Happy Winter Holidays, all! Snippet Saturday is the brainchild of author Lauren Dane, wherein a group of authors selects thematic excerpts from their work and shares them on Saturday mornings. This Saturday's snippet is endings, which is clearly appropriate for the date! I thought that, instead of sharing the ending of a whole book, I'd share one of the sections in my Choose Your Own Romance from Red Sage, Megan's Choice. Yes, you read that right! Each one of these sections has a significant ending with a choice where readers get to decide what the heroine of the book does next. Let's do the first section and its ending...
***
Megan Malone never enjoyed being at the center of the universe. Polestar, quite frankly, stunk. All the traffic, all the species, all the smells and noise and congestion, made her long for the wide open reaches of space.
However, too many black expanses for too many days in a row had left her craving downtime. By down, she meant down on a real planet, not in a vidmall. She’d prefer a tropical planet, the roar of unpolluted surf crashing in her ears and the gleam of a yellow sun twinkling on the well-oiled muscles of humanoid cabana boys.
While she adored sensaround, not even that holographic marvel would erase the itch lurking inside her to feel sand between her toes, salt water on her skin, and, well, other things in other parts of her body. And not even a two-day sleep would heal the jaggedness she’d begun to suffer at the edges of her psi.
“When I drop the passengers on Ysaltris,” Megan told her boss as she sat across his desk from him, “I’m staying there, and I want a three dec holiday.”
“Thirty days off?” Gerald Parks, the fleet manager of Stellar Transport, frowned and rubbed his unnaturally bald pate. “You’re our best zip pilot. I can’t lose you for that long. How about ten days?”
“I haven’t taken a day off in three hundreds turns.” Megan jabbed the light stylus she’d been fiddling with at Gerald, who shifted his bulk backwards towards the windows that overlooked the shipyards of Polestar Prime. “I’m going to burn my psi out, and then who’ll pilot Frank?”
In fact, she’d only endured this long by judicious use of stims and treating herself to a session in a sensaround hot tub between every assignment. Piloting a zip ship, which involved a psi-link to the AI that sapped a pilot’s energy levels like a black hole, wasn’t exactly a stress-free occupation—or conducive to relationships beyond getting laid on a lay-over.
Just a layover lay, Megan would settle for right about now. Stars, it had been an eon since she’d gone to bed with a fellow humanoid, much less woken up beside one.
“Come on. We dropped an embarrassing number of credits reconfiguring Frank to your specifications. He practically flies himself.” Gerald laced his fingers over his paunchy stomach. “I’ll give you fifteen days, no more.”
“Not enough. Linking with any ship is a constant drain, even when things go smoothly.” Megan knew Gerald wouldn’t give in easily, but she was desperate. With an intensity that almost disturbed her, she craved a block of time spent entirely at her leisure. She’d even begun to fantasize about changing careers, though she’d planned to be a starship pilot as long as she could remember.
She raised her stylus to gesture and opened her mouth to expound on how much ST owed her and indulge in a spot of legal blackmail when the receptionist’s grey, lipless face popped into the air between her and Gerald.
Megan jerked her stylus out of the projection, although the sight of the pen in gD’tril’s holographic nostril had been pretty funny.
“Sir Parks,” it said, the projection flickering, “you have a holocall from the emissary.”
No need to ask which emissary. Sheeshan an Hiram ab Anshan pad Tu, Polestar’s representative in the legislative branch of the Quad government, was the only emissary who had ST on her holodex.
Gerald whacked the triangular projector embedded in his desk, and the receptionist’s image clarified. “Can it wait? I’m in a meeting.”
“The emissary said it was urgent.” The dB’thx blinked its inner eyelids. On the other side of the projection, Megan saw a blurry Gerald grimace. Although gD’tril could see Gerald as well, it continued as if its boss weren’t pulling disgusted faces while it spoke. “Your office or the booth?”
Gerald glanced at Megan, who shooed him away. “I’m not involved here. If the emissary needs a pilot, get somebody else. Remember? I’m about to go on vacation.”
The Polestar emissary was a volatile Torian who’d gotten elected to the Quad’s legislative branch, the Guidance, because of the sizeable contingent of Torians on the planet. Polestar, as the most inbound of all inbound systems, was home to hundreds of species, but most weren’t as organized as the matriarchal Torians. The times Megan had been called to transport the emissary and her staff had been unusual, especially after the woman had taken a special sort of shine to her.
