The Mammoth Book of Futuristic Romance

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 . . .

“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.

“ T he 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.

A sickening thought made her hands go even colder. Had the Faction’s attack on Kel-Paten – and she and Jameson had no doubt the Teaser was a trap aimed specifically for him – been only a part of a larger plan to wipe out all “traitorous” former Triad officers and crew?

The sound of footsteps made her jerk upright.

“No change,” Cal told her as he angled around his desk, and then dropped tiredly into his chair. He tapped a screen icon. Data flashed against a white background. “The best Jameson can come up with is that we work from a worst-case scenario. When the admiral regains consciousness, we must assume he’s been reprogrammed to harm this ship, you, the furzels, or all of the above.”

“You’re sure he will? Wake up, that is?”

“Jameson’s very sure that if the Faction wanted him dead, he’d be dead.”

Which meant they didn’t want his death. They wanted a weapon. And there was no weapon quite as insidiously lethal as Branden Kel-Paten with his beyond-human strength, reflexes, and intellect. And his ability to kill with a touch.

“That’s why I’ve posted security here in sick bay, and why I’m banning you from Room Six,” Cal continued. “And don’t try using your furzel to teleport you in there.”

“Damn it, Cal, Branden wouldn’t—”

“He can. He would.”

“Jameson can’t reprogram his reprogramming?”

“He’s trying to.”

“I gave you our list of code words.” Kel-Paten would not be happy about that breach of personal security protocol. But he couldn’t reprimand her until he woke up. And right now Sass would gladly face the stoniest of his reprimands, just to have him back. “His med files—?”

“Are more incomplete than we realized.” Cal tapped his screen. “We not only ran through the key word list you gave Jameson. We mixed them up and threw in every other possible code we could think of to try and get him to respond. Ship names. Your name. Tank’s. Captain Kel-Tyra’s. Hell, we even uploaded images of winning hands in Starfield Doubles. His systems block everything.”

She almost suggested they try a losing hand but, no. Branden Kel-Paten never lost.

Damn it! If only Kel-Tyra would answer.

“I’m not saying we’re giving up. We will, right up to the last moment, try everything we can to restore him. But we’re at a crossroads here, Captain. That’s why I’ve come back – I’m sorry. You’re not going to like what I must ask you now.”

What could be worse than not permitting her to touch Branden?

Gods. No.

Cal was tapping Branden’s med-file data again. “Something that highly classified isn’t in here. The Triad could never risk our finding out. But I suspect he’s told you. We need that information or this entire ship is at risk.”

Sass shut her eyes and forced the tremor threatening to surge through her body to stop. She knew what Cal wanted, what Security needed.

They needed to know the one vulnerability in Kel-Paten’s synthderm mesh body.

They needed to know how to kill Branden.

SICK BAY ROOM 6

Nothing.

Blackness.

Pain.

Cessation of pain.

Power.

He came fully awake in a stark gray and white room and immediately cataloged his surroundings and their relative threat index. He ripped the data-feed cables from his wrist port. Someone – the enemy– had tried to gain access to his systems.

Fools.

But fools who had enough wisdom not to leave a human security guard in the room with him. That person would be dead before he could even raise his weapon.

He sat up, ran a second systems diagnostic and oriented himself. Med panels were all labeled in Standard, not Triadian. Definitely the enemy. But U-Cees, not the Rebashee or the Illithians. Not that that mattered much. His mission – it flooded him as soon as he came to consciousness – was to neutralize all enemy personnel, take control of the ship, and deliver it to the Triad.

Piece o’ cake.

Piece o’ cake ? He shoved the uncharacteristic phrase away. Residual data, likely something he’d overheard while unconscious. It sounded like the usual ridiculous U-Cee slang.

Eight minutes and seventeen-point-two seconds later – according to the readout in the corner of his vision – the wall screen on his left flickered. Two humans in U-Cee tan uniforms stared at him. One – the male – wore the blue lab coat of a med-tech. The shorter female balanced an overweight black-and-white furzel in her arms.

