Star Cruise: Stowaway Plus Rescue and Token

by Veronica Scott

  Copyrights: Star Cruise: Stowaway 2016; Star Cruise: Rescue 2016; The Golden Token 2016, Star Cruise: Thanksgiving 2016 by Jean D. Walker; Danger in the Stars 2017 by Jean D. Walker

  These books or stories are works of fiction. The names, places, characters and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of these books or this four story anthology may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Cover Art by Fiona Jayde

  STAR CRUISE: A Novella

  Stowaway

  Plus Rescue and Token Short Stories

  By Veronica Scott

  Welcome to the Sectors, the interstellar civilization where my science fiction adventures take place!

  In this volume I’ve gathered three stories set in the Sectors which have previously only been available in anthologies, plus a bonus Sectors short holiday story that I originally wrote for my blog.

  Star Cruise: Stowaway: A novella of 22K words, previously in the ‘Pets In Space’ anthology.

  Cargo Master Owen Embersson is shocked when the Nebula Zephyr’s ship’s cat and her alien sidekick, Midorri, alert him to the presence of a stowaway. He has no idea of the dangerous complications to come nor does he anticipate falling hard for the woman whose life he now holds in his hands. Life aboard the Nebula Zephyr has just become more interesting – and deadly.

  (NOTE: I’ve included a short excerpt from my new release Danger in the Stars, which tells the standalone story of the Stowaway heroine’s sister, at the end of this collection of stories.)

  Star Cruise: Rescue: A short story of 9K words, previously in the ‘Romancing the Stars’ anthology.

  When a shore leave excursion goes terribly wrong for Mira Gage, a member of the Nebula Zephyr’s crew, Security Officer Clint Miltan races the clock to find her before the ship leaves orbit and abandons Mira to her fate. Clint’s got more than a professional interest in Mira, but will he be able to save her from the aliens holding her prisoner?

  The Golden Token: A short story of 13K words, previously in the limited edition ‘Dealer’s Choice’ paperback anthology handed out at the 2016 RT Booklovers Convention Interstellar Bar & Grille event.

  Sectors Special Forces operator Charlie McBrire had a few days to kill on a layover at Space Station 47. He never expected to find himself in the middle of a miners’ rebellion, fighting to save the life of a casino dancer he just met but can’t imagine living without.

  BONUS: Star Cruise: Thanksgiving: A short short story of 3K words, published on my blog

  The crew of the Nebula Zephyr arranges a holiday feast for one of their members.

  I hope you’ll enjoy the stories!

  Veronica’s Note: Why I wrote this story: From the beginning when author Pauline B. Jones and I had the fun idea to do an anthology mixing pets into scifi adventure and romance, I knew I was going to place my Pets In Space story in the Sectors, an interstellar civilization where most of my scifi romances occur. What kind of pet would be logical in a spacefaring world? Of course—cats go anywhere, any time, right? Not to mention that my own two cats Jake and Keanu are strong advocates for more feline presence in my stories LOL.

  I also wanted to have an alien pet involved, just for fun.

  At the time we’d started talking about doing a Pets In Space collection, I was writing Star Cruise: Outbreak and had a scene take place in the cargo hold. It occurred to me that even on a spaceship there might well be vermin, so I gave Moby the white-furred rescue cat to the Cargo Master, Owen Embersson. Since he had the pet, Officer Embersson would have to be the romantic hero of the short story. What kind of a woman could he naturally become involved with? How could I write a plot for them that involved more than just everybody enjoying cats, feeding cats and playing with cat toys? Owen wouldn’t normally interact with the Nebula Zephyr’s passengers and I felt I’d done enough ‘crew member falls in love with another crew member’ stories for now…but he’d be the first person to interact with a stowaway!

  Once I knew Tyrelle the heroine was going to be a stowaway, the rest of the plot elements fell into place for me.

