Sci-Fi Romance Quarterly, Issue 9

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Greetings of the season!

Oh my, there are so many things I want to cover in this issue's Editorial, I'm not sure where to begin! Firstly, my fingers are crossed that this issue made it out in a surprise early release. The Editorial Team thought it would be a great idea to give you something to read over the holiday season and, boy, is there a lot to read in Issue 9! But, before we get to that, onto more administrative news.

As you may know, Hugo nominations open next month for all WorldCon members and Sci-Fi Romance Quarterly is eligible in the “Semiprozine” category. The Hugo Awards state that, for a nomination, the publication must have produced at least 4 issues (tick); at least one of which must have appeared in the year of eligibility (tick); is “semi”pro in that they pay a little, but generally not enough to make a living for anyone (tick...sigh); either pays its contributors in other than copies of the publication (tick on the short stories and cover art) or is generally available only for paid purchase (a definite cross, although we wouldn't have it any other way!).

We won't win, of course. After the horror of Puppygate, it's obvious to me that the SF arena is still one that's toxic to women but we'd love to be nominated, if only to spread the word. The more eyes we have reading this magazine, the better the mix and the more we can help the genre and writers of SFR. Which brings me to another effort, the consolidation of Heather Massey's groundbreaking The Galaxy Express blog with this magazine. All of Heather's treasure trove of posts is still available at the old site, but Galaxy Express 2.0, as we're calling it (for some reason, she nixed Galaxy Express: The Next Generation), hopes to consolidate all our efforts and turn the writers, readers and lovers of SFR into a community. I've been trying to give the most silent member of our team, Fiction Editor Diane Dooley, a bigger voice here at the magazine, and Galaxy Express 2.0 seems the best way to do it. So please direct a browser window to TGE.SciFiRomanceQuarterly.org and pick up on the latest posts from SFRQ's editors. The articles won't always be on SFR but I hope you'll find all of them equally entertaining.

Not only do the Hugo nominations open next month, but January is also the month of the SFR Galaxy Awards! I love the Galaxy Awards, precisely because the books that are chosen resonate with the judges, rather than being awarded on a first-second-third place basis according to onesize-fits-all categories. To celebrate this, SFRQ's next issue will be one devoted to the Award winners. I know this is a bit early to mention, but I wish to make the following offer: If you are the recipient of a Galaxy Award, you can buy an Excerpt or Excerpt + Ad package from us for 50% off! That is $15 for an excerpt-only (reg. $30); $20 for an excerpt and supplied ad (reg. $41); or $25 for an excerpt and we-do-it ad (reg. $51). And you're excused from any other limitations (i.e. quarter of publication, number of excerpts allowed per year). This will only apply to Issue 10, which is set for release on 31 March.

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It's a great opportunity to spread the word and encourage readers to find out about your books via SFRQ. Full details will be provided on our Advertising page early next year.

We have so much for you this issue that I don't even have time to go on one of my opinionated raves. :) All of us at SFRQ would like to wish you and your family all the best during this holiday season. From the reviewers, the columnists, the readers, to the short story crafters and artists who've been with us, thank you so much for your support. I hope 2016 is a banner year for SFR and I thank you for staying with us on our journey.

Go read!

Kaz Augustin

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before October We strive to include as many sci-fi romance releases as possible, but with current time constraints, we apologise in advance if your release was not included in our round-up

BLUE YONDER (Diane Dooley, novella, $2.99, Decadent Publishing)

SEEDING ERO-5 (Quin Ripley, novella, $3.99, Combust Books) Taisia’s sex drive is out of control.

Earth is drowning, but Isabel Visconti won’t be going down with the planet. Her earnings as a factory drone and prostitute will soon fund her escape to the stars. All she’ll leave behind is her late husband’s best friend, Daniel Morneau, who has disappeared into the underbelly of the city’s criminal gangs. Until he shows up, pleading for Isabel’s help.

The shy botanist is many lightyears from home, serving on the most ambitious terraforming project ever undertaken by humanity. But she’s helpless to resist her flaming desires and fears the project may fail.

Rob is the ERO-5 team leader. Recently divorced, he works hard and plays harder.

He’s long had his eye on his It’s the old Daniel, the kind, team’s quiet botanist. gentle one. The man who They knew the work on the bought medicine for her dying husband then helped sterile planet would be backbreaking, but they didn’t expect the collective her through the grief. It’s libido of the team to shoot into the stratosphere. the Daniel she couldn’t possibly refuse to help. But Isabel has already been Every night their lust takes over, testing the limits of their self-control. given a choice by Daniel’s psychopath boss.

Betray Daniel—or spend months travelling to a And perhaps ERO-5 isn’t as barren as they’d far-off colony, servicing a violent criminal gang thought. along the way.

Taisia is the key to keeping the project on track and When Daniel is abducted, Isabel is his only hope. discovering the secrets of the intense pleasure on He may die without her, but is there time enough ERO-5. for love on the eve of the end of the world?

Disclaimer: Seeding ERO-5 contains explicit sex, [* Sneak Peek in this issue] polyamorous sex, lesbian and gay sex, gonzo sex, and sexy tentacles.

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October We strive to include as many sci-fi romance releases as possible, but with current time constraints, we apologise in advance if your release was not included in our round-up

SPIRIT BONDED (Ashlynn Monroe, novel, DAMAGE CONTROL: The Valiant Knox $4.99, Beachwalk Press) series (Jess Anastasi, novel, $3.99e/ $21.99p, Entangled Select Otherworld) When you've been deceived your entire life and everyone suddenly wants to use you for their own purposes, how do you know who to trust?

fact she's an alien.

In space, you can't hide from temptation…

Nick-named Hardass by the new recruits, Leigh Alphin is captain of the Fighter Force of the battleship Valiant Knox. He’s honorable, straightforward, and hard as nails – except for the soft spot he has for a young woman he rescued off a transport under attack.

Now that she’s one of his new recruits, it’s imperative he stop thinking about her in that way.

Annika thought not knowing her parents was rough, but knowing the truth is even worse. She has always felt out of touch with everyone around her. Since she was a teenager, she's seen impossible things. When she's suddenly attacked by shadowy creatures, the truth come out, and it changes her life. It appears Annika has an out-of-this-world destiny, and if that wasn't crazy enough, Especially now that the Knox has been secretly she's beginning to accept the infiltrated by the enemy.

It helps that she has some friends to see her through. Cas, her best friend, is bitter that in the chaos he lost his birthright to be her magical protector, Jai is crazy and trying to make his death wish a reality, and Mikol is…hers. Her guardian is the only part of her insane new life that makes sense. The feelings growing between them are forbidden. But rules don't stop Annika from wanting more than his ability to shield her from the darkness. When Annika is with her hot-as-hell bodyguard she knows what it is to really be human.

Can she save a distant planet from a tyrannical ruler and find a way to be with the man she loves?

Content Warning: contains sex scenes and some violence.

Mia Wolf’s new commanding officer is icy, no-BS, and completely gorgeous. His glances send heat searing through her. Neither of them can afford to make this mistake, yet desire takes hold, consuming them. For the first time, Leigh’s iron sense of honor falters as his heart fights for love… and against an enemy trying to destroy everything they hold dear.

HIS ONLY HOPE (Erica Conroy, novella, $2.99, Plutoid Press) Aliens, a backwater planet, useless tech, an epic journey and...love?

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Cord, a former soldier who lost his young family, is hired to ensure a scientist’s sister is transported safely to the Ashula Mountains. Easy money, right? Not when a selfproclaimed governor, the natives and Cord’s old friend are all against him. Add to that his personal demons, alcoholism and an unwanted attraction to an alien...Cord has his hands full.

Hope, however, has a destiny. One that will save the planet and everyone on it, but only if she succeeds. Unfortunately for her, the only one who can help is a hairy and uncouth alien male.

There’s never a dull moment in this new frontier where winter is never-ending and tech doesn’t work, but one question remains. Will Cord accept the second chance at love he’s offered or will Hope slip through his fingers in this touching Science Fiction Romance?

Edwin himself dispose of her "innocence," but he's already rejected her advances once, and a girl has her pride.

Things look pretty bleak romance-wise until Maggie discovers that Devon, the pre-Flare internet boyfriend she'd assumed was dead, is not only alive but on campus. Despite the passage of time, their bond is strong, and they quickly pick up where they left off. Even as Devon aims for a chance at love IRL—everything Maggie thought she'd wanted—Edwin's desire to protect her makes her question her heart.

Maggie's torn between the future she didn't dare to hope for and the past she can't let go of. And when a group of neo-Luddite terrorists threaten the campus, everyone's loyalties will be tested. To ensure that the world doesn't go back to the dark days following the Flare, Maggie might have to sacrifice it all.

REBELLION: Alien Attachment #2 (Sabine Priestley, novel, $3.03, Kensington Books/Lyrical Press)

Ria Montori is no stranger to kicking ass. Though petite in size, she packs a punch as a former Sandarian military officer who currently serves the Cavacent clan on a strange planet called Earth. She has no interest in seeking MIXED SIGNALS: Off the Grid #3 (Alyssa her one psi-mate who could Cole, novella, $3.49, Carina Press) bring her unparalleled Four years after the Flare, the world is finally pleasure through a sensual, starting to rebuild otherworldly bond. She has For Maggie Seong, no time for a lover of any that means leaving the kind. So why is she lured in safety of her family's by the beguiling Curzan cabin for college. She native who just killed a won't be alone, though government official.

—hunky former Ty Sordina hates Ria’s kind. military cadet Edwin The Sandarians murdered Hernandez, family his parents while he friend and selfwatched and enslaved his appointed Protector of people. Driven by revenge, he vows that nothing Maggie's Virtue, will and no one will stand in his way. Especially not a be there. Maggie feisty redhead who challenges his every instinct would much prefer that and calls to his psi like no other.

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But war is coming. And the two must succumb to temptation for only the power of their completed bond can defeat and destroy the enemy. But only if they surrender…

would believe. With his lover and the crew of the Chaos at his side, Zander returns home to a media frenzy, threats from the military and pressure to join the family business.

Felix Ingesson still struggles with the horror of believing Zander dead. And no matter how strong their emotional connection is, Felix Can a manufactured being mutiny against her feels out of place in the creators? Dare she? glittery world of Zander's rich family. His lover would be Salvia is a being like no better off without a broken, other, crafted from the low-class ship's engineer genes of several Earth species. She is on Jupiter’s holding him back. moon, Europa, to work for When the crew receives word “the company”, finding that another of Zander's new materials that will be former teammates needs used for commercial rescue, Felix travels with the applications. She is young, Chaos…setting Zander free. intelligent…and lonely; so But when Zander is arrested much so that she demands for treason, the men realize they need each other as that her employer send her much as ever—not only to survive, but to make a companion, or she’ll their lives worth living. never work for them again.

EUROPA EUROPA (KS Augustin, novelette, $1.99eb, Sandal Press, 50/50 SF/Rom)

Rhus is the brash male that the company sends from Mars, and he stirs something deep within Salvia. But Rhus has been crafted with another objective in mind. Working closely together, they begin falling in love, but what Salvia doesn’t know is that the company wants her head, preferably on a platter, and they’re going to use Rhus to get it.

FROM STARS THEY FELL (H.R. Harrison, novella, $3.99, Less Than Three Press)

An alien ship crash lands on Earth, leaving its only occupant stranded. But in a fortunate twist, Earth is a hospitable planet for Veni, from the atmosphere and food to the friendly and intelligent inhabitants.

The first such inhabitants Veni meets call (This story was originally published by Total-Ethemselves dwarves. And though they don't Bound. It has been completely revised and reunderstand the technology edited.) that brought the alien to them, they insist on being [* Sneak Peek in this issue] hospitable. Sure, Veni doesn't understand why the inhabitants of this land insist SKIP TRACE: Chaos Station #3 (Jenn on speaking a language that Burke and Kelly Jensen, novel, $3.99, modifies for gender, but ze is Carina Press) anything if not adaptable— Zander Anatolius has been revived from the fatal especially after ze meets effects of the super-soldier program, but now he Wystan, a man who speaks has to face his estranged family and tell a story few only with his hands.

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piloted by a big, sexy alien. Warrant puts the safety of his brothers above all else but the violent and DEEP INTO DARKNESS: ALIENS, ALPHAS, AND ANTIHEROES (Ella Drake, sensual Chara makes him question the price of risk.

Kim Knox, Annie Nicholas, Marguerite Labbe, Elise Logan, boxed set of novels & novellas, $3.99, indie) TAMING THE MONSTER (boxed set; Five tantalizing and includes three sci-fi romances by JC thrilling science fiction Andrijeski, Ella Drake, and Jaide Fox, stories from five $.99, The Raven Books) amazing authors.

Monsters Need Love Too...

PANDORA by Over 15 ALL NEW NEVER BEFORE Marguerite Labbe RELEASED Paranormal Romance Tales by NY (novel): Sentenced to Times & USA TODAY Bestselling authors as well life on board a space as some of today's top paranormal voices salvage cruiser, Riff combined into one low priced box set for your Korra and Zed Jakobsen reading pleasure! find themselves drawn together out of mutual Stories filled with need. But when an seductive alpha males, epidemic of violence shifters, monsters, and insanity consumes creatures, demons and their ship, will their more! You do not want to bond give them the strength they need to escape? miss this limited time BOARDED by Annie Nicholas (novella): Liaison collection.

Sadie Beckit must accompany the mysterious Mandy M. Roth - Prince of Ambassador Nual to Central Station. Sounds easy Flight (King of Prey enough, but the lawless void of space holds many World): This bad boy biker dangers. To make things worse, Nual seems beast has met a beauty that determined to make Sadie lose her professional isn't scared off by what she control. sees.

FORSAKEN PLANET by Elise Logan (novella): Michelle M. Pillow Luci has gone, literally, to the ends of colonized Stranded with the Cajun (Captured by a Dragonspace in order find some peace. Marooned on a Shifter): The bayou is about to get a whole lot desolate planet with limited supplies, Luci needs to hotter. learn to trust her team leader, Sakir Khyne.

Together they must take out hostile forces and try Carina Wilder – Hunted: Every woman dreams of meeting a desirable man on holiday...but he's not to survive. usually a mythological creature.

DARK IMMORTALITY by Kim Knox (novella): Captain Andros: pirate, vampire, all-round bastard. Cristina Rayne - Seeking the Oni (Incarnations of When he takes Madelen Ariel as his own, his crew Myth): Reality is more wondrous and scary than sees an opportunity. They’re about to find out just she could have ever dreamed. how much of a bastard he really is.

Eve Vaughn – Thief: A down on her luck thief steals more than she bargained for...his heart.

FREEKER by Ella Drake (novella): On the run, convicted murderer Chara stows away on a ship

Jaide Fox – Alien Disruption (Captured by Aliens):

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Sometimes the boom isn't thunder--it's aliens crash proportion. landing in your hood.

A strange object of alien origin has been found and JC Andrijeski - The Rings Fighter (Alien The Department of Ufology has sent its top agent, Apocalypse): Although he is the hottest alien Beth August to investigate. Once there, she meets overlord she's ever seen, he may not be exactly Brad Davis, a handsome security guard with a what he appears. secret of his own. Together they Kim Knox - Something Wicked: In trying to escape both succumb to and struggle her marriage to a half-demon, her usual bad luck against the object’s aphrodisiac powers, eventually finding traps her with him. themselves in a race to prevent Michele Bardsley - A Damned Deed (Deed the world from exploding in Brothers): Drawn into battle against a killer cult, sexual anarchy, even as the two she soon realizes that more than her life is at of them grapple to understand stake...so is her heart how much or their own mutual attraction is due to an Renee George - A Door to Midnight (Midnight unexplained supernatural energy Shift): When destiny knocks at your door after and how much is the more midnight, you let him in. natural chemistry of two people Mandy Rosko - Gonna Make You Howl (Dangerous falling in love.

Creatures): This werewolf will make you howl!

Tracey H. Kitts – Sacrifice: Being sacrificed to a lake monster was not how Ivy wanted to spend her FREEDOM'S EMBRACE: A'yen's Legacy #4 (Rachel Leigh Smith, birthday. novel, $4.99, indie) Ella Drake - Kilt in Space (Space Grit): Scaring If Taran loses his girl--and his second chance at the ship engineer wasn't exactly how this shy love--he'll never find his way to freedom. monster wanted to get her attention.

Jaycee Clark - The Sandman: When the Sandman finds her, Chevy turns to the dangerous dragon shifter lover she left behind.

Candice Gilmer - Guarding Her Secret (The Mythicals): When the monster is your exgirlfriend, sometimes the rules have to be broken.

A'yen's Reign: Year Two Taran has served Nicco, prince of Marcase, for twenty-three years. While on a fact-finding mission to Corsica--a planet annexed by the empire thirteen years ago--Taran and Nicco are kidnapped by the Freedom Alliance and taken deep into the Corsican hardwood forests.

Lexy Cole - Billionaire Shifters in Manhattan (The Da'Renna, sister to King Wolves of Central Park): Rules are made to be A'yen's linked bodyguard, broken. has loved Taran since the Jessica Collins - The Singularity: I was best moment he saw her. friends with a monster...and never even knew it.

Leaving him behind wasn't easy, but her brother needed her more. Hearing CLOSEST ENCOUNTER (E.G. Wiser, novella, $3.50, Totally Bound Publishing) about Taran's kidnapping makes her wonder if she Special Agent Beth August is sent to investigate an made the right choice. object of mysterious origins. What she uncovers With the help of a friend could send the world into an orgy of apocalyptic

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from Corsica, Da'Renna and her brother sneak in to find Taran. When mercenaries take her hostage, Taran must make the choice he dreads most: his master, or his soul-mate.

Freedom isn't supposed to be this hard.

Note: This novel stands alone and is a great entry point into the A'yen's Legacy futuristic romance series ARCHANGEL DOWN: Archangel Project #1 (C. Gockel, novel, $3.99, indie) In the year 2432, humans think they are alone in the universe. They’re wrong.

Commander Noa Sato plans a peaceful leave on her home planet Luddeccea ... but winds up interrogated and imprisoned for her involvement in the Archangel Project. A project she knows nothing about.

Professor James Sinclair wakes in the snow, not remembering the past twenty four hours, or knowing why he is being pursued. The only thing he knows is that he has to find Commander Sato, a woman he’s never met.

A military officer from the colonies and a civilian from Old Earth, they couldn’t have less in common. But they have to work together to save the lives of millions—and their own.

Every step of the way they are haunted by the final words of a secret transmission: The archangel is down.

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November We strive to include as many sci-fi romance releases as possible, but with current time constraints, we apologise in advance if your release was not included in our round-up

CHRYSALIS CORPORATION (T.A. Venedicktov, novel, $6.99e, $16.19p, DSP Publications) Together, they can change the rules of the galaxy and the definition of humanity.

THE SOJOURNER: The Sojourner Series #1 (Vallery Vestine, novella, $2.99, indie)

All her life Sara McGregor has felt adrift, searching for. . .

When Damion Hawk is offered an opportunity to something. Part of her past is shrouded in escape the destitute life of a miner on Mars and mystery, thanks to her become an elite Alpha Fighter pilot, he jumps at enigmatic mother, long the chance. Within the Chrysalis Corporation, Damion must learn to work with his Core―a man dead, and she's struggling to figure out what course with computerized implants, no human her life should take. emotions―and no rights. But unlike other Fighters, Damion can’t treat Core 47 as a tool. He Dropping out of college and a string of failed sees 47 as more than a machine, and he’ll take relationships has trapped deadly risks to help 47 find the humanity inside her into a holding pattern. him.

There's got to be Fighters and Cores are designed to work together something more than her and enhance each other’s strengths in defense of dead-end job, her current their employer. Damion and 47 will need each loser boyfriend and the pointless rat race of life. other’s support as suspicions about the allSomething is missing. powerful Chrysalis Corporation arise. Someone wants Damion and 47 gone, and they need to find A strange astronomical event coupled with the power of a family heirloom blasts her into the out who and why while hiding 47’s growing future, far away from her world and from everyone emotions and the love forming between them. If she's ever known and loved. She accidentally lands they can succeed, they might save not only on the ship of a handsome pirate captain. Viewed themselves, but all Cores enslaved by the as an unwelcome stowaway at the least, a Corporation. dangerous spy sent to harm the crew at the worst, the captain is convinced that she's been sent to assassinate someone very close to him. Sara's in over her head and must think fast to convince the captain she's innocent. Sara's game for the excitement but does she have what it takes to survive among a den of space pirates who don't trust her? Survival among them depends on the captain accepting her account of how she landed on his ship and discovering her identity. The answer lies in the mystery surrounding her secretive mother, an answer that may save her life

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and help her chart a new destiny.

discovers something in the snow. When she opens VICIOUS CIRCLE (Elle E. Ire, novel, $6.99, the ribbon-wrapped box, it mysteriously returns Sam Harrington, who "disappeared" in an 1885 Torquere Press) blizzard.

Kicked out of the Assassins Guild for breach of contract, There's nothing alien in this enduring tale of hunted by its members for holiday homecomings and the hope of love that lasts a lifetime. killing the Guild Leader, and half-hooked on illegal Up on the House Top: narcotics, Cor Sandros Will her Christmas be ho, ho, ho? Or oh no, no, could use a break. She no? accepts a freelance job to Gini knew Christmas in Wyoming would be eliminate Kila T’ral’s brother, Jaren. Kila claims challenging as she headed over the frozen crick and through the woods to the family cabin. The her politically powerful brother has sexually abused lights are going out in her mom's attic, the guy who broke her heart is on the porch...and there are her, and Cor has always aliens on the roof. been a sucker for helping the helpless.

The plan doesn’t include Cor falling in love with Kila, but as the pair struggles to reach Kila’s homeworld, pursued by assassins from the Guild, Cor finds her inexplicable attraction to Kila growing stronger. There’s a job to do, and personal involvement with her employer is an unwelcome distraction. Then again, so is sexual frustration.

ALL I GOT FOR CHRISTMAS (Pauline Baird Jones and Genie Davis, $3.99, anthology, indie) Beware of aliens bearing gifts!

Christmas is coming and so is All I Got For Christmas. Inside you'll get the evocative and haunting, "Riding for Christmas," and the offbeat and heartwarming, "Up on the Housetop."

According to her mom, it's going to be the best Christmas ever.

BARBARIAN MINE: Ice Planet Barbarians #4 (Ruby Dixon, novella, $3.99, indie) The ice planet has given me a second lease on life, so I’m thrilled to be here. Sure, there’s no cheeseburgers, but I’m healthy and ready to be a productive member of the small tribe. What I didn’t anticipate? That there’d be a savage stranger waiting nearby, watching me. And when he takes me captive, the unthinkable happens…I resonate to him.

Riding For Christmas:

Resonance means mating, and children…but I don’t know if this guy’s ever been around anyone before. He’s truly a barbarian in all ways, right down to clubbing me over the head and claiming me as his own.

A mesmerizing tale of interstellar time travel and romance!

So why is it that I crave his touch and hunger for more?

Jane MacKenzie, visiting her grandfather's abandoned ranch,

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was more than she could stand.

BREATHING VAPOR: Cyborg Sizzles #2 (Cynthia Sax, novella, $2.99, indie) Vapor is the most advanced cyborg the Humanoid Alliance has ever developed.

He’s a finely honed weapon, a warrior without parallel, half man and half machine.

No lock can contain him. No being can stop him.

Whatever he wants, he takes.

Shocked and betrayed, Jak dedicates herself to training militia-women, spending her days as far away from Torrin as possible. But Jak’s new friends have their own agendas and now her internal compass has gone haywire, severely compromising her safety in the field.

When a militia member dies and Jak disappears, Torrin begins a desperate race against time. This time around, Jak’s life depends on her.

MUST REMEMBER: The Solum Series #1 (Coleen S. Myers, novel, $4.99, Champagne Books)

He wants Mira Breazeal, the Nineteen-year-old Elizabeth ‘Beta’ Camden is a survivor.

Designer’s daughter.

When the E’mani—those She’s his one temptation, his sexy target. Vapor shouldn’t crave her caresses, steal her kisses, make pale alien freaks—destroy Earth with a plague of her scream with ecstasy. The cyborgs want her madness and scoop up the dead and they would question his loyalty if he remains, Beta is one of the didn’t kill her. The humans would shoot him on ‘lucky’ ones. For years, she sight if he dared to touch her. endures their tortures, Their love is forbidden. Their desire could be experiments and games. lethal. One human and one cyborg will risk Then one day, she manages everything for a moment of passion. to escape their ship with her life, and no memory of her time with them.

HEIGHTS OF GREEN: On Deception's Edge #2 (Lise MacTague, novel, Stranded on their world, $17.95pb/$9.99eb, Bella Books) Beta wanders the mountains, looking for a way Torrin Ivanov’s homecoming wasn’t the smooth, triumphant process she’d imagined. She almost killed her girlfriend Jak Stowell in their escape and now that they’re planetside, the intrigue of her business occupies all of her time.

Jak believed all of the lies that Torrin told her—that things would be better when they got home. But then she walked in to find Torrin in a lip-lock with one of her exes, and that

home. She stumbles onto the Fost—the E’mani’s ancient enemy. Their war with the Imani is old and rooted in magic that the Fost once had and the Imani crave. Magic Beta soon discovers she’s developing along with strange tattoos and disturbing glimpses of her past. The Fost take her in and train her in their ways. As she spends more time with them, she falls in love with their culture and with Marin—he of the hot hands and slit eyes.

But the E’mani took her for a reason and they want her back—dead or alive. If Beta doesn’t remember that reason soon, they’re all going to die.

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ALIEN ATTRACTION: Alien Next Door #3 (Jessica E. Subject, novella, $2.99, indie) DESIRE TO FALL (Shona Husk, novel, $6.99, Loose Id) Kya Hawl is an architect on the Precinct One redevelopment, a prestigious and contentious project in the city-state of Velli.

While she is happy with her part-time female lover, Judge Elmi Chadee, she wants more. She wants a family and children, for that she needs two men willing to put their life on the line to breed.

Tref Xant and his partner Dru Macon seem like the right guys; however, Tref has secrets and Dru is about to deploy to Precinct One, one of the roughest precincts in Velli. The redevelopment can’t come soon enough. Tref would like to see the placed burned to the ground. But even that wouldn’t be able to erase his memories of growing up there.

She wants to be more alien.

He wants to be more human.

Born a galaxy apart, will Angela and Chal have a chance at love, or will their extraterrestrial secrets leave them running to stay alive?

RAISED IN FREEFALL (Alice Lee, novel, $3.99, indie) In the fall of 1997, Layla arrives in Portland, Oregon. This move is her family's sixth attempt at a fresh start. Layla copes with the turbulence by drawing inward. Working a part-time job, she meets John, an awkward and socially ostracized senior at her school. Out of his passion for science and space exploration, they form a strange sort of friendship. Layla struggles to balance the growing friendship with her ingrained habits of hiding. As she delves further into John’s strange, kind world, the contrasts to her own tumultuous life become harder to bridge. Layla must learn to confront the chaos, to trust in the friendships she's formed, and to seek her own solid ground.

With Dru away Tref finds himself falling for Kya. Jealousy sparks between the men. A triad can never form as Dru wants Elmi and she has sworn off unions after her sister ran away to join the Terrin Sect.

[RAISED IN FREEFALL is intended for mature As riots erupt and the redevelopment is threatened readers] Dru realizes he has to fight for what he wants-something Tref learned long time ago. A four-way union--while unusual--would work. But will the women agree when they learn of Tref’s past?

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December We strive to include as many sci-fi romance releases as possible, but with current time constraints, we apologise in advance if your release was not included in our round-up

KEIR’S FALL: Redemption #2 (Pippa Jay, novel, $3.99, indie)

adversary.

Empress bent on conquering the galaxy with her cybernetic army, it will take all Quin’s diminishing powers and the help of her son to find him. But what waits for her aboard the tyrant’s ship will test her strength and the limits of their love, and put everything she cares about at risk. Including Keir.

A tormented soul…

An illicit allure…

A seductive tyrant. A lost hero. And a galaxy about While searching for his to fall... missing healer, King It’s been a year in paradise Noeh didn’t expect to find for Keir and Quin, but now an unusual, green-eyed the idyll is over. After Quin female chained to the wall falls sick, they return to the in an abandoned asylum hidden sanctuary of deep in the woods, Lyagnius, and what she evidence of her torment in learns there will not only the branding iron at her change their lives, but set feet. Captivated, he them on a journey that rescues the petite female could separate them and brings her to his underground home. Despite forever. the requirement to select a queen of his species by When Keir falls victim to a the next new moon or lose his crown, a forbidden attraction blooms. ruthless Nercaandi Haunted by the memory of her dead mate and child, Melissa can’t escape her past or her future.

On the run from her controlling master, she didn’t intend to get captured by the enemy, or be rescued by a brooding, handsome king. When she With the galaxy itself about to fall, will she be able succumbs to her need for a male’s blood and drinks to save him? from the honorable king, she can’t ignore the compelling desire he ignites in her soul.

UNTOUCHABLE LOVER: Worlds of Lemuria: Earth Colony #1 (Rosalie Redd, novel, $3.99, indie) A devastating war…

Across the globe, shape-shifting Lemurian warriors battle against a deadly enemy in the dark of night. The prize—Earth’s most precious resource—water, and the fate of humankind. To unite the soldiers, Lemurian gods send the diverse species to the underground Keep to join forces with their brethren and contend against their

CHALLENGING SABER: The Alliance #4 (S.E. Smith, novella, $3.99, Montana Publishing) Sometimes it takes losing the one thing closest to a warrior’s heart to wake the beast that lives inside him…

Saber, a wounded Trivator, believes he is no longer a fit warrior, much less strong enough to claim a mate. Scarred, he does everything in his power to push away the delicate human female he has fallen

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in love with. He knows that she deserves a warrior who can protect her, not one that will need her constant help.

Zahli Sherron isn’t planning on turning Tannin in.

In fact, she actually believes him. Sure, he’s sexy as every kind of sin, but he’s no criminal—so she hides him. But no one escapes from Erebus and lives to tell about it. With every day that passes, Taylor Sampson may be human, but that doesn’t make Zahli further risks the lives of the entire crew… even as she falls in love with a man she can never her weak. She and her two older sisters survived living on have for herself.

Earth for four years after their world went crazy. She is all LIBERATION: Alien Attachments #3 grown up now and has her eye (Sabine Priestley, novel, $2.99, KAC on the one stubborn Trivator Publishing) that captured her heart seven Following the signal of foreign psi to an old years before. abandoned building on Florin 5, Balastar Alder Taylor has one last requirement in order to complete her schooling. Once she finishes, she plans to show Saber that he is the man she wants, but when the planet she is on erupts into a civil war, she is trapped behind enemy lines. When Saber discovers that Taylor has been left behind, the warrior inside him refuses to think of her as collateral damage in a savage battle for power.

Journey to a lawless, alien world and discover what happens when the beast awakens inside a damaged Trivator warrior when the woman he loves is threatened.

literally stumbles across the pugnacious ravenhaired beauty, Kit Athorika.

He’s not the only one who’s looking for the mysterious portal making devices in her possession. When Torogs attack, she ports them to safety. Without the help of a single Portal Master.

Balastar offers to repay the favor by getting her offplanet and back to her own [* Sneak Peek in this issue] ship. Their escape is complicated when the ATROPHY (Jess Anastasi, novel, $3.99, Torog’s pursue. Forced to go silent and lay-low in an Entangled Publishing) asteroid field, they have little to do. Fortunately, No one on Erebus escapes alive... the chemistry between them ignites and they find Twelve years on the prison endless ways to occupy their time. planet Erebus makes a man Balastar convinces her to come and meet his boss, long for death. The worst Lord Cavacent. Recently relocated to Earth, the part for Tannin Everette is Sandarian clan included a handful of rogue Portal that he was framed for Masters. Kit has her own reasons for hating and murder. He’s innocent. fearing the Portal Masters, but she needs all the When the ship Imojenna help she can get to save her planet. She reluctantly lands for emergency repairs, agrees to seek out Lord Cavacent’s help, and his Tannin risks everything to connections to the Galactic Trade Organization and escape…only to find its powerful military. himself face to face with the The Portal Masters’ Guild on Sandaria has captain’s undeniably controlled intergalactic portals throughout the gorgeous sister.

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galaxy for centuries, and jealously guard their secrets. One of those secrets has kept Kit’s home world under quarantine for nearly thirty years. But portals across the galaxy are failing and the guild is getting desperate.

but we are beyond that now. It’s time we stand up and show them how we humans throw a party.

We’ll just have to hurry since Megan and Kanda are about to give birth. Between creating a holiday, hot loving, enduring a few hateful dagrinians, Finding themselves bonded wasn’t expected, but spooky as hell lightning strikes, and a scary animal having a psi-mate had its advantages. Can Kit and I’m sure we can pull it off.