His databanks brought up the humans’ corresponding files: Dr Caleb Monterro, CMO. Captain Tasha Sebastian. Both assigned to the Regalia. The furzel was of no importance and, if necessary, easily terminated.

Excellent. He was exactly where he needed to be.

“How are you feeling, Admiral?” Sebastian asked. The furzel wiggled in her arms then slid down, out of view.

“Optimal.” He plucked the useless data feed from the diagnostic bed and dropped it. “A waste of time.

But you already know that, Sebastian.”

Something flickered across Sebastian’s face. He was programmed to unerringly interpret over one hundred and forty human facial expressions, and another sixty-seven nonhuman ones. He labeled what he saw in her face as “disappointment” and “grief”.

Disappointed he was alive? Too bad.

Grief because perhaps before they trapped him in this sick-bay room, he’d killed someone she cared about? Good.

“Kel-Paten.” She paused.

He stared at her. Waited. When she said nothing more, he continued to wait. U-Cees and their infantile games.

“Do you really need me to state name, rank, and serial number?” he asked curtly.

“We’re not the enemy. I know you don’t believe that right now, Branden. But we’re not.”

The use of his first name by this U-Cee trash annoyed him. He stated name, rank, and serial number.

The wall screen blanked.

Time to get to work. He had a mission to complete. And Bio-’cybernetic Kinetic Programmable Apparatus-Ten never failed.

DR CALEB MONTERRO’S OFFICE, SICK BAY

“Captain . . .”

The gentle tone in Cal’s voice was exactly what Sass didn’t need. Damn it! She missed, really missed Doc Eden Fynn-Serafino, her former CMO, right now. “Don’t coddle me, Doctor. I can handle this.”

She stopped at his office door.

Tank leaned against her ankle. Brandenfriend gone. Gone. Mommy sad.

“Evacuate sick bay. Disable all equipment, especially data and comm feeds. Put a double containment field around the admiral’s room. Then another pair around the sick bay itself. Yes.” Her raised hand stilled Cal Monterro’s comment. “He will get through those. Eventually. But it will slow him down. We need time, Cal. Time. We have to reach Captain Kel-Tyra. Since Tank couldn’t make telepathic contact with Branden, Kel-Tyra’s now our only chance of finding those key code words.” She refused to voice her fear that Rall Kel-Tyra might already be dead.

“A security team—”

“In the corridor. Only. I’m not—” And she clenched her eyes shut for a moment. “I’m not ordering his .

. . assassination. Not yet.”

Cal’s mouth tightened.

“Alert me when he breaches the first set of fields,” Sass told him. Then she headed doggedly out into the Regalia’s gray utilitarian corridor, Tank padding softly – and sadly – at her heels.

CAPTAIN TASHA SEBASTIAN’S OFFICE

Admiral Cayla “Ace” Edmonds’s communication came in an hour and a half later. Right after the security update that Kel-Paten had already neutralized the first of Room Six’s containment fields and was working steadily on the second.

“The shuttle Captain Kel-Tyra was traveling in came under attack by unknown bogies five hours ago, standard shiptime. We believe he made it to Lightridge Station, but Lightridge’s commsat’s ceased responding. I’ve got a battle group three lighthours out from station. It’s a godsdamned mullytrock, Sass.

I’m sorry. As soon as I have something, you’ll know. Edmonds out.”

Sass gripped the edges of her office chair and shoved herself to her feet. She had to try to save him.

Brandon had more than once been willing to sacrifice his life for hers. He’d loved her in spite of what he was and who she was. She loved him because of what they were together.

She knew better than to ask for sick bay’s containment fields to be dropped. She settled for using the comm screen in CIC that – as it was her ship’s Combat Information Center – had triple-secure emergency links to all key stations on the Regalia. It took a few minutes to re-establish sick bay’s severed audio and video links. And that was a risk. Kel-Paten could spike in. But at least if he did, CIC’s firewalls had the best chance of stopping him.

She didn’t know how he knew that the screen in his room had come on quietly, only that he turned casually – if anything Kel-Paten did under full ’cybe power could be said to be casual – and raked her with a luminous icy-blue gaze, his expression unchanging and unreadable.

