Afterburn Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  Praise for the Novels of S. L. Viehl

  Afterburn

  “The fun of an S. L. Viehl tale is the marvelous intelligent biota with which she fills her tale. . . . A peace conference provides conflict to many interesting characters with romance and evil plots mixing together in a fun meld.”

  —The Weekly Press (Philadelphia)

  “An entertaining adventure and a surprisingly thoughtful look at the ways greatly different species might interact.”

  —Booklist

  “S. L. Viehl is a fabulous world-builder.... This is one of the best books the author has written with several characters deserving their own story in future novels.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “The water world setting is nicely drawn.... The story is convincing and well thought-out.” —Chronicle

  “Strong world-building ... [an] adventurous space opera. Viehl’s various species are fully fleshed out, with individual habits and customs that bring inventively nonhumanoid characters to vivid life. . . . Character- rather than science-driven, this is a science fiction novel with heart—one that will appeal to fans of romantic suspense as well as space fiction.”

  —Romantic Times

  Bio Rescue

  “S. L. Viehl is a terrific world builder ... another great work by a gifted writer.” —Midwest Book Review

  “[An] earnest tale of space medical rescue. Viehl presents another strong female lead [with] Jadaira mu T’resa.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Like Anne McCaffrey, only with more aliens. . . . Viehl certainly ratchets up the tension through the twists and turns of the plot ... a likable book that adds to the genre rather than recycling all the old clichés.”—SF Crowsnest

  “[Bio Rescue] features a compassionate and intelligent heroine and lots of medical rescue scenes. A good choice for fans of medical and military SF.” —Library Journal

  “Viehl does a good job of telling the story, with believable alien as well as human characters and with more romantic emphasis then you usually see in SF.”—SFRevu

  “There’s plenty to like about Bio Rescue. Dair is one of Viehl’s trademark likable, outgoing heroines. Her air battles, and those of her alien flight crew, are thrilling and detailed in a way visuals can’t capture. Bio Rescue is solid sci-fi, better by far than a tonnage of licensed property stories lining the bookshelf racks.”—Rambles

  “Viehl excels at world-building and characterization, bringing the planet K-2 to life and populating it with a diverse cast of native and alien species. Dair is a strong-willed, tough military commander. . . . A rousing adventure tale mixed with space opera and a bit of romance, this is a fast, enthralling read that leaves behind a strong message about tolerance and open-mindedness.”

  —Romantic Times

  “An awesome beginning to what could easily become a series of stories . . . just as superb as Blade Dancer. . . . This novel catches the reader on page one and refuses to release the imagination until the last page has been turned. I simply cannot recommend this title highly enough. Brava!”—Huntress Book Reviews

  “The book’s strength lies in the aquatic nature of the main species in it . . . and the issues of interspecies interaction that it raises.” —Booklist

  “I [have] read plenty of science fiction where the only Sense of Wonder invoked is to wonder which of the cardboard characters is the least interesting, [and] it is a pleasure to meet Viehl’s living, breathing characters.”

  —BookThink

  Praise for S. L. Viehl and the Stardoc novels

  “Continuously surprising and deviously written and splendidly full of new characters.”—Anne McCaffrey

  “I don’t read much science fiction, but I got ahold of a manuscript copy of Stardoc and just loved it. Don’t miss this one.”—Catherine Coulter

  “An entertaining, almost old-fashioned adventure . . . The adventure and quirky mix of aliens and cultures makes a fun combination.” —Locus

  “Genetically enhanced fun . . . Cherijo herself has been justly praised as a breath of fresh air.”

  —Science Fiction Weekly

  “[Cherijo’s] adventures are worth following.”

  —Space.com

  “A rousing good yarn, with plenty of plot twists . . . a lot of action, a sly sense of humor, and wonders aplenty.”

  —SF Site

  ROC

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

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  First Roc Mass Market Printing, November 2006

  Copyright © Sheila Kelly, 2005

  All rights reserved

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  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  eISBN : 978-0-451-46117-9

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  There is a real Emily Kim, and like her counterpart she is a funny, patient, compassionate, and very dear friend.

  Emily, this book is for you.

  CHAPTER 1

  B urn knew he’d be dead in minutes.

  No one would believe it had happened this way. Not to Sublieutena
nt Byorn mu Znora, the best gunner in the Pmoc Quadrant Planetary Militia and, quite possibly, the entire Allied League of Worlds. Not while he flew one of the fastest attack strafers ever built by the League’s military engineers. Not when he had the most advanced weaponry known to humanoid kind at his fin tips. Not after all the tactical flight training hours he’d logged over the last eight months while working to attain his qualifiers.