Balastar free an entire planet and take down a guild Crystal Dawn - An Alpha Alien’s First Christmas: as old as the Masters without losing their lives?

It's Christmas time but what does it mean on Jaded ALIEN KISSES AND HOLIDAY WISHES (Crystal Dawn, Lisa Lace, Pixie Moon, Calista Skye, Lucy Varna, Ashley West, anthology, $.99, Sizzle and Steam Publishing)

where humans and Majuri warriors are learning to live together? Dervac has found his fated mate among the human females and his joy knows no bounds until she rejects him.

Hannah has things to do and a sharp eyed, curious mate is the last thing she wants, at least for now.

This captivating bundle includes six ALL-NEW Can Dervac figure out what she's up to and save stand-alone spicy hot holiday romances that her from herself? Will she let celebrate the true meaning of the season - escaping him? On a new world as a with hot sexy aliens. Grab a cup of hot chocolate, new civilization begins, will sit back and relax with Amazon's bestselling sci-fi love grow? romance authors.

Calista Skye - My Alien Ashley West - New Traditions: Altair comes from a bleak world, full of conflict and having to fight to survive. He's spent his whole life fighting enemies to protect himself and his people, and doesn't believe there's anything soft or good about himself.

When he's injured in a battle, he's sent to Earth to recuperate, as injured people don't last long on their planet with near constant battles raging daily.

He’s bitter about being sent away, since he believes that his place is with his people, but the choice isn’t his to make, putting him in a foul mood.

But then he meets Charity, a young woman who doesn't even know who he is, but is determined to spread some Christmas cheer to her grumpy new neighbor, no matter how strange and standoffish he might be. Altair's going to learn that not everything has to be hard and dark, and just might open up a part of himself that he thought had died long ago.

Prince: The Christmas Tree Prophecy: When a flying saucer crashes near her house right before Christmas, Amy Miller is surprised to see that Axa'rok, the alien in command, is just drop-dead gorgeous and hotter than any man she's ever seen. The fact that he's the warrior prince of his kingdom in the stars is just the icing on the gingerbread.

The planet Axa'rok comes from has no women, and he's come to Earth to fulfill a very special prophecy. But now he's shipwrecked, and his crucial mission is in danger.

Amy is willing to help, but who exactly is the legendary Mother of Womanhood that the prophecy revolves around? Who are the creepy aliens suddenly lurking in the woods? And how will she do her Christmas shopping now?

Pixie Moon - Small Gifts Outshine the Stars: ~ Niya ~ Holidays are great! But being at this dagrinian one allows me to see that I’m losing myself in my alien mate’s world. Megan and When it turns out that curvy Amy is the key to Kanda agree. We may have started out as captives everything, she has to step up and find some

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strengths she never knew she had...

Lucy Varna - A Warrior’s Touch: Yasmin Olvera has a problem only Benar Q'Mhel can solve, but can he help her before the situation explodes, taking the two of them down with Yasmin's stalker?

Lisa Lace - A Merry Vandwan Christmas: She wasn't looking for love, but she found marriage.

Samantha's determined to be with friends and family for the holidays, so she's travelling to Vandwa for a relaxing winter with Ashlyn. Sam finds herself drawn to Ashlyn's brother-in-law; he has a brooding disposition and a delicious sixpack. A Christmas miracle and TerraMates will help this family come together!

ALTERED (Marnee Blake, novella, $3.99, Entangled Embrace) A new adult romance from Entangled's Embrace imprint…

When "normal" ends, survival begins…

The sickness came on suddenly and violently.

When it was done, waitress Blue Michaels was different in a really strange way. And the entire town of Glory was dead...except for her.

Only that's not exactly true. A handful of people made it, including U.S. UPGRADED: Building A Hero #3 (Tasha Army Specialist Seth Black, novel, $3.99, 13th Story Press) Campbell, who was Some heroes aren’t born… they’re built caught in the wrong town at the worst time. He's Westley Worthington has found the love of his life in fierce and protective, and way too good-looking.

As much as they need a leader—as much as Blue Cordelia. wants to trust him—there are too many questions But when he pushes her and not enough time for answers. Now they are away to protect her family, hunted. But what their pursuers don't know is each he fears he’s lost her of them has strange new powers. And they'll use forever. their "gifts" to survive...no matter who stands in their way.

Cordelia Cross has never felt about anyone the way she feels about West.

CHALICE: Planetary Submissives #1 Which is exactly why she is (Amber Kell, novella, $.99, Pride Publishing) resolved to keep her distance.

In order to stop his magic from eating him alive, Chalice seeks out a man strong enough to When West is threatened with the loss of his fortune, his friends, and even his life, he must learn dominate and control him. that it takes more than super-strength to be a hero Chalice might be a prince on his planet, but his to the ones he loves. submissive tendencies prevent him from dealing with the incredible energy coursing through his Can he save the day one last time, before the technology that saved him finishes him for good? body. Magic users need a second to balance them out, but there has never been a case where the one Find out in Upgraded, the final full-length novel in with the power didn’t hold the dominant position. the Building a Hero trilogy from USA Today Chalice’s ability as a rare four-elemental magic bestselling author Tasha Black. wielder already marks him as different, though.

And with the king in denial of his son’s needs, he

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has no choice but to look off-planet to find a powerful partner.

He runs into a diplomat on a mission, who leads Chalice to agree to be the pet of an emperor—one whose reputation for tossing aside subs is only balanced out by the fact that Chalice thinks he’s the sexiest creature he’s ever seen. Chalice takes the plunge, hoping the biggest gamble of his life won’t prove to be his biggest mistake.

Publisher's Note: This book was previously released under the same title. It has been reedited for re-release with Pride Publishing. Erotic Romance, Gay, Bondage and BDSM, Sci-Fi, Paranormal

Orlin, he learns his new pet might not be as petlike as he first appeared.

Neither man expects to change the fate of a world…much less two of them.

Reader Advisory: This book contains a scene of attempted rape.

Publisher's Note: This book was previously released under the same title. It has been re-edited for re-release with Pride Publishing.

ZALL’S CAPTAIN: Planetary Submissives #3 (Amber Kell, novella, $3.50, Pride Publishing) When ex-slave Zall is asked to be Captain Teslan's cabin boy, he learns sometimes you have to bend your rules to offer your heart.

Zall is settling in on the ship Chalice chose for him. Even though he's not a soldier, he's learning from them and developing his own skills. When the ship changes captains, ORLIN’S FALL: Planetary Submissives Zall has to decide if he'd #2 (Amber Kell, novella, $.99, Pride rather keep his Publishing) independence or offer Orlin didn't know when he put himself up for sale himself to a man who might that he would be responsible for changing a be everything he's ever kingdom. wanted…or his biggest Broke and homeless, Orlin puts himself up for sale mistake. as a pet. Approached by his new Master, Orlin Danner Teslan has agreed to decides maybe being owned by a gorgeous king investigate a possible wouldn't be fate worse than death. He doesn't smuggling ring on a military expect to become the one ship. However when he person who changes the views arrives and meets Zall, he's of an entire kingdom…or to be convinced the ex-slave is his more than a lover for the man other half. Zall is not who buys him. interested in becoming another man's property and At first sight of the sexy oiled Danner has to decide whether he's willing to give sub, Aester Fall knows he's not another person the freedom to destroy his heart. leaving until Orlin belongs to Publisher's Note: This book was previously him. He might be hanging on released under the same title. It has been re-edited to his kingdom by his for re-release with Pride Publishing. fingernails but he knows some things are worth the fight.

When he returns home with

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PROPHECY: Prophecy #1 (Lea Kirk, novel, $2.99, indie)

doctor with a harrowing past.

One night of betrayal leaves Senior Captain Gryf Helyg a prisoner of his enemies.

Because of him, Earth’s indigenous people face extinction and his home world is threatened. But his plans for escape are complicated by his inexplicable draw to the Earth woman imprisoned with him.

Unfortunately, time is running out for Hell. Her own desperate past is about to catch up to her with deadly results.

One ancient prophecy holds the key to free Alexandra and Gryf’s war-ravaged worlds. Can two wounded souls who have lost everything learn to trust and forgive in order to fulfill the prophecy, and find a love that will last for eternity?

Their worst enemy, the Red Queen, rampages across the galaxy evading capture, while blocked portals restrict normal commerce among planets.

Compounding their problems, half the Grand Masters on the Council fear Violet is the agent of their doom as her father foretold, and vow to eliminate her. To restore peace, Violet and Athanor embark on a hazardous quest for a weapon hidden by the ancient psychic masters on one of four planets. But, the weapon proves elusive, dangers lurk in the ancient sites, and new alliances forged with bizarre entities may not be sufficient to foil their enemies and save the galaxy.

When he’s ‘gifted’ with a state-of-the-art One normal day turns into a nightmare when Earth companion that he can’t send back, Peyton is far is attacked. Now ER nurse Alexandra Bock is from pleased. She’s sentient. She’s sexy. She’s imprisoned aboard an alien everything he doesn’t want complicating his life. slave ship with no way out. He nicknames her Hell. She nicknames him lots of She deems all aliens unladylike things, at least in her mind. Because untrustworthy, including the there are rules to a relationship like theirs. Master handsome blue-skinned and Slave. She’s supposed to obey him in all Matiran captain who shares things. But if that’s true, why can’t she stop her cell. meddling in his life?

PEYTON’S DOLL: New Earth Series #1 (Felicity Kates, serial installment, $.99, indie) She isn't what the doctor ordered, but she's just what he needs.

1000 years after Earth has been devastated by a viral plague, the few survivors turn to genetic engineering and advanced robotics to ensure the future of the human race. But not everyone is happy with artificial life living amongst humans, least of all Peyton Chase, a

GRAND MASTER’S MATE: Grand Master #3 (Aurora Springer, novel, $3.99, indie) Young empath, Violet Hunter, and her crafty Grand Master, Athanor Griffin, tackle the villains threatening civilization.

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January

MATED WITH THE CYBORG: Cy-Ops Sci-Fi Romance #2 (Cara Bristol, novel, $4.99, indie) Kai Andros’s orders were simple. Get in. Gather the intel on the terrorist organization. Get out. Then he met her. Mariska. Beautiful. Innocent. Ignorant of her father’s atrocities. And marked for death. His orders said nothing about saving her. But he did. He went off-mission. Can a rogue cyborg outrun both Cyber Operations and the terrorists to save the woman he loves?

Mated with the Cyborg is an action-packed erotic sci-fi romance between a man with a mission and a woman with a secret that jeopardizes their lives and the fate of the galaxy.

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Your Guide to Sci-Fi Romance Movies The Cosmic Lounge with Heather Massey Sci-fi romance movies aren’t always described as such, but they run the gamut from big budget, mainstream releases to obscure independent films. Only a handful of bona fide SFR films exist— meaning ones where the romance has an upbeat ending—but they’re out there if you know where to look.

A true SFR movie will fall apart if one removes either the romance or the science element. This is the case with James Cameron’s AVATAR, one of the most successful and high profile films of all time. Of course, it was marketed as a science fiction action movie, but SFR is the glue holding the story together.

Reportedly budgeted at 176 million, Andy and Lana Wachowski’s JUPITER ASCENDING is SFR through and through. In a nutshell, it’s about Jupiter Jones, a lowly janitor who learns she’s the heir to an alien mega-corporation in the business of harvesting humans for a nefarious purpose. Caine Wise, a bounty hunter tasked with finding her, falls in love with Jupiter and decides to rescue her from the dangerous political machinations of her royal family.

Overall, JUPITER ASCENDING tells me the filmmakers totally get what SFR is all about. While watching this movie, it felt like I was watching the SFR books I read come to life. Even the movie poster is similar to SFR book covers! The filmmakers knew exactly how to integrate the SF and romance elements and delivered them with impressive visuals. Tone-wise, the story hits the right note.

JUPITER ASCENDING also accomplishes what many other SF films don’t: it centers the narrative on the heroine. It’s an unabashed wish-fulfillment fantasy for women and teens because it features a female protagonist gaining both political power and the love of her life.

Unfortunately—and this is a big “unfortunately”—JUPITER ASCENDING has so many plot flaws and other shortcomings it wound up puzzling and polarizing audiences. The problem wasn’t the SFR elements, it was the questionable execution of them.

Because the story has lots of action, short cuts are deployed for the romance development. And while the worldbuilding is gorgeously rendered, some of it is stylistically inconsistent (e.g., the BRAZIL homage). At times the SF concepts, which involve great stuff like genetic engineering, come across as muddled. I have the feeling the Wachowskis used their creative freedom to throw whatever caught their fancy into the story, a tactic which ended up crushing the SFR core under its weight.

My concerns about JUPITER ASCENDING have largely to do with the medium. The story’s grand scope would have been better suited to a comic book series or a television show. Everything about it feels

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rushed and simultaneously stuffed to the gills with convoluted story elements. I’m thrilled this movie made it to theaters, but am disappointed about how much it fell short. This was not destined to be the film that would win people over to science fiction romance.

More often than not, I’ve discovered more satisfying sci-fi romance films outside the mainstream.

Though sometimes lacking the slick production values of their mainstream counterparts, indie SFR films make up for it with elements like inventive plots, diverse characters, quirky humor, and lots of heart.

I count four indie SFR films as the best I’ve seen: CODEPENDENT LESBIAN SPACE ALIEN SEEKS SAME (space opera, Earth setting; written and directed by Madeleine Olnek), SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED (time travel; contemporary setting; written by Derek Connolly and directed by Colin Trevorrow), HAPPY ACCIDENTS (time travel; contemporary setting; written and directed by Brad Anderson); and GB Hajim’s STRANGE FRAME (animated space rock opera; written by Shelley Doty and GB Hajim and directed by GB Hajim).

Other sci-fi romance films get the concept and mix right, but the stories themselves are deeply flawed, if not downright awful. Juan Solanas’ UPSIDE DOWN has its heart in the right place, but it’s a pretentious, superficial mess. HEARTBEEPS is a comedic SFR about two robots falling in love, but despite the combined star power of Bernadette Peters and Andy Kaufman, the story is a bizarre, unfunny, and cringe-inducing experience from start to finish. India’s LOVE STORY 2050, which stars QUANTICO’s Priyanka Chopra, is one of my personal kitschy time travel SFR favorites despite the film being a disaster both artistically and commercially.

A number of SF films feature a significant romance. Romantic SF films worth checking out, at least in terms of a rental or via streaming, include the following: •

DARK CITY

•

OUTERWORLD

•

TIME AFTER TIME

•

TAI CHI 0

•

THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU

•

PERFECT SENSE

A new film that’s being described as a post-apocalpytic sci-fi romance is the Ethiopian film CRUMBS. I haven’t seen it yet, but plan to as it seems to offer an inventive take on this genre.

I’m also keeping my eye out for PASSENGERS (2016), an outer space love story that will reportedly star Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence. Written by John Spaihts and to be directed by Morten Tyldum, the story will focus on two people traveling aboard a generation ship carrying colonists in stasis. One of them wakes up decades too early because of a malfunction and decides to wake another passenger. At this point, it’s impossible to know if the story will have an upbeat ending, but one can hope!

My quest for SFR films is an ongoing journey. I crave SFR in this medium because of the immersive experience and visual intrigue it can offer. Seeing SFR couples come to life is nothing short of

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amazing. Given the explosion of science fiction movies in the past few years, chances are good future ones will be either romantic SF or outright SFR. They don’t have to be mainstream releases, either, since indie films are probably better suited to this genre.

Frankly, I don’t care what marketing labels studios slap on the films as long as we get them!

For more information about the films mentioned in this article and more, check out 15 Posts About SciFi Romance Films (via The Galaxy Express).

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Archangel (Sharon Shinn) Review by Jo Jones In the last issue I reviewed a novella by Eve Langlais. With Eve you know you will get fun dialog, lust, explicit sex and finally love. This issue I am reviewing a book by Sharon Shinn that goes in the opposite direction. With Shinn you get very good dialog, great characters, and a lot of action with a touch of romance simmering in the background. Lust and explicit sex are not on the menu. In fact, while you know there is sex in Shinn’s books it is “behind the door” and you arere not invited in. Sounds boring? Not for me, it wasn’t. Follow me to take a peek at the world of Samaria where Archangel by Sharon Shinn takes place.

Samaria is a world populated by angels, mystics, and mortals, all ruled and protected by Jovah. Jovah is a god. Or is he? This is where Shinn walks that very fine line between fantasy and science fiction.

Jovah brought his people to Samaria and divided them into angels, mortals and oracles. Only the oracles can talk to Jovah and pass on his wishes. One wish has not changed since he left them. Once a year, the people must sing the Gloria to Jovah lead by the Archangel and the angelica, his mortal bride. If it is not done on the annointed day, Jovah will send down fire to destroy a mountain. If not done in the next three days, he will destroy a city and, if not done in another three days after that, he will destroy the world. Gabriel has been chosen by Jovah to be the new Archangel and, in six months' time, he will lead the singing of the Gloria. Unfortunately, Gabriel is just getting around to searching for the woman Jovah has chosen to be the Archangel's bride.

That sets the tone for the story. Rachel may be the bride chosen by Samaria's god, but she isn't as easy to find as Gabriel had hoped. When he finally does locate her, she is not happy to find that she has no choice in the matter. The stage is set for a story filled with tension and an underlying romance.

Rachel is very strong character and does not allow Gabriel to rule her. She sets the rules and the first one is a marriage in name only. Gabriel is very confident, some would say arrogant, and is sure he is always right. He keeps giving orders to Rachel. The two of them really clash.

If that were the only issue in the book, it would be relatively short, but it is not. Shinn writes very complex and interwoven plots. Rachel is in danger because someone does not want her to sing at the Gloria. There are people who no longer believe in Jovah or his powers and are out to prove he does not exist. Rachel has good reason to dislike and distrust angels. Gabriel is afraid Rachel will refuse to sing the Gloria and, likewise, shows his own distrust toward her.

26 Woven around all of this is the world building for Archangel. There are hints about Jovah scattered through out the book. Only oracles can talk to him. They talk to him through a screen with language only they know.

He brought them to this land but returned to the sky after they were settled. He can hear their prayers and answer them with gifts from the sky. One oracle found a way to Jovah and, when he returned, his story was so odd that they locked him up for the rest of his life.

So is Jovah a god or is he an artificial intelligence inside a space ship? Read the book for yourself and decide if it is Fantasy or Science Fiction. While you are deciding, you will also be treated to an interesting romance filled with fascinating characters.

Archangel is the first book in the Samaria series. Each book is a romance and each gives further hints of the world of Samaria and Jovah.

Bad Kitty (Teresa Noelle Roberts) Review by Marlene Harris Bad Kitty is the direct followup to Thrill-Kinky [also reviewed in this issue –Ed.]. And while it helps in understanding the world of the space-freighter Malcolm to read both books, I think it would be possible to read Bad Kitty without reading Thrill-Kinky first.

On the other hand, why would you? These are short burst of Firefly-type fun, and the worldbuilding gets deeper the further in you go.

Where Thrill-Kinky was mechanic Rita’s story, Bad Kitty is felinoid Xia’s journey. While it isn’t completely clear what Xia does on the Malcolm, it is very clear who she is. Mik and Gan rescued her after she killed her rapist, back when she was about seven. Mik and Gan are her dads, no matter who (and what) her birthparents might have been.

But in the big action scene in Thrill-Kinky, the now adult Xia begins to unravel the secrets of her life before Mik and Gan rescued her, and those secrets begin to unravel her. Felinoids, in spite of their generally cute appearance, are apex predators. They are very smart, with long retractable claws and very sharp teeth, and they like to hunt. But Xia is a special case.

Somewhere between the death of her birthparents and her adoption by Mik and Gan, someone trained Xia to be an assassin. A very, very good one.

However, Xia had learned to suppress those bad memories, and not see everyone and everything as prey. The meditation techniques that Gan taught her have helped, but not enough. Now that the memory genie is out of the bottle, the darkness inside Xia wants her to feed it with more blood and more death.

27 Most felinoids learn how to distinguish prey from play when they are young. They are taught by their parents as part of growing up. But at that critical juncture, Xia was taught to kill instead. Her ability to keep her instincts at bay is fraying.

When the Malcolm lands on the lawless planet Cibari, Xia finds someone who can help her deal with all her felinoid impulses. The warlord of Cibari, Rahal, is an adult felinoid who strikes Xia as sex-on-legs. Rahal sees Xia as the mate he never expected to find. So while Rahal was more than willing to help his buddy Drax out of jam, he is highly motivated to protect Xia at all costs.

Little does Rahal or Xia know that the cat-girl is firmly fixed in someone else’s sights, and that her longburied memories are about to jump out and bite everyone who cares about her. Especially the undercover bounty hunter who has lied his way into both Rahal’s and Xia’s hearts.

Escape Rating B+: Just like Thrill-Kinky, Bad Kitty is also a very-hot-sex-into-love story. Rahal and Xia (and eventually Karn/Cal) are definitely into the screw first and work out relationships later school of thought (or libido). There is plenty of insta-lust all around, but it works in this story.

Xia and Rahal are both members of a species that just likes playing, with anyone and everyone, in infinite combinations. Often with infinite diversity. Cal/Karn is pretending to be an interstellar playboy and arms dealer who is notorious for swinging every way possible. These three are meant to fall into bed (or a pile of cushions together.

As their stories combine, the play becomes more serious, and none of them are expecting it. Rahal is pretty sure that Xia is his mate, but Xia has no idea that the mating drive exists among her species. It’s a private thing, and she was raised by non-felinoids. But they all end up feeling it long before the drive is so allconsuming that rational thought disintegrates.

But the underlying story here is the story of Xia’s birth and origins. Cal/Karn comes to Cibari on a mission to bring Xia back to her grandmother. But something about the way that the job is given to him doesn’t mesh with the way felinoids operate. Something is off, and Cal/Karn decides to figure out what that something is before he takes Xia away from the only security she has ever known.

The more Xia remembers about her true past, the more heartbreaking her story is. The climactic moment when she has to decide whether to be the girl that Mik and Gan raised or the assassin that she was trained to be is surprisingly touching.

Her reluctance to reach for true intimacy, and to let go of the nightmares that rightfully haunt her sleep, gives this story its heart. The mission to take down the baddies who are after all of them gives the story its punch.

And its fun!

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Black Ice Heart (Ella Drake) Review by Normalene Zeeman Ensign Joan Halley of the Geonate space military, forced to enlist at age six, yearns to transfer to the Nex, a secretive special ops branch of the Geonate military. Compulsory military service after attending government schooling makes this world sound very dictatorial and chilling, but I like Joan and Georgie’s BFF relationship.

By page six, we meet quick-healing, super-strong, Cenak Bronson, scheduled for execution upon arrival at the prison asteroid. Joan’s first assignment as a probationary Nex officer is to keep an eye on Cenak until he is handed over to prison officials. Cenak allegedly killed a whole barracks full of “sleeping recruits before their first training day”, yet Joan seems to have empathy for the cruel treatment of the prisoner, and, from what we’ve read so far, I don’t understand why. Everything we’ve been told about him to this point leads us to believe he is a cold-blooded, conscienceless, mass-murderer who deserves to die.

By Chapter Four, Cenak and Joan are on the decimated prison asteroid, taken captive by the Scoriah. With the ship broken and stuck on the prison asteroid with the Scoriah and the possibly-not-fully-human Cenak, Joan has no choice but to play along with Cenak and hope to stay alive long enough to escape. At the young age of 16, Cenak was forced to mate with the now-deceased clonedaughter of the Scoriah matriarch. The matriarch orchestrated Cenak’s rescue on the prison asteroid, although the details of exactly how that worked is very sketchy. The Scoriah babies’ accelerated growth and birth killed the mother and the babies were taken away to be raised by scientists. Cenak’s anger at the scientists’ uncaring sacrifice of the mother, in order to keep all twenty-four Scoriah babies alive, causes him pain as he had begun to care for her.

We don’t learn much about the Scoriah warriors right away. They are huge humanoids with grey skin covered in long hair, with long arms ending in razor sharp claws and humanoid facial features, seemingly based on advanced Neanderthals, but cuter. The timeline for their growth is also a little vague. It seems they are only a few months old due to their accelerated growth, but Cenak seems to have been on many missions for the scientists and the military during their gestation and artificially-induced, early birth. The Scoriah matriarch tells Cenak that she is a sterile lab-created blend of Geonate DNA and the “indestructible female Ferrashi Neotio” which we learn much later on is an insect found on Ferrash. She was also only months old when they created the clone-daughter who was fertile (um, why was she fertile but her clone-mother wasn’t? It felt like she pulled this from Orphan Black [er, in case anyone (like me) didn't know, Orphan Black is a TV series about clones who were implanted in different women for obviously...dum dum DUM...mysterious reasons –Ed.]).

At the young age of four months, the clone-daughter was mated with Cenak and soon after she birthed the twenty-four Scoriah brothers but didn’t live through it. This is the first mention of the planet Ferrash and we learn much later that it is the Scoriah home planet, but if the Scoriah matriarch is the first of her kind and lab-created, and the Scoriah babies are lab-created from her clone-daughter, how do they have a home world?

One of the powers of the matriarch is to make the scientist who created her fall in love with her and do her

29 bidding, but it’s not clear what about her was so appealing. The matriarch, Donetta, (finally we have a name for her) is also crazy-smart, gifted with DNA-splicing knowledge and every other kind of skill and ability that makes it possible for her to help capture a spaceship, discover where Cenak was being taken, run the machines in the lab (which contains exactly what is needed, even though it seems they are still on the prison asteroid) to bring the fertilized eggs to life and implant six of them into Joan. None of that made sense to me, and it felt like this was tacked on to make the plot work. I didn’t buy it.

The Scoriah matriarch desires more Cenak/Scoriah babies and it seems the only human womb available is Joan, now Mother-of-Monsters 2.0. Donetta forces Joan to give a blowjob to Cenak so that semen can be collected and Joan is artificially inseminated. This wasn’t necessary with the clone-daughter so I’m not seeing the point, other than to give us some sex.

With Joan pregnant and the Scoriah packing up to leave the asteroid on a ship Donetta managed to find, Cenak needs to find a way to escape before Joan’s pregnancy comes to the same bloody and fatal end-ofmotherhood that birthed the first twenty-four Scoriah. In Chapter Six, the author throws in the fact that the scientist who created him (wait, Cenak is also lab-created?) and Donetta, is still alive and helping her bring these new Scoriah into existence. This also felt tacked on so that the author wouldn’t have to explain how a nine-foot tall, rail thin, grey-skinned monstress managed to do all the science-y stuff without help and get the scientist to fall in love with her. Plus, Joan has military training and years of experience, yet she went down like a creampuff from the very beginning. Again, it felt too contrived.

In Chapter Seven, we learn that there were other women on the asteroid, but Donetta didn’t try to make any of them Scoriah surrogates. Why not? When Joan asks where they got the ship, she is told that Mother obtained it and that is all the explanation we get. During this chapter, the Scoriah start to sound very intelligent, although in the beginning they couldn’t put a sentence together and have it make sense. When very high-concept thoughts come out of them, it’s hard to remember who is talking as there seems to be no reasoning behind this abrupt change in their personalities, other than to make them more likeable. In this chapter, one of the Scoriah tells Joan he is twenty years old and grew up on the planet Ferrash, but earlier we were told that all twenty-four are brothers born at the same time of the same mother and are only a few months old. Now I’m really confused.

Chapter Eight makes it seem that Cenak is much older as he talks about the many Nex-controlled military and assassination missions he went on while waiting for the babies to be born and immediately after. In Chapter Nine, Joan calls the Scoriah nice, charming, friendly, psychopaths and we learn they can make pie – on a spacecraft – and they are pretty awesome with swords and have the knowledge to handle all the duties of running a spaceship, but who taught them those things? At this halfway point, Joan’s practical side still wars with her conscience after she watches Cenak cold-bloodedly kill the guard who had been torturing him at the beginning of the book, but she is massively pregnant and needs his help to stay alive. From this point on, we notice changes in Joan, Cenak and the Scoriah that lead you to believe they will all have a happy ending because as part of a military experiment, Cenak was given an untested berserker drug which caused him to kill until there was no one left to kill, so it wasn’t really his fault that he was a killer, he is really a very nice – um, lab-created-guy. This would have been nice to know at the very beginning.

30 The setting was very well-portrayed and character development was good once you got past the weird timeline glitches. You get a good sense of the puppy-style nest that the Scoriah sleep in as it is the same on the asteroid, the spaceship and on Ferrash; you really feel their loyalty to Cenak, the father, and Joan, the mother. The plot is a little loosey-goosey, but you can figure it out. Most of the secondary characters who are not Scoriah feel like plot devices used to impart information and move the story along and they don’t add much to it. There is more sex later on, but I didn’t buy the relationship and it felt like another obligatory sex scene.

This is a very short book and I expected to zip right through it, but I had to go back and re-read parts multiple times because I couldn’t figure out the timeline. I get that the author didn’t want to give a huge infodump right at the beginning, but I was confused about the how and when all the way through the book. I finally made my own timeline as I went along and updated it every time I learned something new that changed it.

This happened a lot towards the end, as the author tried to bring all the pieces together quickly and make Cenak and the Scoriah loveable and to make Joan want to keep them. I think I would have started with Cenak being given the berserker drug in a flashback and gone from there. It might have saved a lot of explanatory digression towards the end, where we had to drop out of the story many times for a smidge of information to explain what just happened. Another ten pages to fill in the gaps and tighten up the timeline would have made this story so incredibly awesome, because the bones are there, but the flesh was missing.

Catalyst (Dani Worth) Review by The Bookpushers (Publisher: Samhain / Publish Date: Out now / Reviewer: E ) How I got this book: From the author A woman seeking answers, a younger man seeking love, and an older man seeking revenge must work together to achieve all of their goals...

The Kithran Regenesis, Book 3 Vala Gorun’s family was off Kithra when the explosions happened and although she’s back on her home planet helping with the rebuild, something she saw all those years ago still haunts her. So she hires a Tracker to find the human man she’d once loved—one she thinks betrayed her in the worst possible way.

In order to stop the search into his past, Jackson Canfield sends space pirates to kidnap the Tracker. He can’t afford to be found. Not now, when his revenge is almost complete. Unfortunately, instead of the Tracker, the pirates grab Vala and a young Gwinarian man instead.

Trapped on a pirate vessel with Bastian Sithbrun, a ridiculously attractive but younger man, Vala fights her attraction. But something about the twenty-year-old gets to her... But when the pirates leave them the unwilling guests of the very man she’d driven crazy with her teen crush all those years ago, Vala learns Jacks has been in hiding, working to right a horrible wrong.

31 Now the three of them must work together to reveal the truth behind Kithra’s destruction—if they can control the explosive passion that erupts between them long enough to complete their task.

Product Warnings A tattooed, broken-hearted heroine discovers M/M/F love is crazy hot when not fighting giant alien lizards or worrying about age differences. And when the senses are narrowed to touch alone behind a massive waterfall? It’s scorching! (Blurb from the author’s website) I have been a fan of Dani Worth since I stumbled upon the first of her Kithran Regenesis series, Kithra, shortly after its release. I really enjoyed the story along with all of the questions left unanswered, the fate of the planet’s citizens, and how those who survived the disaster were going to handle the longer-term aftermath. As a result I eagerly picked up book two when it was released and let out a cheer when I found out that there was going to be a Book Three. Not surprisingly, I leaped at the chance to read and review Catalyst. Sometimes eagerly awaited books don’t manage to live up to my mental hype but this one certainly delivered. The Kithran Regenesis is one of those series where each succeeding book builds on information released in its predecessors. I think it is possible to start with this one because some of the back-story is nicely interwoven but I recommend starting from the beginning. As a result there will be a few spoilers from previous books but I will try to keep them to a minimum.

When Vala was 17 going on 18 she had her first serious crush on Jacks, a human visiting Kithra. Jacks viewed Vala as too young for him, so he tried everything he could think of to dissuade her feelings to include having a make-out session with his boyfriend in public. Gwinarians, the variant of human that lived on Kithra, mature at a much younger age than humans and their society did not have any taboos against multi-partner relationships so Vala was perfectly willing to join in. After Jacks caught Vala following him one night he tried once more to tell her that he was too old for her in what ended up being the last conversation they had before the explosions which rendered Kithra uninhabitable and killed most of the Gwinarians. Vala caught a glimpse of Jacks once more after that fateful conversation and based on what she saw, she eventually hired a Tracker to find him. Vala had her suspicions about him because that sighting was extremely circumstantial to the explosions. Jacks found out about the Tracker and hired some people to get the Tracker out of the way, only they grabbed Vala and a young man, Bastian, who had a crush on her.

Vala and Bastian found themselves dropped on what appeared to be a deserted planet, not entirely hospitable towards Gwinarians, but during their search for shelter they ended up meeting Jacks.

