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  “Can I get a gravity check?” she asked.

  “Artificial gravity currently reading sixty-seven percent of standard,” BFF20 said.

  So that was why she felt light. Earth’s normal gravity was considered standard on human-inhabited ships. Raina felt a small shift, like when an elevator started to descend.

  “Forty-five percent,” the drone said.

  “What?” Raina asked.

  “Seventy-two percent,” BFF20 amended. “This is quite unusual, darling, the gravity on the vessel is inconsistent.”

  “Don’t call me darling,” Raina said distractedly.

  She could definitely feel the inconstancy of ship’s gravity - it was almost like being on a swing. Her stomach was doing little flip-flops.

  “Would you like me to continue updating the readings?” the drone asked.

  “No, thanks,” Raina said. “Let’s see if we can find the navigation room and check out the control settings.”

  “Very good,” BFF20 said, sounding like a sexy butler.

  Raina slipped her navigation palette, like a souped-up version of the iPad she’d had back home, from her pocket and slid her fingers over the glass.

  A hologram of the rough shape of the ship in front of her lifted from the screen. She held it aloft in her palm and spun around slowly and some of the blanks filled in.

  She shaped and adjusted the floors that ran around the forest in rings up as high as she could see but the forest was blocking her from completing the map.

  “Hopefully I can get detailed schematics from the navigation room too,” she said to no one in particular.

  Raina had always loved maps and mapping. As a child on Earth she had reveled in the tales of explorers, and bemoaned the fact that nearly everything on the blue and green planet had already been discovered and mapped long before she was born.

  When the opportunity arose to join the space cadet program she’d leapt at the chance, dreaming that maybe one day school kids would read about her adventures.

  But there had been issues on entry and the portal to Earth had closed. The ship that contained her pod and the pods of two other Earth women was lost and hundreds of years passed before the three of them were discovered and awoken.

  Raina was grateful to be alive. But it was hard not to notice that just enough time had passed that the golden age of near space exploration was coming to a close.

  Once again, Raina had missed out on her calling by only a few generations.

  “The navigation room is most likely this way,” BFF20 said politely, hovering in front of her.

  “Let’s go,” Raina said crisply, swinging her pack onto her back.

  The little drone folded himself into a crane shape and flitted through the air, leading the way down a corridor covered in thick carpet.

  The whole place had an odd feel, as if a shopping mall had been crossed with a high end hotel and wrapped around a forest.

  But it was the silence that was truly haunting.

  Her footsteps were muted by the rug, and BFF20 flew noiselessly.

  Raina wasn’t the imaginative type, but something about the enormity of the ship and the profound silence within gave her the creeps. She picked up the pace and BFF20 zoomed on ahead.

  Every so often the gravity would unexpectedly drop and she’d find herself sailing a few inches above the floor and floating along for five feet or so. Then gravity would kick back up a bit and she would land.

  It reminded her of the feeling she sometimes had in dreams, where she was jumping and floating. It might even have been fun if she hadn’t had a tingly feeling that they weren’t alone.

  She was beginning to get used to her new command of intermittent partial gravity when at last they arrived at a large walnut door bearing a brass plate that said Navigation Room.

  “The navigation room, milady,” BFF20 announced needlessly.

  “I’m not your lady,” Raina said automatically, pushing the door open.

  The plush carpet and glossy millwork of the public space ended at the threshold. The navigation room itself was all gleaming ceramic and carbon fibre.

  Raina found it reassuring that this space looked like what she would have expected to be in a navigation room in her own time. She went to the control panel, which ran the length of the room, and scanned the buttons and slides carefully without touching anything.

  “I believe the gravitation field access panel is here,” BFF20 said.

  He was hovering over a small ivory colored toggle covered by a transparent bubble.

  Raina studied it carefully without lifting the dome. There were numbers on it almost like a thermostat. Currently it was set at 1G. The digital readout below was fluctuating between .45G and .72G.

  She lifted the bubble and slid the toggle gently upward to 1.1G.

  Nothing happened.

  She eased it back down to 1G, hoping that would reset the whole thing.

  There was no change in the reading.

  “Damn it,” she murmured to herself.

  “May I be of assistance?” BFF20 asked politely.

  “I don’t think so,” Raina said as she slid the toggle up to 2G.

  That should have increased the gravity to twice what she was used to on Earth, but she didn’t feel any difference, and there was no change in the digital read out.

  “Something must be wrong with the control panel,” she said.

  Gravity kicked in slightly and she felt the weight of her pack again.

  The sound was echoed in the threshold of the room, where something larger than Raina had just landed.

  2

  Nick

  Nick held his breath and tried to steady his mind.

  Coming out of stasis was always difficult, but he was having a harder time than he ever had before. The halls blurred before his eyes and his body weight seemed to ebb and flow.

  He wondered, not for the first time, how long he’d been out.

  His last memory before waking up was of Captain Reese. The normally confident leader had worn an expression of utter terror.