  Star Cruise: Outbreak features an alien pet, Midorri, who is kind of a cross between a tribble and a red tailed panda (my favorite animal after cats). I decided to keep her on board the Nebula Zephyr after the events of Outbreak so she could be involved in this Stowaway adventure too. As pets and secondary characters often do, she kept becoming more and more integral to the plot and revealing new capabilities I didn’t know about before. I got really fond of my furry little green friend with the six legs!

  STAR CRUISE: STOWAWAY

  CHAPTER ONE

  This was the time of day he enjoyed most, when all his crew had gone off duty and the Nebula Zephyr’s top cargo deck was quiet. Sure, more work remained tomorrow to get the cargo squared away properly and ready for the next stop, but there was no rush, being several weeks out. Cargo Master Owen Embersson surveyed his desk in the tiny office on Deck 18. Time to leave the place to the ship’s AI, go have his dinner in his cabin and then resume work on the scale model of a long-vanished temple he was building. This one was incredibly intricate, and he’d charge the customer triple the usual price.

  Stepping onto the echoing deck, he called for Moby. She spent most of her evenings hunting vermin lurking among the monstrous crates and containers, but she usually passed the first part of the evening in his cabin, eating the incredibly expensive cat food he had the ship’s AI keep in stock. Not much else to spend his salary on. “Come on, cat, I want my dinner even if you don’t,” he said to the elegant vision in white fur who trotted from the murky recesses of the deck. How she stayed clean when she spent her days prowling the cargo deck, he’d never know.

  Purring, she came to his steel-tipped work shoes but evaded his effort to pick her up, moving just out of range the way felines did, as if cats could teleport. Moby scampered toward the towering stacks of cargo then turned. Seeing he’d failed to chase her, she sat, tail twitching, head tilted, eyeing him.

  “What‘s the matter with you? I’m not in the mood to throw cat toys and retrieve them right now.” Embersson headed toward the gravlift. Moby regarded the entire ship as her territory and could find his cabin for her dinner when she was hungry.

  In the next minute, he nearly tripped as she rubbed his ankles, nipping at one in passing. Swearing, he caught himself with a hand to the bulkhead. “What in the seven hells is wrong with you tonight? Giving me a concussion won’t get you fed.”

  Moby yowled at him and ran toward the stacked cargo again.

  Figuring she wanted to show him a recent kill, which he’d then have to dispose of, he followed.

  Moby moved faster now that she’d gotten him with the program.

  He followed her around the corner of the pallet the ship had taken on earlier in the day and found Midorri, the Zephyr’s other pet, crouched beside a free trader container. “What mischief have the two of you gotten into now?” he asked Moby. Midorri came aboard the Zephyr originally as the pampered pet of a princess, but after the whole outbreak incident, Sector authorities refused to let the lady disembark on Sector Hub with the undocumented animal, so the ship had kept the odd green fluffball. Dr. Shane was her official owner of record, but the entire crew liked the slightly clumsy but always amusing creature.

  Midorri sneezed, as she was often wont t
o do, allergic to humans perhaps, and flicked her plush prehensile tail before lowering her head and extending her long green tongue to lap at something on the deck.

  “Freaking flares, do not tell me we’ve got leaking cargo. Damn free traders and their beat-up equipment.” He hoped Moby hadn’t sampled whatever Midorri was drinking. The alien animal could probably handle anything up to and including nuclear fuel, who knew, but Moby was definitely a terrestrial cat, with a more delicate stomach. He tried to shoo Midorri away from the slowly growing puddle of green goo, dripping from a dented corner of the container. Musta gotten banged when the shuttle crew offloaded the final pallet too fast and had to straighten everything in a rush. Funny, he’d never have picked this box—well constructed, made from high-quality materials—to be a problem. “I better see what’s in there,” he said to the interested animals.

  Moby yowled, startling him as her voice echoed, and Midorri emitted a high-pitched chirping that grated on his ears like a physical assault.