This attraction had caused some awkwardness between them. Megan considered Sheeshan something of a friend, but that was as far as she wanted to go. Dating a government official was at the top of her “Never Again” list. Never, never again.
“Set me up in the booth.” Gerald rose from his body-conforming chair with a grunt and exited the office.
Megan waited, watching as flitters at the docks staffed by ST and other transportation companies hovered, landed and rose like giant avians feeding their young. She considered how to pressure Gerald to give her what she wanted— no, what she deserved. She hadn’t had a break in what amounted to almost a year on their native Terra. Three hundred days shuttling through wormholes from spaceport to spaceport, surrounded by querulous passengers, canned oxygen and recon food, with only the occasional sensaround rendezvous and gourmet meal to look forward to.
Megan might not enjoy the grey sky cities and bottlenecks of Polestar Prime, but at least the air was real. If Gerald balked her vacation, she’d play the psi card. Considering how few beings of any species had appropriate psi to pilot zip ships without additional, costly wet wiring, ST should be kissing her butt a lot more than they did.
She could get a job with any transport company at twice the credits she was making here. Maybe. Unlike most Terrans, an inquisitive race in the galactic scheme of things, she had developed a rep as a sour puss. Many corporations preferred a pilot who was at least civil to passengers.
Maybe if she didn’t work so damn much, she wouldn’t feel so crabby all the time. Maybe if she weren’t so crabby, she wouldn’t end up lonely all the time. Maybe if she had a different job, she’d grow to hate it, too, but have less income to soothe her disillusionment.
And that would make her crabby all over again.
But however much ST owed her, she owed them as well. When she’d been an intern pilot, it had been their intervention that had saved her from being “recruited” by the Truce, the military branch of the Quad government.
Most beings with strong psi got drafted by the Truce. In return for Megan’s civilian status, ST provided transport for non-military government operations at a reduced rate.
Except for the transport of Emissary Sheeshan, Megan was rarely the pilot for those operations. There were those in the government who still sought to “recruit” her, so she did what she could to limit her exposure.
Growing impatient, Megan thumbed the holocom and buzzed the receptionist. “Is he out yet?” she asked.
The hologram of gD’tril glanced up from its hard terminal. dB’thx as a species had no psi, with or without wet wiring, and accessed tech the old-fashioned way. “No.”
“Any idea what the call was about?”
“No.”
“Can you ask him?”
“No. Sorry.” The receptionist terminated the call. dB’thx weren’t known for their effusiveness, just their efficiency.
Megan’s stomach grumbled, reminding her how long she’d been cooling her buns in Gerald’s office. It had been a while since breakfast, and she’d been looking forward to an extravagant lunch followed by a trip to Sensaround, Inc. at the vidmall. One of the remaining perks of the single life, now that loneliness had become an issue, was the freedom to spend her credits however she wished.
Right before she ditched the meeting, Gerald returned, clapping his hands when he saw her.
“Malone. Glad you’re still here.”
“We weren’t finished,” Megan pointed out, ignoring the fact she’d been seconds from leaving. “I want my vacation approved.”
He ignored her petition. “I have bad news. Scratch that. I have interesting news. The emissary was just informed there’s a civil war brewing in the Elteri system.”
“Elteri?” Megan straightened in her chair, hunger forgotten. The chair shifted with her, supporting her back in its new position. “How can they have a civil war? There’s no indigenous intelligent life. I thought it was rated as a raw materials system.”
“Sheeshan wants to brief you. Needless to say, this is classified.” Gerald returned to his seat and squinted. Megan felt an answering tingle in her brain that indicated his use of psi. A library terminal rose from Gerald’s desk in response and began flickering images and text.
In another moment, Sheeshan’s holo coalesced above the embedded projector. The emissary’s auburn hair was confined to a green snood, and her rosy skin was taut around the mouth and nose. The high neck of her black uniform gave the impression her head was immobile.
“Malone,” the emissary said, without preamble, “I’m glad you could join us.”
Sheeshan’s businesslike demeanor alerted Megan to the fact this was a grim situation. “I’m listening.”
“We have just learned an insurgent group has overrun the Elteri colony and taken everyone prisoner, including the fifth steward. We’ve been given a deadline to—”
Megan interrupted. “What the hell was a steward doing there?” Each populated planet that met certain criteria was allowed an emissary to the Guidance, and the thousands of emissaries elected the twelve stewards who headed the Quad government and its four branches: Guidance, Truce, Justice and Library. It didn’t make any sense that one of the stewards had been touring an outbound system with few exports and a barely-there outpost.
