The green sun of Lilen rose over the city of Shooshun. Its warm rays pierced a certain upper-story window of a certain stone house near the outermost edge of the city’s innermost ring. Soft green light shone on the face of a young Lilenite as she slept among piles of silky-soft furs.
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“Absolutely not!” My bass voice shook the room. “I refuse.”
King Elrose Pendrake VI merely grinned. “Oh, don’t be like that, you big lizard. Wasn’t it you who taught me not to refuse something without knowing what I’m refusing?”
“That’s different. I know exactly what kind of nonsense you’ll be involving me in.”
Cooling my jets on a passenger transport from the outer planets to Mars, I was looking forward to conducting my research on pre-android robots from a safe, but observable, distance from Earth. Naturally, that’s when it happened.
The radio crackled and the captain of a passing freighter, leaving Mars for the outer quadrants,
While I’ve faced plenty of crises aboard the spaceship Oceania, I’d never been charged by a rhino before.
Seconds from impact, I dodged the furious beast’s horn, lunged, and scooped her into my arms. “Take it easy,” I murmured, scratching behind Rhino One’s ears.
The Oceania was transporting a dozen Sumatran rhinos…
Watching the one-yen coin tumbling seemingly endlessly midair, Ren Izumi said,
“Winner gets to update the signal tower’s hardware down on the planet. Fresh air after three months, ah! The loser has to stay here and overhaul the ship’s decrepit ventilation system. I call one.”
Himari Tanaka smiled. “Is that Toshiko-san’s lucky coin?”
“Wait! Stop!” Brynn shouted between panting breaths. His lungs burned. His legs burned. And though the sun was dipping below the rim of the canyon, putting the structures around him into shadow, Brynn could feel the rock’s residual heat, even through his boots.
The girl kept climbing.
“You know they can’t understand you, right?”
Shots glanced off a yellow-leafed tree as Tee darted through bushes taller than him. He screeched as another bullet almost grazed his large ear. Taurus’s tail, he thought ERT-82’s greens would provide camouflage, but the chlorophyl-deprived foliage left him exposed. “This is Ambassador Tee, calling dispatch. Come in, Caelum Base!”
Only static.
Kaits and his buddies scrambled to hide their holocards and gambling chips as Lieutenant Gilbert walked into the rec bay. Gaming for credits was strictly forbidden on the Galactic Defense Federation’s ships, and the last thing Kaits needed was to get chewed out by the lieutenant.
Again.
“Men, this is Private Johnny Wilson
I sit alone on the silent space station that was supposed to make me famous. Now, it’s hardly more than a dead shell. The bright overhead lights have been replaced by the red emergency lights behind me. The sun peers around the cursed planet below. I wonder if there are any eyes staring
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WARNING: POWER CAPACITY AT FIFTY PERCENT
With a grunt, Nick swipes away the alarm in his head. But what little peace he’d hoped to gain is smashed with each pound on the shuttle door.
“Give up, Nicky!” a voice jeers from the other side. “The Silverclad just wants a little heart-to-heart!”
Gravity is merciless. My brittle-boned body—courtesy of decades in the Space Force—hurtled toward what could be a disastrous collision with the floor.
But I was wearing a Belt. Once its sensors registered my loss of balance, its anti-grav went into action, halting my descent and raising me gently until I was again upright.
Cassandra gripped the handle on the side of the launch shuttle to keep her hand from trembling. The target ship’s silver and white panels gleamed in the ocean of darkness.
At least I could swim in the ocean. In space, Cassandra would be at the mercy of trajectory, and it was no short distance
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