Tesla Read online

  Raina

  Raina awoke to soft sounds.

  At first, she wasn’t sure where she was. She was loose-limbed and euphoric, and the bed felt too firm to be her cot.

  Then it all came rushing back.

  She opened her eyes to see Nick, bare-chested, cradling a cooing Tesla in his arms and replying to his baby talk.

  “Ah ma ma ma ma,” Tesla said.

  “Yes, mom will wake up soon,” Nick told him solemnly.

  “MamamAH,” Tesla squealed delightedly.

  “Good morning, my mate,” Nick said, without looking up.

  Could their bond really be so strong?

  “Good morning,” she replied.

  “He already knows your name,” Nick said proudly.

  “I think he’s just practicing making noises,” Raina said. “But it’s lovely, a good preview of things to come.”

  “He is saying mom. I heard him,” Nick said, looking offended on behalf of the baby.

  Raina stretched and went to them, her little family.

  Tesla squealed again and flung himself toward her.

  “Careful, little one,” Nick admonished him as he handed him over. “His top half is heavier than his bottom,” he noted. “He must be more careful.”

  “That’s what he has us for,” Raina said, smiling as she cuddled the delightful baby close. “Thanks for letting me sleep. How long have you guys been up?”

  “Not long,” Nick said. “Are you hungry?”

  “Yes,” she said, realizing she must be pretty hungry if she was eager at the thought of Stargazer fare. “Too bad we didn’t think to bring some of those supplies from the cruiser with us.”

  “Perhaps Mama would allow us to raid the dining area of the ship where your friend and my brother are trapped,” Nick said.

  “Good thinking,” Raina said.

  “I’ll take him again while you get dressed,” Nick said hopefully, eying the baby.

  “Sure,” Raina told him.

  She hummed her way cheerfully through another chemical shower and dressed quickly.

  The three of them headed to the mess hall together. Anna and Leo were already sitting at the table with Tolstoy.

  “Are you mated, brother?” Leo asked eagerly.

  Raina felt her cheeks grow warm, but she wasn’t really embarrassed. She was proud to have Nick for a mate.

  “Yes,” Nick laughed.

  “Well done,” Leo congratulated them, clapping his brother on the back.

  “Good morning,” Anna said with a smile.

  “Good morning,” Raina replied.

  “Did the baby sleep for you?” Anna asked.

  “He did,” Raina said. “He’s a good boy.”

  “They seem a lot older than newborn, don’t they?” Anna asked, looking down at Tolstoy.

  “Definitely,” Raina agreed. “I babysat a little girl sometimes when I was in high school starting when she was six months old, and I’d say they’re even more advanced than she was. They must not have been born directly into stasis.”

  “Why do you think they survived when no one else did?” Anna asked, stroking Tolstoy’s blond curls.

  “I don’t know,” Raina said. “I’ve been wondering the same thing.”

  She’d been wondering even more about what was going to happen to them both. Mama hadn’t said anything about returning the babes to their rightful owners. She’d been too focused on getting to the third ship in time to help the others. But Raina knew the conversation was coming, and she wasn’t looking forward to it one bit.

  “Raina,” Leo said, snapping her out of her thoughts. “Nick says you have a good idea how to get these ships out of the web.”

  She glanced at Nick, who nodded back at her.

  “Well, it seems like the creature’s web is basically acting like a huge electromagnetic field,” she explained. “That’s why the ships were caught in it, and why our comms don’t work when we’re in it.”

  Leo nodded.

  “My thought was that if we could reach the hull of the ship and electrify it to reverse its polarity, the web would repel it instead of attracting it,” she finished.

  “Gods,” Leo breathed.

  “That’s very clever, Raina,” Anna said appreciatively. “I wonder if it could be done.”

  “Oh, she did it already,” Nick said proudly. “Only to a small compartment of the ship, but that was the mess you saw when you came to find us.”

  “Did it work?” Leo asked.

  “On that part of the ship, yes,” Raina said. “We’d have to find a way to reverse the polarity of the whole ship to free it.”

  “Okay, crew,” Mama said as she strode into the mess hall, BFF19 and BFF20 humming along in her wake. “We’re about an hour from reaching the third ship. It’s time to suit up.”

  Raina and Anna exchanged glances.

  “Don’t worry,” Mama chided. “The little ones will be just fine here with me, won’t they?” She cooed at Tolstoy, and he responded by clapping his chubby hands and squealing with delight.

  “Already being spoiled by the grandparents,” Anna teased.

  Nick took Raina’s hand and squeezed it in his.

  She was surprised to find herself feeling excited instead of afraid.

  “We’ve got this,” he whispered into her hair.

  She smiled and squeezed his hand back.

  “Here we come, Angel,” Anna said happily as Leo let out an enthusiastic whoop.

  Raina smiled up at Nick.

  With her brave mate by her side, their sweet baby in her arms, and friends to share their burdens, it felt like there was nothing she couldn’t do, no obstacle they couldn’t overcome together.

  Thanks for reading Tesla!

  Keep reading for a sample of the next book - Tchaikovsky: Stargazer Alien Barbarian Brides.