“That information isn’t available at this time,” Sheeshan replied coolly. “The insurgents dispatched an apprentice pilot on a zip ship to relay their demands.”
“But—”
“Malone, give the emissary a chance to describe the situation before you start asking questions.” On the other side of Sheeshan’s image, Gerald frowned at Megan before concentrating on his library terminal.
“Sorry.” Sheeshan may or may not have known the steward’s purpose on Elteri, but she had to know that Megan was a contract pilot with limited clearance. So Sheeshan would keep her mouth shut, at least now when there was a witness.
Still, Megan wished she knew more. Like all citizens, she was concerned with conflict. Outbound disputes had a way of spilling into inbound economics and increasing government recruitment efforts. That was why she was the owner of a black market peeper card, so she could sneak into Quad databases.
“Several days have passed since the incident, and as I tried to mention before,” Sheeshan continued, a touch of her customary good humor creeping into her serious tone, “we have a deadline. The insurgents destroyed the ship’s comm systems, which forced the pilot to deliver their demands in person. Before you ask, we don’t know why.”
Gerald slowed the progression of data on his terminal, and his use of psi prickled in Megan’s head. So much tech required psi to access it that wet wiring—kitium implants that increased residual psi—was becoming commonplace, but no less costly. Naturally-occurring psi was more reliable, and ST prided itself on employing only congenital pilots without implants, like Megan.
“It might help us understand if we consider the species of these so-called native Elterians,” Megan suggested. Pilots, like librarians, the staff of the government’s information-gathering branch, were trained in cross-species communication. Since repeat customers kept shipping companies in business, cultural sensitivity was a must. Megan got around that part by avoiding passengers as much as possible, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t mastered the basics.
“The library had no information on the Elterians. They’re carbon-based humanoids, unremarkable in appearance, but here’s the catch. They exhibited unusual psi powers to subdue resistance.” Sheeshan’s lips quirked. “Off the record, my friends, but the Quad is running around like a bunch of ticits on kaf, and the Truce is arguing for an immediate cleansing. You know how the military feels about unmapped psi.”
“Not to mention insurgents.” The Truce was not the benevolent branch of the government, to be sure. “What powers did they flash?”
When Sheeshan shook her head, Megan guessed, “Classified?”
“Not classified, just unknown. If we knew what their powers are, the situation wouldn’t be as troublesome.” Sheeshan glanced out of the holo for a moment and then back at Megan. Tiny lines marred her brow, a stress indicator Megan had never noticed on the Torian’s countenance before today. “You’re a very untrusting woman, Malone.”
Megan wanted to argue she had good reason to distrust governmental agendas, but she was professional enough to realize this was neither the time nor the place. Sheeshan would reveal as much information as she was authorized to, and she wouldn’t knowingly place anyone in danger. Torians, Sheeshan included, were a peace-seeking species. Megan could trust that, even if she didn’t trust the Quad as a whole.
Gerald’s terminal beeped, and he hummed with satisfaction. “Done. I’ve run the reports and data dump through the verification program.” He pivoted the screen towards Megan, where a steady stream of information scrolled past. Megan speed-read some and gave up. She was too tired for that kind of brain effort.
Sheeshan pressed her fingers briefly against pressure points along her eyebrows before instructing Gerald. “Make sure Malone receives the data packet with full clearance. Now about the deadline. The insurgents have demanded an immediate withdrawal of all Quad citizens from Elteri within two decs. The messenger has used several of those days in transit.”
A thousand turns ago, the librarians had cleared the Elteri system for colonization, and now these insurgents appeared only while the fifth steward was there. As they said on Megan’s native Terra, something didn’t smell right. Sheeshan’s great care with her words and obvious tension were another tip-off that there was more to the story.
Megan felt the data pad in her hip pack vibrate with the incoming packet. Though she had a good idea why Sheeshan had contacted ST about this, pushing for confirmation would speed the process and get her out of here quicker.
“What does all this have to do with Stellar Transport and me?” she asked.
Sheeshan inclined her head at Gerald, ceding the floor. He gestured, and the terminal sank into his desk. “The government is sending negotiators on a non-military ship. It’s important the ship be innocuous to scans, yet piloted by an individual who can flit the team to safety at a moment’s notice. I know you don’t usually take government missions, but how about a reassignment?”
She was right. They wanted her to pilot. Megan asked the important questions first. “Would I get a hazard bonus?”