  Not that any of that mattered now.

  Burn’s first solo mission as a fighter pilot was about to end in complete disaster, and there was nothing he could do except sit back and wait. It wouldn’t be long. The raiders surrounding his ship were Hsktskt, a reptilian slaver species currently at war with the League. The cold-blooded Hsktskt refused to take military prisoners and immediately executed anything wearing a League uniform. They also used displacer weaponry, which, unlike the League’s penetrating pulse-energy ordnance, would use matter-pulverizing energy waves to vaporize Burn and his ship. All very quick and efficient; zero chance for survival.

  But I’m not ready to die yet.

  If Burn had been in the water, he might have had a chance. Under the waves he could have caught a strong current or darted into a labyrinthine recess of the seamount reef. He was much faster in the water now, too; hardly anyone in his natal pod could keep pace with him anymore.

  However, this was not home. This was airless, frigid, unfriendly space. He’d always thought it exciting—the star-pocked blackness had the same lure as the dark water of the dangerous outer currents—but it had no mercy. No, once those blighted, unfeeling Hsktskt lizards blew him up, space would open its endless maw and swallow the explosion, and whatever particles of Burn and the strafer it left behind.

  “Suns if I’ll go like this,” he muttered.

  Burn’s muscles knotted as the ends of his articulated fins hammered his console, searching for options that didn’t exist. Adrenaline made him unconsciously strain against the harness specially adapted to fit and secure his alterformed aquatic body within the liquid-filled interior of his ship. He didn’t have to see the reflection of his features on the vid screen to know his dark hide had blackened and all of his sharp teeth glittered, white and wholly exposed. Any other ’Zangian catching sight of him like this would have given him a wide berth, and herded everyone else away from him, too. ’Zangian males in a killing rage, rare as those were, became a danger to anything that moved.

  Burn felt he had the right to be furious. It wasn’t fair. Against one raider, he might have had a chance. With a little luck, he could have dodged two or three.

  The array of glittering blips that had appeared out of nowhere pulsed on his display. He counted them again, but none had winked out. Three had converged upon him in one coordinated attack, with twelve more streaming in right behind them.

  What would Dair say at this moment? Fifteen Hsktskt raiders . . . kiss your ass good-bye.

  Burn didn’t have an ass, at least not in the humanoid sense, and he’d never kissed anything—’Zangians only used their mouths to feed and fight—but it was a phrase his cousin Jadaira mu T’resa had often used when referring to something completely hopeless. It seemed particularly apt at this moment. At least he had enough time left to alert the ground crew, which had been sending him signals he hadn’t answered since encountering the raiders.

  “Flight Control, this is the SeaDance,” Burn transmitted over the secure relay channel, along with his current scanner readings. “Multiple gstek-class raiders have closed on my AO from all sides. I’m cut off.”

  He could well imagine his controller’s reaction; the Hsktskt weren’t supposed to be in the patrol squadron’s area of operations. Burn’s squadron and other League militia forces had chased the reptilian slavers from the Pmoc Quadrant three revolutions ago. Aside from a few stray renegades, and small scouting missions nosing around now and then, the Hsktskt had never returned.

  Until today, and wasn’t that bloody damn tragic.

  “Acknowledged, SeaDance,” a crisp female ’Zangian voice said over his headgear. His cousin Jadaira, who was also his commander and best friend, had taken over Flight Control from someone Burn wished he could bite hard. “I show you presently at vector eight-six degrees, one-sixteen east, fourteen solar. Confirm track and position.”

  He checked his alidade panel. “That’s my blip.”

  “Patrol has been dispatched to intercept, which you would know if you’d bothered to answer a signal.” Her voice crackled, but with cold anger, not relay interference. “Stop stream and initiate evasive maneuvers. Stand by for patrol ETA.”

  As she spoke Burn imagined the twenty attack strafers being launched from the surface of his homeworld, Kevarzangia Two. All forty occupants of the strafers were, like him, native ’Zangian aquatics who had also undergone surgical enhancement /alterforming to become League pilots and gunners. Forty SEALs, however, couldn’t save his tail, no matter how fast they flew. For all her superior tactical flight experience, neither could Jadaira.

  No one could.