I found that Worth used a rather interesting technique with this story. Vala had a huge crush on Jacks but he rebuffed her due to her age. Years later Bastian had a huge crush on Vala and she was trying to rebuff him.

That situation gave Vala some small sympathy towards Jacks and how he must have felt which I think added depth to her character. She started off a very headstrong immature young woman. It became evident that over the years she had matured into a character worth following. Even though Vala had grown up when she encountered Jacks again she still had to struggle with the combination of years of mixed emotions ranging

32 from love to hatred, to attraction to reluctant sympathy to anger. Watching her go through those swings just brought home how really complicated people and their emotions are.

Bastian, while younger than Vala, showed that he possessed a depth of maturity that she did not have during her crush on Jacks. He was persistent but he also made himself helpful instead of just mooning and skulking after Vala, which I certainly appreciated. He was also old enough to know his own mind and to subtly push his suit. Bastian almost seemed to provide the bridge and sometimes the buffer between Vala and Jacks. I think without his presence it would have been even more difficult to resolve the complicated past that tied Vala and Jacks together.

Jacks… I didn’t get as much of a feel for as I did the other two characters. I understood and admired his reluctance at the beginning of the book because Vala was rather immature. I also understood, after he told his story of the events, why he chose to hide out. I think I wanted both Vala and Bastian to learn more about Jacks because even during their encounters I felt he was still slightly remote.

Worth certainly had me speculating about all sorts of things as she threw in twists and turns. I wanted to know if and how Jacks, Vala, and Bastian would act on their mutual attraction and what the results would be.

I wanted to know who was really behind the explosions and why. I wanted to know why Jacks was hiding out and why he tried to get the Tracker intercepted. I wanted to know if and how Vala’s friends would manage to find her. Luckily enough for me Worth answered most of my questions but in doing so she raised a few more.

Overall I enjoyed watching Jacks, Vala, and Bastian interact together. I am looking forward to seeing what happens next as the quest for answers continues.

I give Catalyst a B+

Dark Horse (Michelle Diener) Review by The Bookpushers (Publisher: Eclipse / Publish Date: 15 June 2015 / Reviewed by: E) How I got this book: Copy from Sci-Fi Romance Quarterly Some secrets carry the weight of the world.

Rose McKenzie may be far from Earth with no way back, but she's made a powerful ally—a fellow prisoner with whom she's formed a strong bond. Sazo's an artificial intelligence. He's saved her from captivity and torture, but he's also put her in the middle of a conflict, leaving Rose with her loyalties divided.

Captain Dav Jallan doesn't know why he and his crew have stumbled across an almost legendary Class 5 battleship, but he's not going to complain. The only problem is, all its crew are dead, all except for one strange, new alien being.

33 She calls herself Rose. She seems small and harmless, but less and less about her story is adding up, and Dav has a bad feeling his crew, and maybe even the four planets, are in jeopardy. The Class 5's owners, the Tecran, look set to start a war to get it back and Dav suspects Rose isn't the only alien being who survived what happened on the Class 5. And whatever else is out there is playing its own games.

In this race for the truth, he's going to have to go against his leaders and trust the dark horse. (B lurb from

Goodreads) I was not tracking this story when it released six months ago but slowly I started to see the title mentioned more and more in my tweet stream. So it went on my mental list of stories I should check out. As fate has it, right after it appeared as a recommendation to other people in my twitter feed I received the list of stories for this quarters issue. Lo and behold Dark Horse happened to be one of the offerings. I think I about broke my fingers I was in such a hurry to request it before anyone else did. While I thought Dark Horse started slowly and yet in what seemed to be the middle of a story, I quickly became engrossed and thoroughly enjoyed my reading experience.

It says a lot about my state of mind that I approached this story concerned it wasn’t going to live up to the hype I saw. I was afraid the characters were going to be simplistic and the only protagonist Rose’s erstwhile “ally”. Boy was I wrong. Diener built a really complex world with a variety of characters and differing motivations. The battle for survival at all costs versus falling in line with the niceties of civilized trappings was shown in many ways. I enjoyed the diversity of species and their individual idiosyncrasies even as they struggled to work together with the unusual situation.

I admired Rose’s determination to make the best of her situation not just for herself but for others inadvertently involved. Her altruism did irritate me a bit because I just don’t forgive that easily but I thought it was balanced by how she refused to let anyone walk over her. I also liked how she remained loyal and kept her promises even if it meant having to risk herself. I thought the relationship between Rose, Sazo, and Dav was a lot of fun and the personalities were so different I was never afraid of a mental love triangle. I also thought the way Sazo enjoyed the challenge of trying to hack his way into Dav’s ship was very entertaining.

One of the other things I thought stuck with me was how central Dav’s thoughts and feelings were. Rose was the alien away from everything familiar but Dav seemed to really be the one struggling with her differences.

Rose had a purpose and drive while Dav kept trying to adjust to his attraction to her and the implications of what she and Sazo along with the other Class 5 battleships meant not just for his world but everyone in his universe. Watching his growth as the story progressed was delightful.

I thought the title Dark Horse really fit this story because the surprises kept coming. Dark Horse was a complete story but hope Diener has sequel(s) in mind because there is more in this universe. I would also like

34 to see some other people/species besides Rose develop a bond with Sazo’s brethren. With this story, one I thought reminded me of why I love SFR, Diener has landed on my list of authors to watch.

I give Dark Horse an A-

Final Protocol (JC Daniels) Review by Normalene Zeeman At eighty-eight pages, this is a quick read with a good tight plot. JC Daniels is the pen name for Shiloh Walker whose other science fiction I love, so it was a sure bet that this one would be equally good. We start out with a quick blurb at the beginning to set the scene. Our heroine, Silence, has been an assassin for the last twelve years, held to the job against her will by a bioseal. In order to control her, her owner/handler, Gold, placed this bomb in her head that will explode at his command if she doesn’t complete her missions.

What I liked: Silence tells us right away that she has evaded capture on a dozen planets in four systems, so we know she can kick butt with the best of them. And she is smart, because she does some research on the planet and the people where her current assignment lives – yay – research. We librarians love it when characters do research.

Partial memory loss is a good device to ramp up the mystery of who the guy was who sold her to Gold, and the one flashback is just enough to whet my appetite for more.

We learn more about Aris, the planet where she had the assignment in which we met her. She failed to complete that mission because she liked the elderly gentleman who was her target and so that she could have an internal monologue about whether or not she has a soul – she does!

There are three alien species that we meet and they sound really cool and unique and I would love to hear more about how they affect the story and Silence, but they are under-used and the description we get about them is wasted if we don’t get more out of them.

We meet the love interest, Orion, around page 59, where we find out that Gold has set Silence on him as her last target. From this point on, there is enough space left to develop the happy ever after so it doesn’t feel rushed.

Orion is not only gorgeous, smart and a gifted negotiator, he is the only one with the knowledge to take out the bioseal. That is a good thing, even if it felt a little contrived. Silence starts to remember that he was the one who gave her to Gold, but as the backstory comes out, you find out there is more to the story than that.

35 What I didn’t like: The setting where her home base is might be a little vague. On page 20, it seems Jakor is a New Earth planet, but on page 21, we learn that Jakor is the name of the city. On page 31, it seems that the Mihor quadrant is a portion of the planet, but on page 34 it is revealed that Mihor is a slice of the city Jakor. Silence calls Jakor “a forgotten piece of hell and my keeper ruled over it with an iron fist,” but I’m not sure what that really means in the way of what Gold controls, although he sends Silence on jobs across four star systems. I’m not sure what the name of the planet is, but it has three suns and three moons and the gravitational forces acting on it should probably make it unstable and uninhabitable - but obviously it is not. How can you even see the three moons if there are three suns? While this isn’t exactly bad science because NASA has found a tri-solar system (yes, look it up), three suns is maybe too many without some explanation of how that works.

The planet Hsain, where she goes for her last assignment has four suns, no nights and is really hot, so how does anything survive? Really, four suns?

Silence’s spaceship runs on dark matter and has the capability of “animation sleep” which might be suspended animation or cryosleep, but I’m not sure. She has a top-of-the-line medbay, but it doesn’t stop her from getting space sick - but can fix her up just fine afterwards.

The sex is only in one scene but it’s not graphic and it is when Gold rapes her to prove he owns her. I didn’t love it but it made sense for it to happen, but it was a little weird that she makes such a big deal out of how much her body responds but her mind doesn’t – it’s like Stockholm Syndrome gone a little crazy.

As a love interest, Orion needs more character development, but I get that the page count didn’t allow for that. I’d have preferred a little less description in the beginning in order to flesh out the end. The timeline seems a little off as Silence isn’t that old, the relationship with Orion seems to have been deep and longstanding prior to her slavery and she spent 12 years as Gold’s assassin so she has to be about 35-40 years old but she seems much younger.

What I really didn’t like was the length – it was too short – I wanted more. Gold’s comeuppance was a little anticlimactic and it didn’t seem realistic that after 12 years of torture from him, Silence could be content with this ending - oh well, room for a sequel is there. If you want more, definitely try out Shiloh Walker.

From Stars They Fell (HR Harrison) Review by Toni Adams For such a small story, this sure contained a punch of sweet, fun, diversity, interesting, with a dash of longing.

Most novellas are too rushed and fails to deliver a great story. Not From Stars They Fell. H.R. Harrison wrote a complete novella: a good beginning, intriguing characters, and a fititng climax. It is not perfect but it does deliver enough of a story to keep it in your mind.

A winged alien crash lands upon Earth and is discovered by dwarves. This happens right at the beginning of the novella and made me wonder if this was going to a sci-fi version of Snow White. Which would made

36 sense since that Disney Snow White sings like an alien. It does become similar with a Snow White story: the dwarves take the winged alien, who introduces itself as Veni, to their home. There they all bond though crafting and chores. It is upon a market day that Veni's eyes land upon a new type of mammal: a human male (The Prince?). The attraction is immediate and the two bond. This is a novella about the growth of this relationship. Or I suppose a Snow White as an alien story (personally preferred).

The romance between Veni and her prince, er, Wystan is genuine. It is a good genuine love story. It even features some jealousy bits, courting behavior, first dates, and a bona fide rescue. Give that this is a great couple, it is even more amusing to note that this is essentially an inter-species relationship, a distinction that was bemusedly noted later on. It was genuinely surprised how not awkward the sex scene was. It was pretty fascinating to read how that was reasoned out, although it really makes me wonder how the two will ever create spawns of their own. Genetic manipulation?

Most notable about this novella is that it features two diverse things: a person of color with a disability. Wystan is described as a deaf, dark man.

The skin color diverged from what Veni has seen so far, so it was natural for her to focus on him at first. Veni has a (most convenient) translating implant that allows her to pick up all forms of communication, verbal and non verbal.

She is able to communicate with Wynstan via sign language and the two have a language between them.

The other notable thing for the novella caused a bit of a reading hindrance. It was only obvious later when I realized that Veni's species inhabit both female and male forms. Veni uses a different set of pronouns: “ze” and “hir”, both of which I kept mistaking as typos. This must have a lot of sense to those who identify as pansexuals.

For all of it's good fun, there were definitely some hiccups and awkward scenarios. The scene with Wynstan's mother was pretty odd. Instead of reading as a scene of a son introducing his love interest, it's a scene where Wynstan takes Veni over to heal her. He had mistaken her for an angel and had hoped to have Veni help his mother. Which he doesn't tell Veni until they get there. Then Veni proceeds to taste the blood so the computer within her can read the results. It's just all a bit too awkward. It does introduce a seed of reality to Wynstan that Veni is not human. That doubt does fleet away and they continue their courting.

The ending of the book hints that there may be more connected to this story. I highly doubt this Royal group would let it end like that. I definitely wouldn't mind reading more about it. This is a story that would have definitely benefited from being expanded upon.

All in all, a very cute novella that was delightful to read.

37

Seeding ERO-5 (Kindle edition) (Quin Ripley) Review by Cyd Athens “ERO-5—Environmental Recursion Operation number Five—or Eros as nearly everyone in the terraforming field affectionately called it, would be a new home for humanity, a place to spread out. It was one of the most ambitious undertakings mankind had ever attempted.”

We are introduced to the tale with the dedication, “For fun.” It could have just as easily, and perhaps more accurately, started with a dedication, “For one-handed reading.”

The story begins and [spoiler alert] ends with graphic sex scenes [/end spoiler alert]. This is not romance or erotica; this is porn with far too many of the trappings. The condensed version of the plot is that five scientists—two female and three male—are sent to an alien planet to terraform it and prepare it for humanity. However, upon their arrival on the new world, the quintet just can’t stop fucking one another—in pairs, groups, same-sex, hetero-sex, indoors, outdoors, and so forth. One of the female scientists, the introvert who eventually becomes the group’s linchpin, figures out that the planet is inhabited by deep sea creatures. Those tentacled beings are affecting the humans in such a way as to cause the increased sex drive. And none of the scientists are immune to the hyperactive sexuality. To make acting on their sexual urges even more convenient, all of them were implanted with antifertility devices before leaving Earth. Sexually transmitted diseases, however, simply aren’t mentioned.

In addition to the main character, the botanist, Taisia, a bisexual woman who begins the story in the throes of a lesbian sex dream, and by the end is paired up with Robert, a stereotypical “dark skinned and well muscled” man with an “insanely huge” eight or nine inch dick (euphemisms for big black guy with “big black cock”), we also have the female biochemist, Kristen, a heterosexual who’s never been with a woman, but, before the story is done, has had sex with one. Hiroshi, the Asian mechanical engineer, and Daniel, the team’s medic and computer specialist, round out the cast. Noticeably absent are any substantive medical or logistics support.

There is not a single chapter here that doesn’t include graphic sex. In fact, the purported plot gets so buried that the story reads like it could have been titled, Porn Stars in Space. What’s more, not only do none of the characters suffer any of the normal effects of overindulgence; they are always hot, hard, wet, and ready for more.

Somewhere along the line, it appears a decision was made that this tale didn’t need editing. The spelling and grammar are fine, but both head-hopping and literary constructions which must be reread to make any sense abound. “For fun” should not come at the expense of solid storytelling.

As an example of one of my pet peeves when reading porn, we are treated to gems like this one, “He

38 penetrated her shallowly, watching himself dip into her, then pulling back until he almost slipped out. He repeated this, going deeper by millimeters each time.” How she could possibly know that exact measurement without vaginal calipers or some other device, I have no idea.

There is a dearth of conflict to be resolved in this book. The tension is primarily that of a sexual nature. Not surprisingly, the aliens are magical, able to communicate in the humans’ language with no problem whatsoever, and provide much better medical services than the equipment the scientists brought with them.

Again, unsurprisingly, this is a HEA story where, regardless of any compatibility factors, these characters fall in love—because here, sex equals love and these people have a whole lot of sex. This is a tale for those looking for a salacious romp where the science fiction is little more than a backdrop.

Starcrossed Bride (print edition) (Meg Leader) Review by Cyd Athens (This book is published by ImaJinn Books. February, 2014. 296 pp.)

Connall Storm, a two-named bastard disowned by his father and therefore unable “to trace his ancestry back to the Founding Ship”, is an ambitious man with aspirations of becoming powerful and influential. To that end, he marries the Savant-trained and three-named orphan, Arkana Crystal Song. She agrees to what she expects to be a short and loveless marriage because her own ambitions include discovering what her parents were investigating when they died and continuing their research. Interpersonal compatibility in their relationship takes a back seat to more pragmatic matters. Because of her Savant training, Arkana has information Connall needs; he, on the other hand, has—or will have if their expedition is successful—the financial wherewithal to set her up to achieve her own goals. In short, their merger is nothing more than a business arrangement.

It’s annoyingly clear from the beginning of their relationship—their wedding— that they are ill-suited. Arkana is book smart, but not at all worldly, while Connall is an arrogant but wealthy man who has strong opinions about a woman’s place. When his mistress, Lucina, shows up at the wedding, and takes Connall aside to discuss her expectations of him—that he will use Arkana to get what he wants, refuse to confirm his marriage to Arkana, then marry Lucina—Arkana starts a food fight, which evolves into a brawl, in the process of defending her husband’s honor.

In several places, we encounter one of my least favorite literary constructs, variations of the “long moment.” A moment was a medieval unit of time which, on average, corresponded to ninety seconds. That’s about a minute and a half. So when we have a character doing this, “For long moments while he held his breath, not daring to move or make a sound…” it begs a lot of questions. Most people can’t go without breathing for that

39 long, and the plural, moments, suggests that he didn’t breathe for several minutes. Likewise, in other places where we see the “long moment,” it doesn’t jibe with the actions being described.

The pace here is slow, presumably to approximate and support the length of time it takes Connall, Arkana, and Jotan the Glorious, a cook/ minstrel who was the sole survivor of the tragedy that killed Arkana’s parents, to travel into the mountains on pack beasts. In the field, Jotan is a horrible cook, a singer of bawdy compositions, and is portrayed as comic relief. He is also, however, a gift from Lucina which suggests he is there to spy on the couple for her.

The trip into the mountains is cyclical. Connall, Arkana, and Jotan get to some new place, Arkana uses one of her Savant skills, and chaos ensues—in one instance because Arkana wins a lot of money in a “pok’r” game, something she’s studied but never actually played. Eventually, and not unexpectedly since this is a romance novel, Connall and Arkana become sexually involved with one another, which, of course, becomes love even though they’re no more compatible at that point than they were at the beginning of the story. Also not unexpectedly, Arkana gets pregnant. What is unexpected, and adds a layer of conflict to the romance, is how the pregnancy changes the relationship between Connall and Arkana.

All of these events occur on the dual-mooned world, Last Hope, humanity’s home “for more than a century” after humans destroyed not only Earth, but also Mars and Regulus V. The Founding Ship crash-landed, and humans have not yet redeveloped the technology to be able to leave the planet. So they’re stuck there— something the non-humanoid natives have decided, after observing the humans since their arrival, just won’t work because the humans are unable to join the planetary LifeLink and are therefore dangerous. The natives decide that the humans must be subjected to “Removal” a euphemism for “killed off.” This sets up the science fiction conflict. How can Connall and Arkana—barely able to hold together their own fragile romance— convince these powerful beings not to exterminate humanity?

The omnipotent narrator point of view works well here. That the author is careful to paint the original inhabitants as the natives, and the humans as the aliens, is a refreshing change. The sex scenes are welldescribed without ever becoming overly graphic. By the end of the tale, all the major plot threads have been resolved. The ending is open enough to leave room for at least one more story about this world. This is an easy read for a day where one wants little more than the warmth of a fire, a refreshing beverage, and a decent book.

The Protector (Diane Burton) Review by Jo Jones The Protector is the third novel in the Outer Rim series. While it does stand alone, I could tell there were references that I was missing because I had not read the first two books.

Pela and Dillan have a past history but not a romantic one. That changes when Dillan arrives in time to help Pela rescue two girls who escaped from a slave ship.

40 That starts the romance, but it is a romance with problems. The big problem from Pela’s point of view is their age difference. She is several years older than Dillan. The big problem from Dillan’s point of view is convincing Pela that age does not matter.

While there is romance, it is not the only focus of the story. Slavers who steal children and then sell them is the other focus. For Pela, stopping them is very personal and she will let nothing stand in her way. That paints a big target on her back. The romance is worked into the action as Pela and Dillan try to find and stop the slave ships from stealing children.

Dillan’s determination to keep Pela safe also causes conflict between the two of them. The Protector is action-filled. Pela and Dillan are very welldeveloped characters who do a good job carrying the story. They are aided by some outstanding secondary characters.

However, there were some things that I felt I missed. There was not a lot of world building or back story, probably because it was done in the previous two books. It did not change the tension or action in The Protector but it did leave me wondering about references more than once.

There was one thing I disliked. Pela was cooking at the beginning of the story. Everything she cooked or used had a made-up name and I found it very distracting. If you are fixing something that is used like bread, just call it bread. Calling it something else interferes with the flow of the story.

Thrill-Kinky (Teresa Noelle Roberts) Review by Marlene Harris For a TV show that ran for 14 episodes (plus one movie) Firefly is a show that is turning out to have a very “long tail” when it comes to influencing SF, particularly science fiction romance. And that the show’s influence seems to show most strongly in SFR rather than hard SF or space opera probably says something about its appeal and what fans see as its underlying strengths.

Getting down off soapbox now. Well, sort of.

Thrill-Kinky is the first book in at least two that the author has set in the future world of the tramp space freighter Malcolm. Malcolm, like the Firefly-class ship Serenity, is crewed by a bunch of verging-on-criminal misfits who mostly do good while occasionally carrying enough freight to barely pay the bills and docking fees.

However, unlike in Firefly, the crew of the Malcolm is made up of multiple species, a polyglot that only gets more poly as the story continues through Thrill-Kinky and into Bad Kitty.

41 The captain Mik is human, but his first-mate/business partner/husband Gan is not. The mechanic (and star of Thrill-Kinky) is the very human Rita, but her best friend Xia is definitely felinoid. And the final member of the crew is Buck, an ex-soldier with a few mechanical body parts and a whole lot of PTSD. The story begins with Rita out picking up garbage on a planet that sounds like Risa on steroids, during the planet’s annual festival celebrating sex and love. The entire crew of the Malcolm is partying except Rita, and Buck. Buck’s PTSD doesn’t like crowds.

Rita likes them just fine, but the slag she is picking up is a cash crop on a planet famous for its neuro relays.

Supposedly they are paying extra to get the crap picked up during the multi-day festival. Of course, anything too good to be true, like the payoff they will get for this surprisingly simple and totally legit job, turns out to be not true.

Rita finds a Banjali tied up and severely bruised inside one of the dumpsters she’s supposed to, well, dump. Drax is an agent for his planet of flyers, and he’s on planet to prevent an interplanetary incident between his people and the local government. Obviously, he’s been betrayed.

Fortunately for Drax, the crew of the Malcolm and especially Rita are exactly what he needs to thwart the bad guys (and girls, and others) and protect the cultural artifact on loan from his planet. He was planning to catch the thieves in the museum red-handed (or pawed, or whatever) by flying in through the skylight and waiting for the baddies to show up.

Instead, Rita climbs through the skylight, and the cat-girl goes all predator on the assassin who is out to take Drax (or pieces of Drax) in. And while everyone chases down the baddies and tries to stay alive, Drax discovers that it is possible to fall in love in just a couple of days – if the person you fall for is wired to the same thrill-kinky strain that you are.

Will true love conquer all, or will Drax return to his planet, his people, and his suddenly boring life as a secret agent?

Escape Rating B: Thrill-Kinky is fun and surprisingly fluffy for a romance about two people who like to have sex while threatened with death and dismemberment. Rita and Drax both get off on being in danger, and the high that comes from surviving it. This is actually fairly normal for Drax, his people have sex while flying. Both because they can and because it aids conception. But sex is distracting and flying is dangerous and the combination is definitely a thrill if your heart can take it.

The romance here is of the lust at first sight persuasion. Drax and Rita set each other off from the moment that they meet. That they are being chased by bad guys in a speeding (and shooting) vehicle just adds spice to their first encounter.

The plot device of the Malcolm crew needing to handle Drax’s assignment without his skillset or his high-end

42 tech toys is a great way for readers to get to know the crew and just what they are capable of.

While the action, and therefore the thrills, never let up, Rita and Drax discover that they are made for each other in every possible way, except one. Rita is a spacer, and Drax is an agent for his planet and people, willing to give his life (which he very nearly does) to protect his home. Also the Malcolm is definitely on the low-end of space freighters, and Drax is very used to a high-living, “smoothstyle” life. Rita is pretty much from the wrong side of the tracks. And Rita is all too aware that whatever they have can’t last, and probably can’t even be real, because there isn’t enough time, and there isn’t going to be enough time, to make it real.

Unless Drax is willing to gamble his whole life for the ultimate thrill – with Rita.

Write for us!

Length: 2,000 to 7,500 words.

Payment: 2.5 cents/word (US) paid upon publication, promotional biography with two links, and a complimentary quarter-page advertisement.

Deadline for Issue #10: 15 February, 2016.

Rights sought: Six-month exclusive world digital rights from date of publication; non-exclusive thereafter.

Other info: One short story will be published per issue. Please send only edited and polished work.

Due to time constraints, we are unable to give personalized feedback on rejected stories.

Stories that tie-in to a previously established world will be considered, but story must stand alone.

All sub-genres of science fiction will be considered.

Any heat level, from sweet to erotic, will be considered. Original, previously unpublished fiction only.

No fan fiction, please.

Story should meld the Science Fiction and Romance genres, and must have an upbeat ending.

Not quite sure what we’re looking for? Read our original fiction in previous issues.

No multiple submissions. No stories that have previously been rejected by us. Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but please inform us if the story is placed elsewhere.

Submit! Standard manuscript format, please. We have a new submissions system at our website.

Please use that to submit your story.

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Vast, Linda Nagata (1998) Review by Martin Wisse Space opera used to be terrible, reactionary stories of brawny male heroes with safe Anglo-Saxon names making the galaxy safe for Terran manifest destiny by cheerfully genociding any alien races looking at them funny. Long derided as the lowest of the low, though with the occasional saving grace in the form of that elusive “sense of wonder” all science fiction strives to achieve, it was sort of rehabilitated in the seventies by a generation of fans and writers who’d grown up reading the stuff. In the eighties and nineties this led to the so-called New Space Opera, which took that sense of wonder and removed the xenophobia and human supremacy from it. Though in this New Space Opera the universe was far more indifferent to human pretensions than the old stuff, it could still be upbeat, as in e.g. Iain M Banks’ Culture novels, where hundreds of various human races live happily ever after in an AIcontrolled utopia.

somewhat of Alastair Reynolds’ Revelation Space and sequels, which also partially took place aboard vast, ancient slower-than-light ships moving between star systems. There’s the same feeling of claustrophobia and isolation, though Nagata’s characters are much more strange than Reynolds’.

Vast is therefore one long chase scene, taking places over centuries of travel time as the Null Boundary moves further into the Orion Arm. It reminded me

were, are never quite answered, but the focus is in how Lot and all deal with their long voyage towards an answer, change and evolve during their journey. It’s not

There’s Lot, infected by the alien Cult virus, which basically makes him want to infect everybody he meets to let them join in a brotherhood of cosmic love.

Unfortunately for him, everybody on the ship is immune to him, which means he has no outlets for his urge to infect. It’s unclear where the virus came from, whether it’s related to the Chenzeme or, as some of the characters speculate, their hypothetical enemy.

Then there’s Nikko, the owner of the Null Boundary who most of the time remains within the ship’s systems, only occasionally downloading himself into a meat body and who, during the long centuries where nothing happens, tends to wipe his own memories every ninety seconds, living in minute and a half loops unless something interesting happens.

The two remaining passengers on the Null Boundary are Urban and Clemantine, the most normal and But not always. In Linda Nagata’s human looking, but like Nikko, each Vast, the universe is not just of them can upload and save their indifferent, but actively hostile to memories to the ship’s systems, rehuman life. A millions years old alien downloading into new bodies when war has left still active, automated warships behind, warships capable of blowing up suns. needed. Thanks to the cult virus, Lot can’t and is therefore condemned to spending a lot of time in cold As humanity moved out of the Solar System and sleep. He and Clemantine used to be lovers, but when established colonies around other stars, these Chenzeme ships started to attack. One such attack has she was still vulnerable, he infected her with the virus, which put a bit of a strain on their relationship. Now left only four survivors, fleeing the attack aboard the Null Boundary, a slower-than-light spaceship, who have she’s cured but none of the other three trust Lot all that much, suspicious of his virus induced pacifistic decided to go look for the source of the Chenzeme leanings. coursers, somewhere in the swan direction of the Orion arm of the galaxy, all the while being chased by a Vast is a psychological drama, where the questions of Chenzeme courser themselves. where the Chenzeme came from, or what their goals

44 entirely successful, as other than Lot, the characters remain largely two dimensional, not quite convincing.

Nikko and Urban especially come across more as a collection of tics and responses than as real people.

relatively close star systems would be, again something that isn’t entirely successful. In the end Vast provides a sort of monochrome sense of wonder, much more sober than the old, gaudy space opera of the pulps.

Vast is an excellent example of the new hard space This review originally appeared on Martin’s Booklog opera, playing “fair” with the laws of physics in limiting and is reprinted with the kind permission of Martin via its space ships to slower than light, while still using SF Mistressworks. miracle technology in the form of nanotech, computer uploads, semi-intelligent alien viruses, not to mention functioning robot warships millions of years old. It attempts to show something of the vastness of space by emphasising how long a journey even between

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Happily Ever After is for Everyone Opinion from Lise MacTague It may surprise some people to learn there is a world of sci-fi romance waiting for them where the characters are not straight and white. Diverse voices in writing continue to expand, but what does that mean for readers who don’t fall under those categories? Why should someone who is straight read something by someone who is gay or lesbian and/or features non-hetero characters?

If your answer is that you think sex between two women is somehow “icky,” remember sex isn’t everything in a relationship. But what is sex, in the context of a romance? It’s the culmination, or beginning, of an emotional relationship between the main characters. The yearning for connection, for relationships, is not very different in straight romance than it is in gay romance. Some of the expression varies, but in ways readers may find refreshing when compared to the mainstream work they’ve consumed for years. And that’s not to say that lesbian romances don’t have sex, that it’s all talking and hand-holding. Lesbian romance exists on a continuum, some are light on the sex, and some have lovemaking scenes (and lots of them!) that will blow your socks off.

The world is still full of people who, sadly, need a hypothetical future in order to conceive of worlds where women are equal to men, and gays are completely accepted A lesbian relationship doesn’t have one woman who’s “the man” and one who’s “the woman.” As a result, typical gender roles tend to be turned on their heads. You can’t take a straight novel and gay it up by changing the pronouns, at least not convincingly. I’ve heard of authors who have tried, thinking the LGBTQ market might be easier to break into, but such novels don’t succeed. There is a difference between sex scenes that are written for the male gaze, and ones written for lesbian readers. Many lesbians long for their happily ever after. Decades of watching lesbians die off as a result of their “lifestyle choices” in film and television translates to a lot of women starved for the kinds of happy endings that represent who they are. Lesbian romance is a validation that we are not diseased individuals who should either conform to that narrow mainstream ideal or die.

The world is still full of people who, sadly, need a hypothetical future in order to conceive of worlds where women are equal to men, and gays are completely accepted, to the point where they aren’t remarkable in their difference. Sci-fi lends itself nicely to – and is needed for – boundarybusting of this type. It also provides a fantasy space where scenarios can be imagined and dissected, and hopefully learned from. I write lesbian sci-fi romance because I like to imagine strong women dealing with

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exciting new situations, while exploring the bonds that tie them together.

My novels, Depths of Blue and Heights of Green, feature two strong female characters, both of whom are very different from each other.

Torrin Ivanov can be seen as the more feminine of the two, and yet is a badass smuggler who rides a motorcycle. Jak Stowell, who spent much of her life passing as a man, may be more masculine on the surface and yet is much more emotionally sensitive than Torrin. The characters spend both books saving each other and themselves from peril. While one might be in trouble, she isn’t waiting for the other to bail her out, nor is she asking to be bailed out. In Depths, Torrin doesn’t ask Jak to save her from the evil enemy colonel, rather she’s working out how to save herself and Jak happens to turn up at the right time to lend a hand.

(Rather forcefully and through the scope of a sniper rifle, as it turns out.)

In Heights, Jak is lost and disoriented as a result of a malfunction in her cybernetic implants, and she tries to make her own way back to civilization. When Torrin finds out about her predicament, she drops everything she’s doing to help find Jak, but Jak never sought her aid.

Each woman is capable of standing on her own, she doesn’t need the other, but rather chooses to be with her. These women are able to negotiate true partnerships based upon their own abilities and the trust each has for the other.

That’s what lesbian fiction has to offer. It’s a point of view that is unique to queer fiction. Traditional gender roles built up over centuries are explored and defied when found lacking. What emerges is something altogether different, a subtle, yet profound shift from the so-called norm. If you haven’t tried queer fiction because you think it’s not about you, give it a shot. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at what you find, and it just may open your eyes.

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The A to SFR of Audiobooks Craft by Veronica Scott If you enjoy listening to your Science Fiction Romance novels, the good news is that there are SFR audiobooks available. Amazon lists 274 ‘Romance=> Science Fiction’ titles. (And in a very unscientific test, they do include all three of mine!) Audible and iBooks also have good backlists of SFR audiobooks, depending what search criteria you use. The simplest approach I’ve found is to search on your favorite author’s name.

The audiobook market overall has grown by leaps and bounds in the last five years, much of the growth credited to the availability of digital downloads versus CDs, as well as celebrities narrating their own books or novels for others. In a recent discussion on the Science Fiction Romance Facebook Group, readers said they listen to audiobooks while driving, walking, exercising, knitting, cooking, relaxing – just about everywhere you can imagine! I have some readers who read the book on their Kindle, listen to the audiobook in the car on the way to work and pick up the Kindle again in the evening.