She didn’t waste his time or hers. Her CIC commander was cutting the link at the five-minute mark.

“Branden, I know you’re in there, inside whatever they’ve programmed into you. I need you to listen, to really listen to me. Ralland Kel-Tyra came under attack by the Triad Faction out by Lightridge. We have every reason to believe he made it to station. Your people are trying to kill him. They’ve already reprogrammed you. I am not your enemy. The U-Cees are not your enemy. Kel-Tyra is working with us, with the U-Cees, just as you have been for the past seven months. And now his life is threatened. We need your help, your knowledge.”

His gaze didn’t waver.

“Damn it all, flyboy, you have to remember!” Her voice rasped. The pain and fear she’d kept tamped down suddenly surfaced.

Something shifted in his hard expression. Sass didn’t know what it was, only that there was a minuscule change, a slight tightening around his eyes. Then it was gone.

“If Kel-Tyra has turned traitor, I will deal with him after I take control of your ship.”

The utter coldness in his tone made her gut clench. This would be her last chance to convince him. She could understand his not remembering her, but Branden and Ralland had spent almost their entire lives together. If anything could shatter Branden’s reprogramming, it had to be Ralland. But there was no way she could now get Ralland here in person. This was her only other option.

She tapped the left side of her screen. A red icon expanded to a secondary screen showing the green-

tinged bridge of the former Triad huntership, the Vaxxar, in total disarray. There was the U-shaped command center, the double-command sling and, in front of that, the curve of the railing. And a familiar tall dark-haired man, gloved hands braced against it.

The time stamp scrolling in the lower right showed a date four shipweeks past. “United Coalition huntership Regalia, this is Branden Kel-Paten. I don’t know if you can hear me. Our comm array is down. Life support is failing. We can’t control the shields, though we’re trying” The image of Kel-

Paten glanced over his left shoulder at a man sitting at a nearby station. Ralland Kel-Tyra, nodding.

“I repeat. Our comm array is down. Weapons banks, life support depleted. We’re not a threat. We are . . . we are all that’s left. The Triad is no more.”

“ Regalia, if Tash – if Captain Sebastian is on board or anywhere in your Fleet, reach her. Please.

Tell her I . . . tell her Branden Kel-Paten hopes – prays – her offer still stands. If you can hear me, Regalia, send us a signal. We have only two hours of air left—” A fat black-and-white furzel appeared suddenly on the wide railing in the green-tinged darkness, plumy tail flicking back and forth. Kel-Paten flinched, Ralland Kel-Tyra behind him rising swiftly from his seat.

Then, in a blur of movement, Kel-Paten grabbed the furzel, clasping him tightly against his chest, relief and joy written starkly on his gaunt features . . .

Sass tapped the screen again and the playback stopped.

“A decent fabrication if a tad overly theatrical,” Kel-Paten said. “But Captain Kel-Tyra doesn’t sit nav on my ship. I suggest you reassign whatever intel officer gave you that erroneous data to the sanitation division. If you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”

An alarm trilled shrilly behind her in CIC. “He’s broken through Room Six’s second containment field, Captain,” the CIC officer told her. “Kel-Paten now has complete access to sick bay.”

CAPTAIN’S QUARTERS

Sass was tired, so godsdamned tired. The Regalia was well into third-shift, long past Sass’s bedtime. She couldn’t sleep. She paced the confines of the captain’s quarters, alternately hugging her arms around her waist and thrusting her hands through her short-cropped hair, as she tried not to look at Branden’s soft sweater thrown over the back of their couch. Or his new hiking boots tucked under their bedroom chair.

She could bring him here, show him his own things mixed in with hers, but she knew he wouldn’t believe her. If she even lived long enough to offer him the tour.

She really thought seeing the vid of himself and Ralland Kel-Tyra on the Vax’s bridge would bring him back out of whatever cybernetic hell the Faction had shoved him into. All that effort had got her, though, was a derisive scoffing remark from him.

And an icy-blue stare she remembered far far too well, ever since they first met on the derelict freighter, the Sarna Bogue.