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  Tchaikovsky (Sample)

  1

  Angel

  Angel strode out of the chamber she had just looted. Her origami drone, BFF21, hovered near her shoulder.

  Angel tried to keep her eyes on the ground, but somehow the trees in the biodome drew her gaze. They loomed over her, dark as night, their canopy so far above that she could barely see it.

  She shivered.

  “Your body temperature is ninety-eight point six degrees Fahrenheit,” BFF21 announced in na gruff yet feminine voice. “Your trembling indicates that you may be coming down with the common cold.”

  “It’s not that,” Angel said. “It’s just those trees, they give me the creeps.”

  “The purpose of the biodome is to provide oxygen and comfort to the occupants of the ship,” BFF21 said. “It’s meant to be peaceful.”

  “Well, it looks like the set of a horror movie,” Angel said, picking up her pace to reach the next doorway so she could escape the view of the woods.

  Angel had grown up in a colonial-era townhouse on a cobblestone street in Old City Philadelphia. Trees were for field trips and fairy tales. You weren’t supposed to live under them like a troll under a bridge. Literally anything could be hiding in there, waiting for a person to let her guard down.

  She scurried into the next room and slid the tagger out of her holster.

  Though this was her first mission as an intergalactic treasure hunter, she was getting the hang of it quickly. The pirating trade suited her restlessness.

  “But what would my brother have to say about it?” she wondered out loud as she scanned the room for anything worth scavenging.

  It was a sleeping chamber, a bit fancier than most. The gold-toned fixtures were only painted composite. But she saw real metal in the frame of the bed. Someone important must have slept here.

  She bent to tag it.

  “Good find,” BFF21 chirped.

  “Thanks,” Angel said.

  There was something anticlimactic about tagging a item of value and then walking away.

  Carrier drones wo
uld come back when the captain retrieved her. They would take everything she had tagged back to the Stargazer, or maybe onto a freighter if her haul was big enough and worth the steep rental cost for a freight ship.

  The only other thing in the room maybe worth saving was the hanging on the wall. It appeared to be some sort of projected image on a liquid looking screen. The image was of a woman either floating just over the surface of a stream or drowning just under it - it was hard to tell which.

  “Is that art?” she wondered out loud.

  “It appears to be everyday art,” BFF21 said cheerfully.

  “Is it worth anything?” Angel asked.

  “The value of any artistic work is in the eye of the beholder,” BFF21 said.

  “I’ll take that as a no,” Angel said, spinning around to get out of the room.

  BFF21 swooped down to hover near her shoulder.

  Angel took two steps and then BFF21 beeped.

  “Proximity alert,” BFF21 said.

  “What do you mean?” Angel asked.

  “It means there’s another life form nearby,” BFF21 said.

  She knew what the proximity alert meant. She’d just been taken by surprise to hear it. The ship was supposed to be deserted.

  “What kind of life form?” Angel asked.

  BFF21 hummed for a moment.

  “An unidentified life form,” she replied at last.

  “I thought this ship was abandoned,” Angel said, spinning to face her robotic companion, even though the little drone didn’t have eyes.

  “With the electromagnetic interference it was impossible to get a reliable scan from the Stargazer,” BFF21 said. “It is still rendering many of my scans ineffective.”

  “And Mama sent us anyway?” Angel asked.

  The captain of the Stargazer was called Mama by the entire crew, though no one had ever said why. She was a tiny woman with a silver eyepatch - tough, mysterious, beautiful in her way, and far too young to be any of their mothers.

  “The probability of any creature remaining alive on this ship is highly unlikely, “ BFF21 said.

  “And yet, here we are,” Angel said.

  “Here we are,”BFF21 agreed.

  Angel willed herself to remain calm.

  “Are you getting any reading on what it is?” Angel asked.

  “Oh, there’s no need for alarm,” BFF21 said. “It is almost certainly not Gryvens.”

  It had not occurred to Angel that it would be Gryvens.

  Her stomach began to twist in knots.

  “Why not?” Angel asked.

  “There would be more corpses,” BFF21 said brightly.

  Great.

  Angel slid her hand into the side pocket of her suit and wrapped her fingers around the smooth, reassuring handle of her baton.

  She pulled it out, flicking her wrist to extend the telescoping metal cylinder to its full length.

  “You’re not supposed to have a weapon,” BFF21 pointed out.

  “Sneaking around an abandoned luxury cruiser with a giant forest in the middle of it is no place for an unarmed privateer,” Angel said.

  “Mama wouldn’t like it,” BFF21 said.

  Angel decided now might not be the best time to mention that the end of the baton was electrified.

  “Mama’s not here,” Angel said.

  “Where did you get it?” BFF21 asked.

  “It was a gift,” Angel said.

  “How thoughtful,” BFF21 sniffed.

  “You ready?” Angel asked.

  “Are you suggesting that we deliberately try to find this thing?” BFF21 asked.

  “Better than letting it sneak up on us,” Angel said. “We don’t have to make contact, but I want to know what we’re dealing with.”