Three of my fellow independently published SFR authors shared their insights for this article – S. E. Smith, Pauline Baird Jones and Deborah A. Bailey.

If “location” is the key to real estate success, “narrator” is the secret to a good audiobook, assuming the author has created an exciting, intriguing novel. Here’s what New York Times and USA Today Best Seller S. E. Smith has to say about the narrator: “I've discovered that if the narrator and story are right, you get pulled into it. That is essential, especially if you are working

out, driving, or just cleaning the house. A narrator does more than read a story, they are actors who bring it to life with just their voice. Oh, and if you think narrating a story is easy, try recording a page on your computer or Smartphone and play it back!

I did. What an eye-opener! It really takes a very special person to be able to read 30,000-100,000 words without messing it up. I never made it past a paragraph. LOL. Then, do it with emotion, voice changes, and no background noises! They are totally amazing! So, go easy on them if they aren't perfect for you, they do a job few others can do.

I listened to numerous auditions before picking the narrators that I use. Within the first 30 seconds of listening to David Brenin read my story, I knew he had captured the essence of the character and story (the goosebumps on my arms helped). There were several factors that I look for: first, can the narrator capture the story.

Second, does the “voice” reflect the feel of world I've built and can I listen to it for a long period of time. Third, can he/she change the voices to reflect the characters.

Picking the right narrator is essential to the story.

The narrator is bringing it to life in a totally different way than the author.”

Here’s how Deborah Bailey selects hers: “Usually I'll wait until I have around 5 auditions, then I listen to them one after the other. That gives me a chance to compare how each narrator performs the same piece. What attracted me to Kristin James, who narrates my Hathor books, was that she picked up on the character nuances right

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away. She performed them just as I'd heard them in my head. For my short story book, I liked the fact the narrator could do different voices for each story. The narrator I picked for my non-fiction book was not the type of voice I set out to choose.

But I liked her reading. Her voice had a warm quality that I felt fit the content. Hearing your writing in your head is one thing, but hearing someone else perform it really gives it a different dimension.”

And Pauline’s experiences: “I guess the most important thing for me is that the narrator helps the reader get into the story, helps them enjoy it. I know for me, as an audio listener, I am not as picky about narrators as some. I think I’ve returned one book because I just couldn’t take the narrator. Picking narrators has been a learning process (a STEEP learning curve) for me, no question. I was not an audio book listener, so I had no idea what audio books should sound like, what made a good narrator. So, initially, I looked for someone who just read the story well. I dumped about ten books into ACX in two months! It was kind of crazy. I was trying to hit the Christmas sales market and I think I listened to 200 hours of audio in one month. My ears were almost bleeding, LOL.

falsetto, too “voice of the gods”, too many pauses, not enough pauses - but then I found actor Michael Riffle. From the first word, he just was the character Nick Jameson in Wreck of the Nebula Dream. I can’t imagine doing an audiobook version of any of my SFRs without Michael doing the narration. We had two narrators on Escape From Zulaire, adding actress Mary Fegreus to be the main character, Andi. That was really exciting, especially in scenes where the two actors were exchanging dialog. Not to give spoilers, but there’s a scene toward the end of the book, where the characters are literally in a last stand situation and Michael’s character has to persuade Mary’s heroine that she can do a seemingly impossible task…I get goosebumps listening to them.

Which leads me to my fellow authors’ favorite scenes from their audiobooks. S. E. Smith says: “My favorite scenes are when the narrator captures the character perfectly. In Touch of Frost, David is able to give the twins, two young boys, the perfect personalities. When they confront Frost, you can hear Frost's confusion and exasperation while the twins are enjoying every minute of it. In another story, David is able to bring out Cara's (Capturing Cara: Dragon Lords of Valdier Book 2) ADHD moment when she has too much coffee. Capturing those moments really brings the story to life.”

Deborah: “That's a tough one, because I have a few favorites! :) But one in particular is one of the quieter scenes in Hathor Legacy: Burn where the heroine, So most of my books are narrated by different Nadira has been people. I found some through friends, slowly separated from learned better what readers liked, and became an Jonathan (the hero) audio book listener myself, and I’m hopefully not and she has a very being quite so random these days. I have one vivid dream about him. narrator working on my Uneasy Future books, It's not a long scene, which is very nice. I’m excited for Core Punch and but the way Kristen Sucker Punch to release, hopefully for this narrated it really Christmas season. brought it to life. She captured the nuances of the character's longing so My own approach was similar to Pauline’s - I well, that I went back and listened to it a couple of listened to lots of auditions – too dramatic, too times. It's a quiet moment that really holds it own

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against the more action-oriented scenes.

I think that's part of what makes picking the right narrator so important. As a writer, I might be thinking of the bigger, turning point scenes. But a good voice artist can make the smaller, quieter scenes shine. It makes you look at your work in a different way.”

Pauline waxed a bit philosophical first: “One of the comments I’ve heard from other authors is that books are written to be read, not to be listened to.

But since becoming an audio listener, I’ve found that listening to a books has expanded my appreciation for the words the author used. It slows me down, so that I hear the words and let them build the picture in my head. Listening has also made me more aware of how much of some authors’ words I was skimming over while listening. I won’t slam another author, but there are a couple of very popular authors who I can’t, just can’t listen to their books in audio. So, it’s kind of hard to tout my own stuff. I like the words I used, so not exactly neutral. LOL I think, I hope, that listening to them will add another layer of fun to the experience. And I like all the scenes I wrote. Haha.

I will say, a book with lots of fun (IMHO) scenes in it is Do Wah Diddy Die. My narrator really got

the sense of fun I was trying to create and I think that makes it a fun book to listen to.”

For more information on S. E. Smith and her books, you can visit her website at http://sesmithfl.com/ For more information on Pauline B Jones and her books, you can visit her website at www.paulinebjones.com For more information about Deborah A. Bailey, you can visit her website at http://dbaileycoach.com/brightbooks/ A Sampling of Other SFR Authors with Audiobooks: Jessica E. Subject – 1Night Stand Series Rachel Bach – Paradox Series Laurann Dohner – New Species Series M. K. Eidem – Tornians Series Linnea Sinclair – Dock Five Universe Anne McCaffrey – Dragonriders of Pern Series, Crystal Singer series & more • Anne Aguirre – Sirantha Jax Series • Jayne Castle – Various Titles • Robin D. Owens – The Celta Series • Mary Robinette Kowal – The Glamourist Series • Cindy Spencer Pape – Gaslight Chronicles Series Coming next issue, the authors talk about their best selling audiobooks and give some advice to writers who want to create their own audio titles.

• • • • • •

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Multicultural Steampunk Focus by Suna Dasi Multicultural Steampunk was a late bloomer to the genre. By default, Steampunk seems to be tailored to appeal to white Westerners who have a hankering after a time when good etiquette was a matter of pride, combined with the exquisite fashion that bedecked the middle and upper classes and the sense of wonder and discovery in the natural and scientific world of Victorian times - not to mention the rise of Industrialism. The rest of the world was merely décor for the Empire's endeavour and ambition.

This being true of the actual Victorian Age, Neo-Victorianism does take historical reality into account and paints with a more varied palette. Not quite varied enough ,yet, though new multi-cultural Steampunk fiction and costuming by people of non-Western cultures is on the rise.

Steampunk fiction, if it uses a non-Western cultural setting, is most often the narrative of British Ladies and Gentlemen who cavort around the globe having rip-roaring adventures, pulp-fiction novel style à la Edgar Rice Burroughs. The narrative point of view is almost always theirs.

The non-Western characters who do feature are most likely to be comic relief, a villainous type or a subordinate, presented as an overblown stereotype of their nation's characteristics.

S.M. Sterling'sThe Peshawar Lancers is a fantastic case in point. It is set in a future India, but a previous global catastrophe means technology has reverted to steam. In his book, Sterling colonises India all over again, not only having the British leave their home isles to settle permanently in the Dark Continent: the whites adopt the native dress, culture and language and take up the positions of the higher castes.

Not even high caste Indians are complete equals; the main Indian character, a Sikh warrior, heroworships his white overlord, much in the way Umslopogaas did Allan Quatermain in Rider Haggard's 1886 adventure novel, She. (A book I love ,incidentally, problematic as that may seem in our politically correct world of today.)

Alan Moore and Kev O’Neill’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen came out in 1999. Captain Nemo, devised by Jules Verne as an Indian prince taken to the deep seas, was recreated by them and his Indian heritage is made very prominent. We see him worship a statue of Kali, he speaks Hindi with his Indian crewmen, the Nautilus is topped by a huge yoni-linga on the upper deck and his car headlamps are adorned with statues of the elephant god Ganesh. I found this very inspiring and hoped it meant an emerging trend of India-based fictional characters and narratives. However, when I looked into the actual fictional genre of Steampunk quite a few years later, it turned out there weren’t many other Indian characters to be found. Eventually, after a ten year gap, a female character appeared in the form of Nemo's daughter Janni Dakkar in LOEG:1910.

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I have been an aficionado of the Victorian Era for many years. It's hard not to be captured by the exciting moment in history that was the Industrial Revolution, or by the Victorian writers, poets, art movements and architecture. The thrilling promise of more advanced scientific understanding sung to my imagination; I was always exploring 19th century fiction and non-fiction, the cultural phenomena, fashions and fads that occurred in Victorian times. The umbrella term Steampunk was unfamiliar to me until much later.

It can perhaps be understood why I felt underrepresented within the genre once I started reading the fiction on offer. India during the British occupation is a prominent Kev O'Neill's artwork for the LOEG comics, from left to right: and influential chapter in history, a Prince Dakkar aka Captain Nemo, The Nautilus, and Janni Dakkar chapter that has a deep political and cultural resonance to this day. It is really quite odd to completely ignore it as a part of the Steampunk genre. What makes engaging in Steampunk so wonderful is the recreation of an era in history in a different mould – an era that has the Empire running roughshod over other cultures. Why not make alternate history truly alternative, instead of rolling in post-modernist angst of what is correct, which seems to be the going trend. It is fiction: the creativity that builds alternate history must be allowed to run unimpeded or the trap of self-censoring is a very real and dangerous one. That always makes for trite, non-heroic art in any discipline.

Whatever the kind of books we read; we read to escape reality and simultaneously, view reality through the prism of the 'other' When writing I think I present norm-challenging ideas in an interesting setting, but never to the detriment of telling the story. (Garth Nix is a wonderful example of this, his passion for telling the story that needs to be told always outweighs any overbearing political or psychological elements, but wow, are they there – and his sexual politics rock!)

Whatever the kind of books we read; we read to escape reality and simultaneously, view reality through the prism of the 'other'. When we read we engage in recognition. We apply the way we think to the wish-fulfilment, sorrows, trials and joys of the characters we invest in. Even when there is no

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one sympathetic in a pantheon of fictional characters, we apply self-referential comparison in our disgust, disbelief and disillusionment when appalling characters make terrible choices or say reprehensible things.

Reading Steampunk fiction, I continually found myself wishing for more Indian characters, or at least mixed race and mixed culture characters whose background informed their personality and choices. To go a step further, Indian women are mostly lacking. Frustrating, as the possibilities seem endless.

There are two female Steampunk fiction characters that instantly do spring to mind, the aforementioned daughter of Nemo, Janni Dakkar, crated by Alan Moore and Miss Celestial Temple, from Gordon Dahlquist's The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters. She is a an affluent, mixed race colonial fending for herself in an alternate London. This is of course purely personal, but these women affected me powerfully. While I hugely enjoyed Susan Kaye Quinn's Dharian Affairs, I was less wholeheartedly immersed in the trials and tribulations of the Princesses, for their situations were more outlandish to me.

In this context, I am looking forward to see what I will make of Eric Brown's Jani and the Greater Game, a Steampunk novel that features a female, half British, half Indian protagonist. I have yet to read it but this Geek Native review gives a good impression: Neither was I the only one with this conundrum: people from all kinds of different cultures who were into Steampunk were asking: Where am I? Where is my story? Where are the characters I can have an affinity with?

More importantly, in the tradition Steampunk has of weaving actual historical characters into the narrative tapestry, there are so many women and men of note to choose from when diving into India's rich and vibrant history. The Maharani of Jhansi, Lakshmibai could be the inspiration for a powerful Steampunk character.

She is a legendary Indian heroine for being one of the first royal leaders to lead her troops against the British during the Indian uprising of 1857, an event now commonly described as the First Indian War of Independence.

She was often seen on horseback in the male attire of her court with her hair loose, and was apparently a great shot, a renowned archer and an accomplished martial artist.

If the Rani's life story and personality aren't eminently Steampunkable, I don't know what is!

Steampunk's other defining characteristic is the love for invention, innovation and the physical fusion of ideas. With the Indian flair for style and inventiveness – and lacking the cutting edge facilities and basic modern apparatus that were the privilege of the British Isles – the Indians were left to use their hands and their cunning. They wrought their own fanciful versions of machinery from exotic and local materials. Jagadis Maharani of Jhansi Chandra Bose (after whom Bose sound-systems were named!) played a vital role in helping to invent the radio. In 1896 Bose became one of the first people to demonstrate that radio waves could be transmitted over long distances. Some scholars argue that he was the first person to achieve this feat. Bose also played a key role in developing the crystals used to detect radio waves.

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In short: examples galore.

In 2012, I launched the Steampunk India website, with the aim to give India its rightful place, as I see it, within the Steampunk universe. I want to create strong Indian characters, preferably female, but either way stepping out of the traditional mould of Steampunk costume and fiction.

Furthermore they should rise above - and go against - traditional morals and values of both Britain and India during the time of the Raj. As shown here: these two women, Itra and Mandu, are DevaDasi temple dancers and pleasure-givers who are seen as exploited prostitutes, much the way Westerners saw Japanese Geisha.

The DevaDasi of old have more in common with Geisha than most people know The DevaDasi of old have more in common with Geisha than most people know (or like to ignore, to further their own agenda). They were absolutely giving themselves to temple visitors for sex. They were also educated in music, poetry, literature, and martial arts.

So the Steampunk characters portrayed here are all of these things. They are also deep cover spies.

They are lovers. One of my gripes with Western forms of Steampunk is that the excessive love and imitation of Victorian social etiquette stymies more immediate and visceral ways of expressing the alternate world, in both costumed events and fiction. I'd like to play with this a bit more. I'm convinced you can have both. The gift of Steampunk is its ability to present an exciting and challenging parallel universe. A Raj that might have been and a modern India that could be: for, certainly, the current India is still no place for outspoken and brave women trying to break the stranglehold of caste and tradition, even though slow change is being wrought by many women who are exactly that – some unnamed and unknowable, some more publicly, visibly outspoken, all tirelessly working for change, even as we speak.

It is all very close to my heart, and with good reason.

In 1861, one of my own ancestors was transported from South India to the Caribbean on a British East India Company ship, to work as an indentured servant on a Scottish-owned sugar and coconut plantation. He retained his Hindu beliefs throughout. My grandfather was born on the plantation but gained his freedom later in life; he moved to the Dutch Caribbean and married a local girl DevaDasi temple dancers from the ABC Islands. My mother moved to the Netherlands in her mid-teens (where there is a large Indonesian and Indian community). I was born thousands of miles away from my origins. Like so many products of colonial times, I was brought up with one foot in the East, one foot in the West, seeking approval from both, yet feeling like an intruder who is going to be found out at any moment.

Shweta Narayan – who wrote the beautiful The Mechanical Aviary of Emperor Jalal-ud-din Muhammad Akbar – puts it most eloquently on her own website when she mentions fretting about "...the fragile line between syncretism and appropriation."

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Writing helps. It helps me piece together the timeline of my scattered genes. It helps me give the legacy of ancient Indian culture a place among post-modern, post-religious values of the West. It helps me embrace my place in the world.

One of my Steampunk stories, Unmade, a lesbian love story set on a Caribbean plantation, will hopefully find a place in a multicultural Steampunk anthology which is in the early stages of development in Europe. The story is important to me as I chose the location very deliberately: the plantation is the one on which my great-grandfather was an indentured worker.

Steampunk Hands Around the World is an annual, monthlong event showing that the Steampunk genre is a global one The anthology itself is a great example of a multicultural project. Everyone involved knows one another because of Steampunk, and largely met through an online project called Steampunk Hands Around the World. The initiative came from Kevin D. Steil (also known as the Airship Ambassador).

Steampunk Hands Around the World is an annual, month-long event showing that the Steampunk genre is a global one. There are new friendships to be found in every conversation and event. Hands is presented in multiple formats from blogs to videos to live events. Each person is responsible for organising their own content and format, but the central theme is that of global connection and friendship.

Some of the writers who contribute articles and content every year were contacted by two fellow participants who wished to boost the presence of Steampunk fiction against a non-Western backdrop. A crowdfunding campaign will become active in due course to publish the book.

There is a growing wave of such books: one of my latest stories, Internal Devices, will feature in Steampunk Universe in 2016, an anthology edited by Sarah Hans.

The SEA is Ours, another short story anthology that focuses specifically on South-east Asian tales, has just rocketed into the aether, edited by Jaymee Goh and Joyce Chng.

Arjun Raj Gaind's Empire of Blood comic (with bold, strong artwork from Enrique Alacatena), explores an alternate India in which the British never left and in which the division of power has remained unaltered.

Of course, some writers are inspired by India's history without such an intense personal investment: aforementioned American Sci-Fi writer Susan Kaye Quinn's Dharian Affairs is a rip-roaring adventure series featuring stubbornly independent noblewomen, airships, spies, marvellous contraptions and sweeping romance. Pure, unapologetic escapism with strong female protagonists!

Artwork from Empire of Blood

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As far as Steampunk music is concerned, the only example of Steampunk-esque bands that I know of who incorporate both East and West in their work, is Sunday Driver. Singer Chandy Nath adds her classical Indian vocals to some of the songs and the music is a happy fusion of Indian and Western instruments.

I would love to see more of this, so if any readers know of further examples I shall be very happy to hear about it!

One thing needs addressing, the Indian elephant in the room: the question of Steampunk in India itself.

Part of the reason I started the Steampunk India project was that there was no Steampunk movement in that country. In the same way in which geek culture, cons and events are continuously on the rise in India, so Steampunk is slowly becoming something Indian people can enjoy.

India has always had an enormous mainstream and underground comic movement I think there can be no doubt that it was desis like myself who had a growing interest and enthusiasm for the genre to begin with. The reason is simple but profound: it's the dual perspective. I live in the West but I have my roots in the East. For Indians in India, what was truly the point of engaging in a subculture that seemed to consist predominantly of white folk emulating the Imperial morals and values of the Victorian colonial age and all the dubious history that came with it? This is changing, at last.

India has always had an enormous mainstream and underground comic movement: it is a major consumer of all things nerdy. But only in recent years is India enjoying a big mainstream geek culture. Comic Cons, Cosplay events and other geekdom gatherings are gaining momentum and are attracting more and more people.

The quality of life for certain cultural groups in India has reached a level where they can reasonably spend time and rupees enjoying geek culture, including Steampunk. People are costuming, reading the fiction, getting together, crafting things and reimagining a Victorian Era where India occupies a different place than it does in history.

And I very much wished to be part of that perspective shift, especially from a Steampunk angle. What better arena than India to fuse fiction, the Age of Steam and alternate history?

I would love to see Steampunk fiction from India itself, as India has a very healthy and beautifully diverse SFF and Spec Fic book culture. Imagine the same art and imagination currently being applied to the traditional comics for epic mythology like the Mahabaratha and the Ramayana, being applied to Indian Steampunk comics?

In general, if someone were to ask me what motivates or inspires my own writing, I could sum it up as: imbalance, subversion, insolence and being a woman! I tend to put women in unusual settings or places and try to think through, in as much detail as possible, how these situations would pan out. What happens when only parts of India are emancipated? What happens when a Maharani loses her husband

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and adjacent conservative regions and other traditionalist countries refuse to trade with her because she is female?

In the grand tradition of fiction and workshop tinkering, I am warping, bending and altering things, but in my Steampunk India you will still find nasty British ruling classes and nasty patriarchal Indian morés alongside some morally liberated characters.

I am not on a crusade to excuse, elevate or exonerate either the British or the Indian nation for anything. That said, there is still plenty of room left for general socio-political observation, satire and gender politics without becoming an apple-crate preacher. I can make better points regarding the historical “then” and the pertinent “now” by creating this alternate history. There needs to be enjoyment in the process and this can be achieved without losing either integrity or amusement. I need to have fun!

For those interested in reading Steampunk India writings and explore other multicultural fiction and people, here is a - by no means complete - list of links: •

Goodreads list of multicultural, diverse and LGBT inclusive Steampunk fiction.

•

Those Dark Satanic Mills is a short story podcast I wrote and narrated last year for the ever lovely Philippa Ballantine and Tee Morris, the creators of The Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences series.

•

The Ghost Rebellion, Book Five in the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences book series by above mentioned Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris, will take place in India, setting the series protagonists on the trail of Dr. Henry Jekyll. The Ghost Rebellion will be made available in ebook, print and audio.

•

Recently I contributed to Jeff VanderMeer and Desirina Boskovich's The Steampunk User's Manual, with photos and quotes based on intensive questioning on their part, about my multicultural interpretation of Steampunk. The book is available on Amazon and in all major bookshops.

•

The Tinku Diaries is an original piece of fiction written especially for Yomi Ayeni of The Clockwork Watch Transmedia Project. The diary is kept by an Indian scientist's wife, who records her experiences in London. The Tinku Diaries are available to read at the Steampunk India website.

•

Diana Pho of Beyond Victoriana is one of the pioneers of advocating the incorporation of all cultures in Steampunk, especially non-Western ones. Her website and blog are a terrific resource of links, articles and individuals.

•

Hopeless, Maine by Tom and Nimue Brown is a stunning comic that packs many Steampunk elements and has the added joy of a mysterious, mixed race female protagonist.

•

Ariel Dixon, aka Makeup Siren, is an example of a cosplayer for whom the fashion is what matters. The fact that some of her creations are inspired by non-Western cultures is what I might call a positive side-effect!

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The Magic of Wisdom Spotlight from Kristine Kathryn Rusch When I was a kid, I believed that adults of a certain age became wise.

Maybe some fairy godmother came down from the sky and touched them with a wand, igniting a previously unused portion of the brain. Maybe the hormones raging through the system settled down enough that thought became more important than emotion. Or maybe that was a lie my parents told me to keep me quiet.

One of the greatest disappointments in my adult life is learning that—nope, no wisdom comes with age. Just some experience and, if we’re lucky, the ability to understand how somethings work— generally from hindsight. And yep, that passes for wisdom in most circles, because really, it’s almost impossible for someone under the age of 20 to do.

In college, I was a history major. I still read great thick history books for pleasure. I love digging into the past. I love old books and old newspapers, old radio shows and ancient newscasts. I love finding out the “truth” of a time period, and not the things that people believe to be true about that time period.

Now, looking back from the vantage of 55 years, I realize that all the things I’ve experienced of late have happened before. (Yes, history does repeat itself.)

The first wave of feminism happened to my grandmother’s generation. Those women, many of whom were born in the 1880s and 1890s, got women in the United States the right to vote. They marched on Parliament in the U.K. and changed the way women were perceived all over the world.

Women of the 1920s had a lot more freedom than the previous generation, and they ended up taking a lot of that freedom for granted. Let’s be fair, though—their world collapsed on them, and they spent the 1930s trying to feed their families.

Women of the 1940s fought a world war alongside their men. These women manned factories and fixed cars. They flew airplanes and defended their countries—only to be forced into “female” roles when the men came home. Those women had a lot of bitterness, and most of them never discussed those shockingly repressive years between 1946 and 1966.

The second wave of feminism came from the writings of those women, their experiences, and influenced their daughters. I grew up at the end of that wave. My older sisters (19 and 16 years older, respectively) actually made headway in that second wave of feminism. They fought battles big and small, all of which are too personal to mention here.

I felt like a tagalong. I got some of the benefits of those battles, but not all of them. I still tear up when I see female athletes receiving the same kind of recognition that their male counterparts receive.

Title IX of the 1964 Civil Rights Act here in the United States had a huge impact on the world we live in now.

Title IX states: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”

It didn’t start being enacted until 1975 (and the litigation continues on some aspects). But those later changes—which occurred in 1975, 1977, and 1980—all meant that female athletes were entitled to the same treatment as male athletes from childhood on.

I graduated from college in 1982—too late to benefit from Title IX. I was an athletic kid, but I couldn’t play baseball in school (even though I beat the boys on our neighborhood team) or run track (not that I would have). So seeing girls succeed—girls who actually get a chance to excel at something they’re good at—makes me tear up to this day.

The playing field was leveling as I grew older, and there were certain parts of the playing field that always seemed completely level to me. Writing and publishing seemed completely level. After all, I read

58 books written by women writers—a lot of women writers. I submitted stories and articles to female editors. I knew of female publishers.

When I became the editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1991, I became the first (and only) female editor of that magazine, but I was not the first female editor in science fiction by a long, long ways.

There are a few arguments about who should be considered the first female editor of science fiction.

Should we count Miriam Bourne, who acted as an associate editor and managing editor for Amazing Stories, beginning in 1928, its first year of publication?

Or Madeline Heath, who edited All-Story Magazine in 1929? I’m sure there were female editors before that at other publications, now lost to history, who published things we would count as science fiction.

Women continued to be influential in the field from 1928 until now. For example, in the 1990s, the award ballots and the bestseller lists for science fiction were dominated by women.

So imagine my surprise a few years ago, when a young female writer told me that there were no women writers in science fiction.

When I looked at this writer in surprise, she realized who she was talking to and added, “Present company excepted, of course.”

This woman had been a student of mine and had taken science fiction classes from me because I wrote science fiction. I wrote off her comment because, frankly, she was not the brightest bulb in the chandelier. I figured she was just as unobservant about the history of the field as she was about the world around her.

Then I saw the same comments crop up online. An entire generation of young female writers started going on and on and on and on about the fact that there were no female science fiction writers. This prompted award-winning writer Eleanor Arnason to write a brilliant blog post called “What Are We,

Chopped Liver?” on Strange Horizon’s website. (I reprinted it on my women in science fiction website late in 2015.) Eleanor expressed how a lot of us felt.

We’d always been here. We had blazed some trails, yes, but mostly, we stood on the shoulders of giants.

Female giants—from Andre Norton to Leigh Brackett to C.L. Moore—none of whom, by the way, changed their names because they were discriminated against. (That’s another myth.)

Of course, there were women in sf—a lot of us—and we’d been here since the beginning of the genre.

A month or two after those comments mushroomed on social media, I taught a writing science fiction class. Years and years and years ago, I got tired of using examples from movies to illustrate my point when I teach writing, so before each class, I hand out a reading assignment. That way, my students and I always have the same touchstones for discussion.

I decided, given all this silly “controversy” about the lack of women in sf, to have my students read the best women writers in the business. I was teaching a short fiction class, so I wanted short stories. Considering the fact that women dominated the short categories of the awards ballots for nearly a generation, I figured that would be easy.

But it wasn’t.

Almost every award-winning short story by a woman was out of print.

Most award-nominated (and winning) stories by men were still in print.

What happened?

I’m not exactly sure. I think it was a combination of factors, including something called unconscious bias. A person who has unconscious bias, unlike a hardcore bigot, will prefer someone who looks like him to someone who doesn’t.

Since almost everyone who edited science fiction bests of the year in the past twenty years were male (and white, another topic for another day), most of the contributors to the years best volumes were male as well. And, in fact, most of those stories did not end up on award ballots, let alone win.

I couldn’t find classics of the genre by Kate Wilhelm,

59 Octavia Butler, Lois McMaster Bujold or Connie Willis in one volume or even two volumes. I had to have the students buy those authors’ collections for one or two stories. I had to hunt those stories out.

influenced sf by winning a lot of awards and selling a lot of books—writers like Anne McCaffrey and Andre Norton, writers whose work influenced entire generations like Leigh Brackett and Ursula K. Le Guin.

Suddenly, I understood why these young writers Women who wrote spectacular science fiction—not just believed there were no women writing science fiction. sf about women or women’s issues. But plain old Historically speaking, we had been wiped off the map. excellent sf with no political agenda at all.

There was no record of the work we did.

I reread a lot of stories to make sure they held up for a This had happened for the generations of women who modern audience. Some of the classics of the 1970s did had come before. Pamela Sargent had edited Women of not. They were really dated. But a lot of the older works Wonder in the 1970s because there was no record of from the 1930s and 1940s held up just fine (with the the women who had written the most influential exception of some dated language). One thing I science fiction of the 1930s through the 1950s. Pam set discovered—or rediscovered—was that so much of sf the record straight, and as she says in a blog she wrote (not just the stuff by women) was romantic, sweeping, for the women in science fiction website, she thought epic. Love stories, buried inside adventure fiction. the work was done.

Great heroes and even greater heroines. Strong women and strong men.

She wrote, “The WoW anthologies remained in print for over a Wonderful, wonderful stuff. decade and in my naïveté, I Then I ended up with the herculean task thought the point had been of picking 100,000 words of fiction out of made: Women could write fine an entire century’s worth of good stuff. I science fiction, and had been left out much more than I could ever put writing it for some time; no in. longer would we be relegated to But if I could time-travel back to that sf being tokens, exceptions to the class, I would use that book. I would rule, or a kind of ladies’ auxiliary show these young writers who think of sf.” women were not part of the science She added, “Little did I know. Few fiction field all of the great women who disputes are ever completely came before them, and the spectacular settled and battles almost always stories those women wrote. have to be refought and cogent I hope to do more volumes. And I will do points made over and over some award volumes with John Helfers, again.” bringing back a lot of award-winning I guess we all had to learn that. stories from the past that never got With great disappointment—and anthologized properly. more than a little anger—I went Until then, though, my new project for Baen is in the to Toni Weisskopf, the owner and publisher of Baen Books. Toni—a woman of the same generation as me, process of publication. The book, which we titled Women of Futures Past, will come out in the fall of 2016 who has worked as a writer and editor in the field as long as I have—was as angry as I was about this lack of —just in time for the next science fiction writing class that I plan to teach. respect for previous generations.

I proposed an anthology for Baen—not a new Women of Wonder which showed what women are capable of. I think we’ve proven that over the years (over and over again). The anthology I proposed is the one I wanted for my sf class.

This has been quite a journey for me. It has put me in touch with my roots—as a trained historian, a woman who used to participate in feminist gatherings, and as a science fiction fan.

It has also educated me. Just because I know something happened in the past doesn’t mean anyone I wanted the best stories from women, the ones that should have been in the years best volumes or the best else does. As Pam Sargent said, these battles never of the century volumes, and were not. I limited myself really end. They crop up in new and different ways. to stories from the 20th century, and to writers who

60 I now know why my grandmother used to smile so mysteriously at my sister when she complained about the lack of respect she received as a woman. Why 50year-old Gerda Lerner started the first Ph.D program in women’s history (at my alma mater, The University of Wisconsin) in 1980 in the first place.

I get it now. Because history gets lost—especially the history of women and minorities.

We need to honor that history and respect it.

One way I have honored that history is to edit a book that brings back wonderful short fiction, stories written in the 20th century that speak to the 21st.

I’ll find other ways as well.

I don’t want to be caught by surprise again. I don’t want our history to get lost.

So I’m doing what I can to help my favorite writers inspire new generations. And to help readers find some great writing.

I’m not wise. I just have a lot of experience. And I’m putting some of that experience to good use.

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Topography of Meringue (Laurie N. Meynig) “I do not understand it.”

“Kissing?” The muscles of her face pull to the sides. She is smiling at me. She is amused by me.

“Yes. The pushing of lips together and the touching of tongues. I do not understand it.”

Her voice goes up and down—the poetic subroutines I have programmed for myself provide the term “dances”—because she is laughing at me. I do not take offense. This response is not uncommon from humans. They find me funny.

“It ain’t exactly something that can be explained properly. Not the way computers explain things,” she says, replenishing the receptacle of paper napkins in front of me. “Kissing is a physical thing. It’s about desire.”

“I do not understand desire.”

There is a cup of hot coffee in my hands. I cannot drink it—I do not have the hardware upgrade necessary to process organic materials. Shelly the Waitress does not mind. Her shifts at the diner occur Thursdays through Tuesdays between 8pm and 1am. Few humans will engage in casual dialogue with an Organic Replicant like myself. Interactions with Shelly educate me, and she behaves around me as she does with other patrons of the diner. It is an average place and I appear average while I am here.

Six months, three weeks and five days have passed since my first encounter at the diner. My visits have averaged four point six times per week. They are famous for their pies. A neon sign in the window declares that. Twenty-seven varieties of fruit, cream, custard and other pies. I have not ordered a slice as it would be wasteful.

Shelly is often stationed near the pies during her shift and I have come to associate the two ideas in my memory banks. Particularly the lemon meringues. Each night the white topping of the pies are a culinary equivalent of mathematical fractals. It is fascinating to track changes in something that, in theory, is the same entity. Like Shelly.