“Yes,” Gerald said.
“How long would the assignment last?”
“The Truce isn’t likely to wait more than a dec before they move in, at which point you will move out.”
“Is it likely to turn into a war zone?” The ship Frank was essentially weaponless, and Megan was no fighter pilot.
“We think that isn’t likely pre-Truce,” Sheeshan interjected.
“Who’s on the team?” Megan demanded. Sheeshan was the only government employee Megan could stand, the only one she partly trusted. In her experience, which wasn’t as limited as she might wish, the personalities who sought high office, no matter their species, were power-hungry, ambitious, and manipulative.
Gerald dropped his gaze and Sheeshan said smoothly, “Most of the negotiators aren’t known to you. However, I’d like you to holo me privately on a secure line to discuss the mission in more detail if you have questions.”
“Who’s on the team?” Megan repeated, suspicion blossoming. Her familiarity with government officials beyond Sheeshan was due to a youthful—on her part—liaison with a member of the Justice branch that had gone awry.
Terribly, painfully awry. Nightmares in the dark awry. Obsessive avoidance of attachments awry.
And she had the solitary life of a zip pilot to show for it.
“Negotiators are typically emissaries and judges,” Sheeshan hedged. “We have the training and temperament for it.”
The pit of Megan’s stomach hollowed. If Sheeshan were leading the team, she’d have said so. “Who’s heading the team?” she asked a third time.
Terran legends claimed if you spoke the names of demons and evil spirits three times, they’d appear. Megan was no believer in fate, no follower of a higher power, but sometimes it seemed the universe had other ideas.
Sheeshan finally admitted, “Yusef Gunnen from the Justice.”
Looks like the legends were true. She’d asked three times, and the devil himself had been conjured. Megan glared at the hologram. “Were you going to mention that before or after I agreed?”
“Malone—Megan—I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t critical. As the emissary for Stellar Transport’s home planet, I volunteered to be the transportation liaison. I thought you’d prefer the request come from someone you know. Someone you know has your best interests at heart.”
Sheeshan’s pale grey eyes, replicated with striking accuracy in the holo, stared at Megan as if there weren’t a city between them. As if she wanted to comfort Megan—or jolt her out of the fight or flight reaction Yusef Gunnen now roused in her.
But any secret messages the emissary wanted to send were lost on Megan as she felt her throat constrict, her heart rate increase, and her nails bite into her palms.
No, dammit, no! She wasn’t going to be driven by fear. The man had influenced her decisions and disrupted her dreams long enough, and she was through letting her past sour the future.
“Malone,” Gerald said in a much less accommodating tone than the emissary’s, “we haven’t got all day for you to make up your mind. Before we discuss any vacations, I need a decision.”
What should Megan do?
(a) Agree to pilot the diplomat ship, despite the fact her controlling former lover Yusef Gunnen, who might be vindictive with regards to their break-up, would be leading the negotiation team. Her psi could handle the trip with a few stims, and she’d insist on a long, healing vacation afterwards plus a bigger bonus than Gerald wanted to give.
Despite her mixed feelings, a diplomatic mission was more important than shuttling tourists to Ysaltris. And if—no, when—she resisted Yusef, she’d prove to herself once and for all she was completely cured of bad relationship judgment. Click here (2).
(b) Refuse the mission. She had better sense now than when she was green, and she’d learned discretion was sometimes the better part of valor.
Discretion was required here for three reasons. One, she was in no shape to pilot a high-stress assignment, stims or no stims. It wouldn’t do if her psi faltered at a crucial moment, like when the ship was traversing a wormhole. Two, seeing Yusef Gunnen wasn’t high on her to-do list. In fact, avoiding Yusef was in her best interest. It didn’t make her weak to concede that. Which brought her to three, the loneliness that had been eating at her lately would make her more vulnerable to Yusef’s particular brand of manipulation. If she were dating someone she liked, maybe loved, it would be easier to resist, but she wasn’t. She was alone. The man had nearly destroyed her once. Why give him another chance? Click here (3).
***
If you'd like to make some choices in Megan's life, you can find her whole book here:
Send out the old year with some more fun excerpts!
Lauren Dane
Rhian Cahill
Eliza Gayle
Selena Blake
Anne Rainey
Lissa Matthews
Mari Carr
McKenna Jeffries
Myla Jackson
Taige Crenshaw
Alison Kent
Delilah Devlin
Shelli Stevens
Shiloh Walker
Leah Braemel
HelenKay Dimon
TJ Michaels
***
Megan Malone never enjoyed being at the center of the universe. Polestar, quite frankly, stunk. All the traffic, all the species, all the smells and noise and congestion, made her long for the wide open reaches of space.