  “Unable to comply, commander.” His scanners showed power spikes coming from five of the raiders’ weapons arrays. If he didn’t move now, he never would.

  “Say again, SeaDance.”

  “They’re already flashing teeth, Dair.” Not like ’Zangians did, as a warning, but like mogshrikes closing in to fight over a fresh kill. The Hsktskt didn’t show what they wouldn’t use. Had he been in the water facing actual ’shrikes, the only way Burn could have avoided a messy death was to transform himself into a parasite-eating mvrey and attach himself to one of their bellies.

  Which, when he thought about it, wasn’t such a terrible idea.

  Weaponry and propulsion core systems on gstek raiders were located in a heavily shielded section at the back of the underside of the ships. If he replotted his course and slid up from beneath them . . . he began calculating and punching in adjustment vectors.

  “Initiate evasive maneuvers at once, Sublieutenant,” Dairs ordered.

  Burn wouldn’t be evading anything, and his cousin knew it. He thought of Dair pacing around the Flight Control deck, her rounded belly undulating with the subtle movements of the unborn child growing inside. His dam had never given him a sibling, but Dair had more than made up for that.

  If Burn was going to die, he knew he would miss his little cousin, and the chance to be present at her whelping. He had been fairly convinced that Dair had intended to pick him to be her pup’s watchout. But she had her mate, Onkar, now, to watch over her and their podling.

  He should say something, though; even under these circumstances a proper farewell to kin was a matter of form. Also, Dair had once been in this position, and he would emulate the dignity she’d shown at the time. “Keep that pup of yours in clear water, Jadaira.”

  “I’m receiving clutter on your channel,” she responded.

  His heart swelled. His cousin was giving him the chance to change his mind and not disobey her command. She was also relating what she thought of his plan, which she had probably figured out by now. He’d always been as easy for Dair to read as a star chart.

  “No, you’re not,” he told the panel.

  “Sublieutenant, transmit your heading.” When he didn’t respond, she transmitted a far more irate, “Abort, repeat, abort.”

  “One spin and I’ll haul fin,” he lied.

  “Blast you, Burn, I gave you a direct—”

  He terminated the relay and finished banking the strafer, which had him facing his attackers. Looking death square in the eye was his second-favorite thing to do.

  Powering up the weapons array and switching the firing controls to the flight panel dispelled the last of Burn’s tension. Saree, the wing leader and one of the few ’Zangians who preferred to fly without a gunner, had taught him a few of her special tricks. And he wasn’t dead yet, so he could spend his last minutes of existence doing his first and most favorite thing.

  “All right, you big, ugly, uninvited scum eaters.” Burn overrod
e all the ship’s control safeties before he engaged targeting and throttled up on the primary engine. A transparent bubble sealed itself around him and glowed faintly red as the targeting/firing sphere began tracking and displaying the raiders’ movements. “Here I come.”

  He pushed the throttle through the stop ring, which forced the engines past their safety limits to produce maximum thrust. The SeaDance responded to the hazardous surge of power by shooting directly into the center of the fifteen ships.

  Because they had expected him to flee, not to fly directly at them, the Hsktskt were completely unprepared. Their power spikes fluctuated as they compensated for his change of position, but not fast enough to avoid the rapid pulse fire roaring out of his nose cannons.

  As Burn fired at three ships, he decided that he liked the targeting/firing sphere. Nicknamed StarFire by its unimaginative but decidedly smug creators from Quadrant Engineering, it was a system the League had hoped to eventually supply for all of its single pilot/gunners like Burn and Saree. For now, StarFire remained in the prelim testing stage. Burn had originally been selected and trained to operate the prototype because he had more experience on weapon systems—as well as confirmed kills—than any gunner in the quadrant.

  On his first pass, three raiders’ propulsion and weapons systems imploded, taking out two ships and severely crippling the third, which fired back and took out one of Burn’s backup engines before its power cells died.

  “Bite my flukes,” he muttered, bringing the SeaDance about for another pass.

  It was a genuine shame that this would be the only time Burn would be able to put StarFire through its paces. The prototype responded beautifully, instantly tracking and obeying the eye movements he used to control it, locking without error on multiple targets, and coordinating cannon fire effortlessly. Before the Hsktskt killed him, Burn thought he really should mention to Dair how well the weaponry system operated. The only problem was that if he enabled his transponder, she’d just scream some silly order to retreat at him and he’d spend his last moments of existence arguing with her.