  Spurred on by the animals’ distress, which confirmed his own suspicion he faced a genuine problem, Embersson used his cargo master key, which was supposed to open any container on his ship. Nothing happened. Swearing, he tried again. “This free trader’s never shipping anything with us again, idiot forgot to set the damn code for my access. Maeve, can you open this?”

  “Of course,” the ship’s AI said. “I haven’t forgotten all my military skills just because I run a cruise ship nowadays.”

  “Wait a second.” He stepped aside, encouraging the animals to do so as well. He imagined a gush of whatever was leaking when Maeve did her hacking thing and overrode the container controls.

  Midorri tried to climb over his boot to return to the growing puddle.

  A loud click echoed in the cargo bay and the seams on the crate glowed yellow, unsealing in a smooth progression along the rim. Sure enough a deluge of liquid followed, but Embersson froze for a moment as he saw what had been inside the crate. Then he was on his knees beside the now-open container, heedless of the green cryo fluid soaking his pants, as he tried to extricate the woman who’d been illegally stored inside. She was tightly curled in the midst of the cryo tubes, and he swore again as he realized chains bound her ankles.

  Carefully he disentangled her from the nonfunctioning equipment. She opened her eyes for a moment, staring straight at him with beautiful green and gold eyes before convulsing, knocking Embersson off balance. He broke the fall for both of them, holding her securely.

  Midorri scrabbled across his body, gently poking the woman with her head, making mewling sounds.

  Shoving the beast away with his elbow as he got to his feet, he observed the woman wasn’t breathing. “Tell Dr. Shane I need her down here now, with a crash cart,” he yelled to the AI as he laid the stowaway on the deck and checked for a clear airway. Ear to her chest, he detected no heartbeat. “And get Jake too. We’ve got a real mess on our hands.” Not knowing what else to try, he placed his hands on her chest and performed old-fashioned CPR. The deck’s rudimentary first aid kit held nothing for restarting a heart.

  “I’ll alert the captain as well,” Maeve said on the private link she maintained with all senior officers, including him.

  “Fine, good idea.” He puffed breath into the woman’s mouth and resumed compressions. “Come on, come on, breathe for me, lady. Where the hell is Dr. Shane?”

  “She’ll be arriving in one minute,” Maeve said, ever calm. “The patient is an unknown type of sentient, not previously recorded in the Sectors, by the way.”

  Embersson continued his efforts—counting, compressing, breathing—hoping he wasn’t breaking the woman’s delicate ribs with his efforts. “Helpful as always, Maeve.”

  “Your sarcasm is unnecessary, Cargo Master.”

  He heard the cargo deck gravlift door cycle open. “Over here,” he yelled, “Behind the first set of pallets.”

  Emily Shane, Ship’s Physician, sprinted toward him, an antigrav medcart and litter in her wake. Jake Dilon, Security Chief, ran right behind her. Taking a quick look, the doctor grabbed a couple of injects. “Bad cryo cooler fluid?” Grabbing a portable scanner from the cart, she focused on the woman’s chest area and assessed the physiology. “Lungs, heart, the basics.”

  “Maeve says an unknown race.”

  “Figures. Humanoid enough. Move aside, and I’ll restart the heart, clear the lungs now.” Emily used all three injects and then attached a probe. “Can you gentlemen transfer her to the litter?”

  Owen took the stowaway’s shoulders, and Jake took her legs. Fingering the shackles on the patient’s ankles, he asked, “What have we got here?”

  “Not an ordinary stowaway situation, that’s for sure. We can remove those cuffs, but check out the collar. I didn’t like the looks of it, not ordinary jewelry, I’m thinking.”

  Frowning, the ship’s Security Chief bent over the woman’s neck. “Emily, be careful – this is an explosive device.”

  “I’ll watch it. Presumably whoever put it there didn’t want her dead, more of a deterrent.” Dr. Shane didn’t pause for an instant, administering treatment. Owen knew she’d seen more things on the front lines of the Sectors’ war with the alien Mawreg and their allies than most people experienced in their entire lives. “You gentlemen can go talk a few feet away and take the animals—you’re all in my way.”