  She didn’t wait for the little drone to answer, instead she headed back into the corridor, trying once again to keep her eyes away from the trees that filled the center of the ship.

  2

  Peter

  Peter awoke with a start, half-expecting to feel the cold metal of a pleasure collar around his neck.

  But he was free.

  He stretched his muscles and shook off the nightmare, only to remember he was on a stranded cruiser.

  With the baby.

  “Tchai,” he hissed, leaping up and landing in a crouch, ready to fight.

  But little Tchai was sleeping soundly, bundled in his makeshift creche beside Peter’s own bedding. His little brow was furrowed as if he too were unsettled.

  “Everything is fine, little one,” Peter crooned softly.

  The little face smoothed, rosy lips pouting.

  Peter sat back on his bedding, heart pounding, and cursed his dream memories for destroying the precious little rest allowed him by the growing baby.

  Small humans were surprisingly restless. Peter attributed it to their being caged in just one form.

  He sighed, watching Tchai’s tiny chest rise and fall.

  All is well. You are safe.

  Something about caring for the baby was healing his broken soul.

  If only they weren’t so lonely. Children needed a community, full of good smells and happy noises, not this eery space-bound tomb.

  Out of the profound silence, there came a sound.

  It came from out in the corridor, soft and subtle. It was worse than a loud sound.

  It was the sound of something trying not to make a sound.

  This time Peter’s skin shivered with electricity and his heart pounded in response.

  The Other was calling to him, and he chose to allow it to transform him.

  Without conscious thought, his mind went to a story book from the ship’s library about an angry boy escaping his home for a wild place.

  Instantly he felt himself swell taller, wider. Fur sprung from his body. Horns protruded from his forehead. His bare toes grew claws.

  As his horns scraped the ceiling, a scent drifted toward him.

  He froze in place, hypnotized by it.

  In this Other form his thoughts were strange. It was hard to know what attracted him. It wasn’t meat, or the salt water of a traveling sea.

  But something called to him, siren-like.

  Peter stood stock still, torn.

  That scent couldn’t have come from the evil thing that dwelled on the ship and pursued the baby. That thing was cold, devoid of scent, and vicious. It was effortlessly silent.

  No, this was something softer, warmer…

  And if it had made it this far, it had somehow circumvented the DNA lock, something the monster had never done.

  Thoughts of the monster sent a wave of involuntary panic through his veins. Peter needed to find the owner of the delicious scent, before that monster did.

  But he couldn’t abandon the child.

  The sounds in the corridor grew closer.

  He turned back to Tchai. The baby was sleeping comfortably.

  However compelling it smelled, this thing might not be friendly. And if it were a danger, it might be better for him to face off with it far away from the child.

  But the door to the suite where he and the baby hid was opening now, it was too late.

  And the intriguing scent was washing over him like a dream, making it harder to focus his other senses.

  With the last of his determination, he lunged out of the room he shared with the baby and into the antechamber to face the unknown intruder.

  3

  Angel

  Angel placed her hand on the DNA lock and tried not to hiss as the pin prick.

  She hated the sight of blood. The fact that this ship forced her to give a sample any time she wanted to enter a restricted area seemed grossly unfair.

  “If you think that finger prick hurts, just wait until you bump into an acid-spitting alien,” BFF21 said.

  “You’re only saying that because you want me to put my helmet back on,” Angel said.

  “I do want you to put your helmet back on,” BFF21 agreed. “But acid-spitting aliens would prefe
r you to keep it off. It will make it easier to peel strips of your face off when they eat you.”

  Angel shuddered again and pulled her helm out of her pack.

  She slid it over her head, instantly hating how removed it made her feel from her surroundings. There was an interior holographic display, but it made her feel like she was in a video game instead of real life.

  “You would have loved this, Gabriel,” she whispered ruefully to her brother, wishing he were there in real life to agree.

  They continued to a door.

  “Back there somewhere,” BFF21 said.

  “Any clue what it is?” Angel asked. “We’re closer now.”

  BFF21 hummed and whirred.

  “No,” she replied at length.

  Angel placed her hand on the DNA lock to the door.

  Another pinprick and it swung open, bumping against the wall.

  “Something’s coming our way, fast,” BFF21 cried.

  Angel held the baton in front of her, defensively.

  Something huge skidded around the corner and rushed at them.

  It was one thing to have an electrified baton. It was another to have to use it.

  Angel held her weapon, trying to get a sense of the creature beyond the flash of fur and fangs and… feathers?

  It eyed her wildly.

  It reminded her of something. A monster from a child’s picture book.

  She tried to strike it, nearly wrenching out her shoulder with the effort.

  It dodged, lightning fast, knocking BFF21 to the ground. It moved way too fast for something so huge and ungainly.

  She went for it again, brandishing the baton over her shoulder like she was about to serve up a tennis ball.

  Suddenly she was pinned to the ground by her baton arm. The energy coursing through the weapon fizzed out and it hung uselessly in her pinned hand.

  The view through the helmet was murky. She couldn’t even properly see what was holding her down.

  This isn’t how I’m going down, she thought to herself.

  She ripped the helmet off with her free hand.