“You know,” she says, leaning on the counter in front of me, “for an artificial intelligence, they kind of built you more on the artificial side than the intelligent one.”

“I understand kissing is part of the human mating process. The research I have done indicates people enjoy kissing, despite it being extraneous to copulation.”

Humans are uncomfortable discussing their sexuality openly. Shelly looks around the diner, the capillaries of her cheeks releasing blood under the skin. The hour is late and few people remain in the diner. This is not the first time we have discussed the sexual instincts of humans, though her reaction now is different from previous occurrences. Why? “It’s not just the kissing,” she says to me, lowering the tone of her voice. “It’s about what follows. It’s like a doorway to intimacy.”

“A doorway?” English is an inefficient language. I am not sure why humans continue to use it. The necessity of metaphor, simile, and allegory to explain ideas is subjective and leaves room for error.

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“Yeah,” she says, nodding her head. “Like, a kiss—just a peck, lips barely touching—is a knock on that door.” She taps her knuckles against the countertop. “And if the door is opened, a whole slew of possibilities chase after it. A deep, passionate kiss is something more. Maybe throw in a little petting, and you find yourself in the entryway. If things go well, you tumble right into the bedroom. It’s not just the kiss we like.”

As she explains the idea, her eyes stray and unfocus the way humans do when they recall memories, and her core temperature increases half a degree. Her voice changes as she talks, filled with an emotion I do not recognize. The sound of it prompts me to reevaluate my assessment of metaphor. “It is the potential that excites you?”

“Yes and no.”

The last of the customers complete their transactions and I wait as she accepts their payment. There are eight minutes left before the diner is closed for business. I always remain until closing time. Tonight, Shelly turns off the neon ‘Open’ sign early and locks the door, though I am still inside.

I remove the appropriate currency notes from my wallet and place them on the counter. “I am sorry. My internal clock seems to be malfunctioning.”

Shelly sits at the stool next to me, placing a hand on my arm, and squeezes. I do not move, unsure of this type of interaction. Shelly has never touched me like this before.

“What’s all this sex talk about, Servo?”

Servo is the name Shelly decided for me, claiming my official designation—ORGREP3708-Q2—too cumbersome for daily use. I agree with her, though she will not tell me the logic behind her choice in nomenclature. My requests for information are frequently denied, I suspect because she finds my frustration with ignorance amusing.

“I have been studying your documentaries on the subject. The sexual act itself I understand. But kissing I do not.”

“Our documentaries?” Shelly said, blinking at me repeatedly. “Servo, have you been watching pornos?”

“Several of the websites I surveyed referred to the documentaries as porn or pornography. By definition: writings, pictures or films designed to elicit sexual excitement. It seemed appropriate for my research.”

“Servo, porno isn’t real.”

“It looked quite authentic to me.”

“Okay, it’s real. But it’s not real real.”

“Your double usage of the word ‘real’ indicates a different meaning.”

“Pornos are for entertainment. Real people having real sex, but it doesn’t mean it’s like actual life.

They’re real like movies are real.”

“This data is new. Its addition sets back my research.”

Shelly has brought up a point I had not considered: the films’ intended audience. I had assumed them to be general educational videos.

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“Why research it at all?” Shelly says, collecting the condiments from the tables. I follow her, carrying the bin to house the bottles. “There a special lady-robot you’re trying to woo? Or a manly robot?”

Technically, I am not a robot. Shelly knows this. Based on the inflection changes in her voice, I surmise she enjoys using the more recognizable term.

“I do not know any gendered robots,” I say, the incorrect categorization setting off my veracity protocols.

“Really?” Shelly takes the bin from me and walks into the diner’s kitchen. “I guess I just assumed y’all had boys and girls like us.”

“My line was designed with neutrality in mind. We are meant to be accessible and non-threatening to any human.”

“Would you mind closing the window shades, Servo?”

I twist the plastic wands and the blinds remove the parking lot from view. On most nights, I am not permitted to assist with the closing duties. Shelly joins me again in the dining area, her arms behind her back.

“Emilio and the boys have all checked out,” she says, frowning. “Could you get this for me, hon? I can’t quite seem to work it.”

She turns her back toward me, the thin straps of her apron twisted and contorted into a complicated knot. I work at the straps with meticulous care.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Shelly says.

I replay our recent conversation in my memory. “Yes. The point of my research. An attempt to better understand the behavior of humans.”

“You don’t really sound like you believe that.” She turns to face me, pulling the apron over her head.

“I am not capable of believing anything,” I say. “But you are not wrong. It is possible I have been too much exposed to fictions of artificial intelligence seeking to mimic human behavior.”

“So it’s not that you want to be like us. You’re just curious about us? About sex?”

“It is an experience I have never encountered before.”

Shelly smiles at me. “A virgin robot, huh?”

“I had not thought of myself in that sense. The term is applicable.”

“You come here a lot, Servo,” Shelly says.

Her comment is unexpected and her meaning uncertain. Humans do not predictably state facts without an ulterior motive.

“I enjoy the topography of your meringues.”

Shelly laughs and I cannot discern why my accounting of the pie would cause it. I wish that I could.

Her laugh is different each time it occurs. I compare the recordings.

“If I had a dollar for every time I’d heard that one,” Shelly says, wiping at her eyes and then she kisses me.

It is my first kiss and I am not prepared for it. The framework of intimate contact with a human is not a probability I invested processing energies into. Her lips on mine are soft and pleasant, the sensation

64

changing as she moves them against me. I do not know how to react. My subroutines provide possible responses, but I do not have time to analyze potential outcomes and determine the most positive choice.

Shelly pulls away from me and I am disappointed at the break in our connection. There was more data that could have been assessed.

“Knock, knock,” Shelly whispers, her cheeks pink again.

“The metaphorical knock, knock?”

“That would be the one.”

“I do not have genitalia.”

She laughs a giggle at me. “There’s more ways than one to get a lady where she needs to be.”

“I cannot provide your eggs fertilization. Our union would produce no offspring.”

“That’s a bad thing?”

“I do not know if I am pleasing to taste. There are other closing duties you need to perform. I have not had adequate time to—” “Servo.” Shelly places her fingers against my mouth. “You haven’t been showing up for my shifts here because of the meringues. Well, not just them, anyway. You may be a robot, but I can tell when someone’s sweet on me.”

I give the thought consideration. My opinions regarding Shelly are currently unprocessed. Each completion of a day cycle with her I notate more data required before formulating a conclusion. Given current events, I address them.

“Most humans do not see me. To them, I am an appliance. Technology designed for their convenience.

In many ways, they are correct. Some humans fear or hate me. You are Shelly with me. Just Shelly so that I can be just Servo. I value our interactions.”

Shelly’s eyes saturate with tears. Humans cry for many reasons. Have I said something to upset her?

She is kissing me again. I do not fully understand why, though it indicates she is not distressed. Shelly wraps her arms around my shoulders and clutches the base of my head. Our hips press against each other as her kisses move down the column of my neck.

“I am unsure of what to do,” I admit to her.

“Most people are, their first time,” she says, smiling against my neck. “What do you want to do? What are you curious about?”

I reach my hand toward her face, careful with the amount of pressure I apply. When my humanoid form was designed, it was done so with a focus on symmetry and clean lines. The uneven elements of Shelly’s face are entirely new to me. I trace the edge of her jaw as her lips return to mine. Shelly’s skin is softer than seems safe. Not a firm silicone covering that would be more protective.

I run my palms down the length of her back, slowly, to ensure I do not harm her and to provide Shelly the opportunity to terminate our interaction. As my fingers pass over the band of her bra, my sensors detect an increase in her heart rate. I trace the lines of it along her shoulders and across her back and she smiles into our kiss.

“You promise you won’t tell anyone we did it in the diner?” Shelly asks, resting her hands on my backside. There is hesitation in her voice and I do not want her to feel embarrassment.

65

“At the conclusion of this day’s timeframe, I will encrypt these files in my memory bank at the highest security level.”

Shelly stares at me as two point five seconds pass. “I’m gonna guess that’s your version of a pinky swear.”

She pulls my hand toward her and I do not prevent it. Shelly is as fascinated by my fabricated skin as I am by her naturalism. This is as new and wondrous for her as it is for me. The realization invalidates several of the negative outcomes provided by my probability matrix.

She takes my fingers in her mouth, teeth drag along my skin, her tongue following. Pain followed by soothing. I had not realized my programming could experience this. The stimulation tests the processing power of my sensors. I understand Shelly has stepped through her metaphorical doorway and we are now in the entry. I endeavor to perform satisfactorily.

With my unoccupied hand, I cup her breast. As I press my thumb into the firm bud at the apex, Shelly moans into my palm. The vibration of her lips resonates through me. Her reaction is more than I expect and I want to find others.

“May I remove your shirt?”

Shelly smiles at me as I reach for the top of her blouse. I slide each plastic disc through its buttonhole, careful not damage the garment. Shelly runs her hands along my forearms and shoulders; not to stop me, but to urge me onward. The skin under her shirt is dark and freckled, but a lighter shade around her breasts. I caress the places where her torso dips and swells in ways mine does not. Her breathing is uneven and her heart beats erratically. I remove my hands.

“If I am causing you physical distress or you are uncomfortable—” “Servo, I appreciate your concern, but please stop talking. Touch me.”

“You are aroused,” I say, running my fingertips over her firm nipples pressing against the fabric of her bra. Shelly gasps and grips my arms.

“Ain’t that much of a surprise.”

I enable my poetic subroutines to be the primary narrator in recording the night’s events. It seems appropriate. “It is…pleasing to me.”

Her smile is kind and her fingers deftly twist the clasp of her bra, the garment falling open to reveal her.

“Pleases me, too.”

My internal clock is tracking the length of time that passes between us. I minimize its recording to a background function. The elapse of nanoseconds is not an appropriate measure for this moment. It does not belong with this data: the millimeters of dilation in Shelly’s eyes as I connect with her flesh, the degrees of temperature her skin rises under my hand, and the rapidity of her heartbeats.

Shelly unbuttons my shirt to my waist. The diner is quiet except for Shelly’s gasping. Each time I move my hand to a new area of her, an array of physical reactions occur. She moans, her breathing quickens or stops, and an involuntary shiver runs through her. The effects are fascinating to study.

“Servo,” Shelly says, her lips against my collar bone. “Servo, I want you to touch me.”

“Am I not?”

She laughs and rests her head on my chest. “So much for pillow talk.”

66

“Oh. Vocal foreplay. Would you like me to engage in some? I conducted an informal survey of the most popular phrases.”

“Did you?” Shelly says, sliding her pink polyester skirt up her thighs. “Alright, hit me with them.”

“If I said you had a beautiful body,” I say, following the journey of the fabric with my fingertips, “would you hold it against me?”

Shelly stops, a centimeter of patterned cotton visible. “That ain’t pillow talk. That’s a cheesy pick-up line.”

“I know,” I say, pulling the hem out of the way. “But I liked it.”

There are cartoon panda bears on her underwear, each with a different expression. I press my thumb over the panda with hearts where its eyes should be. Shelly leans her head to the side and her heart skips a beat.

I know the process to sexually stimulate a female. I studied it. Like most of my studies, it did little to prepare me for the joy of personal experience.

Shelly leads us to the red leather stools at the counter, lowers herself onto one and hooks her legs around mine. There is an unfocused quality to her eyes. Her lips part and her breasts heave with her breathing. I keep my gaze fixed to her face as my fingers navigate her panties. The skin is softer here.

The fine curls of hair give way and I press my fingers through the outer lips and into the slick folds of skin underneath. Shelly gasps, her eyes squeezed shut, as she clutches the counter behind her.

I stroke circles over her clitoris; eight thousand nerve endings that make her gasp and moan. I do not enter her until she asks it of me, her voice little more than high-pitched gasps. There is thrusting and pumping, yes, but it is her face that interests me. Physical sensation overwhelms her and more expressions than I recognize pass across her face. I catalogue each one to study later.

“Servo,” she breathes. “Oh God, yes.”

I increase my speed and bring my lips to Shelly’s nipple. Her eyes open wide, connecting with mine as she reaches her orgasm. It is like nothing I have seen and it is beautiful. Some part of Shelly— something I have no definition for—leaves her for an eternity of moments. Her muscles constrict around my fingers as though pulling me further in, to be a part of her. Gradually, she returns to herself and I slow my movements to a stop, resting in her warmth.

Grinning, she presses her mouth to mine. The kiss is changed. There is an enthusiasm about it. Joy and gratitude conveyed through the meeting of lips. To know that I inspired these emotions in her—not as a requirement of my programming, but as a choice of my own—it is an unrepeatable experience. An event that is unique to Shelly and me. I will never delete this memory.

“I think my understanding of kissing has improved,” I say. “Did I perform well?”

“You got a reason to think otherwise?”

“You did not scream and thrash about or loudly proclaim my sexual prowess. In many of the films—” “Servo,” she says, her smile turning into the type that indicates I have done something amusing. “Let’s not ruin this.”

“Could we repeat this?”

“Well…” She winks at me. “Give me a few minutes to reset the biology here and I’ll see what I can do.”

67

“Tomorrow also?” I settle my hands at her hips, caressing the skin with my thumbs. “I have more techniques I would like to try.”

She grins and her hand traces irregular patterns on my chest. “You sure you won’t get bored with little, old human me?”

The unpredictability of insecurity can be difficult to account for in determining speech choices. I give my response due consideration.

“Each time I am with you it is a new experience.”

“And you do love your unique data, don’t you?”

I smile for her. “There is not enough time in either human or robot life span to experience all the possibilities our time together would generate. I…believe it is worth the attempt.”

She pulls me close, kissing me in a first of many new ways. “Let’s get started, then.”

68

Origin Stories (Sara Kate Ellis) "Your Dad shot you into orbit?" asks Invisia. "Like, alone?"

“He went off his meds,” I say. “Thought the planet would explode and all that.”

“That’s so sad!” Invisia pats my hand and I feel appropriately tragic, noble even, until Epiphany with her perpetually befuddled expression, opens her mouth.

“Just orbit?”

“Yeah,” I say. Invisia’s fingers go translucent and she pulls away. “Why?” Epiphany jams a tongue thoughtfully into her cheek. “Well, what I mean is, why shoot a baby into orbit if the planet was going to blow up and hit you with debris? Plus, there’d be like nowhere for you to land, right?”

She stares at me like she’s actually expecting me to answer right there in front of everybody. Invisia gets up and steps into the aisle.

“Unless…” Epiphany fixes her eyes on my insignia, the exuberant double Ds scrawled in a rich, earthy damson.

“Unless what?” I say.

“Yeah, what?” Arsonette, our resident firebug, shifts around in her chair to face us. Sinister curls of smoke trail from her lips. “Making things up, DD? Taking after your old man?”

“It’s Damson Damsel,” I say, watching helplessly as Invisia quietly makes for a back row seat before blipping out of sight. “And what’s it to you?”

I direct my glare back at Epiphany, but she’s turned away, brushing a strand of auburn hair from her eyes as she sinks deep into that brain that supposedly harbors her superpower. I still can’t figure out what she does or how she got into this school.

Arsonette clears her throat and we all twist around to the familiar sound of sleigh bells. It’s our mentor, the Caroler, Super Heroine Emeritus at Calliope City’s Institute for Unusual Abilities, and as usual she’s been eavesdropping like a bugged sprig of mistletoe.

“Flung out of space. That is a sad story, Damsel,” she says, wisps of silvery tinsel trailing behind her.

“Worthy of the pulps. Or perhaps an overwrought abuse memoir.”

There’s a brief silence before my classmates howl; everyone but Epiphany, who’s always the last to get a joke, but none of their origin stories fare much better. Caroler blasts Rod Iron's doping mishap during the 2048 Olympics as pure reality show, and calls Invisia banal for getting her powers in a lab accident.

The only origin she likes is Arsonette's, but only on the condition her street urchin past "steers clear of any Dickensian sentimentality."

None of us knows what that means.

69

I gaze up at the stained glass skylight behind the podium, a gorgeous splash page of the Institute’s founders: Catscratcher, Fever Pitch, and my idol—the late Girl Friday, last survivor of planet Killdrake.

They’re all flying in tandem, fists raised, with the sun at their backs. It’s how things were before Friday’s murder at the hands of Le Morte, before faster-than-light travel sent our villains off to surething dictatorships on developing worlds. Now superheroing’s gone aesthetic, become a choice between lean workmanship and ironic self-deprecation.

The Caroler’s elfin features contort with a mix of disdain and resignation. “It’s time to do away with childish things, candidates. You might be intergalactic orphans or harvested from space incubators, but you can’t skate by on a flashy origin anymore. And forget those hackneyed notions about secret identities or, god forbid, moonlighting in journalism. That won’t pay off your loans.”

On days like this I wonder why I’ve decided on this career, but I always remember my Dad. The last words he spoke from the Calliope Asylum for the Criminally Insane: “Make up for all the wrong I did, Dammie. Do it for your mother.”

Not that Dad was a criminal really, just a little too smart mixed with a little too unstable. After the whole shooting-me-into-orbit thing, there was a social worker at our house every week, and Dad’s inventions—the nuclear nose hair remover, the spackling paste made from runaway nanoparticles— only managed to dig him deeper into trouble. As for my mother? Never met her, and Dad kind of changed his story a lot. Sometimes she was a cook in a diner, sometimes his lab assistant. What I do know, the one consistent thing about her is that she was special. *** If you think that at the last remaining super school in Calliope City, we'd be learning how to deflect our heat vision off rear view mirrors or how to knock a giant armored Murgatron out of commission, you’d be sorely mistaken. Mostly we sit around, discuss the hegemony of secret identity or the diaspora of the reboot narrative while the police go about the real business of nabbing criminals and reveling in glory.

Combat training and crime patrol at the Institute are a joke compared to the old days. Our mentor is a guy named Jeb Dempsey, a faux longshoreman who eschews the tights for flannels, and slouches off after each rescue to get into a drunken brawl and negate his good deeds. Then there’s his sniveling TA, Little i, who only wears a mask as meta commentary and—when he can be bothered to fight crime— takes out opponents with the measly kicks and jabs he calls footnotes.

“Yo, Damask Rose!” Jeb spits a glob of tobacco on the floor. “I’m putting you and Epiphany in Westhaven tonight.”

“Damson Damsel, Sir. And Invisia and I usually…” I glance over at Invisia. She shrugs apologetically before turning her attention back to Little i.

Epiphany steps up and shoves me gently aside. “Permission to request a more challenging post, Sir.” She’s right. Westhaven is a posher-than-posh bedroom community. Other than the pranks played by the brats at the Westhaven Psy Academy, a hive of pimply future investment bankers, it’s virtually crimefree.

“Relax,” Jeb clamps a knobby hand on her shoulder, nods at my cape. “Get bored, and you and Damson can have a picnic on that nice little blanket.”

70

I feel my face go hot, but I should be used to this by now.

Costumes, unless you’re an old timer, are strictly passé. Lightning Bug’s replaced his gilded shoulder bolts with a tasteful monogram, and Rod Iron now hides his physique beneath the sober black leotard of a modern dancer. But I won’t give up my cape, even if my classmates snicker at me, even if Jeb accuses me of nicking it from the bargain bin at Bed, Bath & Beyond the Galaxy. It’s not one of those dainty over-the-shoulder numbers, but a full on mantle that trails after me as I walk. Old fashioned?

Sure, but it was my father’s last gift to me, lovingly stitched together during his final stretch in the Asylum, and the one thing that still ties me to my mother.

“You see this color?” Dad asked me, running his finger over the insignia. The Ds were stitched in a deep blue that shifted into tones of purple and magenta. There was something uncanny about the way the colors melded, otherworldly yet familiar, and they dazzled my eyes as I examined the needlework.

“It’s from a rare flower where your mother was born. She wore it on her wedding dress, and I saved it, used it to dye the thread.”

He never told me where Mom was from. After he died, I ran searches for flowers in similar shades. I never found one to match. *** “Look, this isn’t fun for me either.” Epiphany glares across the table of the Westhaven Hotcake House.

“Your moping doesn’t help.”

We’ve been up half the night waiting for someone, anyone, to hit a parking meter or break a window, but so far not even a scofflaw. She sighs and reaches up to signal the waitress, her sleeve falling back to reveal a forearm covered in a dazzling tattoo: a woman in a mask and tights, her chest emblazoned with a star in stoplight yellow.

I sit up; remove my face from my palm. “When’d you get that?”

“Just after my acceptance,” she says, tugging up her sleeve. “It was supposed to be a reminder, you know? The ‘me’ I’d hoped to become here. Guess that didn’t pan out.”

She looks at me defensively and slips her sleeve back over her skin.

“Hey, you don’t have to…” I stammer. “I mean, I like it. It’s neat. Makes me feel a little less old school, you know?”

Her expression softens just a little. “Thanks,” she says, and I lean in, try to find the right words.

Instead, I feel myself color under her gaze. There’s something warm about her. Real.

“So…” I start, “so what is the deal with you? Are you psychic? Is that it?”

Epiphany averts her eyes. “Everyone thinks that.” She turns her cup over for the waitress.

“Sorry. I just really don’t get your powers.”

“It was worse when I was little,” she says. “Teachers said I was slow, had ADD. But it’s more like there’s a part of my brain that’s busy taking everything in, working things out slowly, and then bam!”

She slaps a palm to the table, sends her coffee sloshing over into the saucer.

“Bam?”

71

“An answer.”

“To what?”

Epiphany freezes, her face flushed, her smile quietly dissipating as our eyes lock. “Nothing,” she says.

She lowers her eyes, lifts her cup to her lips and takes a long, slow drink like she’s trying to hide behind the steam. “Why don’t you tell me more about your parents.”

“You heard the Caroler. My origin’s a dud.”

“I don’t think so.” Epiphany glances at me, her expression suddenly shy, and I notice the hint of green in her eyes, a depth I hadn’t seen before.

Just then, the door swings open and three Westhaven dandies make a beeline for our table.

“Make yourself useful, heroes!” one of them yells. “Our goddamned school is on fire!” *** When we get there the east wing is engulfed in smoke, flames jabbing outward like kids shaking their fists in a mosh pit. I drop Epiphany in the courtyard and shoot toward the roof, ash scattering in my face, my eyes. I can see them now: seven kids, huddled in the far corner of the rooftop garden. They’re coughing, crying out on stolen gulps of air as the blaze licks at them like some homicidal tickle monster.

I swoop over; try to gauge how many I can snatch up before the flames reach them. Too many to grab all at once, but I have no choice. There's no time.

Unless.

I tear my cape from my back. It won't put out a fire that size, but I can dampen a good corner of it. I fly low over heat, unfurling it like a picnic blanket as the smoke billows upward in protest.

"Get on!"

The oldest girl tumbles forward, dragging the smaller kids toward the center of the cape. They clamber over one another. I swing around, the heat pecking my skin as I snatch up each corner and hoist my bundle aloft. The cloth stretches precariously with their weight, but it holds.

When I lower the bundle to the courtyard, the kids spill out, gasping and covered in soot. The youngest has left a pee spot right on my insignia.

"Piss yourself, choir girl?” It’s Jeb. He's leaning against a fire truck, flask in hand. He gives me a once over, turns up the end of my cape with a polished work boot. “That’s real undignified.”

“Ignore him,” Epiphany says. She slips her arm through mine and pulls us out of earshot.

“What is it?” I say.

Epiphany stops and turns to face me. She stares at me for a long moment, like she remembers me from somewhere but just can’t place my name. Maybe it’s the smoke inhalation, but I go dizzy for a moment, find myself leaning in a little bit closer. She’s leaning in, too, her mouth opening slightly.

Then she shakes her head abruptly and steps away.

“What?” I say again.

72

Epiphany slaps her hands together, starts nodding to herself like I’m not there.

“If those kids from the Psy Academy knew we were around, why not hail us telepathically? We would have gotten here sooner.”

“Lazy rich kids?” I say.

She reaches out, grabs my wrist and my skin tingles at her touch. Her eyes search mine for a moment.

“That’s not it.”

“Then…what?”

“Nothing,” she says and turns away. “I’m just going to have a look around.” *** Little i presses the rewind button, takes us back through the previous night's rescue. There I am, cape billowing as I make that first pass over the roof. I'm waiting for my classmates to cheer, to stand up and clap or whoop, but they greet me with silence, even embarrassment.

"Ostentatious, Damsel," says Little i. “It's almost as if you're branding."

“Branding?”

“Corporate sponsor for the linen industry,” Jeb slurs through a wad of tobacco. He stands and gives a loud, theatrical clap.

“Just like you and Wild Turkey, Jeb?” the Caroler says, shooting him a look of disgust. He sneers and sits back down.

“Little i?” Epiphany lifts her hand. “Sir. Can we run that video one more time? There was a theft reported in Westhaven last night. The alien geology museum.”

“The geology museum?” Little i says in a half yawn. “We’re talking about the school.”

“Yes, Sir, but something very valuable was—” “The police can handle that,” he says, “and speaking of police, I think it’s time I show you something truly remarkable. A beautiful example of the art of heroic transparency."

Little i directs us to a dull, grainy video from a convenience store. It takes a good ten minutes for the gunman to enter, and another five for the only other customer to leave.

"Is anything going to happen?” Arsonette says, sparking her nails against the zipper of her hoodie. The rest of us cough and shift in our seats. By the time the police arrive to taser the crook, Rod Iron is snoring softly in the back of the room.

Little i gives a sanctimonious clear of the throat, as if we've talked through his favorite French film.

"Look again. Note the subtle depression of the button below the cash register."

We still can't see much beneath the rapid-fire flicker of the monitor, but after a long, confusing minute, Little i points to Invisia. “One of our own has foiled her first crime.”

73

I let out an exasperated sigh and look to Epiphany for comfort, but she hasn’t even been paying attention. She’s leaning over, whispering something in the Caroler’s ear. The two of them leave the room.

Invisia though, she breaks into a dizzy, yet undeniably beautiful smile, and we stumble into delayed applause. Everyone but Arsonette. She cocks her head, her mouth quirked as smoke curls from her ears.

“You used your powers to call the cops?”

“The police? Yes.” Invisia folds her hands, and a self-satisfied primness coats her features like powdered sugar. She smiles at Little i, rosy cheeks in palms, baby blues swaying to every perfectly timed flip of his forelock, and my heart goes as green and poisonous as Kryptonite. Is this what being a hero means—doing nothing and still taking all the credit? *** I'm not Jeb. I don't brawl or vomit on the hatcheck girl. A half bottle of Jack is all it takes, and when the numbness hits, I step out and up into the city skies, whooping and playing chicken with the skyscrapers, scaring up the pigeons as they tuck in for the night. This'll be my new identity. The Caped Drunk. The Swamp of Self-Pity. The Flying Arc of Vomit.

I hit a building.

The windows rattle and the concrete slaps me backward as if I've just made an unwanted advance. I'd break my fall if I weren't seeing stars, but it's all I can do to squeeze my eyes shut and hope I won't get billed for the sidewalk repair.

A palm smacks hard across my cheek.

"Dammie!”

My face is plastered to a greasy countertop, my skin still flecked with salt as I lurch into a sitting position. Arsonette's got her hand on my back, trying to keep me from sliding to the floor.

The bar is empty, the windows broken.

“Did I do this?”

Arsonette shakes her head and the ground follows suit. I swerve around in my seat, my vision clearing in just enough time to see an enormous metal foot make a bottle cap of someone’s shiny new Prius hovercraft.

"Murgatrons!”

Arsonette lights a cigarette with her thumb. “They’re back. Must have gotten bored or something."

I push myself up from my seat, but my head is pounding. This isn’t a hangover. I feel cold, almost feverish, but I’ve never been sick a day in my life.

“Pretty sweet, ain’t it?” Arsonette says.

“Huh?” She blows a plume of clove-scented smoke into the air, and I see she’s got something in her other hand.

Mauve light seeps between her fingers as she taps the object on the countertop.

74

“Arsonette? Where are the others?”

By the time I get the words out, she’s opened her palm to reveal it, a jagged chunk of damson crystal. If my head were clearer I’d be able to isolate this feeling, this shock of recognition now surging through me in waves of pain and nausea. Arsonette stubs out her cigarette, holds the stone up to my face.

“Just for you, Dammie. A present. From home.” *** I wake to snoring and the reek of Old Spice. Jeb is tied up next to me, his drool-smeared cheek lilting precariously close to my arm. Sweat soaks my costume, trickles down my face like the dull tip of a knife.

“Dammie? You awake?”

Invisia’s to the other side of me, bound back-to-back with Little i. I spot his fingers stretching beneath the ropes, trying to brush her thigh.

“Can you get us out?” she says.

“I can try.”

Arsonette has done a lousy job of chaining me up, like some camper going balls out on a paperclip necklace, but I’m too weak to gain any leverage, much less pull them apart.

“Hiya!” Arsonette drops to the floor in front of us, and a shiver passes through me. I can see it as she rocks back on her heels, that burgundy glow emanating from her pocket.

“What is that?” I say. The words are barely a whisper.

“Oh, you mean this?” She plucks out the crystal, places it a few feet out of reach. “Gee, fangirl, I thought you’d have figured it out by now. I guess it does sort of dim the lights.” She taps the side of her head. The thing glistens like a mauve river teeming with bioluminescent organisms all swirling around one another, mesmerizing me. I can feel my pulse slowing, my mouth drying up while the rest of me steeps in sweat.

“Where are others?” I ask.

“Murgatrons got ‘em, I guess.”

Arsonette’s amassed a pile of textbooks in front of the skylight. She snatches up two more and tosses them on the heap.

"I gotta say. You did a great job on that fire the other day, but these eggheads? They celebrated the invisible pipsqueak here for calling the cops."

Little i pipes up suddenly. “Fighting crime is a critical process. We were trying to impart—” He yelps as Arsonette, her hair a tangle of crackling flames, brings a foot down on his roaming fingers.

“Impart what exactly?” She picks up a couple of books. “The Grammatology of Emblems? The Liminality of the Sidekick? I coughed up five hundred credits. For this?”

75

“Where did you get the Murgatrons?” Invisia says, her voice shaking. “I thought they were incinerated after the Federation of Foul left Sol." Arsonette grins, takes a step back to survey the pile. "You don't go through a street urchin past without rackin’ up a few favors. When Bong the Belligerent left to start New Pyongyang, he told me where he kept his stash, somewhere nobody would look—Stockton! It was just a matter of powering ‘em up, and I’m a one-girl frackin’ operation.”

“In heat’s more like it!” Jeb belches.

I gag as a whiff of his cough syrup wafts past my nostrils. Arsonette turns, a burning frond falling over one eye. “You know, Jeb? That Norman Mailer crap was tired when it was Norman Mailer.”

She takes a leisurely step closer and opens her palm, allowing a bright ball of flame to grow in its center. Then she puckers her lips and blows. The orb hovers like a miniature sun before descending, and I squeeze my eyes shut as the brightness enfolds us, the heat flash drying the sweat on my skin. Jeb screams once, long and loud as the heat sears my skin, and then nothing.

When I open my eyes, there’s no light. No Jeb either. Just ash and bone and the remnants of a charred longshoreman’s cap.

And something else. The crystal. The blaze has rendered it black and lifeless like an unlit briquette.

Perhaps I’m imagining, but I can feel the nausea dissipating, my strength returning.

“You know, I liked you, Dammie. You and that slow chick, wherever she is,” Arsonette says. “I’m sorry it has to end this way, but I need to make this town safe again, safe for stories where things can happen.”

Drunk on her own audacity, she floats to the top of the pile of textbooks. She doesn’t even notice her handiwork, doesn’t see the color returning to my face.

I make quick work of the chains as blue sparks flicker from her fingertips. She sets the heap alight, sending tendrils of flame zigzagging down the pile.

I get to my feet, pluck up the stone and hurl it at her, clocking her in the back of the head. She whirls around, eyes wide, shock and pain melding into rage.

“Who says nothing happens?” I say.

She slings a volley of molten buckshot at me as I charge her, but she’s not fast enough to build up heat or momentum. She thrashes about wildly as I get her in a headlock, but the pile has become a bonfire now. It’s spreading closer to Invisia and Little i, licking at the skylight, at the beams overhead.

I have to let her go, get the rest of them out before the fire takes the building.

Arsonette slithers from my arms, smashes fists first through the skylight, leaving only a slim black trail of smoke behind her. The stained glass shatters, ushering in a blast of air that will feed the flames.

I feel it then, a welcome chill fluttering over my skin like a department store entrance in summer.

Something cold touches my nose, wets my tongue like a tiny kiss of hope.

Snowflakes.

The Caroler and Epiphany descend on a strand of tinsel as snow drops on us in great sloppy confetti, dousing the flames, coating our skin with welcome damp as sleigh bells ring and the scent of candied mint smothers the reek and smoke.

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“She said the Murgatrons got you,” I say. I close the distance between us and fall into the warmth of Epiphany’s arms.