  “Something’s wrong, Nick,” he heard her say, an octave above her normally husky voice. “Something’s coming…”

  There had been whispers. Crewmembers had been scuttling around for days. There were unexplained minor power outages, and a general sense of unease among the professionals who manned the craft.

  Of course none of them had seen fit to discuss their concerns with the head of security.

  Nick was a barbarian, a distinction he was never once permitted to forget, no matter how long he worked among other species, or how easily he took on their forms and habits. Whatever the problems on the ship, the humans had preferred to hedge their bets alone rather than engaging the help of the likes him.

  Their gamble had obviously not paid off. When he came out of his post-stasis haze, it was clear that Nick was the only living thing on the ship.

  And then he wasn’t.

  Something’s coming…

  He heard footsteps and the sound of low voices down the long corridor. Something was already there.

  Nick knew he ought to hole himself up somewhere and recover, but he had never been good at avoiding trouble. It seemed to come looking for him, and it never found him lacking in the bravery needed to face it head on.

  At least, he thought of it as bravery. His brothers often teased him with less flattering terms.

  They were endlessly amused by the situations he got himself into. If someone heard that a barbarian had gotten himself into a duel with a Warblanix outside a bar in an intergalactic safe zone, or that someone had been jumped at a Mondalvian fueling center, his brothers joked that they would know it was him before hearing the details.

  He scanned the corridor for a porthole, suddenly wondering if his brothers were okay. They were on the other two cruise ships moving in tandem to this one.

  But the ornate carpet and chestnut wainscoting seemed to go on for miles without a bit of glass or view.

&
nbsp; Just ahead though, an open door allowed a triangle of light to spill out into the hall. He guessed that was where the voices were coming from.

  He slowed his pace and tried to flatten himself to the wall as much as his large form would allow. He thought of shifting, but he was still disoriented, and didn’t want to add to the effect by altering his form.

  His stomach lurched as gravity suddenly released its hold on him and he left the ground.

  He sailed a few feet before landing hard in the threshold of the open door, effectively ruining his chance to observe the intruder surreptitiously.

  He pulled his body into a crouch, preparing to land in a ready state.

  Her scent drifted to him.

  Before he could fully take in the scene, something locked up in his chest.

  My mate…

  He fumbled his landing, but caught his balance at the last moment, scanning the room and finding her against the far wall.

  A haze seemed to surround the woman, though he couldn’t be sure whether it was his post-stasis symptoms or the mating thrall.

  He could see that she was young, with soft tendrils of blonde hair drifting to her chest.

  As his vision came into focus at last he saw the spark of bravery in her bright blue eyes.

  Just before it hit him that she was human.

  His senses reeled with the pleasure of observing her even as his mind recoiled from what she was.

  Mate.

  His heart spoke again and he found himself horrified and attracted in nearly equal measures.

  “Who are you?” she demanded.

  The alto timbre of her voice slid over his ear like a carnal caress. She wasn’t scared, or if she was she hid it well.

  Brave mate, his heart noted approvingly. Bravery was a prized quality among his kind.

  “I’m the head security officer of this ship,” he volleyed back automatically. “Who are you?”

  A fleeting expression crossed her face and he took a closer look at her.

  She wore simple clothing, too simple to match her class, if her posture were any indication of her birth.

  A loose holster slung around her hips told him she might be a threat.

  But the holster’s contents told him something worse.

  Not a weapon, but some type of inventory tagger.

  Taggers were the tools of privateers who made their petty fortunes stealing from the wreckage of the unoccupied vessels that littered the stars after the Earth sent her first colonizers to the skies. They used the taggers to put their marks on all the inventory and then their utility drones came back to carry it away.

  For all her pretty hair and brave eyes, she was nothing more than a scavenger, here to steal from the ship he was tasked to protect.

  “This ship is occupied,” he told her. “You can’t loot it.”

  “Well, I know that now,” she said.

  He glowered at her and she scowled right back.

  He was suddenly reminded of his grandmother, a tiny woman with a ferocious glare.

  “Where is everyone?” the woman demanded.

  “I detect no other living beings on this ship,” a man’s voice said.

  Nick nearly jumped out of his skin until he realized it was only the drone hovering near the woman’s left shoulder.

  “What about the other two ships?” Nick asked.

  The drone buzzed softly.

  “My apologies, my comms appear to be down,” the little robot said at last.

  “Don’t apologize to him,” the woman said. “You don’t work for him.”

  “Quite right, my dear,” the little drone said. “Apology rescinded.”

  “I’m not your dear,” she pointed out. She turned her attention back to Nick. “So what’s the deal? What happened here?”

  “I… don’t know,” Nick admitted. “I just woke up from stasis.”

  3

  Raina

  Raina swallowed back the words she had been about to say.

  The man had just awoken from stasis, and everything he knew was gone.

  She had been in that spot herself not so many months ago.