  Vicente, the nurse who’d been a military medic, rushed onto the cargo deck and jumped right in on assisting Emily.

  Owen held onto Midorri, balancing on his shoulder with her ringed tail looped around his neck. “Grab Moby for me, would you, Jake?” He edged toward the door, reluctant to leave the unconscious woman’s side. The single glance he’d had from her on the cargo deck hit him like a knife, as if he was her only hope and she was drowning.

  He heard a choking gasp, and the patient coughed, retching up more cryo fluid. Instinctively he stepped forward to help, he had no idea how, but Vicente blocked his path.

  Jake took his elbow. “A good sign, but we need to let them work—the professionals have got her now. Come over here and tell me what happened.”

  He let himself be drawn away but glanced over his shoulder to find the mystery woman staring at him as she sank back on the litter. “Is she out of danger?”

  “Probably, can’t be sure. We’re moving her to sickbay now so I can get her hooked into monitors, start the proper therapy for cryo problems. Her heart is showing a tendency toward fibrillation which concerns me.” Emily frowned as she checked her readouts. “I want these shackles off her.”

  “I’ll have two of my men meet you at sickbay, and Clint can take care of the cuffs for you,” Jake said. “But you’ll have to keep her in restraints until we know more.” He raised a hand as the doctor opened her mouth to protest the order. “We can’t simply assume she’s an innocent victim—I’ve got the safety of the ship and everyone aboard to consider. So until we know more, we’ll keep her immobilized in a more humane fashion than chains. Can you activate the privacy screen while you’re transporting her? It’s late at night, thank goodness, but you may run into passengers in the A Deck corridor. I want as little attention on this incident as possible.”

  “Of course.” Emily seemed surprised by his request but acquiesced readily enough. “What should I do about the collar?”

  “Red and I’ll come examine it as soon as I’m done here. He did demolition work when we were in the Special Forces, so he may have an idea how to defuse the device. Give it a wide berth for now.”

  Drawn by the woman’s gaze, which she kept locked on him in an almost pleading fashion, Owen stepped closer to the litter. She reached out one hand and without thinking, he clasped her fingers in his, feeling how chilled she was from her violent trembling. “You’ll be fine now,” he said, leaning closer, while Emily and Vicente prepared the litter for transport. “Dr. Shane will take care of you, I promise.”

  She squeezed his hand tighter and then arched into another convulsion.

>   Moby screeched her disapproval and scooted behind the nearest cargo crates while Midorri scrambled down Owen’s back and leapt to a perch on a nearby loader, chittering and whining with ear splitting volume the whole time.

  “Sickbay now,” Emily said. She and Vicente moved the antigrav litter and associated equipment to the gravlift entrance.

  Captain Fleming walked onto the cargo deck. He stepped aside to let them pass, Moby and Midorri hustling in their wake.

  “I’ll be up to check on her later,” Owen said, raising his voice.

  “What the seven hells is going on here?” Fleming asked. “Hardly the usual stowaway case, from what Maeve told me.”

  Owen briefed the captain while the three men examined the open freight container without touching any part of it. One of Maeve’s small cleaning robos bustled over the deck, absorbing the puddle of cryo cooler fluid.

  “Save the liquid for evidence,” Jake directed the AI. “Never know what may be a clue.”

  “Who shipped this?” Fleming asked.

  Owen checked the info on his handheld. “InterPlanet Novelties. Never heard of them, undoubtedly a false front company. These two pallets came aboard late – we weren’t the primary choice of shipper, but the original vessel suffered an unexpected delay making port. I picked up the load for them since we had space. I owed the freight forwarder a favor or two.”

  Jake gave him a sympathetic grin. “Sorry now?”

  Owen grunted, a vision of the woman’s face flashing through his mind. “The container’s scheduled to be offloaded two stops from now, on Devir Six.”

  “The cryo unit was well shielded,” Jake said. “It’s a clever design, self contained, small but an efficient power source.”