
you going to break it down?”
Eyebrows
raised, he gave her a glance. “Thanks for the compliment but it’d take a battle
robo to get through this storm portal by brute force.”
“What
then?”
He
stepped to the keypad, flipping open the cover, and entered a series of numbers
and symbols so rapidly she had no idea what the sequence might be.
“You’ve
been here before?” Meg asked.
He
shook his head. “Special Forces, Team Twelve. We each have a special access
code enabling our entry into any door, ship, vault, or facility in the
Sectors.”
The
storm door jerked away from the threshold and then began to roll into the roof
recess. The window shutters on all four sides of the building followed suit a
moment later. Meg knew her mouth was hanging open. Biting her lip, she tried to
make sense of this new information. “You’re on active military duty, but working
as crew on a charter ship? Are you undercover or something?”
“Retired.
Wasn’t sure my code would work, but we have a saying in the Teams—no one is
ever completely released from service.” He grimaced. “Not until we die or the
Mawreg have been erased from the Sectors. I should live so long.” He pushed the
inner door open. “Let’s see what we have here. Stay behind me.”
The
lights didn’t respond to voice command or their physical presence. “I guess the
rangers powered down before departing. Shutters must be on auxiliary. I’ll have
to check the situation out later,” he said, pausing on the threshold. “At least
the windows let in enough ambient light for now.”
“How
long do you think we’re going to be here?” Meg was disturbed by his mention of
later.
“Depends
on what the problem in orbit is.” He stopped, giving her a hard look. “Anything
like this ever happen before?”
“No.
Drewson is an idiot, but he’d never abandon us. And Captain Jonsle certainly
won’t maroon us.”
“He
may not have a choice. I don’t want to alarm you, but we could be in a bad
situation here. I hope not, but just between the two of us, I’m not feeling too
positive. Whatever spooked the TDJ captain into recalling his people had to be
damn serious. I don’t want to alarm our passengers because panicked people are
hard to handle. Drewson’s takeoff seems like the act of a panicked person.” He studied
her face, the expression on his serious. “You’re not going to panic, are you?”
“Of
course not.” She straightened her spine, irritated he would even ask.
He
squeezed her shoulder. “Good. I didn’t think so. Stay here, let me check the
rest of the place, and then we’ll bring Sharmali in.”
Moving
so quietly she couldn’t hear his footsteps, Red left her. Meg sank onto the
nearest chair, resting her head in her hands. If she and the people she was
responsible for were in survival mode, even for a short time until someone sent
help for them, she had to reprioritize her thoughts...