“There weren’t any Murgatrons,” she says. She presses her fingers lightly to my temples. “They were psionic hallucinations cooked up by those Westhaven brats. They were in cahoots with Arsonette. They wanted to create a market panic. She wanted that.”

Epiphany nods over at the blackened crystal and my breath stalls in my throat.

“That’s what was stolen from the museum,” Epiphany says. “It is, or was, the only specimen of Killdrakium. The very substance Le Morte used to kill—” “Girl Friday.” I remember my father’s last words. Your mother.

Epiphany takes my hand, presses it in her own. “I’m sorry. I should have told you my suspicions sooner, but I was still fitting the pieces together and, unfortunately, Arsonette’s psychic preppies were keeping tabs on our thoughts. She got to the Killdrakium, and to you, first.”

“So the whole orbit thing wasn’t true.” I’m reeling now. I take a step forward and find my knees going weak, but Epiphany’s arms are there to steady me.

“Girl Friday left many enemies behind,” the Caroler says, sawing at Invisia’s bonds with the broken end of a candy cane. “He had to protect you, and to do that he needed to create a convincing explanation for your powers. Hence, the old baby in the rocket story.”

“You knew?” I say.

“I hoped,” says the Caroler. “That’s quite a bit different from knowing. I’ll admit it is why I critiqued your origin so harshly. I can understand hiding you in the limelight, but you’d think he’d come up with something a tad less cliché.”

“Imagine,” Epiphany says, flashing me a wry grin, “someone slower on the uptake than me. Must be fate.”

“Excuse me,” says Little i. He’s put his mask back on, but the flaring nostrils are anything but ironic.

“Shouldn’t we go after that monster you just let go?”

He thumps his finger into my chest and slips a proprietary arm around Invisia. She shrugs him off and turns to me, her eyes dewy or maybe just watery from the smoke. Whatever the cause, I don’t care. I lace my fingers through Epiphany’s, feel the pressure as she gently tightens her grip.

“And why should we do that?” the Caroler says. “Rather ostentatious, don’t you think? Kind of like branding?”

“You can’t be serious!” he says.

The Caroler raises an eyebrow, fixes Epiphany and me with an impish smile. “As much as the aesthete in me is loath to admit, heroes of mettle require proper villains. I know no one likes a binary around here, but capture her now, and what will we do for a nemesis?”

“You hear that, Damsel?” says Epiphany. “We’ve got a nemesis.” Epiphany reaches up and slips her arms around my neck, her sleeve falling back to reveal that brilliant tattoo, a future bright and unashamed.

We’ve got a nemesis, I think. And I’ve got a past, and an epiphany—small e—about missing the Epiphany right in front of me. The Caroler would groan at that, but as we lift off into the cinder-lit sky,

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it’s hard to worry about clichés or branding or even getting my origin story just right. All I can think is that some things take time.

Then—bam.

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Challenging Saber: The Alliance, Book 4 (SE Smith)

Release date: December 1, 2015 Publisher: S.E. Smith LLC Format: Ebook and Paperback Price: US$3.99 Links: Book page at SE Smith's website – Subscribe to SE Smith's newsletter – Goodreads

Chapter 1 Seven Years Before – Earth: The Collapsed Parking Garage: “This way,” Hunter said in a quiet voice.

Saber nodded, staring at the dark crevice between the huge slabs of concrete. A curse echoed through his mind when he saw Hunter disappear into the opening. Sometimes he wondered about his friend’s sanity. If it had been him, he’d have left the human woman to her fate.

A grimace crossed his face as he slipped through the hole and slid down the incline created by the collapse of the building. With a shake of his head, he knew deep down he would have done the same thing as Hunter did if a human female had risked her life to save him. It was bred into their species to protect those that were weaker, that included all females.

Over the last four years of his mission, he had met a few human women. Most of them had been pleasant, but overall, he found them to be either too demanding or too delicate for his tastes. That had led to many frustrated night since his arrival on the planet.

He paused when Hunter glanced at him and held up two fingers, then a third. Stepping to the side, he and Dagger spread out while Hunter took the center. This was Hunter’s mission; they were the support.

His vision quickly adjusted to the darkness. His gaze narrowed on the dim light and the soft voices in the far corner. Hunter slowly moved off to search for the female that had helped him, leaving him and Dagger to deal with the other two. He watched as Hunter disappeared into the darkness before returning his attention to the two figures by the fire.

His eyes were immediately drawn to the figure of the youngest human. She wasn’t quite a woman, but she wasn’t a child either. What he did know was that she was in a very dangerous situation, and that ignited a flame of anger inside him that he had never felt before.

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His eyes scanned the shadows of the parking garage for signs of any males. It was hard to tell from the scents in the air. He could smell fresh blood and the acidic smoke from the fire. The blood was the same as from the warehouse where they had tracked the female earlier. He knew that the female Hunter was seeking had to be here, it was just a matter of where.

He turned his gaze to search for Hunter. He caught a glimpse of his friend’s shadow and knew that Hunter was in the mode that made his name famous. It wouldn’t take long for Hunter to find his prey.

He glanced at Dagger. Surprise and amusement swept through him when he saw Dagger’s intense gaze on the two females. Dagger had always been the most forceful and deadly out of the three of them. It wasn’t like he or Hunter couldn’t be put in that same category, it was just they didn’t play with those that pissed them off before killing them. Dagger was known to draw out the deaths of those stupid enough to get under his skin.

Turning his gaze back to the two females, Saber felt a strange twist in his chest as he listened to them quietly talk. The little one was trying to take care of the other. His eyes swept over her tousled blonde hair and slender, almost fragile form.

Anger burned in him as he wondered why the females did not have a male or males to protect them. As a Trivator warrior, protection of a female within a family unit was top priority. If a warrior proved himself worthy, he would be gifted with a family of his own. All warriors hoped to one day prove they were strong enough to have an Amate, a mate, to carry on their bloodline and fill the empty space inside them.

Saber looked critically at the young girl’s face. There was something about her in particular that pulled at those protective instincts, that made him want to shield her from the horrors outside. She was too young and delicate to be living this way.

He wasn’t sure what Hunter’s plans were for the other female, but he had a feeling that it would involve offering his protection. If Hunter did, then these two would also receive the same shelter and care. That meant that he and Dagger would protect them as well, since they considered Hunter more of a brother than a friend.

Satisfied with his reasoning, he decided that Hunter could protect the one he was seeking, Dagger obviously was focused on the welfare of the injured female, and that left him to care for the little one. A grin curved his lips. Since she was obviously the youngest and smallest, that meant his job would be the easiest. He could handle that.

He snapped back to the present when he saw Dagger motion for him to move forward. He nodded and stepped out of the shadows into the dim light of the fire.

A moment later, he realized that he might just have made the biggest error of judgment in his life. His mistake was thinking the littlest one would be the easiest to control.

He drew in a hissing gulp of frigid air as he bent forward. He was trying to keep his footing after the little hellcat with blonde hair nailed him in the stomach with anything but fragile piece of broken concrete that lined the fire pit. She had thrown it underhand with enough force to leave him gasping for air.

He rocked for a moment, trying to push away the pain. He thanked the Goddess that she hadn’t hit him a few inches lower. If she had, any hope of ever having a family would have been over. Straightening, he glared back at her defiant eyes.

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Something tells me this isn’t going to be as easy as I thought, he reflected, warily watching her as she bent and picked up another fragment of concrete.

Chapter 2 “I swear, Hunter, if that she-creature bites, hits, or tries to escape one more time, I’m going to put her in a cage!” Saber growled, staring at the petite female standing behind his friend several hours later. “Why you little…!”

“Saber,” Hunter grimaced, looking at his friend’s murderous face. “She is a defenseless female.”

Saber could see what Hunter couldn’t. His hands curled into tight fists when she stuck her tongue out at him before giving him a self-satisfied smirk. He didn’t care that she was under Hunter’s protection.

Saber was about to throw her over his shoulder and scare a little respect into her.

He rubbed his wrist. He was sure she had drawn blood this time. He wondered if he should have insisted that the healer examine her for any diseases instead of believing the medic on board the transport when he said that, except for being malnourished, the youngest one appeared to be healthy.

“I swear, Hunter,” Saber started to say again before clamping his lips shut. “Go, check on the other females, I will watch over her,” he finally said with a weary sigh.

“Are you sure? I could see if another warrior…,” Hunter offered before giving Saber a strange look when a growl escaped his friend.

“Did he just growl?” The young female asked in awe. “What are you guys? That sounded just like a tiger. I heard one do something similar at the zoo. Does he need to be caged or something? He isn’t going feral, is he? Ugh! I bit him. You don’t think he has rabies, do you? Maybe he should be quarantined. My neighbor did that to a feral cat that she found in the woods near our house. Do you guys have those big pet containers?”

“Taylor,” Hunter warned, glancing at Saber’s red face. “Saber is fine. He is under control. Isn’t that right, Saber?”

“Oh, I am under complete control,” Saber said with a tight, sharp-tooth smile. “Just leave the little human to me.”

“Thank you,” Hunter said with a relieved smile. “I won’t be long. I hope that the healer will allow me to bring both of her siblings back to my rooms.”

“Take your time, we will be fine, won’t we, Taylor?” Saber promised.

He stared over Hunter’s shoulder. His intense eyes locked with Taylor’s wary ones that gazed back at him with growing alarm. He rolled his shoulders and bent his neck from side to side, enjoying the feel of the crack that released the tension building inside him.

“Keep her safe, Saber,” Hunter finally said, breaking the growing silence. “Her sister is my Amate.

That means that Taylor and Jordan are now under my protection.”

“I know what it means, Hunter,” Saber growled, not taking his eyes off of Taylor. “I promise there won’t be a single bruise on her.”

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Hunter nodded, glancing once more at Taylor before reluctantly stepping around the table in the nearly deserted cafeteria. Saber had to give Taylor credit, she didn’t scream until Hunter walked out of the room. Still, he should have known it wouldn’t be easy to catch her. *.*.* Shewta, she’s fast, and slippery, and…, he thought as he wiped the white gooey food matter from his face, creative when it comes to escaping.

“I am so looking forward to wrapping my hands around her little neck,” he muttered under his breath as several warriors chuckled from where they were sitting and watching from the safety of a corner table.

“Taylor, get down from there right now!” He ordered, looking at the top of the cabinets attached to the far wall.

“Why don’t you try to make me, you…you moron!” She snapped. “I’ve got a bowl of…,” she glanced at the orange mixture with a frown. “Orange goop and I’m not afraid to use it.”

Saber flicked a piece of green food particle off his left shoulder as he stomped toward the metal cabinets. Right now, he was wearing just about every other color of food matter the cafeteria served.

Why not add the last? He was going to need to visit a cleaning unit as it was.

“I won’t hurt you,” Saber promised, watching warily as the cabinet under her shook. “Taylor, that cabinet is not secured to the wall properly. Be careful.”

“You’re just…,” Taylor started to say when the cabinet shifted under her. Her eyes widened in alarm when it began to tilt. “Catch me!” She cried out before slinging the bowl in her hand to the side and jumping.

The sound of the warriors shouting a warning was drowned by the loud crash of the cabinet as it fell.

Saber ignored everything but the small figure flying through the air. His arms opened and he caught Taylor.

The force of the impact sent him backwards. On the second step, his left foot hit one of the items that Taylor had thrown at him. The combination caused him to lose his balance and he fell.

His arms instinctively wrapped around Taylor to protect her as his back hit the hard, tiled surface. He was surprised when he felt her hands wrap protectively around his head to cushion the back of it. It took a moment for him to draw in a deep enough breath to speak. He opened his mouth to give Taylor a piece of his mind, but he snapped it shut when he locked gazes with the bright eyes staring down at him in worry.

“Are you okay? I didn’t mean for that to happen,” she said in a breathless voice. “I… Thank you for catching me.”

Saber’s expression softened. The feel of her in his arms reminded him of just how small and fragile she was. He glanced over her shoulder and scowled at the grinning faces of the other warriors who had come to make sure that Taylor was unharmed.

“Is she alright, Saber?” Arrow asked with a grin.

“Yes,” Saber grunted with a wince when Taylor pushed up on his chest and accidentally kneed him in the groin. “Careful, little one. I’d like to keep those intact.”

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“Oh, sorry,” Taylor muttered, turning a little red as she climbed to her feet and stared down at him with a wiggle of her nose. “Boy, I didn’t miss you much, did I?” Saber grimaced when the other warriors chuckled. “No, you didn’t.”

“I was a kick-ass softball player before….” Her voice died and she looked around at the group of warriors towering over her before she turned her head to look back down at Saber. “I want to see my sisters,” she said, wrapping her arms protectively around her waist.

The other warriors registered the change in Taylor from bubbly pain-in-the-ass to a somber young girl at the same time as he did. Saber rose to his feet, wiping a hand down over his side before he tentatively reached out and drew her into his arms. With a fierce glance at the other warriors, he jerked his head for them to leave them alone.

“It will be alright, Taylor,” Saber murmured, holding her stiff body against his. “We will not harm you or your sisters.”

Her arms slowly unfolded and she slid them around his waist, resting her cheek against his chest. That protective possessive feeling he felt the first time he saw Taylor swept through him.

“How can we be sure?” Her muffled voice asked. “Everyone else… I wish my dad were here.”

Saber frowned at her fractured words. He wondered where the male was. Taylor and her two older sisters appeared to be alone, but what if they had protectors? He didn’t know if Hunter or Dagger knew the answer to that question.

“Where is he? If you tell me, I will do everything I can to reunite you with your protector,” he promised in a husky voice.

“You can’t,” she replied with a sniff. “He’s… he’s… dead. It’s just Jesse, Jordan, and me now.”

A shudder ran through Taylor, and Saber frowned when he felt her ribs through her threadbare shirt.

She was too thin. The knowledge that his people and the Alliance were partially to blame for that fact did not sit well with him.

His species, the Trivators, had come to Earth four years ago. Their mission was to initiate first contact and prepare the Earth for inclusion into the Alliance, a vast coalition of planets that encompassed a large number of star systems.

They had encountered resistance before, but never like this. Mass chaos had reigned around the planet.

While the humans were all the same species, their beliefs and lifestyles went from one extreme to the other. Tribal groups, fanatics, those greedy for power and wealth, and those that refused to accept they were not the only ones in the universe fought against not only the Trivator forces, they fought each other too, until their civilizations crumbled.

Bending, he scooped her up in his arms. He glanced at where Sword, Edge, and Thunder were watching in silence. All three men had a tense look of regret on their faces. He bowed his head in acknowledgement. They couldn’t change what had been done, but he could change what happened to Taylor. She would not only have Hunter to protect her, but Saber and Dagger, as well.

“You are not alone any longer, little one,” Saber whispered as he carried her out of the cafeteria. “I will watch over you.”

Neither one of them spoke as Saber turned left at the end of the hallway. They had been negligent about Taylor’s welfare. He felt another shaft of guilt pierce him. Taylor’s two sisters, Jesse and Jordan, had been critically ill while Taylor had been a fireball of rebellion. She had fought like a warrior trying to

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protect her sisters. Because of her resistance, it never dawned on Saber that Taylor might need medical attention as well. The medic had checked her over and said she needed food, but otherwise appeared healthy.

“Where are you taking me?” Taylor asked, not moving her head which was nestled just under his chin.

“To the medical unit,” he replied in a gruff voice. “I should have insisted that the healer check you over.”

“Is that where Jesse and Jordan are?” She asked, tilting her head back to look at him. “You have dried mashed potatoes in your hair.”

A startled chuckle escaped Saber. “I think I have more than that. You hit me more than you missed. You have a very good aim for a female. You are also very….” He stopped as he tried to think of the right word to describe her quickness.

“I’m very what?” Taylor asked with a puzzled frown.

Saber glanced down at her as he paused outside of a dark green door. “Fast. You are very fast, but the way you could jump and flip… I’m not sure the correct human word to use,” he said in frustration.

“I’m very limber,” she replied with a small smile. “I was in gymnastics. I was really, really good at it.

Dad…,” her voice choked for a moment and her eyes glittered with tears. “Dad said I needed it because I was born with too much energy for anyone to keep up with.”

“I’m sorry about your father, Taylor,” Saber murmured, reaching down to open the door.

Taylor shook her head and snuggled up against him again. “It wasn’t your fault,” she whispered. “He was killed the first day by a human. We’ve been running ever since. I’m tired of running. So are Jesse and Jordan.”

“You’ll never have to run again if I have anything to do with it,” Saber said grimly, glancing as one of the medics came forward. “I want a healer to check her.”

The medic looked at the grim expression on Saber’s face and gave him a sharp nod. “Follow me,” he said. *.*.* Taylor sat on the exam table and looked around the room. The medic had ushered Saber out of the room, telling him that he would have to wait outside in the front office. She glanced at the door, listening carefully. She could hear the quiet murmurs of the medic and another man.

She bit her lip in uncertainty. Jesse and Jordan had taught her the first year they were on the run to look for anything that they could use. Her eyes flickered to the medicine cabinet attached to the wall. They could always use the medicine once they escaped from here. Drugs were the second hardest thing to find out on the streets; the first was food.

She wiped her sweaty palms down her faded jeans. She would wait until after the doctor saw her, then find a way to hide a few things away. Her eyes jerked back to the door when it opened and a huge man walked into the room.

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“Hello, human. My name is Carp. You were with the other two females that are resting?” He asked.

“Are they…,” Taylor said, nodding her head at his question. “Are Jesse and Jordan going to be okay?”

Carp studied the tablet in his hand for a moment with a frown before he glanced up at her and nodded.

“Yes, but it was a good thing the three of you were found when you were. Your sisters were very ill and one of them had several broken ribs,” he said with a grim look. “How long have you been without protection?”

Taylor pursed her lips. “Jesse, Jordan, and I have been protecting each other. If you mean how long have we been on the run? It’s been four years,” she replied with a shrug, looking on curiously when he held up a small device. “What’s that?”

“It allows me to scan your vitals,” Carp replied with a slight smile.

“How does it work?” Taylor asked, glancing at it with a frown.

“It picks up your temperature, heart rate, and blood pressure,” he explained, pocketing the device in his jacket before reaching for another strange piece of equipment. “Please place your hands on the surface.”

Taylor cautiously lifted her hands and laid it on the dark glass. “What does this do?” She asked as a red light ran back and forth several times causing her hands to tingle.

“It is taking blood samples and running tests on them. The results will tell me if you have the same virus that your sisters are suffering from, if you are anemic, as well as other tests,” he said, pulling the flat glass toward him and studying it. “When is the last time you ate?”

“About half an hour or so ago,” Taylor admitted. “It was the first time I’ve had that much in years.”

Shaking his head, Carp set the scanner down and walked over to the medicine cabinet. Pulling out a key, he unlocked it before dropping the key back into the pocket of his jacket. He scanned the contents.

He started when he realized that Taylor had quietly stepped up behind him.

“What’s that?” She asked, pointing to a purple bottle.

“A vitamin supplement,” Carp replied with a raised eyebrow. “Are you going to ask me what each vial contains now?”

Taylor glanced up at him with a mischievous grin. “Yep,” she said. “I’ve always been fascinated with stuff.”

“A few drops in water will give you strength as it replenishes the nutrients and vitamins you are missing. This one will kill any infections you might have. This one will seal a wound and enhance healing,” Carp explained as he touched each vial.

“How do you guys know how to do all of this stuff?” Taylor asked in curiosity.

Carp picked up several vials and turned, motioning for Taylor to return to the examination table. He placed several drops from the purple vial into a glass of water before handing it to her. Taylor studied it suspiciously before sipping it. She was surprised when she felt a charge of energy sweep through her.

Quickly drinking the rest of the water down, she handed the glass back to him.

“Can you tell me if you are feeling pain anywhere?” Carp asked, motioning for her to lay back.

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“Not really,” Taylor said with a shrug as she scooted back and laid down. “I’ve got some bruises from Saber, but that’s all.”

“Saber?” Carp said with a dark scowl. “He hurt you?”

Taylor snorted. “Only when I hit his hard hide,” she growled. “The guy is built like a brick wall. You try hitting him and see if you don’t end up with a bruise or two.”

Carp’s scowl dissolved and he chuckled as he shook his head. “No, thank you,” he replied dryly. “I’ve participated in enough training sessions to know what Saber, Hunter, and Dagger are like. This will take care of your bruising. I suggest that you refrain from striking any more Trivator warriors in the future.”

“Of course you’d say that, you’re one of them!” Taylor retorted.

“I’ve requested clean clothing to replace your torn garments,” Carp said, running the last of his scans and motioning for Taylor to sit up. “I’ll inform Hunter that you and your sisters may return to his quarters with instructions to return in a few days for a check up to make sure all of you are well.”

“Thanks,” Taylor said, smiling as she sat up.

She watched as the healer walked to the door and opened it after a soft knock sounded. He turned with a stack of clothing in his hands. She slid off the exam table again and reached for them when he held them out.

“I’ll inform Hunter you are here. Just come back out to the front room when you are ready,” Carp instructed.

“I will. Thanks, doc,” Taylor grinned brightly.

Carp gave her an uncertain look before he nodded and stepped out of the room. Taylor breathed a sigh of relief and quickly changed. She glanced at the door before walking back over to the bed where she pulled out the key and scanner she had slipped from his pocket and hidden under the pillow.

It didn’t take her long to place all the vials into her old shirt that she had tied up to make a bag. Her fingers hovered over a gun-shaped item. It was the same thing the medic had used on Jordan and Jesse in the transport that had brought them here.

“It might come in handy,” Taylor whispered under her breath as her fingers wrapped around it. “Always think ahead like Jesse says.”

Wrapping the items in her jeans, she straightened. Once she, Jesse, and Jordan were together, they could plan on how to escape. She paused by the door and pulled down the paper taped to the wall. It was a map of the compound. It would definitely come in handy.

Drawing in a deep breath, Taylor grinned. This was actually fun. They were healthy, had clean clothes, food, and medicine. Now, all they needed to do was escape. Taylor thought of everything she had seen as they were walking to the building. There had been a line of garbage trucks leaving.

They were checked coming in, but not going out. It wasn’t an ideal escape plan, but knowing how well these aliens could smell, it just might work.

Doing a little jig, Taylor opened the door and stepped out. She smiled at Carp when he walked by her. She took the opportunity to drop the key back into his pocket. He was just going to have to get a new scanner.

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“Thanks again for everything, doc,” she said.

Carp bowed his head in acknowledgement. “I have instructed Hunter to take better care of you and your sisters. Now that he has claimed one of them for his Amate, you are under his protection.”

“Sure thing,” Taylor agreed, not understanding what an Amate was and deciding it didn’t matter as they wouldn’t be here long enough to find out. “Bye!” She bit her lip when she heard Carp’s muttered words as he turned. If he thought they were strange, he needed to spend a few weeks in the outside world. With a sigh, Taylor saw Saber rise as she entered the room. The adorable alien moron still had dried food in his hair.

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Blue Yonder (Diane Dooley)

Release Date: September 29, 2015 Publisher: Decadent Publishing Format: Ebook Price: US$2.99 Links: All Romance Ebooks – Amazon US – Amazon UK

Chapter One Face mask firmly affixed, Daniel Morneau strolled beneath the crumbling edifice of the Acropolis. The warm glow of sunset had turned Athens golden, and the gusty winds had blown the usual polluted haze out to sea. High above the Acropolis, a comet streaked its way across the sky. How many times had the ancients treated each appearance of this comet as a sign of the end of times? This time, though, it was.

The end of the world was no longer nigh. It was on them.

Daniel walked on, in no particular hurry. His day, which had started with his very last backgammon battle with his old friend, Stratos, was drawing to a close. One last payment to pick up, then he would visit some favorite places for the last time. Say his final good-byes to the city and the planet. And to Isabel.

He turned down an alley, listening to the distant booms of spaceships being slingshot out of Piraeus Space Port. The ships were all headed for Lunar Base where their occupants would be loaded onto massive arc ships and dispersed throughout the far-flung colonies. He’d be heading out himself soon into that great blue yonder. Everything was arranged. “Next week,” Vangelis had said. Daniel didn’t have to worry about a thing, didn’t have to concern himself with the swirling rumors. People were saying there wasn’t going to be enough time and ships for everybody. What would the dictator do with those left behind? Kill them? Probably. Daniel shrugged. His place on an outward-bound ship was assured. He’d earned it, and he didn’t have it in him any longer to worry about anyone else. Except Isabel.

Athens seemed so empty, the bustle he’d come to associate it with almost entirely absent. Almost. He’d turned a corner and encountered a lengthy line of a few hundred silent, shuffling people outside Yannis’s market. Some glanced up at him, recognized him then avoided his eyes as he walked by.

Daniel stopped to stare. So many old men and women, a few in wheelchairs. It couldn’t have slipped their notice that they were lowest on the evacuation priority lists. The guard stationed at the door nodded at him nervously as Daniel approached him with a question.

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“What’s Yannis selling?” He tried to remember the guy’s name but gave up. He was one of the lowerlevel men, there to provide protection for whatever price gouging Yannis was doing today.

The man stepped forward. “Suicide pills.” He glanced around before leaning closer, directing whispered words through his face mask into Daniel’s ear. “I heard Yannis say they were fake, but that he was making a killing.”

An old woman dressed in black scurried out of the market, adjusting a face mask before tucking more of them into her cavernous bag.

“They’re no longer distributing masks for free,” the man continued. “Yannis is selling them, too, if you need some.”

Daniel took a last look at the gathering of sad and desperate people. Suicide pills. So it had come to that?

“Hey, did you hear about Roma?” the man said, his voice hushed.

Daniel nodded. He’d wet his feet years before in that ancient city when it had already started to go under. Now it was no more, following so many formerly great cities of the world since the icecaps and glaciers had melted. Athens, though, was still dry, its water still fresh. But it wouldn’t be for much longer. Maybe suicide pills were the right idea. Better than starving. Or drowning in your own diseased lungs. He closed his eyes to the elderly people. His parents had never gotten the chance to get old. It was almost a rarity these days.

He shook off his thoughts, strolling around the corner and then through the back door, pausing to enter the lock combo from memory. Yannis’s wife, Dora, sat at a table in the back room, packing small, dry oranges into bags, her face as miserable as always.

She looked up as he entered. “That bastard Vangelis is still charging us for protection?”

Daniel pulled down his mask. “You’ve got a guard on your door, don’t you? Pay up. And watch your fucking mouth.”

Dora stood then grumbled her way to a desk in the corner of the room. She pulled an envelope out of the top drawer before turning and tossing it onto the table in front of Daniel. He opened it, spilled out the multicolored creds, and started counting. Halfway through, he heard an impossible noise. Dora crying? He glanced up into the stony face. Nope. He doubted a tear had ever dropped from those grim eyes. He turned toward the sound. In another corner was a cage with a mattress inside. Holding on to the bars and sobbing piteously was a small child.

“A baby? I haven’t seen one of those in forever.” He rose and went over, crouching down and gazing into the limpid brown eyes of a half-naked little boy. “How old is he?”

Dora shrugged. “Eighteen months, maybe. Something like that.”

The boy reached a hand through the bars and clutched one of Daniel’s fingers. He stared down at it.

Such a small hand. His fingers were thin, but he held on with an impressive grip. A fat tear slid down the child’s face, leaving a clear track through the dirt.

Daniel turned back to Dora. “Is he your grandson?”

An amused snort exploded from Dora, the closest he’d ever seen her to happy. “My grandkids are grown and working for a warlord on Greenpath. I’ll be joining them soon enough. And that useless daughter of mine will take care of me in my old age. Whether she likes it or not.” She stabbed a bony

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finger in the direction of the child. “That right there is our ticket off this fucking planet. I’m gonna be retiring in style.”

Daniel looked back at the boy. “He’s for sale? Who the hell is gonna buy an extra mouth to feed?”

“Some Blue bastard. But he won’t be feeding the kid for long. His own brat needs a new set of kidneys, and the family can’t leave until then. I negotiated an excellent price.” Dora smirked at her own cleverness. “The Blues are abandoning the city, the whole planet. You know what that means? It’s time to get the fuck out of here.”

The little finger clutched harder, and the boy let out a sob. Poor kid. It was almost as if he’d understood the old bat. Daniel reluctantly disengaged his finger from the child’s grasp and went back to the table.

He started recounting the creds. “Where’s his mother?

Dora shrugged again. “Who cares? What kind of stupid bitch would bring a baby into this world? He was being experimented on up at the hospital, so I’m doing him a favor.”

Daniel paused. “A favor that’ll kill him.”

“Whatever. The Blue is paying me enough for a ticket off this shithole. Me and Yannis both. Tell Vangelis this is his last payment. We’ll be gone this time next week.”

Daniel proceeded with his count. “You don’t need to buy a ticket. Won’t you be evacuated for free?”

“Everyone says there won’t be enough arc ships, and we’re low on the priority list. Too fucking old. I ain’t ready to die yet, and I don’t want to be assigned a destination. I want Greenpath. My daughter owes me, and I’m gonna collect.”

Daniel had heard about the assigned destinations. No useful skill? Then it was forced labor in the asteroid mines, the desolate salt fields—or worse. Daniel’s skill was smarts and muscle, useful to Vangelis, if not anyone else. He finished his count.

“You’re short two hundred creds.”

“It’s all we’ve got!”

“Didn’t you just say the Blue paid you a shitload of money?”

“He hasn’t paid yet,” she whined. “Plus, the guard has been late for work every day.”

Daniel stood and approached her. Time to earn his keep. He bent his head and put his mouth to her ear.

“Go get the rest of the money from Yannis. Or I will take one of your kidneys as payment.”

She cringed away from him. “Yannis went out. I don’t know where he is.”

He lowered his voice further still. “Find him. Get the money. Bring it to me. Or get the money from the store. I don’t care. Just get it for me. Now.” He reached into his inside pocket and pulled out a knife, turning it, making it flash in the dull light.

“You’re as big a bastard as Vangelis, Daniel Morneau. You know Yannis would kill me if I gave you uncounted creds.” Dora grabbed her shawl, pulled up her face mask, and fled the room.

Daniel sat back down at the table and settled in for a wait. Using his knife, he sliced up one of the oranges, finding they were much juicier inside than he would have guessed. The scent of oranges always reminded him of Isabel. Her favorite fruit, he’d bought a basket of them as a wedding present for her and Jacques. Food hadn’t been in quite such short supply back then. Daniel slurped on the

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orange wedges, remembering his best friend and the day he’d introduced Daniel to the woman Jacques intended to marry. Isabel, with her waist-length hair, bold spirit, dark eyes, and infectious laugh.

“She doesn’t laugh anymore,” he announced, looking over at the child. Not since Jacques had died. She was still beautiful, though her smile had disappeared. When last he’d seen Isabel, her black hair had been chopped, barely grazing her brown, bare shoulders.

“Da,” the boy whimpered, stretching an arm between the bars.

Daniel looked down at his orange. “This? You want a piece?”

He lifted a section and took it over to the kid. The boy grabbed it and immediately started to gnaw.

Looked like Dora had been saving money by not feeding him. Daniel shook his head. Poor kid. What a shitty end to such a short life.

The child dropped the gnawed orange and stretched his sticky fingers through the bars again, grabbing onto Daniel’s hand. “Mama.”

Daniel laughed. “Nope. I ain’t your mama. Sounds like you didn’t have one, little guy.”

The boy leaned his head against the bars, his eyes filling with tears again, his hand tightening around Daniel’s finger.

“Can’t help you, kid,” he muttered. “I would if I could.”

The child slumped against the bars. He looked dejected, almost as if he’d understood what was being said to him.

“But I tell you what. You want out of that cage for a few minutes?” Daniel pulled his hand away and slid the top off the cage. He stood and, leaning forward, scooped the child up and off the dingy mattress. Daniel held the child under his armpits, and they stared, face-to-face, into each others’ eyes.

“Da,” the kid said. “Da-na. Da.” “Trying to say my name? Dan-yell. Dan-yell.”

“Da-na. Da-na.”

“Well, you’re a clever little fellow, aren’t you?” Daniel bobbed him up and down. “And you weigh more than I’d have thought. They weren’t starving you in that hospital.”

Dora had said they were performing experiments, but he didn’t have any marks except for grime. What the hell kind of person would experiment on a little kid like this? He pulled the child against him. The boy immediately reached an arm around Daniel’s neck and laid his head against his chest.

“Da-na,” he murmured, sounding almost contented. He peeked up at Daniel, his eyes large and trusting.

“Da-da.”

Daniel’s heart twisted. This was crazy. He should put the kid back in his cage and go wait upfront for Dora’s return. He should do that. He really should. The boy snuggled his face into the crook of Daniel’s neck, wiggling slightly to settle himself more firmly in Daniel’s arms.

“Da-da,” he said, then closed his eyes.