However, too many black expanses for too many days in a row had left her craving downtime. By down, she meant down on a real planet, not in a vidmall. She’d prefer a tropical planet, the roar of unpolluted surf crashing in her ears and the gleam of a yellow sun twinkling on the well-oiled muscles of humanoid cabana boys.
While she adored sensaround, not even that holographic marvel would erase the itch lurking inside her to feel sand between her toes, salt water on her skin, and, well, other things in other parts of her body. And not even a two-day sleep would heal the jaggedness she’d begun to suffer at the edges of her psi.
“When I drop the passengers on Ysaltris,” Megan told her boss as she sat across his desk from him, “I’m staying there, and I want a three dec holiday.”
“Thirty days off?” Gerald Parks, the fleet manager of Stellar Transport, frowned and rubbed his unnaturally bald pate. “You’re our best zip pilot. I can’t lose you for that long. How about ten days?”
“I haven’t taken a day off in three hundreds turns.” Megan jabbed the light stylus she’d been fiddling with at Gerald, who shifted his bulk backwards towards the windows that overlooked the shipyards of Polestar Prime. “I’m going to burn my psi out, and then who’ll pilot Frank?”
In fact, she’d only endured this long by judicious use of stims and treating herself to a session in a sensaround hot tub between every assignment. Piloting a zip ship, which involved a psi-link to the AI that sapped a pilot’s energy levels like a black hole, wasn’t exactly a stress-free occupation—or conducive to relationships beyond getting laid on a lay-over.
Just a layover lay, Megan would settle for right about now. Stars, it had been an eon since she’d gone to bed with a fellow humanoid, much less woken up beside one.
“Come on. We dropped an embarrassing number of credits reconfiguring Frank to your specifications. He practically flies himself.” Gerald laced his fingers over his paunchy stomach. “I’ll give you fifteen days, no more.”
“Not enough. Linking with any ship is a constant drain, even when things go smoothly.” Megan knew Gerald wouldn’t give in easily, but she was desperate. With an intensity that almost disturbed her, she craved a block of time spent entirely at her leisure. She’d even begun to fantasize about changing careers, though she’d planned to be a starship pilot as long as she could remember.
She raised her stylus to gesture and opened her mouth to expound on how much ST owed her and indulge in a spot of legal blackmail when the receptionist’s grey, lipless face popped into the air between her and Gerald.
Megan jerked her stylus out of the projection, although the sight of the pen in gD’tril’s holographic nostril had been pretty funny.
“Sir Parks,” it said, the projection flickering, “you have a holocall from the emissary.”
No need to ask which emissary. Sheeshan an Hiram ab Anshan pad Tu, Polestar’s representative in the legislative branch of the Quad government, was the only emissary who had ST on her holodex.
Gerald whacked the triangular projector embedded in his desk, and the receptionist’s image clarified. “Can it wait? I’m in a meeting.”
“The emissary said it was urgent.” The dB’thx blinked its inner eyelids. On the other side of the projection, Megan saw a blurry Gerald grimace. Although gD’tril could see Gerald as well, it continued as if its boss weren’t pulling disgusted faces while it spoke. “Your office or the booth?”
Gerald glanced at Megan, who shooed him away. “I’m not involved here. If the emissary needs a pilot, get somebody else. Remember? I’m about to go on vacation.”
The Polestar emissary was a volatile Torian who’d gotten elected to the Quad’s legislative branch, the Guidance, because of the sizeable contingent of Torians on the planet. Polestar, as the most inbound of all inbound systems, was home to hundreds of species, but most weren’t as organized as the matriarchal Torians. The times Megan had been called to transport the emissary and her staff had been unusual, especially after the woman had taken a special sort of shine to her.
This attraction had caused some awkwardness between them. Megan considered Sheeshan something of a friend, but that was as far as she wanted to go. Dating a government official was at the top of her “Never Again” list. Never, never again.
“Set me up in the booth.” Gerald rose from his body-conforming chair with a grunt and exited the office.