The captain had to make a decision soon. She knew that. The lives of her officers and crew hinged on it. Possibly the very fate of the United Coalition, if Kel-Paten commandeered her ship and handed over to the Faction all the intel the Regalia now held. She could not let the fact that she loved that man more than life itself stand in the way of what she knew had to be done.

Starting with the hard cold realization that the man she loved was no longer even there. Someone, something else, inhabited Branden’s body and cybernetically enhanced mind.

When he breached the first of the two larger containment fields around the sick bay, she would have no choice but to give the order to kill him. She’d already provided the security team with the highly classified data on how to do that.

She hoped Ralland Kel-Tyra would forgive her. She knew she would never forgive herself.

I should have let you kidnap me. She’d told him that in McClellan’s Void, when they had been trapped in another hell of the Faction’s making – in a fabricated universe where all her sins as the infamous mercenary, Lady Sass, were paraded before Kel-Paten. She’d truly believed then that she’d lost him, that he was going to kill her.

But instead, he had admitted that at their first meeting on the decrepit Sarna Bogue twelve years ago he’d fallen in love with her. She’d been shocked. He’d said he’d known from that moment that, no matter who she was now or who she’d been, he wanted her in his life forever.

It was just a godsdamned mullytrocking shame that “forever” turned out to last only seven months.

She stared with all her might at her quarter’s outer bulkhead, as if she could pierce her ship’s hull with just her emotions, and send a message to the godsdamned mullytrocking Triad Faction – the same message she’d leveled at then-Captain Kel-Paten’s Vaxxar a dozen years earlier: Fuck you and the equinnard you rode in on.

It had certainly worked back then, changing her life and his. He’d told her more than once that it was a phrase he’d always associate with his “green-eyed vixen” . . .

She spun and bolted for her closet. “Tank, come! I need you now.”

SICK BAY

Kel-Paten almost enjoyed dismantling the Regalia’s containment fields. They were a bit better than he’d anticipated, with a few unexpected twists and turns in the coding. It was a skillful pattern he’d come across only once before, a long time ago. That, too, was a pleasurable memory – as far as any ’cybe with emo-inhibitors could experience pleasure, that is. He tried recalling the details but they remained, oddly, elusive.

Unimportant, then. His programming automatically worked to a structured hierarchy. If and when that memory was needed to provide something of value, it would be there.

Until then . . .

There was a subtle change in the air currents. He spun to his right with unerring precision. Not toward the doors to the corridor. They were sealed. Not to any air duct or inner office door. Those posed no threat. But to . . .

“Captain Sebastian.” He powered up fully. Even through his gloves, one touch would kill her. A brush of his fingers would render her unconscious. He could hold her hostage until he took control of her ship.

But how had she . . . ?

His brain searched, gathered, analyzed, redacted, gathered, analyzed, and redacted again. Two-point-

seven seconds passed. She was unarmed. She had that fat furzel at her feet. She . . .

She was out of uniform, in patched and faded freighter grays, a ratty-looking red cap bearing the logo of a Kesh Valirr night-house perched askew on her short-cropped pale hair.

“Vaxxar, this is the Sarna Bogue,” she said crisply. “Fuck you and the equinnard you rode in on.”

His body went rigid. His mind whirled, latching onto a coded sequence string of instructions that unpacked so quickly he was momentarily blinded in a blizzard of images and sounds and data.

Override. Execute. Override. Execute. Override. Execute.

His breath was sucked harshly out of his lungs. He bent over at the waist, gloved hands on his knees, and gasped for air, which suddenly tasted sweet and fresh – not stale and bitter as it had moments before.

He stared up at his green-eyed vixen. The galaxy slowly and elegantly righted itself.

Still hunched over, he focused his gaze on the name-patch above the single bar on her threadbare shirt.

That insignia was the only part of her attire that was remotely regulation. He read her name and her rank aloud. “Lieutenant Sebastian.”

She nodded, her mouth quivering slightly. “Captain Kel-Paten.” Her voice, he noted, wavered. Was she frightened of him? She needn’t be. He could never, would never hurt her.

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.”