  The confusion she had felt in those first awful hours was still never far from the surface. Loss of memory and time was the worst kind of violation.

  “I’m Raina,” she said, offering the big man her hand. “Can we start over?”

  He looked at her like she might be holding a thermal detonator.

  Slowly he extended his own and firmly took hold of hers.

  A jolt of desire shot through her body at the feel of his warm hand around hers. Her stomach was flip-flopping again, and this time it had nothing to do with gravity.

  She had already noticed that he was handsome. She would have had to be blind not to see the broad shoulders, strong jaw and dark hair hanging a little too long over startlingly blue eyes.

  But Raina wasn’t the type to mindlessly drool over a guy for his looks. And she knew next to nothing else about this man, beyond the fact that he was angry and hot as hell.

  But it was no use telling that to her libido, which seemed to be square dancing all over her common sense in its eagerness to connect with the good-looking stranger.

  She withdrew her hand as quickly as politeness would allow and tried not to make eye contact.

  “Raina,” he said, his voice husky and low.

  She felt it between her legs.

  “Yes,” she said, backing up a step. “And you are?”

  “Nick,” he told her.

  He stayed put, for which she was grateful, though her traitorous body booed and hissed inwardly.

  “Nice to meet you, Nick,” she said. “I’m sorry that I didn’t know your ship was occupied. I’m new at this job.”

  “That’s okay. I think I’ve got some post-stasis lag. I didn’t mean to lash out at you,” he said. His expression was chastened enough that it almost made her smile.

  “That’s okay,” she said. “I’ll just send word to my captain that she needs to come back and pick me up.”

  Nick got a strange look on his face.

  “My comms are down,” BFF20 reminded them.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Nick said quickly. “Maybe we can help each other.”

  “Go on,” Raina said.

  “If I’m the last living being on this ship, then if we leave together the ship will be abandoned by the time your drones get here to loot it, right?”

  She nodded.

  “I was assigned to guard one thing on this ship, and one thing only,” Nick said. “If you help me retrieve that, you can take anything else you want.”

  “Why would you let me do that?” she asked.

  “Because you’re going to help me,” he told her.

  “Where is this thing that you need? Is it dangerous?”

  “It’s on the far side of the ship,” he explained. “And I’m sure the most valuable things onboard are with it.”

  Raina observed him carefully. She had no idea why, but she felt to her bones that this was a decent person.

  Although she hadn’t planned on working with a partner, it wasn’t like she had much choice. If she didn’t work with him, she couldn’t work at all.

  And comms were down, which meant she couldn’t call for help, even if he turned on her. She was as well off with him anywhere on this ship as she was right here.

  Raina had always been a planner, but it seemed she would have to be flexible today.

  “Okay,” she said, nodding slowly.

  He smiled for the first time, and she was lost for a moment in the warmth of his twinkling eyes. A small dimple had formed next to his left cheek.

  “Let’s go,” he told her.

  “I’ll keep an eye on him, my dear,” BFF20 said crisply.

  Raina tried to hide her smile from the courtly little droid. She moved toward the doorway Nick had gestured to.

  “We’ve got a ways to go,” Nick warned her.

  They started back down the corridor toward the fore
st. The gravity was still low, and still fluctuating.

  Raina found herself having a hard time setting a pace. She was the kind of person who liked to hear her boots click a rhythm on the floor as she cast herself forward with determination. But her pace here was necessarily dreamy, no matter how quickly she moved. It was like being underwater.

  “Was the gravity like this when you went into stasis?” she asked Nick.

  “I don’t remember going into stasis,” he said quietly.

  “Oh,” she replied, unsure of what to say. That was odd. There was usually preparation for a technological hibernation. No wonder he seemed so lagged.

  “Something was wrong on the ship,” he told her. “That’s all I know.”

  “Aren’t you the head of security?” she asked, wondering how anything could possibly go wrong on a ship without the security head being briefed immediately.

  He didn’t reply and they kept moving.

  The forest loomed overhead, and Raina feasted her eyes on the delicious greenery. She hadn’t seen trees or plants in… in centuries. Though to her it felt like less than a year.

  She forced herself to think about something else. It was dizzying to imagine the years that had passed while she slept on in stasis.

  “What are we retrieving?” she asked Nick.

  “I’m not sure,” he admitted.

  “So you were hired on as head of security, with the instruction to protect one thing with your life and you don’t know what it is?” Raina was incredulous.

  “Whatever it is, if they hired me to protect it I know it’s incredibly valuable,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll find other valuable things near it.”

  “How will we know what it is?” she asked.

  “I have a feeling we’ll know,” he told her.

  She nodded, deciding it didn’t help to question him. He was obviously sensitive about the situation, and given what he’d been through, it wouldn’t help to browbeat the poor guy.

  “I like a little mystery,” she said, giving him a small smile.

  He smiled back and they headed further into the ship, the graceful trees on the other side of the glass thickening even as the hallway they travelled remained as elegant as ever.