Megan waited, watching as flitters at the docks staffed by ST and other transportation companies hovered, landed and rose like giant avians feeding their young. She considered how to pressure Gerald to give her what she wanted— no, what she deserved. She hadn’t had a break in what amounted to almost a year on their native Terra. Three hundred days shuttling through wormholes from spaceport to spaceport, surrounded by querulous passengers, canned oxygen and recon food, with only the occasional sensaround rendezvous and gourmet meal to look forward to.
Megan might not enjoy the grey sky cities and bottlenecks of Polestar Prime, but at least the air was real. If Gerald balked her vacation, she’d play the psi card. Considering how few beings of any species had appropriate psi to pilot zip ships without additional, costly wet wiring, ST should be kissing her butt a lot more than they did.
She could get a job with any transport company at twice the credits she was making here. Maybe. Unlike most Terrans, an inquisitive race in the galactic scheme of things, she had developed a rep as a sour puss. Many corporations preferred a pilot who was at least civil to passengers.
Maybe if she didn’t work so damn much, she wouldn’t feel so crabby all the time. Maybe if she weren’t so crabby, she wouldn’t end up lonely all the time. Maybe if she had a different job, she’d grow to hate it, too, but have less income to soothe her disillusionment.
And that would make her crabby all over again.
But however much ST owed her, she owed them as well. When she’d been an intern pilot, it had been their intervention that had saved her from being “recruited” by the Truce, the military branch of the Quad government.
Most beings with strong psi got drafted by the Truce. In return for Megan’s civilian status, ST provided transport for non-military government operations at a reduced rate.
Except for the transport of Emissary Sheeshan, Megan was rarely the pilot for those operations. There were those in the government who still sought to “recruit” her, so she did what she could to limit her exposure.
Growing impatient, Megan thumbed the holocom and buzzed the receptionist. “Is he out yet?” she asked.
The hologram of gD’tril glanced up from its hard terminal. dB’thx as a species had no psi, with or without wet wiring, and accessed tech the old-fashioned way. “No.”
“Any idea what the call was about?”
“No.”
“Can you ask him?”
“No. Sorry.” The receptionist terminated the call. dB’thx weren’t known for their effusiveness, just their efficiency.
Megan’s stomach grumbled, reminding her how long she’d been cooling her buns in Gerald’s office. It had been a while since breakfast, and she’d been looking forward to an extravagant lunch followed by a trip to Sensaround, Inc. at the vidmall. One of the remaining perks of the single life, now that loneliness had become an issue, was the freedom to spend her credits however she wished.
Right before she ditched the meeting, Gerald returned, clapping his hands when he saw her.
“Malone. Glad you’re still here.”
“We weren’t finished,” Megan pointed out, ignoring the fact she’d been seconds from leaving. “I want my vacation approved.”
He ignored her petition. “I have bad news. Scratch that. I have interesting news. The emissary was just informed there’s a civil war brewing in the Elteri system.”
“Elteri?” Megan straightened in her chair, hunger forgotten. The chair shifted with her, supporting her back in its new position. “How can they have a civil war? There’s no indigenous intelligent life. I thought it was rated as a raw materials system.”
“Sheeshan wants to brief you. Needless to say, this is classified.” Gerald returned to his seat and squinted. Megan felt an answering tingle in her brain that indicated his use of psi. A library terminal rose from Gerald’s desk in response and began flickering images and text.
In another moment, Sheeshan’s holo coalesced above the embedded projector. The emissary’s auburn hair was confined to a green snood, and her rosy skin was taut around the mouth and nose. The high neck of her black uniform gave the impression her head was immobile.
“Malone,” the emissary said, without preamble, “I’m glad you could join us.”
Sheeshan’s businesslike demeanor alerted Megan to the fact this was a grim situation. “I’m listening.”
“We have just learned an insurgent group has overrun the Elteri colony and taken everyone prisoner, including the fifth steward. We’ve been given a deadline to—”
Megan interrupted. “What the hell was a steward doing there?” Each populated planet that met certain criteria was allowed an emissary to the Guidance, and the thousands of emissaries elected the twelve stewards who headed the Quad government and its four branches: Guidance, Truce, Justice and Library. It didn’t make any sense that one of the stewards had been touring an outbound system with few exports and a barely-there outpost.
“That information isn’t available at this time,” Sheeshan replied coolly. “The insurgents dispatched an apprentice pilot on a zip ship to relay their demands.”
“But—”
“Malone, give the emissary a chance to describe the situation before you start asking questions.” On the other side of Sheeshan’s image, Gerald frowned at Megan before concentrating on his library terminal.