Daniel attempted to unlock the little arm from his neck, but as soon as he managed it the arm wiggled free and coiled its way back again. He looked to the door, hoping Dora would march through it with her hatchet face and rescue him. But when Yannis “went out”, there was no telling which whorehouse he would be in. Athens still had a few of them, even with most of the population being evacced to the

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stars. He scowled. He himself hadn’t gone in one since he’d seen Isabel plying her wares a few months ago. He’d tried to talk to her, but she’d scurried off to an upstairs room with a customer, showing Daniel nothing but her back and an imperious toss of her hair.

Looking down, he saw the kid had grasped a fistful of his shirt and was holding on tightly, his knuckles white. Daniel sighed. Were kids this young supposed to be this clever? Or was he just desperate for some kind of human warmth and affection? He’d obviously decided he needed to be saved, and Daniel seemed to be his choice. Not that the kid had any other options. This was ridiculous. He was just here to collect the protection money for Vangelis, not involve himself in this doomed creature’s problems.

Shaking his head, he put a hand on the thin back of the child, feeling the ribs beneath the skin, imagining the scalpel cutting in toward the kidneys. He cringed at the thought, holding the baby a little tighter. A wild thought entered his brain.

Looking around, he noticed an old rucksack. Inside were cloth triangles, like the one the baby wore, some plastic bottles, and packets of off-yellow powder. Daniel tossed in a few oranges and slid a fat envelope out of his pocket. The day’s take. Vangelis’s money. He tossed it in the rucksack and then zipped up his jacket, tucking the baby inside, snug enough that he wouldn’t need a mask. He threw the rucksack over one shoulder, pulled up his mask, then paused at the door. What the fuck am I doing?

This is a bad idea. A stupid decision. He looked down at the kid, at the little hand clutching his shirt.

He closed his eyes, remembering something he had tried so hard to forget. Another little hand that had once held onto him for dear life. He opened his eyes, grinned wildly, and marched out the door.

It was dark. Good. He slipped confidently through the mazelike alleys of the Plaka. Couldn’t go to his place. Vangelis would look there first. There really was only one choice of where to go. No matter the time that had passed and the promise he had failed to keep, there was only one person he could trust.

He’d find a family for the kid, pay someone to evacuate him. At least he’d live.

Daniel took a right, then a left, then another left onto a dark dead-end street. The small house at the end was run-down and looked abandoned, but he knew Isabel still lived there. She’d never willingly leave the home where she’d been so happy, the house where her beloved husband, Daniel’s best friend, had died. The comet burned in the sky above, the only light, as Daniel slipped around the back of the house.

Chapter Two Isabel pulled on her face mask and trudged wearily toward the factory gate, another evening shift done.

She was exhausted, already having worked so much overtime that week, what with the factory running constantly, churning out nutripacks to supply the arc ships. Now it was time to rush home, get changed, and spend a few hours seeking out a man who would pay a lot of creds for the use of her body. She’d try the house up on Syntagma. The owner only took ten percent, and there were still a few Blue customers with plenty of creds wanting one last fuck for the road before they evacced. And for another ten percent cut, the security guys would make sure she wasn’t treated violently. God, she hoped she didn’t run into Daniel again. That look on his face when he’d seen her….

She put her head down as she passed through the gates, ignoring the guards as they eyed the leaving factory workers.

“Hey, you. Visconti!”

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Shit. She’d paid the fee, the bribe that was supposed to get her out the gate without being searched. Her pockets, like everyone else’s, were stuffed with high-protein nutripacks. Shit. She shuffled over to the guard.

He looked her up and down. “Relax, Visconti. I’m just delivering a message.”

She breathed a sigh of relief. She needed this damn job. The creds were okay; it kept her supplied with nutrition, and, most of all, it meant she only had to whore part-time. She mentally totaled up her savings. A couple more weeks and she’d be free. One very expensive ticket to the planet of her choice.

No more factory, no more whoring, no more Earth.

“Vangelis wants to see you. He’s at his regular taverna. Go straight there.”

Fuck. She knew exactly what he wanted. She nodded. “Thanks.”

Straight there. Good. He’d see her in her threadbare work coveralls and hopefully wouldn’t be making her an offer she’d be all too happy to refuse. She’d best hurry, though. A Vangelis who was kept waiting was an angry Vangelis.

Isabel stuck out her arm and waved down a riksha. She showed the painfully thin runner a glimpse into her pocket. “One if you walk; two if you run.” He nodded eagerly. “Plato’s Taverna in the Plaka. You know it?” He nodded and gestured her in to the riksha.

“Me go fast,” he murmured and, indeed, he took off at a pace that seemed impossible, especially since he had no mask to protect his lungs.

He barely spoke Standard, she realized. Looking down, she saw he had no shoes. Still, the sticks of his legs pumped furiously, eager for the two measly nutripacks she had offered him. What part of the world did you wander in from? Just another wetfoot escaping the rising oceans. From the looks of him, this one was from the North.

She’d been the same ten years earlier, drifting in on the rising Mediterranean. They’d arrived in Athens, she and her older sister, Lisabet, clothed in rags and almost desperate. Lisabet had seen the writing on the wall and had shipped out for the star colonies as soon as she could. Isabel had met Jacques, and there was nothing, not even her beloved sister’s pleas, that could tear her away from her love. Or from Daniel.

The three of them had all found work. Jacques as security for an important Blue, she at the factory, and Daniel with Vangelis. Jacques, lithe and quick-witted with the laughing green eyes, and Daniel, darker, quieter, more intense. A large man, but surprisingly gentle, his eyes as blue as one particular summer’s day from her childhood. Oh, how things had changed. Jacques wasn’t laughing any more, and Daniel, no longer gentle, had disappeared further into Vangelis’s dangerous underground world, declaring he was sick of being on the bottom of the food chain. It had been over a year since she’d seen Daniel until, a few months ago, he’d shown up, frowning, disappointed, and looking ready to drag her out of that whorehouse by the hair. Fuck him. She’d barely seen him after Jacques died. Once so close…. She shook her head. Fuck him. Then acknowledged that that was exactly what she had done.

The riksha pulled up at Plato’s, and Isabel gave the runner his two nutripacks. Karma. She could use some. She slipped him another pack.

“Me thanks,” he said, smiling gratefully. “My have small son.”

She walked away shaking her head. A child? In this terrible place? Why the hell would anyone do that?

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She pulled open the door of the taverna and slipped inside. Vangelis was at his usual table, surrounded by his flunkies. She looked for Daniel. He wasn’t there. Good. She hated seeing him all cold-eyed and heartless. And she didn’t want him to hear whatever Vangelis was going to offer for her. Not that she was ashamed. No, she just associated Daniel with Jacques, who’d have been horrified by what she’d become. Jacques had always been the decent one. Daniel? Not so much, not after he joined up with Vangelis.

“Isabel Visconti. What the hell are you wearing?” Vangelis laughed and waved her over. He seemed in a good mood, at least. She approached his table, and he shoved a man out of her way. “Give the lady a chair. Poor thing’s been on her feet all day. Get her a drink.”

The man shuffled off and returned with a glass of ouzo and a jug of water. Isabel put a tiny splash of water in the drink and watched it turn cloudy. No matter the food shortages, there was always, always booze. She swallowed it down, aware Vangelis was watching her closely, his dark eyes curious.

“I got your message, Vee. What do you want?”

He poured her another drink. “What do I want?” He leaned back in his chair. “Lots of things.” He casually slid his hand down and cupped his balls. “How about you?” He indicated her glass. “Drink.”

She tossed it down and dropped the glass on the table. “I just got off work, and I’m tired. What do you want?”

“Why you still at the factory? You can make more money with this.” He reached forward and pulled the zipper on her coveralls down, slowly. He stopped; disappointed with the T-shirt she wore underneath.

“And you wouldn’t have to dress so ugly.” He leaned back in his chair. “Where is Daniel Morneau?”

She started. “What?”

“Your friend, correct? Your very close friend.” He leered. “The reason why your husband killed himself.”

“That’s not true!”

Vangelis laughed. “No one cares if you fucked your husband’s best friend. Well, except me. Where is he?”

Isabel glowered at him. What have you gone and done, Daniel? “I haven’t seen him. He works for you.

How the hell should I know where he is?”

Vangelis’s smile disappeared. “Liar. You saw him recently. I was there, too, remember? And from the way he was looking at you, I’d say he was quite intent on fucking you again.”

“It wasn’t—” Vangelis held up a hand to silence her then gave an expansive shrug. “You know, Isabel, I never liked your husband.” He poured her another ouzo. “I offered him and Daniel a job. Daniel said yes. Jacques told me to go fuck myself. Drink.”

Isabel reached for the glass and drank it without taking her eyes off him.

“Daniel has…absconded. With something that belongs to me. And with another item that belongs to one of my clients. I want them both back.” He tipped his head, took a long slug from the bottle, and then set it back on the table. “I shall be leaving this benighted planet soon. And before I go, I want to fuck the wife of the man who was too proud to work for me.”

Sucking in a breath, Isabel tensed. “I can’t do that, Vee.”

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“No? And why not? I’ll pay your usual fee.”

What could she say that wouldn’t infuriate him? I hate you and always have? You took our friend from us and turned him into a soulless thug? Your sadistic tastes are only too well-known? She sighed.

Those wouldn’t work. But she had to say something. “You…you’re married. It wouldn’t be fair to your wife.”

He grinned. “Alethia is far too sensible of a woman to care. You should be sensible, too. I will pay you well. And I will pay you even more if you find Daniel for me.”

Isabel suppressed a shudder. Barely.

“If you don’t find Daniel, I’ll still be generous. I like you, Isabel. Always have. But I’ve stayed away from you. I’ve respected you. Well, until you turned to whoring. Now….” He smiled. “You’re just another woman for sale. No reason to deny myself.”

Isabel’s heart was speeding and thumping, her fingernails grinding into the arm of her chair. How am I gonna get out of this? How the fuck am I gonna get out of this? What the hell did Daniel do? She spoke loudly, hoping her voice didn’t show any fear. “Will you hurt him? For what he’s done?” Fuck. Her voice had trembled.

Vangelis hadn’t missed it. He lit a cigarette. “I want him back. He’s never done anything like this before, has been loyal to me for ten years. I’ll hear him out, and he still has a berth on the ship I’ve chartered. Our slingshot is already scheduled at Piraeus. We won’t even have to go on one of those overloaded behemoths either. I’ve chartered a very nice, very expensive ship for the entire journey.” He inhaled deeply and thoughtfully on his cigarette then blew out the smoke in a steady stream toward her.

Even the touch of tobacco smoke, from his lungs to her skin, felt ominous. Her skin crept, a judder forming in the base of her spine. His lips curled back in the reminiscence of a smile. “If Daniel isn’t there for launch, then I’ll take you in his place. And then I’ll fuck you all the way to the Epsilon Quadrant. I’m told the journey takes six months.” The smile dropped from his face. “You had best aim to please me. Because if you don’t…”

He snapped his fingers.

The man who had vacated the chair approached, smiling politely. He stood directly behind Isabel, nudging up close to her, his crotch touching her back. She tried to lean forward, but his fingers grasped her shoulders, holding her lightly, insistently. Beads of moisture gushed from her pores in a stone-cold sweat, and she found her hand reaching out, grasping her glass. Something hard dug into her back, and her arm stretched toward Vangelis, the glass shaking. He carefully tipped a long pour of ouzo into the glass. Soon, a long thin stream of water turned the liquid cloudy. Isabel pulled it to her lips and quenched her parched mouth with a deep swallow, closing her eyes as the fire went down her throat.

Vangelis set the jug of water down with a heavy thud. “If I’m not pleased with you, I’m afraid you’ll have to earn the rest of your passage flat on your back, twenty-four seven, entertaining the rest of my men.”

The man behind her lifted a hand and, with one knuckle, gently stroked the hairs that were standing up on the back of her neck. Isabel raised her eyes to meet Vangelis’s. His lids were heavy, giving him a deceptively sleepy look. But his eyes were cold dead things in their sockets. When his mouth formed into a smile, his eyes didn’t change.

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“I’m sure you’ll do excellent business. Maybe even have paid off your debt before we get to the next fucking planet.” He snapped his fingers again, and the man behind her retreated, his touch leaving her slowly, reluctantly. “Do you know where Daniel might be?”

“Maybe.” The part-time taverna, open weekends only, where Daniel used to go play backgammon with the old men? “I don’t even know where he lives.” That place up in the mountains where the trees used to be? He used to like to take a blanket and go sleep near an old broken shrine. He’d taken her and Jacques there. It was his favorite place; his secret place, he’d called it. Could he be hiding out there?

Vangelis watched her, amused. “I know where he lives. We have that covered. And I have many men out looking for him.” He took a long drag on his cigarette, reached out with his foot and nudged hers.

“Maybe you’ll get lucky and they’ll find him. Drink.”

Isabel sipped.

“Finish it.”

She tipped it back, her stomach rebelling. She had to get out of there. Her stomach roiled, and she clenched her body, trying to hold everything back.

“You can go.”

She stood up, locking her knees to keep from staggering. Turning, she felt dizzy and put a hand on the table to steady herself. Vangelis reached out and grasped her wrist, circled his fingers around, touching on her pulse point, smiling at its rapid pace. His eyes dropped to her breasts.

“One of those Blue bitches in Kolonaki is selling her clothes.” He handed her a card with an address on it. “They’re fleeing the planet and trying to take as much money with them as they can.” He turned to the man on his right. “Give her all your creds.”

The man stood, pulling a thick envelope from an inside jacket pocket. He leaned over and shoved the packet inside the top of her coveralls, the back of his hand rasping roughly against her breast.

Vangelis stubbed out his cigarette and sat up straight. “Don’t ever come before me wearing such ugly clothes again. Next time? Dress to please me. I like my whores to dress like whores. Tits out, slits to the ass. Tacky, but expensive. You know the type of thing? ” Isabel nodded. “I-I came straight here from the factory, Vee. I have to wear this stuff to work. But I won’t come straight from work again. I-I’ll change first.”

Vangelis stood then pulled Isabel to him. “Your foreman was a hard man to bribe. Very hard. He said you were a good woman and a good worker. But… everyone has their price. Even you. Right, Isabel?” He brought her hand to his mouth and lingered over it, inhaling, before kissing it lightly. Never had a kiss felt so much like a threat. Isabel pulled her hand away, but Vangelis only smiled and raised an eyebrow at her. “So, in the end? You don’t work there anymore.” He shoved her away, his hand to the small of her back, toward the door. She stumbled in its direction. From behind her. “I’ll see you soon, Isabel. One way or another.”

She pushed her way out into the cool night air, staggered to the corner, then vomited, again and again, into the street. What have you done, Daniel? What have you done? My dear friend. What have you fucking done?

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Europa Europa (KS Augustin)

Author: KS Augustin Release date: October 2015 (Reissue) Publisher: Sandal Press/Challis Tower Format: Ebook Price: US$1.99 Links: Book page at Sandal Press website – Subscribe to the Sandal/Challis newsletter

Chapter One The sharp pain Salvia felt in her upper arm told her she was wanted at the station. She flinched and a soft eddy hit her in the back, propelling her forward through the soothing, cool water. It had been several Earth-months since she’d last received a signal and she was disappointed to get it.

Hadn’t they forgotten her yet? After the last round of arguments, she had been so hopeful...

Duty warred with rebellion before finally winning out. Taking a deep breath, Salvia set out, knowing it would take her the best part of a day to reach her destination. She thought it was quite a distance, but the humans had told her that the territory on Europa was so small it would take seventy of them to fill Earth. She couldn't imagine that. A world seventy times bigger? Europa was already vaster, and lonelier, than she could sometimes bear. What would she do on an even bigger planet?

They weren't thinking of moving her, were they? Transporting her to Earth? She would refuse if they tried it. They might think they were smart, with their spaceships and technologies, but humans were useless without their personal bubbles of gaseous atmosphere. When she had first been released on Europa, the humans' submersibles and marine drones were much faster than her, but that had been months ago. Salvia was now sure that she had built up enough strength to outpace the fastest vessel on the station. The fact of the matter was they couldn't do a thing without her express permission.

Feeling triumphant, she sliced through the dark water with ease, enjoying the bursts of speed she coaxed from her body. She wasn’t worried about feeling another painful jab. The tracking device located somewhere on her body should have relayed her position and direction of travel. And she was doing what they wanted, after all...for the time being.

Her route would take her past the Bayless Plume, which was good. She needed to remind herself that she had achieved great things in the past year and a half. Things that nobody else from the station could have achieved. Things that had increased the profits and prestige of the company she worked for. She kept those thoughts in mind as she swam.

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The station shone like a brilliant jewel set into the ice crust, visible from kilometres away. Salvia blinked down her inner eyelid against the glare of light and grimaced. Sometimes she couldn’t believe she was related to the station’s inhabitants. They had no inner membrane to block the bright stabs of illumination that constantly surrounded them. How could anybody see anything clearly under such bleaching? It beggared belief.

She swam up the high tube situated off-centre at the bottom of the station. Even though she was used to darkness, the inky entrance of the tube always appeared menacing and claustrophobic. Flicking her legs she propelled herself upwards. Curved rectangles of light patterned her body as she swept past windows peering out into the funnel, but nobody was watching her. It would have been rare if there had been.

Doctor Faisbain was waiting for her in the Interaction Room. Salvia would have laughed at the title if she didn’t already know that there were cameras everywhere, watching each move she made.

Interaction Room? More like a Getting Orders Room. Out in the ocean, she was free. Here in the station, she felt pinned down and shackled.

As if responding to her thoughts, a clear panel below her feet slid shut, trapping her in a cylinder of water. Salvia watched her exit from the station narrow and disappear before looking up again.

“Hello, Dr. Faisbain,” she sub-vocalised.

She wasn’t sure how it worked, but that little bit of sound seemed to be enough to communicate with the humans on the other side of the thick transparent panel.

“Hello Salvia.”

The doctor was an older woman with grey streaks in her hair. Whenever she smiled, the wrinkles on her face grew deeper. She had always been nice, but Salvia knew that the woman was constrained by the company they both worked for. If Dr. Faisbain was ordered to imprison Salvia indefinitely within the station, there was no doubt she would do it.

“You’re looking well,” the doctor said. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Five months, I believe.”

Salvia flicked her feet, a movement that sent her bobbing further up in the water. Moving her arms slightly, she approached the window, lowering herself again so she was eye-level with the xeno-marine biologist.

You’re looking older, she thought. More tired. Has the company been bullying you while I’ve been away?

“You’re looking well too,” was all she said.

Faisbain leant against the bench at her back, her arms outstretched behind her as they rested on the flat surface.

“I know this may distress you, Salvia, but I think it’s important that we revisit the last few months. To make sure we’re both on the same page.”

Page of what, Salvia wondered, but kept silent.

The doctor was right about one thing, though. Salvia knew she was probably not going to enjoy the conversation. She never did. The humans had a name for the process where they talked at her, rather than with her. They called it "performance evaluations". She hated it.

“Almost a year ago, you discovered the Ivory Chasm for us,” Faisbain said. “This was after you

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mapped the Bayless Plume. Two such objectives, discovery and a completed survey, in the space of three months was tremendous work and the company was eager for you to go further afield, to scout locations even farther away from the station.”

She paused and pursed her lips. “But there was a problem, wasn’t there, Salvia?”

“I didn’t want to do it.” Salvia's voice was barely above a mutter, but it was still heard.

Faisbain nodded her head. “That’s right. You didn’t want to do it. And from a promising start two years ago, the productivity of this station dwindled, then crashed. We wondered if you were suffering from a dietary deficiency, but you weren’t, were you?”

Salvia shook her head.

“Nor was it the difficulty of the task. You’re a highly intelligent young woman who took great joy in your past achievements.”

Salvia watched the doctor silently, twitching her limbs occasionally to maintain her position in the tank.

“Then, a little over seven months ago, you came into the station and told me that you weren’t going to do any more work for the company unless we found a way to alleviate your boredom.”

Put like that, Salvia conceded that it made her sound more than a little churlish. But the station staff always had things to do and, when they didn’t, they had company to spend time with. She, on the other hand, had no-one. Nobody to share her discoveries with for almost two whole Earth years. Under the circumstances, she hadn’t considered her request unreasonable.

“After our numerous...discussions, I decided to contact the company with your request, and I have some good news for you.”

The smile that broke across Faisbain’s face was sudden and bright.

“The company accelerated a current programme of theirs and shipped it to us here on Europa.”

Salvia thought she must not be getting something, because that sentence didn’t make any sense to her.

“Current programme?” she asked. "Shipped? Shipped what?"

Faisbain widened her eyes. “Why, a companion of course! A male. He docked yesterday with the Nemo. We’ve been running him through a battery of tests to make sure he’s fully compatible with the ocean environment but think he’s ready for his first exploratory swim. Would you like to meet him?”

Salvia blinked her outer eyelids. She hadn’t been expecting such a swift response from her employer and creator. Had they really created a male, just for her? Just like her? Caught between apprehension and a growing excitement, she said nothing.

“If you swim down to Port Five, you’ll be able to meet him in person,” the biologist told her, adding a cajoling note to her voice. She turned and pressed a button on an adjacent console. The panel beneath Salvia’s feet slid open again. “Why don’t you go now and I’ll meet up with you there?”

Faisbain turned and moved towards the door at the back of the room. Feeling strangely anxious, Salvia slowly flipped her body and swam back down, past the small observation windows, and out of the tube completely. She knew how the ports were numbered, and headed to a panel of three human-sized hatches along the bottom of the station, skimming close to the station's metal skin as she swam.

It was cooler up here near the water's surface. A normal human would have suffered from hypothermia in minutes. Salvia, on the other hand, felt nothing more than a refreshing chill against her flesh. She

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needed it. She felt hot, as if her heart was pumping more and more blood through her body. In order to keep calm, she tried thinking of other things.

Like the temperature of the water.

She liked the variation in the marine climates of Jupiter’s moon, for example. It was clear and a little cold adjacent to the crust of ice that enfolded the rocky satellite, except where the hot water from geothermal vents weakened the solid water, forming cracks that looked out at the thin Europa atmosphere and the vacuum of space beyond. Afraid of what might happen if she was caught in a boiling updraft, Salvia stayed well away from the ice, except for her visits to the station. Where she normally swam, deep down, sometimes skimming the moon’s rocky core, it was warm and comforting.

There were no dangers down there she couldn’t deal with, as long as she kept her eyes open and didn’t swim directly into a hot, bubbling geothermal vent. All these things were what she would need to teach her male companion; that is, if the male actually existed and Dr. Faisbain wasn't playing a trick on her.

Humans liked to do that, from time to time.

Salvia saw a large illuminated number “5” next to a hatch and slowed, looking through the neighbouring window with curiosity.

The window was set into the floor of the fifth launch bay, looking down into the ocean depths. Salvia looked up at the foreshortened legs of three humans as they moved about. They were shifting a long metal tank closer to the hatch. The tank must have been heavy, because the station members looked like they were straining their muscles. One of them even had beads of sweat on his forehead. Salvia reflexively lifted a hand to her face but, of course, she didn’t sweat. And even if she did, the water surrounding her would wash her perspiration away in a second.

After the humans moved the tank to the position they wanted, they started tilting it so the end of the tank sat upright on the hatch opening. At this point, Dr. Faisbain entered. The scientist wasn’t aware of it but, in the time she spent training Salvia for her job, Salvia had learnt to lip-read through the thick transparent panels. She narrowed her eyes, damning the glare, and concentrated on the biologist’s lips.

“How far are we from a ‘go’ situation?” Faisbain asked.

Luckily, someone who was only a little in profile answered, his mouth almost fully visible to Salvia.

“We can jettison the cargo now if you like,” he said.

Cargo? Salvia thought they were handling a person like her. What kind of “cargo” were they going to drop into the ocean? A robot submersible? An oceanic sensor array? Was she right? Had they lied to her?

Faisbain nodded.

“Let’s do it,” she said with a sigh. “Haber wants his luggage in the ocean yesterday. But stay sharp. The greatest difficulty will be from thermal shock and we'll have to begin retrieval protocols instantly if we detect it. Better to find out sooner rather than later if we have a dud on our hands.”

Another technician moved to a console and said something. Unfortunately she had her back to Salvia, so only a low buzz was audible.

What did they mean about jettisoning cargo? About the cargo being a dud? Salvia wanted to think about the questions more but a dull creak vibrated through the water towards her. She turned in time to see the hatch fully retract. In a plume of obscuring white bubbles, something dropped into the water.

Salvia wanted to approach the object but she stayed where she was, confused by what had been

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discussed in the launch bay. Then the object began to move by itself. Salvia watched it cautiously, then gasped as her vision cleared and the bubbles rose to the station’s metal skin and skidded upwards.

It was a person! Her heart thumping, she approached the stranger, circling with slow practised movements, her gaze never leaving the newcomer’s body.

Faisbain was right. It was a him. Like her, he had a slit low on his abdomen, but it was short and his skin was smooth and unbroken at the juncture of his thighs. Dr. Faisbain had told her that many of her adaptive features were taken from Earth mammals called dolphins and, from her educational vids, Salvia could see this was one example of it.

She circled him again while he remained calm in the water. When she was in front of him, his large dark eyes focused on her, but he didn’t turn his head when she went around his back. His skin was smooth and glowing a neutral purple, even along his spine where a dorsal fin erupted, although there was a small circle of blue at the junction of back and fin. Salvia had been told of early attempts to craft something that was more fish-like, able to fan out or lie flat against the body depending on circumstances, but they couldn’t get it to work. Eventually, the scientists settled on a thick fixed membrane, kept erect by extruded vertebrae.

The webbing between his fingers and long toes were just like hers, which meant that the light shallow mounds on his forehead, cheeks and chin must be on hers as well. She had never seen more than dim glass reflections of her facial photophores, those large organs that augmented her vision and turned the dark of the ocean into a wonderland of exquisite detail. The mounds looked…interesting, like small shiny mirrors reflecting the world.

Her skin gleamed blue with satisfaction, shifting to orange and then back again to blue as she continued her leisurely examination. She flexed her shoulders, almost sure that hers weren’t quite as broad as his.

And while her legs were muscular and powerful, the stranger’s seemed to be bigger and thicker, as were his arms. If he could help her lift away rocks on their exploratory journeys, he would prove to be very useful.

“Salvia.”

The voice came from the speaker just next to the hatch.

Dr. Faisbain. She’d forgotten.

She spun around and headed for the window. Inside the launch bay, Faisbain was crouched down, watching her.

“We haven’t had time to properly introduce you,” she said with a smile. “Salvia, your new companion is called Rhus.” Her gaze shifted to somewhere behind Salvia’s right shoulder. “Rhus, this is Salvia. Up till now, she’s been the only full-time resident of Europa.”

Salvia felt ripples brush her fin as Rhus approached.

“Hello Salvia.”

His voice, while higher in tone than a normal human’s and designed to cut through water with less interference, was still deeper than hers.

“Hello,” she said politely, not knowing what else to say. Her body, rippling yellow and pink was, she hoped, the only outward indication of her embarrassment.

Dr. Faisbain chuckled as she watched them through the porthole. “Why don’t you take Rhus for a quick look around? Don’t be too long. We need to complete his medical check-up before we release him into

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your tender care.”

Salvia was more than happy to hear the request. Without waiting to see if Rhus was following, she darted away from the station.

At first, she had a stretch of beloved water to herself. Then, she felt the presence of someone skimming close to her. She flashed him a look—he had almost collided with her!—and, annoyed, dived down, spiralling through the currents like a torpedo. To her chagrin, he followed, almost at her heels. She levelled out at the Zaymen Ridge, the first and most explored of Europa’s underwater features, and slalomed between its stubby pillars, trying to outdistance him. When she finally came to an exhausted halt near the end of the ridge, he was behind her, but only by a handful of lengths. However, she noted with satisfaction that he appeared to be more out of breath than her.

“What did you do that for?” he asked, in between gasps. He flexed his back rhythmically, urging more water into his lungs.

“Dr. Faisbain told me to give you a ‘quick look around’,” she said, “and that’s exactly what I did.”

He snorted a quick chuckle and a small thread of bubbles rose to the surface.

“You were very impressive,” he finally said, but his breathing was still laboured.

Salvia didn’t know if Rhus had made that up to make her feel better, but it set a warm glow of pride in her belly. He was radiating blue and purple, which meant he wasn’t in heightened emotional state.

Maybe, she thought with a flick of her foot, he was telling the truth.

“In fact,” he said, “I didn’t think I could keep up.”

It was Salvia’s turn to be impressed. Even as she was darting from one outcrop to another, she had kept an eye on him, gleaming brightly in the water behind her. Up till that minute, she thought she was the fastest swimmer in the ocean. Now she wasn’t so sure.

“How did you get here?” she asked.

“You mean, to Europa?”

Salvia nodded.

“On a ship. It’s called the Nemo and it came from Mars.”

“And didn’t you have any place to exercise on this ship from Mars?”

He laughed and the burst of bubbles from his mouth momentarily obscured his features. “Haven’t you ever been on a ship?”

“Of course I have,” she answered, frowning deeply. “It’s just…I wasn’t awake at the time.”

“You were asleep?” His voice was incredulous. “If you came from Mars, you must have been asleep for the entire four months! Even the normals don’t sleep for that long.”

Salvia flashed an embarrassed yellow again. “It wasn’t sleep, exactly. Dr. Faisbain told me it was a state of suspended animation. That must be how you got here too.”

He had probably picked up the name of the ship from one of the technicians, she thought, and was using it to try and impress her.

“No.” He shook his head. “I was conscious almost the entire time.”

“Conscious? Were you able to see anything?”

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As much as Salvia loved her watery home, the presence of the station was a constant reminder that there were other wonders beyond the ice crust. Other worlds. There were planets where the water had dried up, disappearing into space they said, yet humans still managed to live there. There were other habitats under domes, protecting the inhabitants from hard vacuum or pollution. Some planets had rings around them, glittering garlands of ice and rock. Even Jupiter had thick colourful bands covering it.

She wondered if Rhus had seen any of them.

“The crew kept me in a transparent observation tank for the entire journey. It was almost as if I was living with them. The captain used to come to the observation tank all the time and talk to me.”

There was a note of pride in his voice that Salvia envied.

She had always known that she was something apart from the rest of the station’s inhabitants. Dr. Faisbain had been kind but firm on that point. Salvia wasn't human and shouldn’t think like a human.

Instead, she was told to open her mind to the wonders of Europa and take her cues from its marine landscape. Thinking like a human, Faisbain told her, might only serve to narrow her perspective.

Except…

Humans were the only other sentient beings on Europa and being deliberately shut off from them was like being thrown out of a community for being too strange, too different. It was something that had obviously not happened to Rhus.

Salvia would have to think about that, about why she had been treated one way and Rhus another. But there was another, more important question she had to ask.

"You call them 'normals'. Why is that?"

Surprise flashed across his face. "Because they are. We use their base DNA code, with splices from other animals. That makes us different. They are normals. We are," he hesitated, and blinked his eyes quickly. "They used a term on the Nemo. 'Cold-adapted marines'." He looked pleased with himself.

"Yes, that was it."

Salvia tried the words out on her own tongue. "Cold. Adapted. Marines." She didn't like it. "It makes us sound like a brand of food."

Rhus shrugged.

“Come on,” she said, not caring that her voice was a bit brusque. “I should get you back to the station before the 'normals', as you call them, start panicking.”

“Then what happens?”

Salvia flicked away. At that moment, she didn't care what happened to him. “That’s up to them to decide.”

She headed for the station at a more leisurely pace, a clearly puzzled Rhus lagging behind.

Chapter Two Rhus wanted to power through the water. He wanted to skim the ice sheets at the moon’s surface while on his back, watching the small bubbles trapped beneath the frozen water wobble as he sliced under them. He wanted to dive down to the depths and slalom the ridge again.

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He wanted to swim.

He radiated a happy blue and purple as he followed Salvia back to the station, wondering if she understood how lucky she was. All this time, she was living in the most perfect environment imaginable while he was trawling the vacuum between planets. As much as the trip on the spaceship had impressed and fascinated him, the feel of free-moving water against his skin told him he was finally home. He just hoped nobody would try to take it away from him.

The woman Salvia referred to as Dr. Faisbain was waiting for them at Hatch Number Five. She looked older than a lot of the people who had accompanied him in the spaceship, but she also looked kinder.

Certainly, she was a lot more relaxed than the courteous yet stiff captain of the Nemo, Haber. The ship crew were often very serious and intense, even when supposedly relaxing, and they didn’t smile as often as Dr. Faisbain. Rhus thought she must be a very important person to be given such a position at the Europa station.

“I brought him back in one piece,” Salvia was saying to her.

Salvia’s voice was higher than his. In the background, through the porthole’s window, he heard the faint vibration of her voice as it was piped into the launch bay, artificially deepened and processed so normals could understand it. He remembered that they did the same to him on the Nemo.