“Sorry.” Sheeshan may or may not have known the steward’s purpose on Elteri, but she had to know that Megan was a contract pilot with limited clearance. So Sheeshan would keep her mouth shut, at least now when there was a witness.
Still, Megan wished she knew more. Like all citizens, she was concerned with conflict. Outbound disputes had a way of spilling into inbound economics and increasing government recruitment efforts. That was why she was the owner of a black market peeper card, so she could sneak into Quad databases.
“Several days have passed since the incident, and as I tried to mention before,” Sheeshan continued, a touch of her customary good humor creeping into her serious tone, “we have a deadline. The insurgents destroyed the ship’s comm systems, which forced the pilot to deliver their demands in person. Before you ask, we don’t know why.”
Gerald slowed the progression of data on his terminal, and his use of psi prickled in Megan’s head. So much tech required psi to access it that wet wiring—kitium implants that increased residual psi—was becoming commonplace, but no less costly. Naturally-occurring psi was more reliable, and ST prided itself on employing only congenital pilots without implants, like Megan.
“It might help us understand if we consider the species of these so-called native Elterians,” Megan suggested. Pilots, like librarians, the staff of the government’s information-gathering branch, were trained in cross-species communication. Since repeat customers kept shipping companies in business, cultural sensitivity was a must. Megan got around that part by avoiding passengers as much as possible, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t mastered the basics.
“The library had no information on the Elterians. They’re carbon-based humanoids, unremarkable in appearance, but here’s the catch. They exhibited unusual psi powers to subdue resistance.” Sheeshan’s lips quirked. “Off the record, my friends, but the Quad is running around like a bunch of ticits on kaf, and the Truce is arguing for an immediate cleansing. You know how the military feels about unmapped psi.”
“Not to mention insurgents.” The Truce was not the benevolent branch of the government, to be sure. “What powers did they flash?”
When Sheeshan shook her head, Megan guessed, “Classified?”
“Not classified, just unknown. If we knew what their powers are, the situation wouldn’t be as troublesome.” Sheeshan glanced out of the holo for a moment and then back at Megan. Tiny lines marred her brow, a stress indicator Megan had never noticed on the Torian’s countenance before today. “You’re a very untrusting woman, Malone.”
Megan wanted to argue she had good reason to distrust governmental agendas, but she was professional enough to realize this was neither the time nor the place. Sheeshan would reveal as much information as she was authorized to, and she wouldn’t knowingly place anyone in danger. Torians, Sheeshan included, were a peace-seeking species. Megan could trust that, even if she didn’t trust the Quad as a whole.
Gerald’s terminal beeped, and he hummed with satisfaction. “Done. I’ve run the reports and data dump through the verification program.” He pivoted the screen towards Megan, where a steady stream of information scrolled past. Megan speed-read some and gave up. She was too tired for that kind of brain effort.
Sheeshan pressed her fingers briefly against pressure points along her eyebrows before instructing Gerald. “Make sure Malone receives the data packet with full clearance. Now about the deadline. The insurgents have demanded an immediate withdrawal of all Quad citizens from Elteri within two decs. The messenger has used several of those days in transit.”
A thousand turns ago, the librarians had cleared the Elteri system for colonization, and now these insurgents appeared only while the fifth steward was there. As they said on Megan’s native Terra, something didn’t smell right. Sheeshan’s great care with her words and obvious tension were another tip-off that there was more to the story.
Megan felt the data pad in her hip pack vibrate with the incoming packet. Though she had a good idea why Sheeshan had contacted ST about this, pushing for confirmation would speed the process and get her out of here quicker.
“What does all this have to do with Stellar Transport and me?” she asked.
Sheeshan inclined her head at Gerald, ceding the floor. He gestured, and the terminal sank into his desk. “The government is sending negotiators on a non-military ship. It’s important the ship be innocuous to scans, yet piloted by an individual who can flit the team to safety at a moment’s notice. I know you don’t usually take government missions, but how about a reassignment?”
She was right. They wanted her to pilot. Megan asked the important questions first. “Would I get a hazard bonus?”
“Yes,” Gerald said.
“How long would the assignment last?”
“The Truce isn’t likely to wait more than a dec before they move in, at which point you will move out.”
“Is it likely to turn into a war zone?” The ship Frank was essentially weaponless, and Megan was no fighter pilot.
“We think that isn’t likely pre-Truce,” Sheeshan interjected.
“Who’s on the team?” Megan demanded. Sheeshan was the only government employee Megan could stand, the only one she partly trusted. In her experience, which wasn’t as limited as she might wish, the personalities who sought high office, no matter their species, were power-hungry, ambitious, and manipulative.
Gerald dropped his gaze and Sheeshan said smoothly, “Most of the negotiators aren’t known to you. However, I’d like you to holo me privately on a secure line to discuss the mission in more detail if you have questions.”
“Who’s on the team?” Megan repeated, suspicion blossoming. Her familiarity with government officials beyond Sheeshan was due to a youthful—on her part—liaison with a member of the Justice branch that had gone awry.
Terribly, painfully awry. Nightmares in the dark awry. Obsessive avoidance of attachments awry.
And she had the solitary life of a zip pilot to show for it.
“Negotiators are typically emissaries and judges,” Sheeshan hedged. “We have the training and temperament for it.”
The pit of Megan’s stomach hollowed. If Sheeshan were leading the team, she’d have said so. “Who’s heading the team?” she asked a third time.
Terran legends claimed if you spoke the names of demons and evil spirits three times, they’d appear. Megan was no believer in fate, no follower of a higher power, but sometimes it seemed the universe had other ideas.
Sheeshan finally admitted, “Yusef Gunnen from the Justice.”
Looks like the legends were true. She’d asked three times, and the devil himself had been conjured. Megan glared at the hologram. “Were you going to mention that before or after I agreed?”
“Malone—Megan—I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t critical. As the emissary for Stellar Transport’s home planet, I volunteered to be the transportation liaison. I thought you’d prefer the request come from someone you know. Someone you know has your best interests at heart.”
Sheeshan’s pale grey eyes, replicated with striking accuracy in the holo, stared at Megan as if there weren’t a city between them. As if she wanted to comfort Megan—or jolt her out of the fight or flight reaction Yusef Gunnen now roused in her.
But any secret messages the emissary wanted to send were lost on Megan as she felt her throat constrict, her heart rate increase, and her nails bite into her palms.
No, dammit, no! She wasn’t going to be driven by fear. The man had influenced her decisions and disrupted her dreams long enough, and she was through letting her past sour the future.
“Malone,” Gerald said in a much less accommodating tone than the emissary’s, “we haven’t got all day for you to make up your mind. Before we discuss any vacations, I need a decision.”
What should Megan do?
(a) Agree to pilot the diplomat ship, despite the fact her controlling former lover Yusef Gunnen, who might be vindictive with regards to their break-up, would be leading the negotiation team. Her psi could handle the trip with a few stims, and she’d insist on a long, healing vacation afterwards plus a bigger bonus than Gerald wanted to give.
Despite her mixed feelings, a diplomatic mission was more important than shuttling tourists to Ysaltris. And if—no, when—she resisted Yusef, she’d prove to herself once and for all she was completely cured of bad relationship judgment. Click here (2).
(b) Refuse the mission. She had better sense now than when she was green, and she’d learned discretion was sometimes the better part of valor.
Discretion was required here for three reasons. One, she was in no shape to pilot a high-stress assignment, stims or no stims. It wouldn’t do if her psi faltered at a crucial moment, like when the ship was traversing a wormhole. Two, seeing Yusef Gunnen wasn’t high on her to-do list. In fact, avoiding Yusef was in her best interest. It didn’t make her weak to concede that. Which brought her to three, the loneliness that had been eating at her lately would make her more vulnerable to Yusef’s particular brand of manipulation. If she were dating someone she liked, maybe loved, it would be easier to resist, but she wasn’t. She was alone. The man had nearly destroyed her once. Why give him another chance? Click here (3).
***
If you'd like to make some choices in Megan's life, you can find her whole book here:
Places to buy Megan's Choice:
All Romance Ebooks
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Books on Board
Diesel Ebooks
Fictionwise
Kobo
Lulu
Powells
Red Sage
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Books on Board
Diesel Ebooks
Fictionwise
Kobo
Lulu
Powells
Red Sage
Jody W. (writing as Ellie Marvel)
Send out the old year with some more fun excerpts!
Lauren Dane
Rhian Cahill
Eliza Gayle
Selena Blake
Anne Rainey
Lissa Matthews
Mari Carr
McKenna Jeffries
Myla Jackson
Taige Crenshaw
Alison Kent
Delilah Devlin
Shelli Stevens
Shiloh Walker
Leah Braemel
HelenKay Dimon
TJ Michaels
0 comments:
Post a Comment