“That’s good,” Faisbain said with a smile, “but, if you don’t mind, Salvia, we’d like to keep Rhus overnight at the lab for observation.”

“Observation?” Salvia’s feet glowed red with dismay but Rhus noticed that she made sure to keep those extremities below the level of the porthole. He didn’t know how Salvia was able to keep her emotions so controlled like that. He couldn’t do it. He would have to ask her to teach him.

“Now that he’s had some exercise on Europa and a chance to breathe its water, we’ll need to do a full health check-up. He’s been in a very limited environment up till now and we want to make sure his body can cope with conditions on the moon.”

“But didn’t you make him so he could cope?”

Rhus was surprised at Salvia's question. Only a little while ago, he was convinced she didn’t care if he stayed or left. Now, she appeared to be arguing on his behalf.

“We did,”Faisbain nodded, “but sometimes things go wrong. Things we might not be aware of until we’ve done a full examination. Don’t worry, I’m sure he’ll be fine. Once we’ve checked his health, we’ll insert the tracking beacon then we’ll release him to begin work tomorrow.”

Salvia’s feet pulsed a quick flash of vivid scarlet—anger—before being cloaked in the simmering darker red again.

“You have some work for us to do?” she asked.

“We kept our side of the bargain, remember?”

What were they talking about? Rhus wanted to interrupt and ask but there was such an air of intensity between the two women that he didn’t dare. Besides, he was starting to feel very tired. Maybe a bit of a rest was exactly what he needed.

It was Faisbain who broke the tension by moving away from the porthole and stretching her shoulders.

Watching intently, Rhus repeated the action in the cool, dark water.

“Tomorrow, Salvia.” This time, the scientist’s voice brooked no objections.

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The metal hatch next to the porthole slid open. Rhus swam over to it and looked up into the tube of water.

“We’ll complete our tests as quickly as possible.” Faisbain’s voice again. “I promise.”

With a last look at Salvia, who gave him a reluctant nod, Rhus swam up into the tube and tried not to notice the lid screwing shut beneath his feet. *** There was a set of passages. The station’s staff knew about them because they were escape exits, to be used in the remote eventuality that the major transit shaft leading up through the station somehow collapsed. They didn’t think Salvia knew about it because they thought she was stupid.

(Salvia, Salvia thought with savage delight, was young, but Salvia was far from stupid.)

After Rhus had entered the tube, Salvia told Dr. Faisbain that she would revisit the Zaymen Ridge.

There was something interesting she had seen there, she said. She even swam halfway to the ridge, so the tracking sensors would note her route. Then she doubled back.

Salvia knew she was taking a risk. There was nothing stopping a technician from glancing at a station screen and seeing her head back to the station, but she had done this several times before and hadn’t been caught. She was betting that the novelty of Rhus would mean even less attention would be paid to her.

Unlike the station’s main water shaft, the passage Salvia headed for was unlit. If she were a normal— Rhus' word, but she liked it, so she started using it—she wouldn’t have even noticed the dark circle halfway up the vertical wall of the station. But what the normals didn't know was that the slow eddies beyond the half-hidden tube opening called to the ocean creature in her. Its languid flows whispered of cylinders of languid water, slow, quiet and rarely visited.

The pipe was covered by a thick, open-mesh lid. Salvia swam right up to the lid and stretched her arm between the ribbons of criss-crossing metal, reaching for the tube's inner surface. Her fingers crept over a rough surface, crusted with colonies of tiny polyps, till they grazed a squarish artificial bump. That, she knew, was the manual release button. She pressed it and quickly withdrew her arm, letting the mesh petals dilate open. Lowering herself so she almost touched the coral, and so her dorsal fin wouldn’t hit the metal, she quietly entered the pipe.

From past visits, Salvia had worked out where the major sections of the station were situated. Dr. Faisbain had told her that she had excellent spatial cognition. As if Salvia didn’t know.

She swam straight ahead, following the curve of the tube. At the first intersection, she took the downward pipe, then turned right. That would take her to the scientific observation section. Dr. Faisbain’s territory. Salvia put a hand out and her webbed fingers touched the curved metal wall.

“—finished?”

That sounded like the biologist.

“Yes, Doctor.”

Salvia didn’t recognise the second voice, but thought it must be one of the technicians.

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“And the beacon’s inserted?”

“Yes, Doctor. And I’ve calibrated it so it’ll activate the upper arm sensory trigger on signal.”

Absently, Salvia rubbed her arm. Every call from the station resulted in the stabbing pain in her upper arm. It was useful knowing that disabling the beacon would also disable the pain.

“Good. I’ll be at the meeting if you need me.”

There were muffled sounds then a rhythmic pattern. Feet. Salvia kept her fingers on the wall while she paced along with the sound. The normals hadn’t realised how effectively vibrations travelled through metal and water. Living in air, they were used to the imperfect transmission of sound, not realising that Salvia could often hear them more clearly that they heard themselves.

Dr. Faisbain continued to walk.

The only time Salvia met with any confusion in interpretation was if simultaneous conversations took place in rooms next to each other. And sound could get muffled if there was some kind of thick dampening material between the person and the floor. Luckily, there were small rugs only in a few areas, such as in the bedrooms and a couple of the small meeting rooms. Important meetings usually meant the involvement of most of the station’s staff, in a room that had a bare, hard floor. Like the rest of the company’s building, wedged between ice and liquid water, it was sheeted in metal—easy to keep clean…and also very efficient at transmitting sound.

Kicking her feet every now and then, Salvia kept up with Dr. Faisbain’s tread. She was expecting the doctor to stop at one of her usual rooms but was surprised when the scientist kept walking all the way to what Salvia knew as the “boardroom”. Why it was called a boardroom was a mystery to her but, then again, much of what the normals did was a mystery.

When Dr. Faisbain's footsteps halted, Salvia knew she was outside the correct room. She frowned and pressed herself closer to the wall. Like the large meeting hall, the boardroom was only peopled intermittently, usually during the monthly meeting with department heads. Salvia cast her mind back and knew that the last monthly meeting had been last week. There shouldn’t be another gathering in the boardroom for another three weeks at least. Something very important must be going on.

Even though she knew they couldn’t hear her, Salvia breathed shallowly and listened in, her cheek pushed up against the metal skin of the tube.

“—glad you could make it, Dr. Faisbain.”

Salvia didn’t know who was speaking, but she knew that tone of voice. It was courteous but masking condescension.

“I came as quickly as I could, Captain Haber.”

There was the scrape of a chair and a bit of murmuring as Faisbain sat down.

Salvia didn't know who this “Captain Haber” was. She hadn’t heard the name before. Was he the captain of the ship that had brought Rhus? She didn't think he was a technician. His voice sounded too authoritative.

“And how is our newest denizen of Europa’s oceans?” That was Haber’s voice.

“Rhus is doing better than expected,” Faisbain said. “Considering the accelerated medium in which he was developed, his skeletal and muscular structures are amazingly robust. He does seem to tire easily, however. Tests indicate a sub-standard level of oxygen absorption from the water, so it’s obvious that

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organ growth is lagging but I’m sure he’ll come up to speed quickly once he’s in his home environment and has had a few months' further growth under his belt.”

“And Salvia?”

“She’s fine.” Salvia knew the scientist well enough to detect the thread of stiffness in her tone. She wondered if anybody else heard it as well.

“We’ve spent a lot of money on this venture already, Dr. Faisbain. I’m expecting something more than ‘fine’, especially considering the rushed nature of the second creature’s development.”

Creature? Were they referring to…Rhus? And her?

“I’d like to remind you that Salvia and Rhus are both human, Captain.” The censure in Faisbain's voice was obvious now, even through layers of steel. “They were grown from human stock and all modifications were spliced on human stock first. With the exception of marine technology in their lungs, skin and eye structure, they are fully human.”

“No human has ever cost as much as one of your…patients, Dr. Faisbain.”

Haber’s voice was a bit muffled. Salvia imagined he would only sound like that if he was leaning forward and perhaps resting his hands on something that interfered with sound transmission. A table?

“Costs that the company has recouped many times over.”

Salvia knew there were others in the room. She could hear their shuffling interfering with her following the conversation, but it appeared that the doctor and Haber were the only ones willing to talk. Salvia wondered why that was. Were hostility-laden arguments between normals some kind of spectator sport?

Did someone keep score? Was that why others were in the room? None of the other monthly meetings had sounded anything like this.

“The new compounds that are being synthesised to form lightweight, innovative building materials came from Europa,” Dr. Faisbain said. “So did the material to create new bone growth matrices. The samples Salvia has brought back, from regions deeper and farther away than we dare explore, have led to innovations in fields ranging from industrial compounds to micro-surgical techniques.”

Salvia straightened her spine and smiled.

Yes! You tell that superior-sounding arrogant man, Dr. Faisbain!

“And such discoveries have stopped for the past half a year, haven’t they, Dr. Faisbain?”

Salvia stilled.

“Understandable, under the circumstances,” Faisbain said.

Her voice was softer now and full of…uncertainty? Salvia frowned and continued to listen.

“We created a modified human being, sent her out into an ocean of darkness and expected only blind obedience. We don’t expect such behaviour from domesticated pets, much less another sentient being.”

“She’s a tool of the company that employs us both.”

“She’s a young woman, Captain Haber. An intelligent, sensitive and lonely young woman. The only thing that surprises me is how long she waited before staging her mutiny. I know you are on the company’s board, and that you specifically requested the ship captaincy so you could relay the company’s…displeasure to me in person but, on your return, could you also tell the rest of the board that we’re dealing with an intelligent being here and not a circus animal.”

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There was a long silence and Salvia wondered whether the normals had used hand signals to indicate the meeting was at an end. She hadn’t heard any noises associated with people leaving. She tried to imagine what it might look like in the boardroom. Besides their voices, how did normals send emotional signals to one another? They didn’t have bioluminescent skin like she did, and their tones didn’t seem to vary very much, staying in a lower range that she found signified secrets to be told, information that wasn’t to be shared. As far as she was concerned, humans were more about hiding things than revealing them.

“When can we send the other one out?” Captain Haber finally asked.

“Rhus,” there was a slight stress on his name, “will be ready to begin work tomorrow. We had a problem with the tracking device that was implanted on Mars and had to replace it. Other than that, he’s coping admirably.”

“And the girl will start work again?”

“Salvia is a reasonable young woman. She knows we made a deal. We stuck to our end. I’m sure she’ll stick to hers.”

“We’re after results, Dr. Faisbain. In the absence of new product launches, our share price has remained static for more than half a year. Considering the size of our investment here, the board considers this unacceptable. We’re depending on your hybrids to help generate more profit.”

“I’m sure you are, Captain Haber. And may I remind you that Rhus’ arrival is only an acceleration of a plan that had already been agreed to five years ago? I'm sure the company is aware of the roadmap I helped draft. Contrary to what others might think, this posting to Europa hasn't turned out to be the exile they hoped for me.”

Another silence.

“Based on past results,” Faisbain said, and Salvia detected a note of triumph in her voice, “as the senior marine biologist on Europa station, I’m expecting a significant rise in commercial discoveries once both Salvia and Rhus begin working together.”

There wasn’t much of importance said after that. Or, at least, anything that made sense to Salvia. The voices became more relaxed, others chimed in, and Salvia gathered that the main, combative part of the meeting was at an end. When she heard someone enter the room, announcing the arrival of food, she knew it was time to go.

Using measured strokes, Salvia headed out of the pipe system and into open water, increasing her speed as she hit the ocean currents. She hadn't been detected but, for safety's sake, she wanted to be as far from the station as possible.

She headed for her home, a cave system forty kilometres from the humans' outpost. Although she had a bay at the station that was supposedly her own “room”, it had been Dr. Faisbain who’d encouraged her to be more independent, telling her that it wouldn’t always be practical swimming back to the base while she was exploring underwater terrain six sectors away, for example. The biologist's encouragement changed the way Salvia thought about her job. She realised that she didn't have to take the company handouts if she didn't want to. Just as she didn't have to eat the company food.

The station had been set up to dispense daily rations and, most of the time, Salvia had dutifully gone and collected her meals. There were three of them for each day, labelled “Breakfast”, “Lunch” and “Dinner”. This had amused and puzzled Salvia no end. Did the humans really regulate their lives to such an extent? When she asked Faisbain about it, the scientist had replied that, yes, most humans ate

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their meals three times a day.

Salvia said nothing but she was smiling inside. What if someone suddenly became hungry in between one of these regimented meal times? What if they happened across something delicious in the course of their work? Were they supposed to ignore a tasty titbit just because they hadn’t reached the eating part of their cycle?

But that wasn’t the only puzzle that the normals posed. Faisbain explained that, at first, humans hadn't been sure what was waiting for them under the icy crust of Europa.

“We had expected a barren salty ocean, stretching all the way around Jupiter’s moon,” Faisbain had told her during her third physical examination, when she was still getting used to having an entire moon to herself. “And when we started the drilling, in order to site the station…well, we discovered more surprises.”

“Like the thickness of the ice,” Salvia said from inside the observation tank.

“That’s right.” The older woman’s voice was distracted from referring to several monitors. “Definitely thinner than we were expecting. And the water was warmer too.”

“And full of life.”

It hadn't taken Salvia long before she was entranced by the wonder of the dark watery world. Except it wasn’t dark to her. Her eyes had been modified, so what appeared to be complete blackness to humans was actually a landscape of shading and pastel colour to her. The currents were faint ribbons of blue, sinuously weaving their way between ridges and slowly fading into larger currents and bodies of water.

Schools of marine creatures resembling fish appeared as white and silver flashes, darting across water, coalescing and dispersing, flowing around obstacles and meeting up on the other side as if they were a single entity, temporarily sliced into individual streams that seamlessly melded together again.

Salvia’s stomach would rumble when she saw the shoals of white-fish. There were bigger predators in Europa’s oceans but Salvia knew she had a couple of advantages over them. She was quick. And smart.

It didn’t take long for her to capture flapping slivers of firm flesh in her hands and mouth and crunch them between her sharp teeth. She swallowed their rich blood as she chewed, and considered her small catches of fish to be superior in taste and texture to the processed blocks that the station dispensed.

She was given medical care by the humans. And accommodation. And food. Dr. Faisbain was kind and even joked with her from time to time. But even during her first tentative forays into Europa, Salvia knew that the humans weren’t her friends. She watched the way they treated each other—what they said behind another person's back—and that was with their own kind. She knew they would be more cruel with her. They could turn into foes at the least opportunity.

But now that she was safely in her cave, Salvia could ruminate more clearly on the meeting she’d overheard. The words that Captain Haber spoke seemed to imply that she and Rhus were nothing more than animals. Trained creatures sent out into Europa to sniff out and recover minerals and structures that might be used by the mysterious, almighty “company” to “increase profits”. She had heard those terms many times, most often when they thought she wasn't listening. She didn't know exactly what a “company” was, except she was sure it described a very greedy entity. Maybe it was something, or someone, that the humans worshipped. That sounded right. And “profits” were like sacrifices to the company. The bigger the sacrifice, the more the entity liked it.

And what if the sacrifices weren't big enough? Salvia had known she was taking a risk by not working these past few months. Would the company understand? Or would it grow so angry that it would travel

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to Europa to punish Salvia?

But she was already steps ahead of the monster. Afraid that it might decide to wreak vengeance, Salvia had been hoarding the rations that the station provided. There had been no firm thought of mutiny at first, just an uneasy thought that she needed some kind of insurance, in case she displeased the station's supervisors. She hadn’t said anything to Dr. Faisbain of what she was thinking; after all, wasn’t Dr. Faisbain also a human, and not to be trusted?

Whenever she could, Salvia snuck away extra rations and, by now, had a reasonably-sized cache. That was her emergency reserve, in case disaster struck. And it had been a wise move.

When, several months ago, she’d gone back to the station to tell them that she refused to do any more work until they provided a companion for her, they did as she'd feared, and used the threat of starvation against her. Up to that point, the normals had somehow thought that she was feeding exclusively on the compressed dusty bricks they called food. When she laughed at them and displayed a wriggling whitefish in her hand, before munching on it in front of them, they looked shocked. They would have threatened to withhold medical care but both parties knew that Salvia was in the peak of health. She had been created to be the perfect complement to Europa and, unfortunately for them, she was.

When they ran out of threats, they finally settled down and listened. And that's when Salvia told them what she wanted.

Salvia hadn’t cared if the companion she had asked for was male or female. All she wanted was someone to share Europa with. The white-fish were too simple-minded and primitive for her to communicate with, and their predators, for all that their size proclaimed some degree of prowess in Europa’s oceans, were also only intent on eating and breeding. There hadn’t been a single creature in her new home that she could talk to or share new discoveries with. The station personnel, even including Dr. Faisbain, were more interested in what she found rather than how she felt. So she had refused further assignments until she had a confidant. A friend.

And she hadn't quite believed their promises until they delivered one to her.

She had expected to be happy. She hadn’t bargained on the conflicting emotions that Rhus’ appearance caused.

Her ideal friend would have been someone like her, quiet and curious. She hadn’t been ready for a brash male who boasted about his journey to Europa, a journey she couldn’t herself recall. She had wanted someone to share confidences with, but Rhus appeared to be somebody who was happier demonstrating his own superiority. She’d been happy when she heard Dr. Faisbain tell the rest of the room, including Captain Haber, that Rhus’ organs were still immature. That meant that he wasn’t as strong as he had first boasted. As first human inhabitant of the moon, Salvia was still its mistress and holder of more knowledge about Europa than any other person in the galaxy.

In the comforting arch of her cave, Salvia smiled to herself. Having some company was good, but she wouldn’t make the mistake of trusting Rhus too much. He was still a tool of the “company” that Salvia mistrusted. He would need to prove himself before she shared more than her surface thoughts with him.

She flicked a glance to a small section of the cave floor piled with uneaten station rations. Although Salvia had laughed at the station staff when they threatened to starve her, they hadn't known that it was bravado. She hadn't known how long she could have lasted if they hadn't listened to her demands. Her Europan diet consisted mostly of white-fish, but she hadn't been on Europa long enough to confidently predict its cycles. Maybe there was an annual migratory surge, when life would disappear to another part of the moon, too far away for her to comfortably reach. Maybe there were regular die-offs. Suicide

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runs. Geothermal poisoning from the moon's active core. The rations were her insurance for such occurrences. Thank goodness she hadn't needed to rely on them.

Her gaze then drifted to a small patch of darkness, hidden behind bigger boulders and bioluminescent patches of copepod colonies. That was her second exit out of her cave.

That passage was small and low, with barely enough room for her to wriggle through. After discovering it, Salvia left it alone, entering and exiting her home via the larger, primary entrance. The reasoning was clear. She couldn’t discount the humans sending autonomous marine drones of their own to explore the moon. In case there was any trouble between the station and herself—they wanted to trap her, for example—she didn’t want to betray her secret escape route.

Yes, she may have been cynical about humans and their motivations but, judging by Haber's words, she was justified in her paranoia.

Floating in the closed comfort of her cave, Salvia let herself drift upwards until she could reach out and touch the rough ceiling. So much had happened that it was difficult to take it all in. Her mind was whirling with visions of lies, betrayal, deceit...and darting through the oceans with someone by her side.

Closing her eyes, she sighed and waited for the new day. And Rhus’ arrival.

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Meet the Editorial Team Editor: Kaz Augustin is an ex-Brisbanite (Australia) who loves space opera, SFR and all things geeky. She lives in Malaysia, where she loves the shopping for tech gadgets, but hates the heat! Her website is at www.KSAugustin.com and she and her husband also runSandal Press and Challis Tower (Books). If you’re a Twitter fan, you can find her at @SandalPress . Send all feedback about this magazine to editor {@} scifiromancequarterly {.} org Fiction Editor: Diane Dooley is the Fiction Editor for Science-Fiction Romance Quarterly.

Born in the Channel Islands, raised in Scotland and now resident in the USA, she is an author, an editor, a voracious reader, an unrepentant troublemaker, and a geek of intergalactic proportions. You can follow her on her blog or on Twitter . Live long and prosper!

Releases Editor: Heather Massey is a lifelong fan of science fiction romance. She searches for sci-fi romance adventures aboard her classic blog, The Galaxy Express as well as the new Galaxy Express 2.0. She’s also an author. Her stories will entertain you with fantastical settings, larger-than-life characters, timeless romance, and rollicking action. When Heather’s not reading or writing, she’s watching cult films and enjoying the company of her husband and daughter. To learn more about her work, visit HeatherMassey.com.

Our reviewers Toni Adams is here to voice her opinions. Toni Adams resides in Los Angeles. Among the normal plane of reality, she has B.S. in Molecular, Cellular Developmental Biology and works as a veterinary technician. She has dealt with Felis catus, canus lupis familiaris, reptilian creatures, various avians, lagamorphs, rodentians, chelonians, and testudines. In her loving care are four felis catus, one canus lupis familiaris, and one pogona vitticeps. In summary, she really loves animals.

When she is able to shed off the shroud of a Responsible Adult, she partakes in so many guilty pleasures that the guilt has long worn off. To name them all would make your brain explode from the sheer power. Just know, that it involves a blue police box, ponies with absurd markings on their rumps, a norse alien god, a rock band from the nineties, gaming (trading cards, board games, consoles), random international romantic dramas, and lots of crafting. The guiltiest pleasure of all has been decades of reading romance novels. From corset ripping heroines to gun toting she-devils, she continues to devour story after story.

Romance and science fiction is a blend that can either intoxicate her to dangerous levels of excitement or entice boiling frustration. Bring on the excessive transfer of heat and get some hydrogen elements shakin'!

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The Book Pushers are six book-loving girls from around the world who share a love of all things romance. From small town contemporaries, to sweeping historicals, to gritty paranormal, to the futuristic science fi, they read it all. They are known for their fun, conversational style joint reviews, and can be found lurking on their website, on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, and Booklikes.

Marlene Harris is currently the Technical Services Manager at The Seattle Public Library.

She's also one of the co-editors of SPL's Romantic Wednesdays feature on Shelf Talk, which gives her a chance to expose her love of romance novels. In addition, she's also a reviewer for Library Journal's Xpress Reviews, and the author of their annual Librarian's Best Ebook Romance feature. Because she can't resist talking about the books she loves, and occasionally the ones she hates, she has her own book blog at Reading Reality . In her professional persona, before coming to Seattle she previously managed Technical and Collection Services Departments at libraries in locations from Gainesville Florida to Anchorage Alaska to the Chicago Public Library.

Jo Jones is a retired pilot who, after retiring, had an RV and traveled 6 months out of the year.

After traveling seven years she left on a trip and realized that she was ready to spend more time at home so she sold the RV. She isn't giving up travel; she just takes the trips that did not fit with RVing. When at home, she gardens, reads, plays bridge, hikes, visits with friends, and volunteers. Jo is an unabashed big cat lover and shares her home with TC, her shelter cat. Both of them live in the Ozarks in Northwest Arkansas which, they unanimously agree, is one of the best places in the country to live.

RK Shiraishi R.K. is a long time science fiction fan, as well as a fan of all things fantasy and paranormal. She spends her spare time deep in the world of classic SF television, movies, and even radio plays. Her alter ego is as fantasy writer Echo Ishii. Her first novella, MR RUMPEL AND MR GRIMM is available from Less Than Three Press. You can follow her on Facebook (RK Shiraishi), Twitter and Pinterest (mrsbookmark).

Psyche Skinner is a working scientist with a taste for imaginative fiction. She is constantly seeking novels that combine hard speculative science with well-rounded characters--although she also appreciates a good space opera.

Rachel Cotterill grew up hiding from the real world in a succession of imaginary lands, and has no particular wish to return to Earth. She likes fast-paced plots, greyscale morality, and characters who remain believable when they find themselves in situations that are anything but. She’s always searching for her next favourite author, and is half of the feminist SF book blog Strange Charm, which exists to showcase the best in speculative fiction by female authors.

When she isn't reading, Rachel is professionally and perpetually indecisive, splitting her time somewhat haphazardly between writing, computer science, linguistics, recipe development,

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and travel. Rachel's third novel, Watersmeet, is a romantic and optimistic fantasy published earlier this year. You can find her on Twitter at @rachelcotterill.

SFF Dragon is an avid reader, some might say bookworm, who lives in England and grew up on a steady diet of home cooking and proverbs. When her head wasn't stuck in a book, she was out being active or volunteering to do charity work. As an adult, animals, any type of sport involving cars, swimming and lots of reading are her main past-times. She also likes watching war, western, spy, sci-fi/fantasy, Christmas stories of any kind and romance films and series, and thinks the best ones include all of these categories.

She loves science fiction, paranormal romance, urban fantasy and any feel-good Christmas story which she reads all year round to maintain her perspective on what's important in life and loves nothing more than a happy ending. She has individual Degrees in Computer Programming and Business Studies, a Masters in HR Management and shares her home with her partner, loads of gadgets, and thousands of books and DVDs. When not reading, which isn't often, she can be found doing anything from learning a new language to designing and making her own clothes and jewellery, as well as gardening for a little light relief. You can find her on Goodreads and Facebook.

Cyd Athens, a pronoun-fluid, over-fifty, alternate-lifestyle living, SFWA member, associate editor of the Unidentified Funny Objects (UFO) anthologies, aspiring professional author, and speculative fiction aficionado from 45° 29 30.65N, 122° 35 30.91W The public library was Cyd's gateway drug. Find Cyd online at www.CydAthens.net Ian Sales has recently been working on a quartet of novellas, the Apollo Quartet. The first, Adrift on the Sea of Rains, was published in 2012. It won the BSFA Award for that year and was shortlisted for the Sidewise Award for Alternate History. The second book, The Eye With Which The Universe Beholds Itself, was published in early 2013, and the third book, Then Will The Great Ocean Wash Deep Above, in late 2013. The final novella, All That Outer Space Allows, will appear in 2014. He is represented by the John Jarrold Literary Agency, can be found online at www.IanSales.com and he also tweets.

This issue's contributors Our Opinion writer, Lise MacTague, left Winnipeg, Canada for warmer climes before realizing those have gigantic bugs, so she settled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin instead. Now she amuses herself by telling the natives it isn’t that cold. When not pestering Wisconsinites about the weather, Lise writes lesbian sci-fi and dreams of the day when she’ll be able to quit her real job to write full time.

First-time entrant in our Craft column, Amazon best-seller Veronica Scott is a three-time recipient of the SFR Galaxy Award, and has written a number of science-fiction and fantasy romances. Her latest release is Star Cruise: Marooned (audiobook coming in 2016). You can find out more about her and her books at https://VeronicaScott.wordpress.com/ The short story “Topography of Meringue” was written by Laurie N Meynig. Laurie writes and paints

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from the ever soggy Pacific northwest in the USA. By day she works in a book store, by night she keeps the world safe from a tiny, hateful cat through the almighty power of a fleece blanket. Her art and goings-on can be found at her website (LaurieNoel.com) or tweet her @LaurieNoelArt. This is her first published work.

The short story “Origin Stories� was written by Sara Kate Ellis. Sara is a 2011 Lambda Emerging Writers Fellow and the winner of the 2015 Defenestrationism short fiction contest. Her stories have appeared in The Red Penny Papers, Ideomancer, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, and Crossed Genres, and are forthcoming at Solarpunk Press and Stupefying Stories. She lives in Tokyo with her partner and her cat, tom, and likes soba. You can contact her via her blog.

The Indian Steampunk roundup was penned by Suna Dasi. Suna is a passionate geek with a pen, whose heritage inspires her steampunk fiction. Her regular job as a session singer has taken her all over the world; she loves to add a dash of her Indian culture whenever she can get away with it. She currently works as a backing vocalist with Texan artist, Erin Bennett. Suna has a theatre background; having been active in many branches of the creative industries, she is passionate about giving a greater scope to the representation of women and poc in all media and art forms. Noticing there was still a glass ceiling to be broken, she has given talks and appeared on several diversity-themed panels on these subjects - for example at Edinburgh Pride 2014 and at the Glasgow School of Art. Two of her short stories are due to appear in anthologies in 2016. In 2014 Suna won the Steampunk Chronicle Reader's Choice Awards for best MultiCultural Steampunk. She can be reached via www.steampunkindia.com and you can find out more about her work at www.erinbennettmusic.com Kristine Kathryn Rusch, who reminded us of many things in this issue's Focus column, writes in every genre she reads, which happens to be most of them. As Kristine Grayson, she writes goofy paranormal romances. As Kris Nelscott, she writes noir mysteries. As Kristine Kathryn Rusch, she writes whatever she pleases. Mostly, though, she's known for her science fiction and fantasy.

Nominated for every award in sf (and many in the other genres as well), she's also won a lot of awards, including several readers choice awards from various magazines, a World Fantasy Award, and two Hugo awards (one for editing, and one for her short fiction). Her short work has been in over 20 years best collections, including two upcoming in 2016. Her novels have hit bestseller lists worldwide.

Recently, she published the 8-volume Anniversary Day Saga, set in her Retrieval Artist universe, as well as the Interim Fates trilogy as Kristine Grayson. She's series editor for Fiction River, with her husband Dean Wesley Smith, and she edits some of the volumes including November's Hidden in Crime. She and John Helfers are editing the Best Mysteries of the Year for Kobo Books. Kris just turned in the Women of Futures Past project for Baen Books. She works and occasionally sleeps on the Oregon Coast.

Cover artwork was (inadvertently) by KS Augustin.

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Advertise with us!

Here at Sci-Fi Romance Quarterly, our mission is to empower and entertain with sci-fi romance stories and original artwork. To accomplish this goal, we rely on the sustenance of your advertising contributions.

Advertising with Sci-Fi Romance Quarterly is a smart way to grow your readership because our readers are passionate about SFR. If you’d like to support this magazine and also reach a highly motivated audience of power readers, then please consider advertising with us.

Deadlines for Issue 10: • Quarter- and Thirds-page ads – 15-March 2016

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Two-chapter excerpts – 01-March 2016

Quarter-page ads For a quarter-page ad in SFRQ, we require an image that is:

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300px by 375px (please note larger dimensions, at no extra cost!)

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Full colour

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Minimum 140dpi

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One URL (for click-through)

The ad will appear on the website and in the EPUB, Mobi, PDF and Flipbook formats of the magazine.

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Price: $16 if you supply the magazine-ready ad / $26 if we create the ad for you.

Thirds-page ads (NEW!) For a one-third page ad in SFRQ, we require an image that is:

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600px wide by 375px high

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Full colour

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Minimum 140dpi

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One URL (for click-through)

The ad will appear on the front page of the website and in the EPUB, Mobi, PDF and Flipbook formats of the magazine.

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Price: $29 if you supply the magazine-ready ad / $39 if we create the ad for you.

Questions? Email Promotions ~at~ SciFiRomanceQuarterly ~dot~ org Two-chapter excerpts * Please read this section carefully and do NOT send any funds unless specifically requested by us. Any funds prematurely sent to us will NOT be refunded (they will be regarded as donations!), so make sure you understand what’s in this section first. *

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In order to satisfy readers’ curiosity about SFR releases, Sci-Fi Romance Quarterly is currently soliciting excerpts for a new section we call “Sneak Peeks”. Excerpts will appear on the website and in the EPUB, Mobi, PDF and Flipbook formats of the magazine.

“SFR Excerpts” submission guidelines • Only excerpts from current releases will be considered (i.e., last quarter, this quarter, and the following quarter)

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The excerpt must be suitable for readers ages 13 and up. Excerpts with sex scenes will be automatically rejected.

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Having stated the above, we regret that we will not be accepting any Young Adult work.

Excerpts must be from a book that is categorised for Adults.

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Create a new document. On the first page, include the book’s title, your name, release date, publisher, available formats, price, click-through URL and your contact email address

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Place the first two chapters of your book after the title page

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Save your document in DOC/DOCX/ODT format (we heart LibreOffice!)

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Send the document to Promotions ~at~ SciFiRomanceQuarterly dot org, with “EXCERPT – [book title] – [author name]” in the Subject line

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The Editorial Team will evaluate your submission. Any excerpt with sub-par cover art, formatting errors, copious typos and/or grammar mistakes will be declined.

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All rejections are final. Rejected excerpts are ineligible for future consideration.

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Authors will be notified if their excerpt has been rejected/approved.

If your excerpt is chosen and you wish to have it included in the magazine: • Cost is $30 per excerpt. An author may advertise up to two (2) approved excerpts in a given calendar year.

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Bonus discount: If you purchase a quarter-page ad for the same issue where the excerpt is running, the price will be $41 for excerpt plus a DIY ad, or $51 if we create the ad for you.

(Regular price $46 / $56)

Questions? Email Promotions ~at~ SciFiRomanceQuarterly ~dot~ org.

We are constantly thinking of opportunities we can offer to help promote SFR, so watch this space!

And thank you for your support!

For short story and artwork submissions, please refer to our website at www.SciFiRomanceQuarterly.org

Get ready for a “reAWARDing” Issue 10, hitting the stands on 30 March 2016!